One Monday We Killed Them All by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online Page B

you do? You can’t explain to your new wife that she is one kind of victim, and Ginny Potter was another kind, and there’ll be many many more before he comes to the end of his life. And I was beginning to realize I was a victim too, second grade.

iv
    So I brought McAran back from Harpersburg and reunited him with his loving sister, and watched him kick our dog.
    Meg took him to the room she’d fixed up for him. It was a two-bedroom house when we bought it. On nights and days off I’d turned a side porch into another bedroom, so Bobby and Judy could each have a room of their own. It had been Bobby’s room for three years, and he hadn’t been completely gracious about giving it up to move back in with his sister, even on a temporary basis. He had improved the decor of the room in the ways eight-year-old boys think essential, and it was degrading to have to move back in with a six-year-old sister, into a revolting tenderness of dolls and little dishes.
    I stood in the doorway and watched her show McAran all she had done to prepare for him. She had packed his things five years ago, and recently she had put everything in order: pressed suits, slacks, jackets hanging in the closet above the row of burnished shoes, and the bureau drawers orderly with shirts, socks, underwear, sweaters. She even had his trophies on the shelf where Bobby had kept his kit models of racing cars, and all the cups and plaques were newly polished.
    He looked at everything too quickly, too indifferently, and sat on the bed and said, “Nice, Sis.”
    Looking slightly crestfallen, she said, “I tried to make it nice.”
    He reached and turned on Bobby’s radio, found some rickytick-imitation Dixieland and put the volume a little too high. “Rampart Street Parade.”
    She went to the bureau and picked up the savings account book and went to the bed and sat beside him. She explained the figures, speaking loudly to be heard over the music. “This was what was in the checking account after the lawyer, dear. And this is what I got for the car. I had themfigure the interest on it last week, so this is what you’ve got right now.”
    “How do I get it out?”
    “What? Oh, we go to the Savings and Loan and make out a card for you so you can take it out any time, as much as you need of it.”
    “Can you take it out?”
    “Of course.”
    “Then I won’t need a card. Just take it out.”
    “But you don’t want to carry that much cash—”
    He snapped the radio off. “You just take it out, Meg. That’s all. Just take it out and give it to me. That makes it real simple.”
    I didn’t wait to hear her answer. I went out back looking for Lulu. I knew where she would be. I squatted at the right place and looked under the garage. She was wedged as far back in there as she could get, muzzle on her paws, rejected eyes staring out at me. I told her all the reasons why she was the world’s most satisfactory dog, but she would have none of it. A horrid, frightening thing had happened to her in my presence, so I was a part of it, and soft talk would not cure a heart so broken.
    I went back into the kitchen. Meg was alone there, staring at something in the oven. “What I liked most,” I said, “was the way he kept jumping up and down and saying whee.”
    She stood up and gave me the slow turn, eyes like chips of green ice. “He’s spent five years being a playboy in all the fun places of the world. That’s why it’s so easy for him to jump up and down and say whee at every little thing.”
    “But he could have—”
    “Neither of us expect this to be easy. So let’s make it harder for each other with a lot of smart cracks, Fenn. If we try hard, maybe we can make it impossible.”
    I went to her and held her close. I felt and heard her sigh. I could hear the sound of the shower running, and guessed our Dwight was scrubbing away the stench of prison. “We won’t fight about him,” I told her and released her.
    She looked at me with eyes of woe,