'I'm sorry, boss,' he said in his calm way. 'I wasn't thinkin. Ain't much, I reckon. You feel like regular soon.'
I got up and went to the cell door. It felt like walking in a dream. When I got there, he said: 'You wonder why they didn't scream. That's the only thing you still wonder about, ain't it? Why those two little girls didn't scream while they were still there on the porch.'
I turned and looked at him. I could see every red snap in his eyes, I could see every pore on his face... and I could feel his hurt, the pain that he took in from other people like a sponge takes in water. I could see the darkness he had spoken of, too. It lay in all the spaces of the world as he saw it, and in that moment I felt both pity for him and great relief. Yes, it was a terrible thing we'd be doing, nothing would ever change that... and yet we would be doing him a favor.
'I seen it when that bad fella, he done grab me,' John said. 'That's when I knowed it was him done it. I seen him that day, I was in the trees and I seen him drop them down and run away, but - '
'You forgot,' I said.
'That's right, boss. Until he touch me, I forgot.'
'Why didn't they scream, John? He hurt them enough to make them bleed, their parents were right upstairs, so why didn't they scream?'
John looked at me from his haunted eyes. 'He say to the one, 'If you make noise, it's your sister I kill, not you,' He say that same to the other. You see?'
'Yes,' I whispered, and I could see it. The Detterick porch in the dark. Wharton leaning over them like a ghoul. One of them had maybe started to cry out, so Wharton had hit her and she had bled from the nose. That's where most of it had come from.
'He kill them with they love,' John said. 'They love for each other. You see how it was?'
I nodded, incapable of speech.
He smiled. The tears were flowing again, but he smiled. 'That's how it is every day,' he said, 'all over the worl'.' Then he lay down and turned his face to the wall.
I stepped out into the Mile, locked his cell, and walked up to the duty desk. I still felt like a man in a dream. I realized I could hear Brutal's thoughts - a very faint whisper, how to spell some word, receive, I think it was. He was thinking i before e, except after c, is that how the dadratted thing goes? Then he looked up, started to smile, and stopped when he got a good look at me. 'Paul?' he asked. 'Are you all right?'
'Yes.' Then I told him what John had told me - not all of it, and certainly not about what his touch had done to me (I never told anyone that part, not even Janice; Elaine Connelly will be the first to know of it - if, that is, she wants to read these last pages after reading all the rest of them), but I repeated what John had said about wanting to go. That seemed to relieve Brutal - a bit, anyway - but I sensed (heard?) him wondering if I hadn't made it up, just to set his mind at ease. Then I felt him deciding to believe it, simply because it would make things a little easier for him when the time came.
'Paul, is that infection of yours coming back?' he asked. 'You look all flushed.'
'No, I think I'm okay,' I said. I wasn't, but I felt sure by then that John was right and I was going to be. I could feel that tingle starting to subside.
'All the same, it might not hurt you to go on in your office there and lie down a bit.'
Lying down was the last thing I felt like right then - the idea seemed so ridiculous that I almost laughed. What I felt like doing was maybe building myself a little house, then shingling it, and plowing a garden in back, and planting it. All before suppertime.
That's how it is, I thought. Every day. All over the world. That darkness. All over the world.
'I'm going to take a turn over to Admin instead. Got a few things to check over there.'
'If you say so.'
I went to the door and opened it, then looked back. 'You've got it right,' I said: 'r-e-c-e-i-v-e; i before e, except after c. Most of the time, anyway; I guess there's exceptions to all the rules - '
I went out, not needing to look back at him to know he was staring with his mouth open.