The Return

William Burns

William Burns, from Ventura, California, told this story to my friend Pancho Monge, a policeman in Santa Teresa, Sonora, who passed it on to me. According to Monge, the North American was a laid-back guy who never lost his cool, a description that seems to be at odds with the following account of the events. In Burns’s own words:

It was a dreary time in my life. I was going through a rough patch at work. I was supremely bored, though up till then I’d always been immune to boredom. I was going out with two women. That I do remember clearly. One of them was getting on a bit — she must have been about my age — and the other wasn’t much more than a girl. Some days, though, they seemed like two ailing, crotchety old women, and other days like two little girls who just wanted to play. The age difference wasn’t so big you’d mistake them for mother and daughter, but almost. Though that’s the kind of thing a man can only guess at; you never really know for sure. Anyway, these women had two dogs, a big one and a little one. And I never knew which dog belonged to which woman. They were sharing a house on the outskirts of a town in the mountains where people went for summer vacation. When I mentioned to someone, some friend or acquaintance, that I was going up there for the summer, he told me I should take my fishing rod. But I didn’t have a fishing rod. Someone else told me about the stores and the cabins, taking it easy, clearing the mind. But I wasn’t going there with the women for a vacation; I was going there to take care of them. Why did they ask me to take care of them? What they told me was that some guy was out to harm them. They called him the killer. When I asked what his motive was, they didn’t have an answer, or maybe they preferred to keep me in the dark. So I tried to work it out for myself. They were afraid, they believed they were in danger, and maybe it was all a false alarm. But why should I tell people what to think, especially when they’ve hired me, and anyway I figured that after a week they’d come around to my point of view. So I went up into the mountains with them and their dogs, and we moved into a little stone-and-timber house full of windows, more windows than I think I’ve ever seen in the one house, all different sizes and scattered haphazardly. From the outside, the windows gave you the impression that the house had three floors, but in fact there were only two. Inside, especially in the living room and some of the bedrooms on the first floor, they produced a dizzying, exhilarating, maddening effect. In the bedroom I was given there were only two windows, both quite small, one above the other, the top one almost reaching the ceiling, the lower one just over a foot from the floor. Anyway, life up there was pleasant. The older woman wrote every morning, but she didn’t shut herself away, like they say writers usually do; she set up her laptop on the living room table. The younger woman spent her time gardening or playing with the dogs or talking with me. I did most of the cooking, and although I’m no chef, the women praised the meals I prepared. I could have gone on living like that for the rest of my life. But one day the dogs ran away and I went out to look for them. I remember searching through a wood nearby, armed only with a flashlight, and peering into the gardens of empty houses. I couldn’t find them anywhere. When I got back to the house, the women looked at me as if I was to blame for the dogs’ disappearance. Then they mentioned a name, the killer’s name. They were the ones who’d been calling him the killer right from the start. I was skeptical, but I listened to what they had to say. They talked about high school romances, money trouble, grudges. I couldn’t get my head around how both of them could have had relationships with the same guy in high school, given the age difference between them. But they didn’t want to say any more. That night, in spite of the reproaches, one of them came to my room. I didn’t switch on the light, I was half asleep, and I never found out which one it was. When I woke up, with the first light of dawn, I was alone. That day I decided to go into town and pay a visit to the guy they were scared of. I asked them for his address and told them to shut themselves in the house and not to move until I got back. I drove down in the older woman’s pickup. Just before I got to town, I saw the dogs in the yard of an old canning plant. They came over to me looking abashed and wagging their tails. I put them in the cab of the pickup and drove around the town for a while, laughing at how worried I’d been the previous night. Predictably, I found myself approaching the address the women had given me. Let’s say the guy was called Bedloe. He had a store in the middle of town, a store for vacationers, where he sold everything from fishing rods to checked shirts and chocolate bars. For a while I just browsed the shelves. The man looked like a movie actor; he can’t have been more than thirty-five. He was strongly built, had dark hair, and was reading a newspaper spread out on the counter. He was wearing canvas pants and a tee shirt. The store must have been doing good business; it was on one of the main streets, which had trams running down it as well as cars. Bedloe’s stuff was expensive. For a while I checked out the prices and the stock. As I was leaving, for some reason I had the impression that the poor guy was lost. I hadn’t gone more than ten yards when I realized that his