The Speed Chronicles Read Online Free PDF Page A

but I’d never seen a pistol.
    Junior whipped Dr. Bob maybe five times across the face and then kicked him in the balls and threw him against the wall. And Dr. Bob, the so-called healer, slid all injured and bloody to the floor.
    You do not fuck with my possessions, Junior said to Bob.
    There it was. The real reason for all of this. It was hatred and revenge, not love. Maybe at that point, all Junior could see was that Aryan who’d raped him a thousand times. Maybe Junior could only see the white lightning of colonialism. I don’t mean to get so intellectual, but I’m trying to explain it to you. I’m trying to explain myself to myself.
    I watched Junior lean over and slap Dr. Bob three or four times.
    He’s had enough, I said, let’s get out of here.
    Junior stood and laughed.
    Yeah, he said, this fucker will never hit another woman again.
    We walked toward the door together. I thought it was over. But Junior turned back, pressed that pistol against Bob’s forehead, and pulled the trigger.
    I will never forget how that head exploded.
    It was like a comet smashing through a planet.
    I couldn’t move. It was the worst thing I’d ever seen. But then Junior did something worse. He flipped over the doctor’s body, pulled down his pants and underwear, and shoved that pistol into Bob’s ass.
    Even then, I knew there was some battered train track stretching between Junior’s torture in prison and this violation of Bob’s body.
    No more, I said, no more.
    Junior stared at me with such hatred, such pain, that I thought he might kill me too. But then that moment of rage passed and Junior’s eyes filled with something worse: logic.
    We have to get rid of the body, he said.
    I shook my head. At least I think I shook my head.
    You owe me, he said.
    That was it. I couldn’t deny him. I helped him clean up the blood and bone and brain, and wrap Dr. Bob in a blanket, and throw him into the trunk of the car.
    I know where to dump him, Junior said.
    So we drove deep into the forest, to the end of a dirt road that had started, centuries ago, as a game trail. Then we carried Bob’s body through the deep woods toward a slow canyon that Junior had discovered during his tree-painting job.
    Nobody will ever find the body, he said.
    As we trudged along, mosquitoes and flies, attracted by the blood, swarmed us. I must have gotten bit a hundred times or more. Soon enough, Junior and I were bleeding onto Bob’s body.
    Blood for blood. Blood with blood.
    After a few hours of dragging that body through the wilderness, we reached Junior’s canyon. It was maybe ten feet across and choked with brush and small trees.
    He’s going to get caught up on the branches, I said.
    Jesus, I thought, now I’m terrified of my own logic.
    Just throw him real hard, Junior said.
    So we somehow found the strength to lift Dr. Bob above our heads and we hurled him into the canyon. His body crashed through the green and came to rest, unseen, somewhere below.
    Maybe you want to say a few words, Junior said.
    Don’t be so fucking cruel, I said, we’ve done something awful here.
    Junior laughed again.
    As we trudged back toward the car, Junior started talking childhood memories. I don’t want to bore you with the details but here’s the meaning: He and I, as babies, had slept in the same crib, and we’d lost our virginities on the same night within five feet of each other, and now we had killed together, so we were more than cousins, more than best friends, and more than brothers. We were the same person.
    Of course, I kept reminding myself that I didn’t touch Dr. Bob. I didn’t pistol whip him or punch him or slap him. And I certainly didn’t shoot him.
    But I was still guilty. I knew that. Though I couldn’t figure out exactly what I was guilty of.
    When we made it back to the car, Junior stopped and stared up at the stars newly arrived in the sky.
    You’re