Home Fires

REFLECTION 6: The Best Course

The moon is high—clearly I slept. They’ll sleep, too. Most of them and perhaps all of them. What have they done with the passengers? There’s no one behind these glass doors, no one in the bedroom behind this veranda. Luggage, yes, and a rumpled bed; but no people. We would have seen bodies in the water, surely. Not a great many perhaps, in proportion to the passengers and crew; but ten or twenty, certainly. We saw none, except for poor Al Alamar. He returned to the ship, found the hijackers in control, and tried to fight them. He was a soldier, and a brave one.

Did the other soldiers fight? Some of them at least? There were a good many on the ship, apparently, most of them in second class. There were enough for Vanessa to hold a meet-greet-and-hook-up party for them.

Chelle went, and I ought to have gone with her. She was angry, but would she have made a scene if I had come in later? Very possibly she would, if she were drunk by then. Certainly she was drunk later—or so I’d like to believe. Was our seventh person drunk too? Was Jane Sims drunk? Did she think Jim or Jerry might be Don? Was Don a soldier? I’d like to think that he was, and that she did.

If the soldiers fought, Jim and Jerry may be dead, for which I now owe them even more. As much as I owe poor Al Alamar.

I’m no soldier nor am I brave, only a killer with an empty gun. Vanessa thought I was brave because I fought that military cop. That wasn’t courage, only rage. Rage because he had struck me, and frustration because Chelle hadn’t recognized me. We killers, we murderers, how often we do it because we’re angry or frustrated or both. That man who kicked a little child to death. His girlfriend’s child, and perhaps he was its father. He or some other man she had met in the same bar or another bar.…

Chelle may be pregnant; but if she is, the infant she carries will not be mine. Will I ever have a child?

Have a son? Will I, someday, kick him to death?

How many murder cases have I defended? Eight I can think of offhand. Even a murderer deserves to have someone to speak for him, someone who will explain to the jury why he did what he did and show him where his best interests lie. I did what I could for them, even for the woman who killed her own children.

I’ll do my best to defend Vanessa, if I ever get the chance. Who will defend the man who tried to kill her? And will he do his best for him, his best for the faceless man, tall and well dressed, with the steak knife?

Who’ll do his best for me? Men with machetes dashing down the corridor, into the fire of my submachine gun … Into the fire of this gun I hold, dashing to their deaths.

When I’m killed tonight, it will be one more. We all have to die, and I’ve had my dream. Chelle returned to me, still as young and fresh as she had been twenty years ago. That was what I wanted. I got it, and the rest has been anticlimax.

Would I live for her if I could? No. My living will do her no good and may do her a great deal of harm, but I will live for myself if I can.

What’s in Stateroom One? And how did Vanessa learn that it was there?

Did they reach it? She and Chelle? Is Chelle still alive? I must find out if I can, must help her if I can. Would she do the same for me? Certainly, and without a moment’s thought.

These glass doors are locked. I might climb up or down, but it will be easier to try another veranda forward. As tired as I am—tired, stiff, thirsty, and hungry—that will be the best course. There ought to be a refrigerator inside a first-class stateroom, mixers and snacks. If I put my left arm and my head through this strap or whatever they call it, I can carry the submachine gun slantwise across my back.

And now up on the railing and step across—carefully, carefully—and the veranda door here is already open.

How easy it was!