Thomas Harris - Black Sunday

His confidence did not sustain him through the hours of darkness. He sweated, he dreamed, he remained impotent. It was at night that the child in him, the hater, fed by his suffering, whispered to the man.

“What else has it cost you? What else? Margaret tosses in her sleep, doesn’t she? Do you think she gave away a little while you were gone?”

“No.”

“Fool. Ask her.”

“I don’t have to ask her.”

“You stupid limpdick.”

“Shut up.”

“While you were squalling in a cell, she was straddling one.”

“No. No. No. No. No. No.”

“Ask her.”

He asked her one cold evening near the end of October. Her eyes filled with tears and she left the room. Guilty or not?

He became obsessed with the thought that she had been unfaithful to him. He asked her druggist if her prescription for birth control pills had been renewed regularly over the past two years and was told that it was none of his business. Lying beside her after yet another of his failures, he was tormented by graphic scenes of her performing acts with other men. Sometimes the men were Buddy Ives and Junior Atkins, one on Margaret, the other awaiting his turn.

He learned to avoid her when he was angry and suspicious, and he spent some of his evenings brooding in his garage workshop. Others he passed trying to make light conversation with her, feigning an interest in the details of her daily routine, in the doings of the children at school.

Margaret was deceived by his physical recovery, and his success at his job. She thought he was practically well. She assured him that his impotence would pass. She said the Navy counselor had talked to her about it before he came home. She used the word impotence.

The blimp’s first spring tour in 1974 was confined to the Northeast, so Lander could stay at home. The second was to be a run down the East Coast to Florida. He would be away three weeks. Some of Margaret’s friends had a party the night before his departure and the Landers were invited. Lander was in a good humor. He insisted that they attend.

It was a pleasant gathering of eight couples. There was food and dancing. Lander did not dance. Talking rapidly, a film of sweat on his forehead, he told a captive group of husbands about the balonet and damper systems in airships. Margaret interrupted his discourse to show him the patio. When he returned, the talk had turned to professional football. He took the floor to resume his lecture where he had left off.

Margaret danced with the host. Twice. The second time, the host held her hand for a moment after the music had stopped. Lander watched them. They were talking quietly. He knew they were talking about him. He explained all about catenary curtains while his audience stared into their drinks. Margaret was being very careful, he thought. But he could see her soaking up the attention of the men. She drew it in through her skin.

Driving home he was silent, white with rage.

Finally, in the kitchen of their house, she could stand his silence no longer.

“Why don’t you just start yelling and get it over with?” she said. “Go ahead and say what you’re thinking.”

Her kitten came into the kitchen and rubbed itself on Lander’s leg. She scooped it up, fearful that he might kick it.

“Tell me what I did, Michael. We were having a good time, weren’t we?”

She was so very pretty. She stood convicted by her loveliness. Lander said nothing. He approached her quickly, looking into her face. She did not back away. He had never struck her, could never strike her. He grabbed the kitten and went to the sink. When she realized what he was doing, the kitten was already in the garbage disposal. She ran to the sink and tore at his arms as he switched it on. She could hear the kitten until the disposal’s ablative action disposed of its extremities and reached its vitals. All the time, Lander was staring into her face.

Her screams woke the children. She slept in their room. She heard him when he left shortly after daylight.

He sent her flowers from Norfolk. He tried to call her from Atlanta. She did not answer the telephone. He wanted to tell her that he realized his suspicions were groundless, the product of a sick imagination. He wrote her a long letter from Jack sonville, telling her he was sorry, that he knew he had been cruel and unfair and crazy and that he would never behave that way again.

On the tenth day of the scheduled three-week tour, the copilot was bringing the blimp to the landing mast when a freak gust of wind caught it and swung it into the maintenance truck, tearing the fabric of the envelope. The airship would stand down for a day and a night while repairs were made. Lander could not face a motel room for a day and a night with no word from Margaret.

He caught a flight to Newark. At a Newark pet store he bought a fine Persian kitten. He arrived at his house at midday. The house was quiet, the children were at camp. Margaret’s car was in the driveway. Her teapot was heating on a low fire. He would give her the kitten and tell her he was sorry and they could hold each other and she would forgive him. He took the kitten out of the carrier and straightened the ribbon around its neck. He climbed the stairs.

The stranger was reclining on the daybed, Margaret astride him pumping, her breasts bouncing. They did not see Lander until he screamed. It was a short fight. Lander did not have all his strength back and the stranger was big, fast and frightened.. He slugged Lander hard on the temple twice and he and Margaret fled together.

Lander sat on the playroom floor, his back against the wall. His mouth was open and bleeding and his eyes were vacant. The teapot whistle shrilled for half an hour. He did not move, and when the water boiled away, the house was filled with the smell of scorched metal.

When pain and rage reach levels far above the mind’s capacity to cope, a curious relief is possible but it requires a partial death.

Lander smiled an awful smile, a bloody rictus smile, when he felt his will die. He believed that it passed out through his mouth and nose in a thin smoke riding on a sigh. The relief came to him then. It was over. Oh, it was over. For half of him.

The remains of the man Lander would feel some pain, would jerk galvanically like frogs’ legs in a skillet, would cry out for relief. But he would never again sink his teeth into the pumping heart of rage. Rage would never again cut out his heart and rub it pumping in his face.

What was left could live with rage because it was made in rage and rage was its element and it thrived there as a mammal thrives in air.

He rose and washed his face, and when he left the house, when he returned to Florida, he was steady. His mind was as cool as snake’s blood. There were no more dialogues in his head. There was only one voice now. The man functioned perfectly because the child needed him, needed his quick brain and clever fingers. To find its own relief. By killing and killing and killing and killing. And dying.

He did not yet know what he would do, but as he hung over the crowded stadiums week after week, it would come to him. And when he knew what he must do, he sought the means, and before the means came Dahlia. And Dahlia heard some of these things and inferred much of the rest.

He was drunk when he told her about finding Margaret and her lover in the house and afterward he became violent. She caught him behind the ear with the heel of her hand, knocking him unconscious. In the morning, he did not remember that she had hit him.

Two months passed before Dahlia was sure of him, two months of listening, of watching him build and scheme and fly, of lying next to him at night.