The Ethical Assassin

Chapter 20

I SAT GLOOMILY in the car while Bobby drove us around, getting us pumped up for the selling day. He would point at moochie houses, point at lawn furniture and Slip ’N Slides and volleyball nets. Finally, he let me out at a little after eleven. He would come by the Kwick Stop to get me in about twelve hours.

There had been times when I enjoyed it, this feeling of the day being all before me, every house a potential sale, a potential $200. Some days the unanswered knocks with the low barking behind thin metal doors didn’t even bother me. Some days I all but smirked at the people who stared at me blankly as I went through my introductory speech, and I judged them. I judged them for their apathy. That’s why you live in this shithole. That’s why your kids will live in a trailer, just like you, when they grow up. Because you don’t care.

Not that the encyclopedias mattered. Sure, it was possible that they’d make a difference in someone’s life, but if a kid wanted to know some detail about the population of Togo or the history of metallurgy, he’d find out at school or in the library. On the other hand, the parents’ willingness to buy the books, to invest the money, signaled something, and there were times when I actually believed in the importance of the work.

Not this morning. I skipped houses if they didn’t look moochie. I knocked listlessly, mumbled my lines. Half an hour into the day, I’d had a smallish woman, pretty but ferociously freckled, just about primed. She was ready to bite, I could feel it, but I eased up on the pitch, excusing myself from going inside.

I knew that my days as a bookman were over. I’d go back to Ft. Lauderdale on Sunday night and I’d quit, and the thought of my impending freedom both excited and enervated me. What would I do with the rest of my day? If only there were a movie theater around here. A good bookstore, a library. A mall. Someplace I could go to cool off.

But for twelve hours? Suddenly the day stretched out endlessly. The heat hammered down on me, and I felt the sting of perspiration in my eyes. The endless expanse of time blanketed me, smothered me like the humidity. I wished I could gear myself up into book mode, just for the next couple of days. I’d still quit, I’d still walk away from this and never come back.

By twelve-thirty I was walking along a main road, not even bothering to look at the houses I passed, when I heard a car slowing down behind me. I turned and saw Melford’s old Datsun, a faded dark green in the sunlight.

He rolled down the window. “Hop in.”

I continued walking, with Melford keeping up with his slow pace. “I don’t think so.”

“Come on. What, are you going to kick rocks all day? I’ve got air-conditioning, tunes, witty conversation.”

I told myself that I had no choice, that the guy was a killer, and a person was smart to do what a killer said to do. But I’d stopped being afraid of Melford. Not entirely, maybe- I wouldn’t want to provoke him or even be around him when someone else had provoked him, but for all his killing he wasn’t like Ronny Neil and Scott, whom I actually feared.

I sighed and nodded, so Melford stopped. I went around to the passenger side and got in. He did have the air conditioner going pretty strongly, and it felt good. We sat in silence for a few minutes while Melford drove past houses and mobile homes and a shopping plaza with a Kmart and a sporting goods store and an Italian restaurant. Coming out of the Kmart, I was sure, was Galen Edwine, the man at whose house I’d sold the grand slam that didn’t work out. Not so far from where I’d been selling the day before, in fact.

Melford saw me looking at the strip mall. “God, I love Florida,” he said.

“You’re kidding. I hate this place. I can’t wait to get out of here.”

“I think you’re the kidder. This is the land without art or values or even the most basic cultural orientation. Nothing matters but real estate and shopping malls. There are more golf courses than schools, prefab housing subdivisions growing like cancers, an aging and dangerous driving population, the Klan, drug lords, hurricanes, and twelve-month summers.”

“Those sound like bad things to me.”

He shook his head. “In Florida, you get to live in perpetual irony. It keeps you from settling into false consciousness.”

“I just want to get out and never come back,” I said.

“Well, there’s that position, too, I guess.”

We rode in silence for another ten minutes until I asked where we were going.

“You’ll see.”

“I want to know now.” While I might have felt a strange liking for Melford, despite all I had seen, I couldn’t stand this. I couldn’t stand being boxed out and left in the dark.

“You’re awful curious, aren’t you?”

“I just don’t want to be shot in the head or anything.”

I regretted it the instant I said it- not because I had endangered myself, but because it seemed to hurt Melford’s feelings. His eyes narrowed and he looked away.

