Dexter by Design

SIXTEEN

I HAVE HEARD CO-WORKERS SPEAK OF HAVING 'THE BLAHS', and always thought myself blessed that I lacked the ability to provide a host for anything with such an unattractive name. But the last few hours of my work day could be described in no other way. Dexter of the Bright Knife, Dexter the Duke of Darkness, Dexter the Hard and Sharp and Totally Empty, had the blahs. It was uncomfortable, of course, but due to the very nature of the thing I did not have the energy to do anything about it. I sat at my desk and pushed paperclips around, wishing I could just as easily push the pictures out of my head: Deborah falling; my foot connecting to Doncevic's head; the knife going up; the saw coming down ...

Blah. It was as stupid as it was embarrassing and enervating.

Okay, technically speaking, Doncevic had been sort of innocent.

I had made one lousy little mistake. Big deal. Nobody's perfect. Why should I even pretend to be? Was I really going to imagine that I felt bad about ending an innocent life? Preposterous. And anyway, what is innocent, after all? Doncevic had been playing around with dead bodies, and he had caused millions of dollars in damage to the city budget and the tourist industry. There were plenty of people in Miami who would gladly have killed him just to stop the bleeding.

The only problem was that one of those people was not me.

I was not much, I knew that. I never pretended to have any real humanity, and I certainly didn't tell myself that what I did was all right just because my playmates were cut from the same cloth. In fact, I was fairly certain that the world would be a much better place without me. Mind you, I have never been in a very big hurry to make the world a better place in that regard, either. I wanted to stick around as long as possible, because when you die either everything stops forever, or else Dexter was in for a very warm surprise. Neither option seemed like much of a choice.

So, I had no illusions about my worth to the rest of the world.

I did what I did and didn't ask for any thanks. But always, every time since the very first, I had done it by the rules laid down by Saint Harry, my near-perfect adoptive father. This time I had broken the rules, and for reasons that were not clear to me, that made me feel like I deserved to be caught and punished. And I could not convince myself that this was a healthy feeling.

So I battled the blahs until quitting time and then, without any real increase in energy, I drove over to the hospital again. The rush hour traffic did nothing to cheer me up. Everybody seemed to be just going through the motions without any real, genuine homicidal rage. A woman cut me off and threw half an orange at my windshield, and a man in a van tried to run me off the road, but they seemed to be doing it mechanically, not really putting their hearts into it.

When I got to Deborah's room, Chutsky was asleep in his chair, snoring loud enough to rattle the windows. So I sat for a little while, watching Deborah's eyelids quiver. I thought that was probably a good thing, indicating she was getting her REM sleep and therefore getting better. I wondered what she would think of my little mistake when she woke up. Considering what her attitude had been just before she got stabbed, it didn't seem likely that she would be terribly understanding about even such a minor slip-up. After all, she was as much in the grip of Harry's Shadow as I was, and if she could barely tolerate what I did when it was Harry Approved, she would never go along with something outside his careful limits.

Debs could never know what I had done. Not a big deal, considering I had always hidden everything from her until recently. But it didn't make me feel any better this time, for some reason. After all, I had done this one for her, as much as anything else —the first time I had ever acted out of noble impulses, and it had turned out very badly. My sister made a really poor Dark Passenger.

Debs moved her hand, just a twitch, and her eyes blinked open.

Her lips parted slightly and I was certain she actually focused on me for a moment. I leaned toward her and she watched me, and then her eyelids drifted closed again.

She was slowly getting better, and she was going to make it, I was sure. It might be weeks rather than days, but sooner or later she was going to get up out of that awful steel bed and get to work at being her old self again. And when she did ... what would she do about me?

I didn't know. But I had a very bad feeling that it wouldn't be much fun for either of us; because as I had realized, we were both still living in Harry's shadow, and I was pretty sure I knew what Harry would say.

Harry would say it was wrong, because this was not the way he had designed Dexter's life, as I remembered oh so well.

Harry usually looked very happy when he came in the front door from work. I don't think he ever was truly happy, of course, but he always looked like it, and this was one of my first very important lessons from him: make your face fit the occasion. It may seem like a small and obvious point, but to a fledgling monster still figuring out that he was very different, it was a vital lesson.

I remember sitting in the great banyan tree in our front yard one afternoon because, frankly, that is what the other kids in the neighborhood did, even long after what one might call optimum tree-climbing age. Those trees were a great place to sit, with their wide horizontal branches, and they served as a clubhouse for everyone under the age of eighteen.

So I sat in mine that afternoon, hoping the rest of the neighborhood would mistake me as normal. I was at an age where everything was starting to change, and I had begun to notice that I was changing in a very different way. For one thing, I was not totally consumed with trying to see under Bobbie Gelber's skirt when she climbed up into the tree, and all the other boys were. And for another ...

