One Monday We Killed Them All Read Online Free PDF

ever made in my life. If I stay in this same rank I can elect to retire after thirty years at one hundred and sixty-five dollars a month.
    If I was not compelled to be a cop by some force I do not comprehend, I could not endure all the rest of it.
    And the worst part, worse than the money, the hours, the idiotic inequities of the laws you have to enforce, is the constant need to rationalize. You can never do the job the way it should be done. So you strain to get the maximum out of tired men, obsolete equipment, an apathetic public. You wheedle and connive and bicker, knowing the best you can expect is a better degree of sub-standard performance. The roof leaks in five places and you have three wash tubs—
    The way I met Margaret McAran, I was on regular patrol, but with an assignment to special traffic when the load got heavy, and on one afternoon of a light rain that froze as it came down, the body and fender shops were racking up a score that would keep them going for weeks. I was teamed with an older man named Lou Briss and we got a school zone injury case at quarter to three that afternoon at Hall Palmer Elementary School. It turned out to be a case of stupid rather than reckless driving. The crossing cop had made a blast with the whistle which startled an old guy into banging on the brakes, locking them so that even at fifteen miles he went into a long slow skid that swung the back end around so that it thumped a little girl, cracked her wrist and gave her a head laceration when she landed on the icy sidewalk.
    The only adult witnesses were the crossing cop, the old driver and Miss Margaret McAran, first-grade teacher. She was there above and beyond the call of duty because it was such a crummy, dangerous, glassy day she wanted to help get the kids herded across the street before going back into the school and finishing up for the day.
    The ambulance was loading the kid when we got there, and we found out from the crossing cop that the teacherwho had seen it was inside calling the little girl’s mother; so Briss and I split up what had to be done, but if he had seen the actual teacher instead of his mental image of the teacher, it would have been split a different way. I went into the school bracing myself to try to get some coherent information out of some semi-hysterical old spinster. She was in the administration office talking to some other teachers. They pointed her out to me. There was a dull gray pearly light in that room and some weak desk lights, but she seemed to have her own light—as if she had some trick of collecting and focusing all the light around her and reflecting it back. Maybe it was mostly that mane of dark copper hair, which looked metallic yet made you want to touch the softness of it. You would get the idea it was tousled, uncombed, but when you looked close you’d see it was as orderly as she could make it. Her skin was pale, but it had that glowing texture of superb health. Her eyes were a green that startles you because it seems too bright and clear to be possible. She was a big girl, moving with that protective dignity of big girls, but looking capable of explosive grace. I guess her features were a little heavy, denying her any classic beauty, but I can say that when she looked toward me in inquiry, there was an impact which dried my mouth and made me feel, in uniform, like a silly kid dressed up for a costume party. I learned later she was one day beyond her twenty-second birthday.
    We went into a small room where I sat at a desk with my note book in front of me, and she sat in a straight chair beside the desk. Her voice was low and slightly harsh, and it had the intonations and elisions of the hill country hidden behind the grammar of her education.
    Yes, she had seen all of it. She felt the traffic officer on duty had made a mistake in judgment. Under those icy conditions he should have let that car go by and stopped the ones coming which were further away. She saw the skid beginning,