Eric Lustbader - First Daughter

JACK NOW goes regularly to the library on G Street NW. At first, he went because Reverend Taske urged him to, but lately he's realized that he likes going. Because of Taske's training, he's tamed his fright of reading new texts; it's become more of a challenge, a way out of the strange little world his dyslexia shoved him into.

He loves the dusty air, golden with motes of history. He loves opening books at random, finding himself engrossed, so that he goes back, starts at page one and doesn't stop until he's devoured the last word. Unlike movies and TV that show him everything, even if he doesn't like it, books transport him into the world of his own imagination. As long as he can create pictures from the words he reads-scenes filled with characters, conflict, good and evil-he can build a world that's in many ways closer to the one other people inhabit. And this makes him feel less like an outsider. He feels he is that much closer to rubbing shoulders with the passersby on the street. This is the atmosphere that draws him day after day into the dusty quietude, calm as a still lake. But in those depths something waits for him, as it does almost every teenager: the fear that recurs, the fear that needs to be faced.

Jack comes face-to-face with his one Monday afternoon. He's back in the stacks, pulling down massive treatises on his latest passion: criminal psychology. A head in the book precludes vigilance. But who would think to be vigilant in a District public library? That's how Andre thinks, anyway. He's been following Jack to G Street every day for a week, until he's familiar with the schedule. It says something about just how deep his feelings of vengeance run that he's been on surveillance for five straight days when he could be negotiating his next shipment of smack from Ian Brady.

But some things are more important than H, more important than greenbacks, because they cry out to be resolved. And, frankly, Andre can't rest easy until this particular matter is resolved to his satisfaction.

Jack doesn't hear him as Andre creeps up from behind. Andre, in crepe-soled shoes he's bought for the occasion, approaches slowly, relishing the end to the ache that's been inside him ever since Cyril Tolkan delivered his punishment.

At the very end, he makes his rush, silent, filled with the power of righteous rage. He grabs Jack by his collar, lifts him bodily into the air, slams him against the rear wall. Shelves tremble; books spill onto the floor. Andre, his eyes alight with bloodlust, jams a forearm across Jack's windpipe both to silence him and to subdue him as quickly as possible. Though he's filled with a desire for vengeance, Andre is nothing if not pragmatic. He doesn't want to get caught in here with a dead or dying body. He has no intention of going into whitey's slammer, either now or ever.

With a tiny snik! he flicks open his switchblade. His victim seems so stunned, his hands aren't even up, trying to pry his forearm away. Maybe he doesn't have enough oxygen to act. Either way, it doesn't matter to Andre, who jabs the point of the blade in toward Jack's diaphragm. He's aiming for the soft spot just below the sternum, to drive the long, slender blade upward into Jack's heart.

JACK'S HANDS, down by his sides, have not, however, been idle. His left hand has kept its grip on the thick hardcover book he's been reading, and now, as he hears the telltale snik! of the switchblade, he reflexively presses the tome to his chest. The point of the knife encounters cotton, pasteboard, and paper instead of flesh. Andre's eyes widen in surprise, then squeeze shut as Jack's knee plows hard into his testicles.

As Andre begins to double over, Jack's windpipe is freed. He sucks in a great lungful of air, brings the book up, jams its edge into Andre's neck. To maintain the maximum force, he's obliged to keep both his hands on the spine of the book and so lacks the means to force Andre to drop the switchblade. This weapon now swings back and forth like a pendulum with a razor's edge, grazing first Jack's ear, then his shoulder. With each wild pass, Jack feels searing pain, and hot blood begins running down him. The next arc could find his carotid artery.

Gritting his teeth, he jams the book harder into Andre's throat, hears a crackle like a sheet of paper being crumpled prior to being thrown away. Then Andre's mouth opens wide, emits a sound like a grandfather clock about to break down.

Jack, staring into Andre's bloodshot eyes, begins to cry. Part of him knows what's happening, what the outcome will be, but that part must stand aside while the organism is in danger. Andre, in a last, desperate attempt to kill, brings the edge of the switchblade up to the level of Jack's ear. He points it inward, aiming for the canal opening. Jack, terrified, shifts his weight. The corner of the book penetrates into the hole made by the fracture of Andre's cricoid cartilage. All air is cut off.

Andre's knife hand moves. The point of the switchblade is almost at the canal opening. Jack leans in with all his weight; more of the book pushes inside Andre. Andre's knife hand begins to tremble; the momentum falters. Tears are streaming down Jack's cheeks. They fall onto Andre, into his wound. Andre's eyes stare at him. They are unreadable.

There is now a contest of wills. Andre can no longer breathe, but he holds the knife. All he has to do is summon the strength to jam it point-first into Jack's ear. There is a moment of stasis, when the power, the wills of both boys are held in balance. Nothing moves. The small sounds of the library, the occasional whisper, the soft pad of footfalls, the tiny, very particular sound of a book being slipped out from between its neighbors, all seem exaggerated, like the sounds of insects deep in the forest. All the trappings of civilization have become irrelevant, useless. All that remains are the tiny symphony of sounds and the beating of your own heart.

Nature abhors stasis; like fame, it's fleeting, though its seconds may seem like minutes. Jack feels the point of the knife enter his ear canal, and he twists the corner of the book. Andre's eyes roll up; his lips are drawn back in a rictus. He has nothing left, only a helpless rage that ushers him rudely from life to death.

Jack, panting like a sick dog, lies against Andre's crumpled form. He feels as if a light has gone out in the depths of his soul, as if he has lost a part of himself. He is in shock, stunned at what has occurred. There are no words, no thoughts in his head adequate to what he's feeling. Soon enough, he begins to shake with a profound chill. The strong copper taste of blood is on his tongue, but whether it's his blood or Andre's or both is impossible to say.

In a dim dead-end of the library where no one comes, he lies in a daze, in a kind of trancelike state, remembering an Indian parable from The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna he came across weeks ago. It happened that a tigress, large with an unborn cub, attacked a herd of goats. As it sprang forward to grip in its teeth a terrified goat, the goatherd shot it. The tigress fell, and in that moment before she expired, she gave birth to her cub. The cub grew up with the goats, eating grass and, mimicking its adopted brothers and sisters, bleating. Until the day a male tiger found the herd. It quite naturally attacked the youngster, who did not fight back, but only bleated. The male tiger gripped the adolescent by the scruff of his neck, dragged him to the river.

"Look at our reflections," the male tiger said. "You and I are as brothers. Why do you bleat like a goat? Why do you live with them instead of feasting on them?"

"I like grass," the adolescent replied.

"Because grass is all you know."

Whereupon the male tiger leapt upon a goat, tore out its throat. The adolescent was close enough to the feast to taste the goat's blood. Then he put his head down and bit into the flesh, which he discovered he liked much more than the taste of grass.