When the Dark Passenger started whispering wicked thoughts, I realized that it was a presence that had always been there; it just had not spoken until now. But now, when my contemporaries were starting to pass around copies of Hustler, it was sending me dreams of a different kind of illustration, perhaps from Vivisection Monthly. Although the images that came to me were disturbing at first, they started to seem more and more natural, inevitable, desirable, and finally, necessary. But another voice, equally strong, told me this was wrong, crazy, very dangerous. And for the most part the two voices fought to a tie and I did nothing but dream, just like all the human boys my age.

One wonderful night the two whispering armies came together when I realized that the Gelbers” dog, Buddy, was keeping Mom awake with its non-stop barking. This was not a good thing. Mom was dying of some untreatable mysterious thing called a lymphoma, and she needed her sleep. It occurred to me that if I could help Mom sleep, this would be a very good thing, and both voices agreed that this was so —one somewhat reluctantly, of course, but the other, darker one, with an eagerness that made me dizzy.

And so it was that Buddy, the loud-mouthed little dog, launched Dexter on his way. It was clumsy of course, and much messier than I had planned, but it was also oh so good and right and necessary.

In the following months there were a few more minor experiments; carefully spaced, playmates more cautiously chosen, since even in my hot-blooded phase of self-discovery I understood that if all the pets in the neighborhood disappeared, someone was bound to ask questions. But there was a stray, and a bicycle trip to a different area, and somehow young Luke Darkwalker got by, slowly learning to be happily me. And because I felt so attached to my small experiments, I buried them close at hand, behind a row of bushes in our backyard.

I certainly know better than that now. But at the time, everything seemed so innocent and wonderful, and I wanted to look out at the bushes and bask in the warm glow of the memories from time to time. But I had made my first mistake.

That lazy afternoon I sat in my banyan tree and watched as Harry parked the car, got out, and paused. He had on his work face, the one that said I have seen it all and don't like most of it. He stood beside the car for a long moment with his eyes closed, doing nothing more complicated than breathing.

When he opened his eyes again he had an expression on his face that said, I am home and feel very good about that. He took a step toward the front door and I jumped down out of the tree and went to him.

“Dexter” he said. “How was your day at school?” In truth it had been just about like all the others, but even then I knew that wasn't the appropriate response. “Good” I said. “We're studying communism.” Harry nodded. “That's important to know about” he said.

“What's the capital of Russia?”

“Moscow” I said. “It used to be St Petersburg.”

“Really” said Harry. “Why did they change it?” I shrugged. “They're atheists now” I said. “They can't have a Saint anything, because they don't believe in them.” He put a hand on my shoulder and we started walking to the house. “That can't be much fun” he said.

“Didn't you, um, fight communists?” I asked him, wanting to say kill but not quite daring. “In the Marines?” Harry nodded. “That's right” he said. “Communism threatens our way of life. So it's important to fight it.” We were at the front door, and he gently pushed me in ahead of him, into the smell of the fresh coffee that Doris, my adoptive mom, always had ready for Harry when he came home from work. She was not yet too sick to move, and she was waiting for him in the kitchen.

They went through their ritual of drinking coffee and talking quietly, as they did every day, and it was such a perfect Norman Rockwell picture that I would certainly have forgotten it almost instantly if not for what happened later that evening.

Doris was already in bed. She had taken to going to sleep earlier and earlier as her cancer got worse and she needed more pain medicine. Harry, Deborah and I had gathered in front of the TV set as we usually did. We were watching a sitcom, I don't remember which. There were many of them at the time that all could have been lumped together under the title of Funny Minority and the White Guy. The whole purpose of these shows seemed to be letting us all know that in spite of our small differences we were really all the same.

I kept waiting for some clue that this might include me, but neither Freddy Prinze nor Redd Foxx ever chopped up a neighbor. Still, everyone else seemed to enjoy the show. Deborah laughed out loud now and then, and Harry kept a contented smile on his face, and I did my best just to keep a low profile and fit in amid the hilarity.

But in the middle of the climactic scene, right when we were about to learn that we are all the same and then hug, the doorbell rang. Harry frowned a little bit, but he got up and went to the door with one eye still on the TV. Since I had guessed how the show would end and I was not particularly moved by artificial hugs of compassion, I watched Harry. He turned on the outside light, peeked through the eyehole, and then unlocked and opened the door.

“Gus” he said, with surprise. “Come on in.” Gus Rigby was Harry's oldest friend on the force. They had been best man at each other's weddings, and Harry was godfather to Gus's daughter, Betsy. Since his divorce, Gus was always at our house for holidays and special occasions, although not as often now that Doris was sick, and he always brought a key lime pie.

