Now Mrs. Dewey said, “Alvin, answer me. Do you think we’ll ever have a normal life again?” He started to reply, but the telephone stopped him.
The old Chevrolet left Kansas City November 21, Saturday night. Luggage was lashed to the fenders and roped to the roof; the trunk was so stuffed it could not be shut; inside, on the back seat, two television sets stood, one atop the other. It was a tight fit for the passengers: Dick, who was driving, and Perry, who sat clutching the old Gibson guitar, his most beloved possession. As for Perry’s other belongings – a card-board suitcase, a gray Zenith portable radio, a gallon jug of root-beer syrup (he feared that his favorite beverage might not be available in Mexico), and two big boxes containing books, manuscripts, cherished memorabilia (and hadn’t Dick raised hell! Cursed, kicked the boxes, called them “five hundred pounds of pig slop!”) – these, too, were part of the car’s untidy interior.
Around midnight they crossed the border into Oklahoma. Perry, glad to be out of Kansas, at last relaxed. Now it was true – they were on their way. On their way, and never coming back – without regret, as far as he was concerned, for he was leaving nothing behind, and no one who might deeply wonder into what thin air he’d spiraled. The same could not be said of Dick. There were those Dick claimed to love: three sons, a mother, a father, a brother – persons he hadn’t dared confide his plans to, or bid goodbye, though he never expected to see them again – not in this life.
Clutter – English Vows given in Saturday ceremony: that headline, appearing on the social page of the Garden City Telegram for November 23, surprised many of its readers. It seemed that Beverly, the second of Mr. Clutter’s surviving daughters, had married Mr. Vere Edward English, the young biology student to whom she had long been engaged. Miss Clutter had worn white, and the wedding, a full-scale affair (“Mrs. Leonard Cowan was soloist, and Mrs. Howard Blanchard organist”), had been “solemnized at the First Methodist Church” – the church in which, three days earlier, the bride had formally mourned her parents, her brother, and her younger sister. However, according to the Telegram’s account, “Vere and Beverly had planned to be married at Christmas time. The invitations were printed and her father had reserved the church for that date. Due to the unexpected tragedy and because of the many relatives being here from distant places, the young couple decided to have their wedding Saturday.”
The wedding over, the Clutter kinfolk dispersed. On Monday, the day the last of them left Garden City, the Telegram featured on its front page a letter written by Mr. Howard Fox, of Oregon, Illinois, a brother of Bonnie Clutter. The letter, after expressing gratitude to the townspeople for having opened their “homes and hearts” to the bereaved family, turned into a plea. “There is much resentment in this community [that is, Garden City],” wrote Mr. Fox. “I have even heard on more than one occasion that the man, when found, should be hanged from the nearest tree. Let us not feel this way.
The deed is done and taking another life cannot change it. Instead, let us forgive as God would have us do. It is not right that we should hold a grudge in our hearts. The doer of this act is going to find it very difficult indeed to live with himself. His only peace of mind will be when he goes to God for forgiveness. Let us not stand in the way but instead give prayers that he may find his peace.”
The car was parked on a promontory where Perry and Dick had stopped to picnic. It was noon. Dick scanned the view through a pair of binoculars. Mountains. Hawks wheeling in a white sky. A dusty road winding into and out of a white and dusty village. Today was his second day in Mexico, and so far he liked it fine – even the food. (At this very moment he was eating a cold, oily tortilla.) They had crossed the border at Laredo, Texas, the morning of November 23, and spent
the first night in a San Luis Potosi brothel. They were now two hundred miles north of their next destination, Mexico City.
“Know what I think?” said Perry. “I think there must be something wrong with us. To do what we did.”‘
“Did what?” “Out there.”
Dick dropped the binoculars into a leather case, a luxurious receptacle initialed H.W.C. He was annoyed. Annoyed as hell. Why the hell couldn’t Perry shut up? Christ Jesus, what damn good did it do, always dragging the goddam thing up? It really was annoying. Especially since they’d agreed, sort of, not to talk about the goddam thing. Just forget it.
