The Killer Is Dying Read Online Free PDF Page B

He sensed the push of it against walls, felt the change in barometric pressure somewhere deep in his chest.
    His mother had been obsessed with storms. At the first sign she would lock all doors, secure every window, turn on the radio, later the TV, for a steady feed of bulletins. He remembered one night that she stood for hours looking up at a lone tree on the hill above the house as winds slammed at walls, thunder boomed so hard that the ground itself seemed to shake, and rain pushed in beneath their doors. As though if that single tree, whipping furiously about, were to fall, the whole world would soon follow.
    He went into the bathroom to take one of the pills, a whole one this time, and returned to bed. There were no sounds outside, no passing cars. The only light in the room came through the far side of the blinds, where it looked as though a dog had chewed away the outer edges.
    Black Dog.
    He hadn’t thought about Black Dog in years.
    Found her in the yard early one morning, a puppy, sick and covered with ants. Just lying there, looking up at him, him not much more than a puppy himself. Cleaned her, fed her, she got better. And his parents, against their better judgment (an often-used phrase), let him keep her. Always something wrong with Black Dog, though. She slept a lot, ate little, shied away from going outside. Then, when he was ten, eleven maybe, she started to get really sick.
    Something else happened then. He’d loved Black Dog as much as he ever loved anything. And as she got sicker and sicker, he grieved, yes. Warmed up bowls of milk for her, petted her endlessly, covered her with an old blanket at night. But something, he realized, had begun to shift. He still fed her, petted her, talked to her. But he had in another sense become an observer, always a step or two apart from the scene, looking on, fascinated at the changes in her body, her eyes. When she died, he was with her, trying to discern the exact moment when life departed, its sign and spore, the turning point at which Black Dog was there , then not.
    Outside, a car door slammed, there was a shout, then a horn that went on for so long he wondered if it was stuck.
    The world speaks to us in so many languages, he thought, and we understand so few.
    A couple went by on the walkway outside his room, young from the sound of their voices, and laughing. A bump against his window beyond the blinds led him to imagine them out there arm in arm, hip to hip.
    Every time he sees young people it reminds him how distinct are their lives from his own, only the bare outer edges of his world and their world overlapping. Of course he feels that way about everyone; simply more so with the young. People go on, their concerns, their fears, their routines have nothing to do with the world in which he lives, nothing.
    A world he is soon to leave.
    He wonders what he thinks about that, and realizes that he doesn’t know.

 
     
    CHAPTER SEVEN
     
    HE HEARD THE FEDEX TRUCK pull in and was at the door before the bell rang.
    “How’s it going, Jimmie?” Raphael’s shaved head glistened. He wore a yellow T-shirt with a picture of a fish and the words CARP DIEM under an unbuttoned uniform shirt.
    “Good.” Jimmie pointed to the packages stacked by the door. “You?”
    “Can’t complain. Still above ground, have work, cold beer waiting for me when I’m done. Hey, your dad’s been busy.”
    “He has. Thanks, Raph.”
    “De nada, my man.”
    He was amazed that it had gone on so long. That, even with him being as careful and watchful as he was, he’d got away with it.
    At first he had waited, living off what was left, canned food, cereal, expecting someone to show up at the door, a neighbor, school officials, police. But no one did. So then, still expecting to be exposed any day, he’d gone on to work with what he had. Now he found it difficult to imagine another life, another way of living. He knew, of course, that this life would end, if not in the manner he had