But he didn't look terribly social now, and he was not carrying a pie. He looked angry and frazzled, and he said, “We gotta talk” and pushed past Harry into the house.

“About what?” Harry said, still holding the door open.

Gus turned and snarled at him. “Otto Valdez is out on the street.” Harry stared at him. “How did he get out?”

“That lawyer he's got” Gus said. “He said it was excessive force.” Harry nodded. “You were rough on him, Gus.”

“He's a baby-raper” Gus said. “You want me to kiss him?”

“All right” Harry said. He closed and locked the door. “What is there to talk about?” he said.

“He's after me now” Gus said. “The phone rings and nobody's there, just breathing. But I know it's him. And I got a note under my front door. At my home, Harry.”

“What did the lieutenant say?” Gus shook his head. I want to do this myself” he said. “On the side. And I want your help.” With the wonderful timing that only happens in real life, the TV show came to an end and the laughter track blasted out right on the toes of Gus's words. Deborah laughed, too, and finally looked up.

“Hi Uncle Gus” she said.

“Hello, Debbie” Gus said. “You're more beautiful every day” Debs scowled. Even then she was embarrassed by her good looks, and she didn't like being reminded of it. “Thank you” she said grumpily.

“Come on into the kitchen” Harry said, taking Gus by the elbow and leading him away.

I knew perfectly well that Harry was taking Gus into the kitchen to keep me and Deborah from hearing what would be said, and naturally enough that made me want to hear it all the more. And since Harry had not specifically said, “Stay here and do not listen ...” Why, it would hardly be eavesdropping at all!

So, I got up from in front of the TV set very casually and went down the hall toward the bathroom. I paused in the hallway and looked back: Deborah was already engrossed in the next program, and so I slid into a small patch of shadow and listened.

“... courts will handle it” Harry was saying.

“Like they handled it so far?” Gus said, sounding angrier than I had ever heard him. “Come on, Harry, you know better than that.”

“We're not vigilantes, Gus.”

“Well maybe we should be, goddamn it.” There was a pause. I heard the refrigerator door open and then the sound of a beer can opening. A moment went by and nothing was said.

“Listen, Harry” Gus said at last. “We've been cops for a long time now.”

“Coming up on twenty years” Harry said.

“And from the first day on the job, didn't it hit you that the system just doesn't work? That the biggest assholes always find a way to fall out of jail and back onto the streets? Huh?”

“That doesn't mean we have the right to—”

“Then who does have the right, Harry? If not us, who does?” There was another longish pause. Finally Harry spoke, very softly, and I had to strain to make out the words.

“You weren't in Vietnam” Harry said. Gus didn't respond.

“Something I learned there is that some people can kill in cold blood, and others can't. And most of us can't” Harry said. “It does bad things to you.”

“So what are you saying: you agree with me, but you can't do it?

If ever anybody deserved it, Harry, Otto Valdez ...”

“What are you doing?” came Deborah's voice, approximately eight inches from my ear. I jumped so hard I bumped my head on the wall.

“Nothing,” I replied.

“Funny place to do it” she said, and since she showed no inclination to move on, I decided I was done listening and I went back to zombie-land in front of the TV. I had certainly heard enough to understand what was going on, and I was fascinated. Dear sweet kindly Uncle Gus wanted to kill somebody, and wanted Harry to help him. My brain whirled with the excitement of it, frantically searching for a way to persuade them to let me help —or at least watch. Where was the harm in that? It was almost a civic duty!

But Harry refused to help Gus, and a little while later Gus left the house looking like someone had let all the air out of him. Harry came back to the TV with me and Debs, and spent the next half hour trying to get his happy face back on.

Two days later they found Uncle Gus's body. It had been mutilated and beheaded and apparently tortured first.

Three days after that, unknown to me, Harry found my little pet memorial under the bushes in the backyard. Over the next week or two I caught him staring at me more than once with his work face on. I did not know why at the time, and it was somewhat intimidating, but I was far too much of the young gawp to be able to phrase a statement like, “Dad, why are you staring at me with that particular expression?”

In any case, the why of it very soon became apparent. Three weeks after Uncle Gus met his untimely end, Harry and I went on a camping trip to Elliot Key, and with a few simple sentences —starting with, “You're different, son” —Harry changed everything forever.

His plan. His design for Dexter. His perfectly crafted, sane and sensible road map for me to be eternally and wonderfully me.

And now I had stepped off the Path, taken a small and dangerous back road detour. I could almost see him shake his head and turn those ice-cold blue eyes on me.

“We've got to get you squared away” Harry would have said.