The Spy in the Ointment

30

In a way, this book is a kind of confession. I am describing the events leading up to the moment when I violated all my principles, negated all my beliefs, disobeyed every doctrine I’d ever defined in my pamphlets, and generally speaking made a lie of my entire life.

I would like to be able to say that this second time I ran (the first being when I’d inadvertently dragged Angela away from Ten Eyck and the rest) was as blind and unpremeditated and unknowing as the first, but it was not. I knew exactly what I was doing every step of the way.

I ran toward Tyrone Ten Eyck, and I knew I was doing it, and in my heart of hearts I approved my intentions. I ran to him, and I took the Luger out of his amazed fingers, and I threw it away. Then, knowingly and deliberately, I laid violent hands upon him.

(Please excuse me if I don’t describe what I did. I remember it all — only too vividly — but I’d rather not say any of it.)

A long time later, as I was kneeling astraddle Tyrone Ten Eyck, Angela began to pluck at my shoulder and cry, “Stop it, Gene! Stop it!”

Reluctantly (I’m ashamed to say), I stopped it. I looked at what I’d done, and in that moment I felt nothing, only emptiness, as though a cargo I had carried patiently for a long long time had finally been delivered.

I got up and went out of the room, out to the hall. The air reeked of gunpowder. I stood there and devoted myself to formulating the question I may spend the rest of my life answering:

If I’ve been right all my life about who I was, how came I to be where I was?

A minute or so later Angela came out and said, in a hushed voice, “He’s breathing.”

“That’s good,” I said, but only because it was the response I knew was expected of me.

“That was a terrible thing for a pacifist to do, Gene,” she said solemnly.

I said, “Uh huh.” I licked my skinned knuckles.

“We better call the police,” she said.

“Phone lines were cut.”

“Then we better go get them.”

“Right.”

We tied Tyrone up, then went downstairs and almost as far as the front door when I stopped and said, “Hold on a minute, I just remembered something.”

“What?”

“I’m wanted for murder,” I said.

“For murdering me, Gene. It’ll be all right, I’ll be right there with you.”

I could hear the explanation as Angela would do it, and it wound up with me in the electric chair before they got it all straightened out. “I don’t see any police,” I said, “without my lawyer.” I turned and headed toward where I’d last seen Murray.