A Very Simple Crime by Grant Jerkins Read Free Book Online

will present me with an opportunity to test my newfound self.
    We pull into the dusty lot. Violet refuses to get out of the car, but I insist; I will continue to have this power over her until I allow her to let herself be free of me. I must go in, but I can’t go in alone. My transformation is not yet complete enough for that. I still need a comforting hand in the dark places. And once I no longer need even that, I will need nothing. More important, I will need nobody. A tacit agreement passes between us. She will go in, but this is the last experience we will ever share together.
    I spot a line of tourists waiting outside the massive oak doors that have been built into the side of Linville Mountain. We get in line behind a gray-haired couple wearing matching red satin jackets emblazoned with the head of a toothy bulldog. The man, his hair clipped in a military-fashion flattop, puffs on a briarwood pipe. The pungently sweet tobacco smoke wafts from his mouth and wisps about on the breeze. The woman, gray with a face of folksy friendliness, turns to us, smiles, and turns back around. She turns again and gives Violet an appraising look.
    “Honey, didn’t you bring a sweater or such? It’s dark and damp in there. They say it stays fifty-two degrees in there year round.”
    Violet shakes her head. “No, I didn’t know. I didn’t bring anything.”
    The woman turns to her husband. “Herbert, give her your jacket. She looks cold.” Herbert shrugs off his jacket, the red satin iridescent in the autumn sun.
    Violet shakes her head. “No, really, please, I ...”
    I think I know what Violet is feeling. Dirty and ashamed. She does not want to sully this man’s jacket with her shame-ridden body.
    “Yes, you can, and you certainly will,” Mrs. Herbert insists.
    Herbert himself jumps in with, “I’d rather a beautiful young woman such as yourself wore it than an old man like me. Besides, I’m hot-blooded, right, honey?” He pats his wife’s behind, and Mrs. Herbert rolls her eyes comically.
    Violet cringes away from the proffered jacket. I take it from Herbert’s hand and drape it across Violet’s shoulders, knowing that the weight of the garment of this good man sickens her. Smiling at Herbert, I offer my left hand for him to shake. It is an old trick my likewise left-handed brother taught me. A left-handed person must make certain concessions to the right-handed world, but when instigating a handshake, if you offer the other party your left hand, it confuses them and gives you a subtle psychological edge. Herbert does not disappoint me. He stares nonplussed at my hand, feeling, as I know, foolish and awkward. Finally, he grasps my hand in both of his. I have, through the ritual of the male handshake, reduced his role to that of an old blind woman.
    “Thank you, Herbert, Mrs. Herbert,” I say.
    Mrs. Herbert beams at me. “You two make such a nice couple. Are you married?”
    I now hate her as much as I hate him. Her smile is crooked and her teeth stained. They are everything I will never be. They are everything that was stolen from me. They are commonplace and ordinary. They are normalcy. Already nervous about entering the cave, I find that I want to hurt this old woman. I want to make her feel bad.
    “My wife recently passed away,” I say, reveling in it. “Violet’s been a good friend to me.”
    “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that.”
    “Don’t be. She was a real bitch.”
    Mrs. Herbert’s face immediately loses its former openness. The folksy friendliness is gone. The Herberts turn away from us and no longer acknowledge our presence. They will not have the nerve to ask for the jacket back after the tour.
    In the cavern, it is indeed dark and damp. Our group files in under scattered strings of electric lights that struggle vainly to push back the darkness. We make our way down into the cavern, and, indeed, it is very cold. Water trickles down the limestone walls. It drips from the strung-out lightbulbs.