AT THE PARSONAGE John Wesley used most of that same long hot summer afternoon to clear everything from his computer. Then as the day stretched toward the end, when the sun had moved far westward, he came out of the bedroom and walked down the hall to his parents’ room at the front of the house and looked in the drawers in the walnut bureau that had belonged to his mother, but she had taken all her clothes and makeup with her to Denver. He drew the curtain back from the window and looked out at the corner of the street and into the high branches of the trees. The late-afternoon light in the street had a slanted look. He walked back down the hall and searched the upstairs bathroom in the cabinets and chests, but there was none of her mascara or lipstick on the shelves or in the drawers.
Downstairs in the kitchen he took out the box of wood matches from the junk drawer together with a flat dish from the cupboard and carried them into the bathroom. He struck a match and smeared the charcoal end on his fingers, it made a black stain. He lighted a dozen more matches and set them in the dish. Then he began to blacken his face. When he was finished he stood looking at himself in the cabinet mirror, all his face was dark now, and he shut the light off and dumped the match ends in the trash can and rinsed the dish and put it away and drank a glass of water at the sink and went out the door to the garage.
There was a long narrow driveway running alongside the house to the garage. Grass had grown up in the gravel. In the garage he pulled the overhead door shut and locked it and locked the side door. Light filtered in from the small windows at the sides.
From the rear of the garage he brought out an old wood chair and set it in the middle of the floor where the fine dirt was black and shiny with oil leaks from the car. Then he brought out the wood box from under the workbench. On the bench were a steel vise and cans of nails and old hammers and wrenches all coated with oily dust. He set the box on the chair.
After that he got out the cotton rope he’d bought at the hardware store on Main Street and hidden in the corner by the workbench.
Then he stood next to the chair and threw one end of the rope over a rafter, making the fine dust from all the years sift down and hang in the air, and tied a knot in the rope and pulled it tight. He leaned against the rope to test if it would hold.
Then he walked over to the window and looked out at the backyard where his father had started a garden. He looked past the yard to the neighbors’. Through the trees he could see the town water tower, with Holt spelled out in red, at night it was always lit up but he wouldn’t see that anymore, and he crossed to the other side and looked out west across the street. Nobody there. Nothing happening.
He came back and climbed up on the box and immediately he lost his balance and had to step off. The box tumbled down. He brushed the dirt off and set it back on the chair and stood up on it slowly, carefully, leaning and tottering, then stood still. He reached around behind and brought the rope over his shoulder so that it hung in front of him. He held it for a moment, looking at it. Then he tied a slipknot and fit the loop over his head and drew it tight around his neck, with the knot at the back of his head just under the bulge of the skull, and let the loose end fall behind him. Then he lowered his hands and arms to his sides.
For a long time, for maybe twenty minutes, he stood without moving. He turned once and looked out the window at the day and all the nearby world. The light was lower now. In the garage it was darker than it was outside.