dog was following me. I hadn’t even seen it in the store: a big black dog, maybe a German Shepherd crossed with something else. I’ve never owned a dog, I’ve got no idea what makes the damn things tick, but for whatever reason, Bedloe’s dog followed me. I tried to get it to go back to the store, of course, but it paid no attention. So I kept walking toward the pickup, with the dog at my side, and then I heard the whistle. The storekeeper was whistling his dog back. I didn’t turn around, but I knew that he had come out looking for us. My reaction was automatic and unthinking: I tried to make sure he didn’t see me, or didn’t see us. I remember hiding behind a dark red tram, the color of dried blood, with the dog pressed against my legs. Just when I was feeling safely hidden, the tram moved off and the storekeeper saw me from the opposite sidewalk and moved his hands in a gesture that could have meant Grab the dog or Hang the dog or Stay right there till I come over. Which is exactly what I didn’t do; I turned around and disappeared into the crowd, while he shouted something like Stop, my dog! Hey buddy, my dog! Why did I behave like that? I don’t know. Anyway, the storekeeper’s dog followed me submissively to where I’d parked the pickup and as soon as I opened the door, before I had time to react, he jumped in and refused to budge. When they saw me arrive with three dogs, the women said nothing and started playing with all three. The storekeeper’s dog seemed to know them from way back. That afternoon, we talked about all sorts of things. I started by telling them about what had happened to me in town, then they talked about their past lives and their work: one had been a teacher, the other a hairdresser, and both had quit their jobs, although from time to time, they said, they looked after kids with problems. At some point, I found myself talking about how the house should be guarded around the clock. The women looked at me and agreed with a smile. I regretted having put it like that. Then we ate. I hadn’t prepared the meal that night. The conversation lapsed into silence broken only by the sound of our jaws and teeth working, and the scuffling of the dogs outside as they raced around the house. Later, we started drinking. One of the women, I don’t remember which, talked about the roundness of the earth and protection and doctor’s voices. My mind was elsewhere, I wasn’t following. I guess she was referring to the Indians who had once inhabited those mountain slopes. After a while I couldn’t stand it any more, so I got up, cleared the table and shut myself in the kitchen to wash the dishes, but I could hear them even there. When I went back to the living room, the younger woman was lying on the sofa, half covered with a blanket, and the other one was talking about a big city; it was as if she were talking up some big city, saying what a great place it was to live, but in fact she was running it down; I could tell, because every now and then both of them would start sniggering. That was something I never got with those two: their humor. I found them attractive, I liked them, but something about their sense of humor always seemed false and forced. The bottle of whiskey I’d opened after dinner was half empty. That bothered me; I had no intention of getting drunk, and I didn’t want them to get drunk and leave me out. So I sat down with them and said that we had to talk a few things over. What things? they asked, pretending to be surprised, or maybe they weren’t just pretending. This house has too many weak points, I said. We’ve got to do something about it. What are they? asked one of the women. OK, I said, and I started by reminding them how far it was from town, how exposed it was, but I soon realized they weren’t listening. If I was a dog, I thought resentfully, these women would show me a bit more consideration. Later, after I realized that none of us were feeling sleepy, they started talking about children and their voices made my heart recoil. I have seen terrible, evil things, sights to make a hard man flinch, but listening to the women that night, my heart recoiled so violently it almost disappeared. I tried to butt in, I tried to find out if they were recalling scenes from childhood or talking about real children in the present, but I couldn’t. My throat felt like it was full of bandages and cotton swabs. Suddenly, in the middle of that conversation or double monologue, I had a premonition and I started moving stealthily toward one of the windows in the living room, a ridiculous little bull’s-eye window, in a corner, too close to the main window to serve any useful purpose. I know that at the last moment the women looked at me and realized that something was happening; all I had time to do was put my finger to my lips, before pulling back the curtain and seeing Bedloe’s head, the killer’s head, outside. What happened next is hazy. And it’s hazy because panic is contagious. The killer, I realized immediately, had started running around the outside of the house. The women and I started running around inside. Two circles: he was looking for a way in, trying to find a window left open, while the women and I went around checking the doors and shutting the windows. I know I didn’t do what I should have done: gone to my room, got my gun, gone outside and made him surrender. Instead I found myself thinking that the dogs were still out there, and hoping nothing bad would happen to them; one of the dogs was pregnant, I think, I’m not sure — there’d