‘Which all leads up to: everybody’d like to do one killin’ in his life, to sort of work off that big load of stuff, all those killin’s in his mind he never did have the guts to do. And once in a while a man has a chance. Someone runs in front of his car and he forgets the brakes and keeps goin’. Nobody can prove nothin’ with that sort of thing. The man don’t even tell himself he did it. He just didn’t get his foot on the brake in time. But you know and I know what really happened, don’t we?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
The town was far away now. We moved over a small stream on a wooden bridge, just near the railway embankment.
‘Now,’ said the old man, looking at the water, ‘the only kind of killin’ worth doin’ is the one where nobody can guess who did it or why they did it or who they did it to, right? Well, I got this idea maybe twenty years ago. I don’t think about it every day or every week. Sometimes months go by, but the idea’s this: only one train stops here each day, sometimes not even that. Now, if you wanted to kill someone you’d have to wait, wouldn’t you, for years and years, until a complete and actual stranger came to your town, a stranger who got off the train for no reason, a man nobody knows and who don’t know nobody in the town. Then, and only then, I thought, sittin’ there on the station chair, you could just go up and when nobody’s around, kill him and throw him in the river. He’d be found miles downstream. Maybe he’d never be found. Nobody would ever think to come to Rampart Junction to find him. He wasn’t goin’ there. He was on his way some place else. There, that’s my whole idea. And I’d know that man the minute he got off the train. Know him, just as clear …’
I had stopped walking. It was dark. The moon would not be up for an hour.
‘Would you?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ he said. I saw the motion of his head looking at the stars. ‘Well, I’ve talked enough.’ He sidled close and touched my elbow. His hand was feverish, as if he had held it to a stove before touching me. His other hand, his right hand, was hidden, tight and bunched, in his pocket. ‘I’ve talked enough.’
Something screamed.
I jerked my head.
Above, a fast-flying night-express razored along the unseen tracks, flourished light on hill, forest, farm, town dwellings, field, ditch, meadow, ploughed earth, and water, then, raving high, cut off away, shrieking, gone. The rails trembled for a little while after that. Then, silence.
The old man and I stood looking at each other in the dark. His left hand was still holding my elbow. His other hand was still hidden.
‘May I say something?’ I said, at last.
The old man nodded.
‘About myself,’ I said. I had to stop. I could hardly breathe. I forced myself to go on. ‘It’s funny. I’ve often thought the same way as you. Sure, just today, going cross-country, I thought, how perfect, how perfect, how really perfect it could be. Business has been bad for me, lately. Wife sick. Good friend died last week. War in the world. Full of boils, myself. It would do me a world of good –’
‘What?’ the old man said, his hand on my arm.
‘To get off this train in a small town,’ I said, ‘where nobody knows me, with this gun under my arm, and find someone and kill them and bury them and go back down to the station and get on and go home and nobody the wiser and nobody ever to know who did it, ever. Perfect, I thought, a perfect crime. And I got off the train.’
We stood there in the dark for another minute, staring at each other. Perhaps we were listening to each other’s hearts beating very fast, very fast indeed.
The world turned under me. I clenched my fists. I wanted to fall. I wanted to scream, like the train.
For suddenly I saw that all the things I had just said were not lies put forth to save my life.
All the things I had just said to this man were true.
And now I knew why I had stepped from the train and walked up through this town. I knew what I had been looking for.
I heard the old man breathing hard and fast. His hand was tight on my arm as if he might fall. His teeth were clenched. He leaned towards me as I leaned towards him. There was a terrible silent moment of immense strain as before an explosion.
He forced himself to speak at last. It was the voice of a man crushed by a monstrous burden.
‘How do I know you got a gun under your arm?’
‘You don’t know.’ My voice was blurred. ‘You can’t be sure.’
He waited. I thought he was going to faint.
‘That’s how it is?’ he said.
‘That’s how it is,’ I said.
He shut his eyes tight. He shut his mouth tight.
After another five seconds, very slowly, heavily, he managed to take his hand away from my own immensely heavy arm. He looked down at his right hand then, and took it, empty, out of his pocket.