doornail, as dodo dead. How’d they get you? D’you go against? D’you. break their rules? Eat too much sweets or touch yourself ? Whatcha in for, what’s the charge? How’d they get you? Dead to rights?” “Jesus wants me for a sunbeam.”
Lesefario was a thinking man. A long time dead-they had time; they had minutes, seconds, hours, years; what they lacked were calendars, clocks, only the Speidel niceties, digital readouts, the quartz accounts, only the Greenwich and atomic certainties-he had begun to speculate about the meaning of death. He had never questioned life’s meaning. He had assumed it had none. Life was its own gloss. Where conditions changed you didn’t look for explanations.
He’d lived in Minnesota, a Minneapolis kid, schoolboy, adult. He’d had his friends and later his cronies.
He’d had his shot at stuff, enjoyed much and been disappointed by the rest. He had liked television, a wonderful invention, but had not known when he’d married her that his wife would turn out to be a depressive, a woman who -she couldn’t help it, he guessed, but it made things awful and spoiled everything that should have been fun: their trips to restaurants, their cruise to the islands, their daughter’s childhood was never to be pleased by things, who wore her melancholy like a rash. Life had not signified.
Death was another story, so time-consuming-they had time-so draining, demanding, taking not just his but all their attentions, given over to pain, not causeless sadness like his wife’s but to a suffering like Wallenda stage fright to not knowing from one moment to the next-they had time-whether what had to be endured and would be endured even could be endured. Death made no sense but it meant something.
When Lesefario formulated this last proposition he decided that he must try to save them, to become heroic in Hell who had been a clerk in a Minneapolis liquor store in a red-lined neighborhood, who had opened up in the morning always a little seared of the winos around the entrance, always a little scared of the blacks, always a little scared of people who asked him to cash their checks, always a little scared of teenagers, of minors who showed him phony I.D. cards, of the big, beefy delivery men, of customers, of anyone who would come into a liquor store.
What could he do he asked himself, and why should he do it? Who was he, stuck away down here, stashed for the duration in some nameless base camp of Hell, a thoughtful fraidycat formerly in the liquor trade, or, no, not even the liquor trade, a clerk in the making change trade, whose last human contact would be, had been, with the trigger-happy jerk Lesefario had known was coming for fifteen years? And so seared he knew-because he knew as soon as the guy came through the door he was the last human being he’d ever see, trying to size him up though fear hurt his eyes and Lesefario lost his face like a center fielder a ball in the sun- that even if he lived he would never be able to pick the thug out of a lineup.
Acknowledging even in that first brief bruised view of him all that he and his murderer-did they get goodTeviews? were their names household words? was their health all it should be, or their children top-drawer?-had in common, and if this was the fellow, and if this was it, why shouldn’t the killer be made to feel the force of that astonishing fact?
“If you’re all I have for deathbed-” Lesefario had said.
“Wha?”
“-then I want your attention. I guess most folks die out of their element, D.O.A.”d by circumstance and only-” “Hey you, no tricks.”
“-the night shift in attendance.”
“No tricks I said. Hands high and shut up.”
“Because-” “I’m going to have to teach you a lesson,” the killer said, and cut him down before he could teach the killer one, his last word “because” in a life he’d already decided didn’t make sense. And a good thing, too, Lesefario thought, groping for the last words he
Lesefario was a thinking man. A long time dead-they had time; they had minutes, seconds, hours, years; what they lacked were calendars, clocks, only the Speidel niceties, digital readouts, the quartz accounts, only the Greenwich and atomic certainties-he had begun to speculate about the meaning of death. He had never questioned life’s meaning. He had assumed it had none. Life was its own gloss. Where conditions changed you didn’t look for explanations.
He’d lived in Minnesota, a Minneapolis kid, schoolboy, adult. He’d had his friends and later his cronies.
He’d had his shot at stuff, enjoyed much and been disappointed by the rest. He had liked television, a wonderful invention, but had not known when he’d married her that his wife would turn out to be a depressive, a woman who -she couldn’t help it, he guessed, but it made things awful and spoiled everything that should have been fun: their trips to restaurants, their cruise to the islands, their daughter’s childhood was never to be pleased by things, who wore her melancholy like a rash. Life had not signified.
Death was another story, so time-consuming-they had time-so draining, demanding, taking not just his but all their attentions, given over to pain, not causeless sadness like his wife’s but to a suffering like Wallenda stage fright to not knowing from one moment to the next-they had time-whether what had to be endured and would be endured even could be endured. Death made no sense but it meant something.
When Lesefario formulated this last proposition he decided that he must try to save them, to become heroic in Hell who had been a clerk in a Minneapolis liquor store in a red-lined neighborhood, who had opened up in the morning always a little seared of the winos around the entrance, always a little scared of the blacks, always a little scared of people who asked him to cash their checks, always a little scared of teenagers, of minors who showed him phony I.D. cards, of the big, beefy delivery men, of customers, of anyone who would come into a liquor store.
What could he do he asked himself, and why should he do it? Who was he, stuck away down here, stashed for the duration in some nameless base camp of Hell, a thoughtful fraidycat formerly in the liquor trade, or, no, not even the liquor trade, a clerk in the making change trade, whose last human contact would be, had been, with the trigger-happy jerk Lesefario had known was coming for fifteen years? And so seared he knew-because he knew as soon as the guy came through the door he was the last human being he’d ever see, trying to size him up though fear hurt his eyes and Lesefario lost his face like a center fielder a ball in the sun- that even if he lived he would never be able to pick the thug out of a lineup.
Acknowledging even in that first brief bruised view of him all that he and his murderer-did they get goodTeviews? were their names household words? was their health all it should be, or their children top-drawer?-had in common, and if this was the fellow, and if this was it, why shouldn’t the killer be made to feel the force of that astonishing fact?
“If you’re all I have for deathbed-” Lesefario had said.
“Wha?”
“-then I want your attention. I guess most folks die out of their element, D.O.A.”d by circumstance and only-” “Hey you, no tricks.”
“-the night shift in attendance.”
“No tricks I said. Hands high and shut up.”
“Because-” “I’m going to have to teach you a lesson,” the killer said, and cut him down before he could teach the killer one, his last word “because” in a life he’d already decided didn’t make sense. And a good thing, too, Lesefario thought, groping for the last words he
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