Ben took a sip of whiskey and glanced toward the front of the bar. The early evening air had turned bluish-pink, and just over the roof of the rubber plant, he could see the residue of sunset, a spray of purple which rose like a light mist above the city. It might have looked beautiful, setting over a beautiful city, but it looked only dreamy and out of place above the cinderblock and tin-roofed factories which surrounded him. He turned his eyes from the window and glanced about the bar. A few factory workers crouched in a booth a few feet away, while a couple of others leaned against the bar, sipping slowly at their beers while they made idle conversation with the bartender. He wondered if Kelly had known any of the men who trudged into the bar after their shifts, had ever had a single decent talk with even one of them. He could not know for sure, but it struck him that he probably hadn’t. For what would be the use, after all, since the one great experience of his life could not be talked about with any of them. And so Kelly had chosen not to deceive anyone, but to take the isolation instead, the silence, the absolute apartness, and to live with that as long as he could, and when he couldn’t anymore, to go out like a man, asking no one’s pity, apologizing to no one, but simply going out of life in the way he had lived it, utterly and unbreachably alone.
It was almost midnight by the time Ben turned into his own gravel driveway. Across the street, the light in Mr Jeffries’ window was burning brightly, and it was easy for him to imagine the old man tossing sleeplessly on his bed or ambling shakily toward the bathroom. His own father had been like that in the last days, pointlessly moving from one room to the next, dazed, unreachably confused, only half-aware of who or where he was. Ben had gotten up many times in the early morning hours to find him stranded in the hallway, glancing about hopelessly, like a child lost in an unfamiliar city. He had finally died in this state of helpless bafflement. It was as if his mind had simply fallen away, like a body over a ledge, and Ben could still remember their last meal together, the old man mumbling incoherently while he stared expressionlessly at his food. He kept his eyes on Mr Jeffries’ lighted window for a moment longer, as if by watching from a distance, he could somehow help him if he fell, or guide him back to his bed and safely tuck him in as he had his father so many times before.
Suddenly the light went off, and Ben turned up the narrow walkway toward his house, then trudged up the short wooden stairs, unlocked the front door and stepped inside.
He felt the pistol barrel at his ear before he could reach the light switch beside the door, and the very shock of the cold round steel against his head froze him instantly.
‘Don’t move,’ someone said in a tense, trembling voice.
It was a man’s voice, but that was all that Ben could tell.
‘Don’t move,’ the man repeated sternly.
Ben stood motionlessly in the darkness, his right hand still lifted slightly toward the light, his fingers stretched toward it, but halted in midair, stiff, wooden, a puppet’s brittle hand.
‘Just take one step forward,’ the man said.
Ben could feel the barrel as it pressed more deeply into the soft flesh behind his ear.
‘Real slow, now,’ the man said. ‘Just one step.’
Ben took a single step, then stopped immediately. He could feel his eyes burning with an odd fierceness, as if trying to sear away the covering darkness.
‘Keep your hands where they are,’ the man told him. ‘Now take one more step.’
Ben did as he was told.
‘Get on your knees,’ the voice commanded.
‘What?’
‘Get on your goddamn knees!’
Ben slowly lowered himself to the floor.
‘Now kiss the street,’ the voice said with a sudden, bitter harshness.
Ben instantly tipped forward, spreading out onto his stomach. ‘Now spread them,’ the voice demanded in a tone that now seemed less harsh, even slightly muffled, as if a handkerchief had been placed over it and pressed down. ‘Spread your arms over your head.’
Ben flattened himself facedown across the hard wooden floor, then drew his hands up and over his head, as if he were reaching for something just beyond the limits of his grasp. For an instant he lay motionlessly in the darkness, then he felt the man kick at his heels.
‘Spread your legs!’
Ben did as he was told.
‘Shit,’ the man said softly.
Ben felt a hand reach down, quickly unsnap his holster and jerk his pistol from it.
‘That’s better,’ the man said.
Ben said nothing, and for a time he simply lay flat against the floor. Then, suddenly, he felt the man’s body as it pressed its full weight onto his back.
‘You ain’t moving now,’ the man said mockingly.
‘Guess not,’ Ben said weakly.
The man laughed. ‘The thing is, you got a problem,’ he said menacingly. ‘What you might call a nigger problem. Know what I mean?’
Ben did not answer.
The barrel of the pistol bit into his flesh.
‘You hear me, mister?’ the man demanded.
‘Yeah.’