Sourland Read Online Free PDF Page A

braked her 1974 Volvo narrowly avoiding rear-ending a van braking to a stop directly in front ofher—a tin-colored vehicle with a corroded rear bumper and a New York license plate whose raised numerals and letters were just barely discernible through layers of dried mud like a palimpsest. Overhead were clouds like wadded tissues, a sepia glaze to the late-winter urban air and a stink of diesel exhaust and Madeleine Karr whose claim it was that she loved Manhattan felt now a distinct unease in stalled traffic amid a cacophony of horns, the masculine aggressiveness of horns, for several blocks she’d been aware of the tin-colored van jolting ahead of her on West Street, passing on the right, switching lanes, braking at the construction blockade but at once lurching forward as if the driver had carelessly—or deliberately—lifted his foot from the brake pedal and in so doing caused his right front fender to brush against a pedestrian in a windbreaker crossing West Street—crossing at the intersection though at a red light, since traffic was stalled—unwisely then in a fit of temper the pedestrian in the windbreaker struck the fender with the flat of his hand—he was a burly man of above average height—Madeleine heard him shouting but not the words, distinctly—might’ve been Fuck you! or even Fuck you asshole! —immediately then the van driver leapt out of the van and rushed at the pedestrian—Madeleine blinked in astonishment at this display of masculine contention—Madeleine was expecting to see the men fight together clumsily—aghast then to see the van driver wielding what appeared to be a knife with a considerable blade, maybe six—eight—inches long—so quickly this was happening, Madeleine’s brain could not have identified Knife! —trapped behind the steering wheel of the Volvo like a child trapped in a nightmare Madeleine witnessed an event, an action, to which her dazzled brain could not readily have identified as Stabbing! Murder! —in a rage the man with the knife lashed at the now stunned pedestrian in the windbreaker, who hadn’t time to turn away—striking the man on his uplifted arms, striking and tearing the sleeves of the windbreaker, swiping against the man’s face, then in a wicked and seemingly practiced pendulum motion slashing the man’s throat just below his jaw, right to left, left to right causing blood to spring instantaneously into the air— A six-foot arc ofblood at least as Madeleine would describe it afterward, horrified— even as the bleeding man kept walking, staggering forward . Never had Madeleine Karr witnessed anything so horrible—never would Madeleine Karr forget this savage attack in the unsparing clarity of a morning in late March—the spectacle of a living man attacked, stabbed, throat slashed before her eyes and what was most astonishing He kept walking—trying to walk—until he fell . The victim wore what appeared to be work clothes—work-boots—he was at least a decade older than his assailant—late thirties, early forties—bare-headed, with steely-gray hair in a crew cut—only seconds before the attack Madeleine had seen the victim visibly seething with indignation—empowered by rage—the sort of rough-hewn man with whom, alone in the city in such circumstances on West Street just below Fourteenth Street, Madeleine Karr would never have dared to lock eyes. Yet now the burly man in the windbreaker was rendered harmless—stricken—sinking to his knees as his assailant leapt back from him—dancer-like, very quick on his feet—though not quick enough (Madeleine had to suppose) to avoid being splattered by his victim’s blood. Fucker! Moth’fukr! —the van driver mouthed words Madeleine couldn’t hear but comprehended. In the righteousness of his fury the driver made no attempt to hide the bloody knife in his