“Surely by now you realize I don’t solve all of my problems with violence,” he told me. “Violence is a tool. It’s like a hammer. It has its uses, and it is great for those uses. But if you use a hammer to change a baby’s diaper, there’s going to be trouble. I chose to use violence with those two because I thought it was the right thing to do.”

“Okay,” I said. “I understand.” I didn’t, and it was clear from my tone that I didn’t.

Melford shook his head. “I don’t enjoy hurting anyone, Lemuel. I only do it when there’s no choice.”

“But you won’t tell me why.”

“I’ll tell you why when you can tell me why we have prisons.”

“I don’t have the energy for your prison riddle. I want to know why.”

“And I want to tell you, but until you’re ready, there’s no point. It would be like telling a four-year-old about relativity. There may be a will to understand, but not a capacity.”

I thought to blurt out something defensive, like he thought I was no smarter than a four-year-old, but I knew that wasn’t what he meant.

“For now,” Melford was saying, “what’s important is that we’re in this together. You are in serious trouble, my friend. We both are. There is dangerous stuff going on around here, and we’ve had the bad luck to land in the middle of it.”

“But I don’t have anything to do with it. It’s not my fault.”

“That’s right. It’s not your fault. And if your house was hit by lightning and started to burn, that wouldn’t be your fault, either. So do you stand there and shout at the flames, or do you do what you can to save yourself and put out the fire?”

I didn’t have an answer because he was just convincing enough to piss me off.

Melford stopped outside a Chinese restaurant and announced that it was time for lunch. I was reasonably hungry, not having eaten much of my breakfast. The dairy-free oatmeal had tasted like Elmer’s glue, and I’d been too nervous about talking to Chitra to try to force it down.

“Chinese restaurants are great for vegetarians,” he told me as we sat at a table in the smallish dining room lined with red wallpaper flocked with gold Buddhas. There were an additional two Buddha statues by the door, a tank full of white and orange koi, and a small fountain. “They tend to have lots of nonmeat options, and they don’t traditionally cook with dairy.” He poured tea into white cups with cracked enamel.

Eating breakfast with Chitra, I’d been determined to abandon all animal products. Now, here with Melford, I wanted to be a carnivore. This morning, I’d wanted to impress Chitra with my sensitive soul. Now, I wanted to impress Melford with my defiance. I needed to decide if I agreed with the principle or not- if I wanted to be a vegetarian or if I just wanted to stay away from meat when I thought it might impress the ladies.

I looked at the menu. “What about fish?”

Melford raised an eyebrow. “What about them?”

“Do you eat fish? The sea bass with black bean sauce looks pretty good.”

“Do I exclude fish from my moral calculus because they live in the water instead of land? Is that what you’re asking me?”

“I think I get the answer,” I said, “but come on, we’re talking about fish here. Not fluffy bunnies or Bessie the cow. They’re fish. We put hooks in their mouths every day.”

“So, cruelty justifies itself. You, of all people, ought to know better than that.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that when I came up to you with those two guys at the motel last night, I had the feeling that it wasn’t the first time some mindless assholes decided to turn you into a pincushion. The fact that it’s happened before doesn’t mean it’s okay for it to happen again. The fact that we’re cruel to fish doesn’t mean we should be cruel to them. Just because they live underwater and have scales instead of skin or fur doesn’t make it okay.”

I sighed. “Fine.” When the waitress came I ordered the vegetable lo mein. Melford ordered vegetable dumplings.

“I’m not especially hungry,” he said.

“Then why are we here?”

Melford shrugged. “Mostly I wanted to see if the woman following us would come in with us.”

“What woman?”

“She was driving a Mercedes, and now she’s at the table behind you. Don’t turn around. Actually, no need to bother, since it looks like she’s heading over here.”

The woman came around and stood between us and looked us over as though deciding which of us she might choose to bring home. She was pretty and tall, dark blond shoulder-length hair, rounded features that would have once been considered hyperfeminine and now seemed girlish. As if to offset that effect, she dressed to draw attention, wearing tight pink jeans and a nearly translucent white blouse that exposed her black bra underneath. “You don’t want to let him eat fish?” She was now looking over sunglasses at Melford, her eyebrows knit together. “Why do you make him miserable about his lunch- boss your friend around like that?”

We were silent for a moment. Finally I ventured, “He’s not really making me miserable.”

“He’s giving you a hard time, isn’t he?” She then looked at Melford. “Are you a bully?”

“He’s not a bully,” I said, not sure why I should stand up for Melford or defend him to this woman, whoever she might be.

