Harold said, “The reverend and I were just talking about the list.”
“Yuh,” Mickey said, grabbing a potato chip between two fingers and plunging it deep into the dip, nearly to the tips of his soiled fingers.
“The reverend was wondering – and to tell you the truth, I started to wonder, myself – exactly how many of those red lines were yours.”
Mickey shrugged. “Lots of them. Almost all of them, I suppose, one way or another.”
“All of them?” Reverend McGill said. “Not really.”
“You got a copy with you?” Mickey asked.
Harold did, in his pocket. He unfolded it, six pages stapled together, and he set it in the middle of the table. Eight or nine Soldiers for Christ surrounded the picnic table, none daring to squeeze in on the bench, and leaned in to get a look at the infamous list. They’d all seen it on the Internet, but here they were sharing it with three legendary figures of the anti-cloning movement: Reverend McGill, Harold Devereaux, and Mickey Fanning. They’d all heard stories about Mickey’s dedication and coldness of heart, about how he’d circumcised himself with a razor blade and a bottle of aspirin, about how he’d killed dozens of doctors and scientists. They just weren’t sure which or how many of these tales they should believe.
From behind his ear Mickey produced a pencil, which he had used to dig about in Harold’s garden. He wiped soil from the lead in the margins of the first page and began putting marks next to the names.
Heads leaned forward all around as Mickey methodically checked off the names of dead and retired doctors. Dr. Andrea Ali, Dr. Jim Baggio, Dr. Phillip Byner, Dr. Thomas Curry… In places, he claimed eight or nine in a row before skipping one with the tip of his lead. On more than one of those streaks, a lanky bearded kid, no more than twenty, whispered a “Whoa. Dude.”
When he turned the last page over he had marked 87 names without a word. He flipped the list right side up and pushed it to the center of the table. The gathering of Christ’s soldiers burst into chatter. Mickey slapped the back of his neck and examined his palm. Three bloody mosquitoes had been flattened there with one blow.
“Let me see that,” Harold said, pulling the list toward him with a skeptical chuckle. He turned the first page. “Here. What about this one? You claim Jon Kucza was one of yours. Jon Kucza died of a heart attack.”
“Nicotine overdose,” Mickey corrected. “I slipped it into his coffee grounds. He was already on the patch. Never tasted it.”
Harold tilted his head to show he was impressed, but continued to pore over the list. “Geoffrey Gahala. He died in a hiking accident.”
“He was hiking all right,” Mickey said. “It was no accident, though.” The soldiers whistled and clapped.
Reverend McGill held up a hand. “I can’t say I know whether to believe you, Mr. Fanning. What would be the point of killing any of these doctors and making it look like an accident? What deterrence value does that action have?”
Mickey had both of his palms down on the table, and he was staring at his filthy hands. “Who said it was only about deterrence?”
“Obviously, the taking of lives such as these must be justified by the greater good,” McGill said. “Don’t misunderstand me, Mickey, you have performed miracles for the movement through your public displays of protest. But I don’t understand why you would allow any doctors to die without sending a message to the general population about the evils of the cloning profession. What about the greater good?”
Mickey looked up from his hands, not at the reverend, but at Harold. “Sometimes the greater good is just a dead doctor. Those men and women offended God, and now they’re dead. Perhaps that’s as good as it gets.”
While his followers turned to McGill for a response, Harold found another name of interest. “Lookit here. Davis Moore,” he said. “Moore quit his practice but he still stumps for the pro-cloners. I saw him on the news less than a month ago.”
“You’re the one who drew a line through his name,” Mickey said. “I just claimed his retirement as my own. Count it as half a victory.”
“That’s fair,” Harold said. “But he hung it up years and years after you shot him. How can you look me in the eyes and take the credit for that? Seriously. There could have been any number of reasons he gave up being a doctor.”
Mickey stuck his jaw out and smiled over the underbite in a manner that gave Reverend McGill a slow chill. “Some take longer than others,” he admitted. “And let’s just say that I did more than shoot Dr. Moore in the shoulder.” No one reacted, so Mickey continued. “Some things you mean to do, some things you don’t, and everything you do has unintended consequences.”
Leaning his large frame so far back he had to hook a foot around one of the table legs to keep from falling over, Harold said, “What are you goin’ on about, Mickey?”
Without looking up, Mickey said, “To be honest, I don’t think the reverend wants to hear it.”
The soldiers grumbled. McGill’s presence was forcing a premature end to a good story, and they planned on walking away from the famous Mickey Fanning with a good story at the very least. The reverend was losing a popularity contest among his own flock. He started face-saving measures. “Mickey, you’re among friends here. I assure you that nothing you can say will shock me. There has been no greater supporter of your work than the Soldiers for Christ. Of course we maintain a certain – veneer – to remain palatable to the suits in Washington as well as plain folks in Peoria. But we understand this is a war. Whatever tactics you have used in pursuit of your many accomplishments are no doubt justified. You have earned that much respect and more, in my opinion.” The soldiers muttered their agreement. The bearded kid patted Mickey on the back, to Mickey’s irritation. Harold was gratified to hear the reverend coming around to more radical, forward thinking.
“I shot Davis Moore about twenty years ago, from sixty-five yards,” Mickey said. “I missed by two inches and he survived. A year or so later I was driving back through Chicago and decided to have another go at him. It was a cold, cold winter and I didn’t have time to set up all the necessary precautions for a proper – uh, elimination – so I decided to try something a little different. A tactic that didn’t work that night, but which has served me well in the years since.
“Moore’s daughter was working in a clothing store. Two hours before closing, I walked in and hid in one of the dressing rooms. While I was in there, I took out a piece of paper and I wrote her a note.” Mickey removed from his pocket a worn and smudged piece of paper, creased into quarters. He unfolded it carefully, as if it were a fragile page from an ancient manuscript. “This very one, in fact.” The reverend adjusted his glasses to examine it closely. In black and red inks Mickey had drawn a crude but anatomically accurate heart, a coiled snake, a pair of hands (one pointing to the heavens), and the initials H O G. The names of six doctors were written in black and crossed out with a red pen. Last on the list, but not crossed out, was the name “Dr. Davis Moore.” Finally, in block letters, was a Bible verse everyone at the table recognized:
SEE! THE MAN HAS BECOME LIKE ONE OF US, KNOWING WHAT IS GOOD AND WHAT IS BAD! THEREFORE, HE MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO PUT OUT HIS HAND TO TAKE FRUIT FROM THE TREE OF LIFE, AND THUS EAT OF IT AND LIVE FOREVER.
All the words were in black ink except for HE MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO… LIVE, which was in red.
Mickey said, “I planned to give this to Moore’s daughter, Anna, when the store thinned out toward closing-”
“Anna Kat,” Harold corrected. Mickey stared at him. “Her name was Anna Katherine. They called her Anna Kat.”
In the ensuing pause Reverend McGill took a loud sip of root beer while Mickey fixed a displeased stare on Harold Devereaux. Harold squinted unapologetically in reply and Mickey continued. “While I was writing this, Anna – Anna Katherine – snuck into the changing room next to me with a boy I guessed was about her age. Sixteen or seventeen. I never saw his face and they couldn’t have known I was there. I listened as they sniggered and shushed one another, and I could see their clothes fall to the floor in the space between our stalls. I picked my legs up off the floor to be certain they wouldn’t see me and I sat very still as the boy pushed himself inside the Moore girl, their bodies slapping together with great violence. Occasionally they would slam loudly into the wall and I could hear him hitting her – slapping her, pinching her – and she responded each time with a muffled but ecstatic purr. So young and so self-loathing, it was everything I could do not to retch.