close to my face and looked intently at the bits of gray matter clinging there. Fractions of a second before, the tissue had held Vanessa's mind. I had devoted my life to figuring out how this biological jelly mysteriously orchestrated itself into the phenomenon of consciousness, how it defined who we were and how it gave us the unique human consciousness of being conscious, our awareness of being aware of being aware.
I sat back on my haunches, transfixed by tissue that had once sustained genius and goodness, a sense of humor and one of outrage. Now the shards of Vanessa's mind were just sticky dying bits of organic dust-to-be thanks to the simple transfer of kinetic energy from a few grams of lead.
"Where are you?" I tried to imagine where her thoughts had gone.
Sirens pulled me back into the cold, bitter day as first one, then a second squad car came flying into the cemetery showering gravel over the nearby graves. A big, white, boxy ambulance followed a few seconds behind. The driver's-side door of an Itta Bena PD squad car opened, and a moment later a defensive-tackle-sized black man in a police uniform climbed out. He reached deliberately into the car and pulled from it a large black cowboy hat, which he carefully placed on his head. Only then did he look slowly around the cemetery and pull a large automatic pistol from its holster and hold it along his thigh, index finger resting ready outside the trigger guard. Shouts echoed through the cemetery. Everyone pointed toward me.
The cemetery grew silent again as the giant cop looked at me. His face was as broad and expressive as a cast-iron skillet as he took in my embrace of Vanessa. Something like disapproval rippled beneath his gaze, then turned to horror as he took in Vanessa's bloody, gaping wound.
I saw recognition make its way across his face. Despair, then anger, and finally sadness played across his face in cinematically swift flashes as he recognized Vanessa. During all this, the ambulance attendants stayed close to their vehicle, looking to the giant cop for directions. Finally, he holstered the automatic and made his way slowly toward me. The paramedics came running behind; the contents of their kits rattled in the stillness. I thought to tell them they could take their time, but my words found no voice.
CHAPTER 9
Once across the Roebuck Lake bridge at the east end of Itta Bena, the motorcyclist settled into a breakneck pace that would have been suicide for a less experienced rider, especially when the blacktop ran out southeast of Runnymede and fed into a wide, rutted lane of still-frozen gravel, sand, and mud. She wore a black helmet and was androgynously clad entirely in the woodland camouflage favored by local deer hunters. With her rifle slung crosswise over her back she looked pretty much like most any other hunter that time of the year.
The warmth glowed in her belly. Relaxed. Satisfied. At peace. The tingles of the orgasmic release crackled about her skin and warmed her thighs and groin where she hugged the saddle. She liked killing when it was quick and cold, but loved it like this morning, when she could expel every bit of anger and frustration from her body with just the right shot. Head shots were the best.
Behind the helmet's visor, her face was a smooth postcoital mask that did not change as she blew quickly past groups of black people, walking along the road in twos and threes. She gave no thought to them or the groups of old black men with old cynical eyes sitting on the steps of cheap mobile homes, which had replaced the gray, weathered wood shacks in which they had grown up. Their old eyes had watched the world change from one of poverty, official segregation, and legal inequality to one of poverty, de facto segregation, and de facto inequality. This was progress as good as they expected in this life.
The unpaved road cut through a winter Delta sameness as flat and featureless as an empty table. The motorcyclist glanced frequently in the
I sat back on my haunches, transfixed by tissue that had once sustained genius and goodness, a sense of humor and one of outrage. Now the shards of Vanessa's mind were just sticky dying bits of organic dust-to-be thanks to the simple transfer of kinetic energy from a few grams of lead.
"Where are you?" I tried to imagine where her thoughts had gone.
Sirens pulled me back into the cold, bitter day as first one, then a second squad car came flying into the cemetery showering gravel over the nearby graves. A big, white, boxy ambulance followed a few seconds behind. The driver's-side door of an Itta Bena PD squad car opened, and a moment later a defensive-tackle-sized black man in a police uniform climbed out. He reached deliberately into the car and pulled from it a large black cowboy hat, which he carefully placed on his head. Only then did he look slowly around the cemetery and pull a large automatic pistol from its holster and hold it along his thigh, index finger resting ready outside the trigger guard. Shouts echoed through the cemetery. Everyone pointed toward me.
The cemetery grew silent again as the giant cop looked at me. His face was as broad and expressive as a cast-iron skillet as he took in my embrace of Vanessa. Something like disapproval rippled beneath his gaze, then turned to horror as he took in Vanessa's bloody, gaping wound.
I saw recognition make its way across his face. Despair, then anger, and finally sadness played across his face in cinematically swift flashes as he recognized Vanessa. During all this, the ambulance attendants stayed close to their vehicle, looking to the giant cop for directions. Finally, he holstered the automatic and made his way slowly toward me. The paramedics came running behind; the contents of their kits rattled in the stillness. I thought to tell them they could take their time, but my words found no voice.
CHAPTER 9
Once across the Roebuck Lake bridge at the east end of Itta Bena, the motorcyclist settled into a breakneck pace that would have been suicide for a less experienced rider, especially when the blacktop ran out southeast of Runnymede and fed into a wide, rutted lane of still-frozen gravel, sand, and mud. She wore a black helmet and was androgynously clad entirely in the woodland camouflage favored by local deer hunters. With her rifle slung crosswise over her back she looked pretty much like most any other hunter that time of the year.
The warmth glowed in her belly. Relaxed. Satisfied. At peace. The tingles of the orgasmic release crackled about her skin and warmed her thighs and groin where she hugged the saddle. She liked killing when it was quick and cold, but loved it like this morning, when she could expel every bit of anger and frustration from her body with just the right shot. Head shots were the best.
Behind the helmet's visor, her face was a smooth postcoital mask that did not change as she blew quickly past groups of black people, walking along the road in twos and threes. She gave no thought to them or the groups of old black men with old cynical eyes sitting on the steps of cheap mobile homes, which had replaced the gray, weathered wood shacks in which they had grown up. Their old eyes had watched the world change from one of poverty, official segregation, and legal inequality to one of poverty, de facto segregation, and de facto inequality. This was progress as good as they expected in this life.
The unpaved road cut through a winter Delta sameness as flat and featureless as an empty table. The motorcyclist glanced frequently in the
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