Twilight by Brendan DuBois Read Free Book Online Page B

up at me, like the former British police officer he was, being overruled by a superior he didn’t respect. I walked away.
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    I FOUND IT harder going in the house. In the barn one could distance oneself from what had happened, what horrible things had gone on in there among the hay and tools and machinery. Nonetheless, it was a different kind of place, a place for animals and tools. It wasn’t a home. But inside the house there was no barrier, no distancing, nothing that could act as a buffer for what I saw. Among the couches and kitchen tables and bookshelves and television sets, among the day-to-day comforting items of reasonable and safe life, madness had broken in. Madness that had ripped
everything asunder, that had left broken dishes and torn furniture and piles of clothing and shattered photos and twisted toys. Some spray-painted slogans had been left on the walls, some of the letters dripping into fresh bullet holes in the plaster, other letters oozing into the spatter of dried blood. The paint was black and the blood spatter was now a dark brown. I paused, holding my digital camera in my hands. Where to start? Where to even begin? Sanjay was by the wall, measuring the distance between the bullet holes. I think he sensed my hesitation, for he looked over at me.
    â€œI know how it is,” he said softly. “You see this home and you wonder who they were. You wonder what kind of man the father was, you wonder how the mother treated their children. You wonder how old the children were, what kind of games they played, how they lived here. You wonder what it was like when the men with guns broke in. Who they were. Angry refugees from one of the cities? Or angry neighbors, upset that this family had given aid and comfort to those now considered enemies, outsiders? Then you wonder what happened. Was the mother raped in front of the children? Was the father killed first? Were the children taken away? You wonder how men could do this to people who were fellow citizens of their country, who were civilians, simple farmers. Fellow Americans, as they would say. Samuel, you are wondering all this, and you cannot let it happen.”
    My words sounded like they were being strangled in my throat before I uttered them. “How? How do you do that?”
    Sanjay looked around him, looking so serious and proper, even though he was still wearing his helmet and body armor. “By doing what we are doing. By remembering them, by paying witness. You do your job as best as you can, but you don’t dwell on what you can’t see. You cannot let your imagination take over. You have to do your job with what is there. Trust me, that is more than enough.”
    I just nodded, picked up my camera. Like before, in the barn, I took photos of the living room and the blood spatters and the bullet holes. I went to the other rooms as well, a children’s room and a bedroom for the parents upstairs, where the fires had been set and had sputtered out. The smell of burned wood was nauseating. I made a special point of taking photographs of the few framed pictures I could find: photos of weddings, of school graduations, of family celebrations. I tried to heed Sanjay’s advice not to dwell on the implications of what I was taking shots of. I just made sure that the photos were in focus and were framed properly and had the correct captions. In a narrow hallway I moved between Jean-Paul and Karen in mid-conversation, with Jean-Paul being his usual pompous self:

    â€œ … Agree with Peter, we can’t spend all this time here with no bodies, no additional evidence. Site A is supposed to have more than a hundred bodies and the evidence …”
    â€œ … Won’t ignore this site. So, sorry, Karen, but that’s the way it’s going to be …”
    Back in the living room Sanjay was processing some of his own information in his laptop, while I took additional photographs of the bloody clothing