Deadeye Dick Page 0,27

He was skinny, and his posture was bad, and he was dressed like almost no other man in Midland City—in gray flannel trousers and a tweed sport coat, what I would recognize much later at Ohio State as the uniform of an English professor. All he did was write and edit at the Bugle-Observer all day long.

I did not know who he was. He had never been to our house. He had been in town only a year. He was a newspaper gypsy. He had been hired away from the Indianapolis Times. It would come out at legal proceedings later on that he was born to poor parents in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and had put himself through Harvard, and that he had twice worked his way to Europe on cattle boats. The adverse information about him, which was brought out by our lawyer, was that he had once belonged to the Communist party, and had attempted to enlist in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War.

He wore horn-rimmed spectacles, and his eyes were red from crying, or maybe from too much cigarette smoke. He was smoking when he came down the stairs, followed by the detective who had gone to get him. He behaved as though he himself were a criminal, puffing on the same cigarette he would be smoking when he was propped against the basement wall in front of a firing squad.

I wouldn’t have been surprised if the police had shot this unhappy stranger while I watched. I was beyond surprise. I am still beyond surprise. The consequences of my having shot a pregnant woman were bound to be complicated beyond belief.

How can I bear to remember that first confrontation with George Metzger? I have this trick for dealing with all my worst memories. I insist that they are plays. The characters are actors. Their speeches and movements are stylized, arch. I am in the presence of art.

So:

The curtain rises on a basement at midnight. Six POLICEMEN stand around the walls. RUDY, a boy, covered with ink, is in a cage in the middle of the room. Down the stairs, smoking a cigarette, comes GEORGE METZGER, whose wife has just been shot by the boy. He is followed by a DETECTIVE, who has the air of a master of ceremonies. The POLICE are fascinated by what is about to happen. It is bound to be interesting.

METZGER (appalled by RUDY’S appearance): Oh, my God. What is it?

DETECTIVE: That’s what shot your wife, Mr. Metzger.

METZGER: What have you done to him?

DETECTIVE: Don’t worry about him. He’s fine. You want him to sing and dance? We can make him sing and dance.

METZGER: I’m sure. (Pause) All right. I’ve looked at him. Will you take me back home to my children now?

DETECTIVE: We were hoping you’d have a few words to say to him.

METZGER: Is that required?

DETECTIVE: No, sir. But the boys and me here—we figured you should have this golden opportunity.

METZGER: It sounded so official—that I was to come with you. (Catching on, troubled) This is not an official assembly. This is—(Pause) informal.

DETECTIVE: Nobody’s even here. I’m home in bed, you’re home in bed. All the other boys are home in bed. Ain’t that right, boys?

(POLICEMEN assent variously, making snoring sounds and so on.)

METZGER (morbidly curious): What would it please you gentlemen to have me do?

DETECTIVE: If you was to grab a gun away from one of us, and it was to go off, and if the bullet was to hit young Mr. Rich Nazi Shitface there, I wouldn’t blame you. But it would be hard for us to clean up the mess afterwards. A mess like that can go on and on.

METZGER: SO I should limit my assault to words, you think?

DETECTIVE: Some people talk with their hands and feet.

METZGER: I should beat him up.

DETECTIVE: Heavens to Betsy, no. How could you think such a thing?

(POLICEMEN display mock horror at the thought of a beating.)

METZGER: Just asking.

DETECTIVE: Get him out here, boys.

(Two POLICEMEN hasten to unlock the cage and drag RUDY out of it. RUDY struggles in terror.)

RUDY: It was an accident! I’m sorry! I didn’t know! (and so on)

(The two POLICEMEN hold RUDY in front OF METZGER, so that METZGER can hit and kick him as much as he likes.)

DETECTIVE (to both RUDY and METZGER): A lot of people fall down stairs. We have to take them to the hospital afterwards. It’s a very common accident. Up to now, it’s happened with mean drunks and to niggers who