“There’s got to be something wrong with somebody who’d do a thing like that,” Perry said.
“Deal me out, baby,” Dick said. “I’m a normal.” And Dick meant what he said. He thought himself as balanced, as sane as anyone – maybe a bit smarter than the average fellow, that’s all. But Perry – there was, in Dick’s opinion, “something wrong” with Little Perry. To say the least. Last spring, when they had celled together at Kansas State Penitentiary, he’d learned most of Perry’s lesser peculiarities: Perry could be “such a kid,” always wetting his bed and crying in his sleep (“Dad, I been looking everywhere, where you been, Dad?”), and often Dick had seen him “sit for hours just sucking his thumb and poring over them phony damn treasure guides.” Which was one side; there were others.
In some ways old Perry was “spooky as hell.” Take, for instance, that temper of his. He could slide into a fury “quicker than ten drunk Indians.” And yet you wouldn’t know it. “He might be ready to kill you, but you’d never know it, not to look at or listen to,” Dick once said. For however extreme the inward rage, outwardly Perry remained a cool young tough, with eyes serene and slightly sleepy. The time had been when Dick had thought he could control, could regulate the temperature of the sudden cold fevers that burned and chilled his friend, he had been mistaken, and in the aftermath of that discovery, had grown very unsure of Perry, not at all certain what to think – except that he felt he ought to be afraid of him, and wondered really why he wasn’t.
“Deep down,” Perry continued, “way, way rock-bottom, I never thought I could do it. A thing like that.”
“How about the nigger?” Dick said. Silence. Dick realized that Perry was staring at him. A week ago, in Kansas City, Perry had bought a pair of dark glasses – fancy ones with silver-lacquered rims and mirrored lenses. Dick disliked them; he’d told Perry he was ashamed to be seen with “anyone who’d wear that kind of flit stuff.” Actually, what irked him was the mirrored lenses; it was unpleasant having Perry’s eyes hidden behind the privacy of those tinted, reflecting surfaces. “But a nigger,” said Perry. “That’s different.” The comment, the reluctance with which it was pronounced, made Dick ask, “Or did you? Kill him like you said?” It was a significant question, for his original interest in Perry, his assessment of Perry’s character and potentialities, was founded on the story Perry had once told him of how he had beaten a colored man to death.
“Sure I did. Only – a nigger. It’s not the same.” Then Perry said, “Know what it is that really bugs me? About the other thing? It’s just I don’t believe it – that anyone can get away with a thing like that. Because I don’t see how it’s possible. To do what we did. And just one hundred percent get away with it. I mean, that’s what bugs me – I can’t get it out of my head that something’s got to happen.”
Though as a child he had attended church, Dick had never “come near” a belief in God; nor was he troubled by superstitions. Unlike Perry, he was not convinced that a broken mirror meant seven years’ misfortune, or that a young moon if glimpsed through glass portended evil. But Perry, with his sharp and scratchy intuitions, had hit upon Dick’s one abiding doubt. Dick, too, suffered moments when that question circled inside his head: Was it possible – were the two of them “honest to God going to get away with doing a thing like that”? Suddenly, he said to
Perry, “Now, just shut up!” Then he gunned the motor and backed the car off the promontory. Ahead of him, on the dusty road, he saw a dog trotting along in the warm sunshine.
Mountains. Hawks. Wheeling in a white sky.
When Perry asked Dick, “Know what I think?” he knew he was beginning a conversation that would displease Dick, and one that, for that matter, he himself would just as soon avoid. He agreed with Dick: Why go on talking about it? But he could not always stop himself. Spells of
helplessness occurred, moments when he “remembered things” – blue light exploding in a black room, the glass eyes of a big toy bear – and when voices, a particular few words, started nagging his mind: “Oh, no! Oh, please! No! No!