“Sometimes people are so bullied that they don’t even know they’re being bullied,” she told me. Then she looked at Melford. “Isn’t what people eat a matter for their own choice?”

“No,” said Melford, nothing but kindness in his voice. When I said no it came out blunt and hostile and defensive. He made it sound like an invitation. “Whether or not to wear clothing that exposes our underwear is a matter of choice. Whether or not to apply lipstick or go to the movies or enter the goofy golf tournament are matters of choice. When you do something that inflicts suffering on another, then it becomes a moral question.”

The woman looked at him in a way that seemed both sly and appraising. “You know what?” she said. “You just might be more interesting than I thought at first. Can I join you?”

“I’d be delighted,” Melford said.

She sat down and angled her chair slightly toward Melford and put her sunglasses in the breast pocket of her diaphanous blouse. “I’m Desiree,” she said. And as they shook, Melford glanced at a series of lines drawn on the back of her hand. He gently kept hold of her fingers for a moment, almost as if he were getting ready to kiss her hand. “Hsieh?” he asked.

She nodded, not bothering to hide her surprise. “That’s right.”

He let go of her hand. “Are you considering making a break with the past?”

She tried to look neutral. “I guess so.”

“Me too.” He folded his hands. “So, you’re interested in becoming a vegetarian?”

“I’m not,” she told him. “I like eating what I eat. I’m interested in why you care so much.”

“I care,” Melford said, “because when we see something wrong, we ought to try to make it right. It’s not enough to silently condemn evil, to congratulate ourselves for not participating. I believe we all have an obligation to stand against it.”

Something darkened in her face. At first I thought he’d made her angry, but then I realized I saw a pang of sadness, maybe even confusion and doubt. “How exactly is this a matter of ethics? Animals are here for our use, aren’t they? So, why shouldn’t we use them?”

Melford picked up an empty teacup. “This was put here for our use, right? It was designed to make our lives better and all. What if I were to hurl it across the room? That would be considered an impolite act at best, but also violent, antisocial, unkind, and wasteful. The cup is here for my use, but I’m not free to use it in any way I see fit.”

She shrugged. “Sounds reasonable.”

“But not so reasonable that you’ll change how you eat?” Melford said.

“No, not that reasonable.”

He turned to me. “It’s interesting, isn’t it. You convince someone that everything you say is right, make them understand that eating animals is wrong, but they still won’t change.”

“Ideology?” I asked.

“You got it.”

“So, what are you fellows up to today?” she asked.

“Oh, you know. This and that,” Melford said.

She leaned a little closer to him. “Can you be more specific?”

He leaned closer, too, and it looked for an instant as though they might kiss. “Can you maybe give me a reason why I ought to be more specific?”

“Because,” she told him, “I’m a curious, curious woman.”

“Are you curious enough to wonder what it would be like to stop eating animals?”

“Not that curious.”

Melford leaned back a few inches and then reached out to her hand and touched the black marks she’d penned onto her flesh. “You can tell yourself that your actions, alone and weighed against the balance of the universe, don’t matter, but I think you know better. How long can you wink at evil because it is easy and gratifying to do so? You’re better than that.”

She pulled her hand away, but not violently. It looked to me more like embarrassment- or surprise. “You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about who I am.”

Melford offered the ghost of a smile. “Maybe not. But I have a hunch.”

She said nothing for a minute. She unwrapped a tube of disposable chopsticks, separated them, and tapped them together. “Does it make you happy to crusade for animals?”

He shook his head. “Does helping the sick, caring for the desperate, make someone happy? Would giving comfort to lepers in the Sudan make me happy? I don’t think so. Happiness isn’t the issue. These things make us feel balanced with the world around us, and that is something much more important than happiness.”

She nodded for a long time, still tapping her chopsticks together. Then she dropped them, as though they’d suddenly grown uncomfortably warm. She stood up. “I have to go.”

Melford held out his hand for her to shake. She looked surprised, but she took it anyway.

“You want to tell me who you’re working for?” he asked. “Why you’re following us?”

“I can’t right now.” She looked genuinely sad about it, too.

“Okay.” He let go and she turned away, but he wasn’t entirely done with her. “You know,” he said, “you’re much too smart to be working for them. You’re not like them.”

She reddened slightly. “I know that.”

“Hsieh,” Melford said.

She looked at her hand and nodded.