been some talk about it. Anyway, just at that moment, while I was still running around, I heard one of the women say, Jesus, the dog, the dog, and I thought of telepathy, I thought of happiness, and I was afraid that the woman who had spoken, whichever one it was, would go out to look for the dog. Luckily, neither of them made any move to leave the house. Just as well. Just as well, I thought. And then (I’ll never forget this) I went into a room on the first floor where I’d never been before. It was long, narrow and dark, illuminated only by the moon and by a faint glow coming from the porch lights. And at that moment I knew, with a terror-driven certitude, that destiny (or misfortune — the same thing in this case) had brought me to that room. At the far end, outside a window, I saw the storekeeper’s silhouette. I crouched down, barely able to contain my shaking (my whole body was shaking, the sweat was pouring off me) and waited. The killer opened the window with bewildering ease and slipped quietly into the room. There were three narrow wooden beds each with a bedside table. On the wall, inches above the beds I could see three framed prints. The killer stopped for a moment. I felt him breathe; the air made a healthy sound as it went into his lungs. Then he groped his way forward, between the wall and the feet of the beds, directly toward where I was crouched, waiting for him. Although it was hard to believe, I knew he hadn’t seen me: I thanked my lucky stars, and, when he got close enough, I grabbed him by the feet and pulled him down. Once he was on the floor I started kicking him with the aim of doing as much damage as possible. He’s here, he’s here, I shouted, but the women didn’t respond (I couldn’t hear them running around either), and the unfamiliar room was like a projection of my brain, the only home, the only shelter. I don’t know how long I was in there, kicking that fallen body, I only remember someone opening the door behind me, words I couldn’t understand, a hand on my shoulder. Then I was alone again and I stopped kicking him. For a few moments I didn’t know what to do; I felt dazed and tired. Eventually, I snapped out of it and dragged the body to the living room. There I found the women, sitting very close together on the sofa, almost hugging each other. I don’t know why, but something about the scene made me think of a birthday party. I could see the anxiety in their eyes, and a fading trace of the fear caused not by the episode as a whole but by the sight of Bedloe’s body after the beating I’d given him. And it was the look in their eyes that made me lose my grip and let his body drop onto the carpet. Bedloe’s face was a blood-spattered mask, garish in the light of the living room. Where his nose had been there was just a bleeding pulp. I checked to see if his heart was beating. The women were watching me without making the slightest movement. He’s dead, I said. Before I went out onto the porch, I heard one of them sigh. I smoked a cigarette looking at the stars, thinking about how I’d explain it to the authorities in town. When I went back inside, the women were down on all fours stripping the body and I couldn’t stifle a cry. They didn’t even look at me. I think I drank a glass of whiskey and then went out again, taking the bottle, I think. I don’t know how long I was out there, smoking and drinking, giving the women time to finish their task. I went back over the events, piecing them together. I remembered the man looking in through the window, I remembered the look in his eyes, and now I recognized the fear, I remembered when he lost his dog, and finally I remembered him reading a newspaper at the back of the store. I also remembered the light the previous day, the light inside the store and the porch light seen from the room where I’d killed him. Then I started watching the dogs, who weren’t sleeping, either, but running from one end of the yard to the other. The wooden fence was broken in places; someone would have to fix it some day, but it wasn’t going to be me. Day began to dawn on the other side of the mountains. The dogs came up onto the porch looking for a pat, probably tired after a long night of playing. Just the usual two. I whistled for the other one, but he didn’t come. The revelation struck me with the first shiver of cold. The dead man was no killer. We’d been tricked by the real killer, hidden somewhere far away, or, more likely, by fate. Bedloe didn’t want to kill anyone — he was just looking for his dog. Poor bastard, I thought. The dogs went back to chasing each other around the yard. I opened the door and looked at the women, unable to bring myself to go into the living room. Bedloe’s body was clothed again. Better dressed than before. I was going to say something, but there was no point, so I went back to the porch. One of the women followed me out. Now we have to get rid of the body, she said behind me. Yes, I said. Later I helped to put Bedloe into the back of the pickup. We drove into the mountains. Life is meaningless, said the older woman. I didn’t answer; I dug a grave. When we got back, while they were taking a shower, I washed the pickup and got my stuff together. What will you do now? they asked while we were having breakfast on the porch, watching the clouds. I’ll go back to the city, I said, and I’ll pick up the investigation exactly where I got off track.

And the end of the story, as Pancho Monge tells it, is that six months later William Burns was killed by unidentified assailants.