Stephen Dixon - All Gone

I try and think of a way to get her to take one last unprovoked swing at me in front of witnesses. Then I could charge her with assault and maybe win this time and also get a quick divorce because of her physical cruelty and a legal writ preventing her from seeing and speaking to me again. But why bother, because the judge would probably say her hitting me again was caused by all the past times I’d provoked her. I’m also afraid that the next time she hits me she might batter my brains or eyes so much that I’d become blind or knocked into insensibility for good.

About six months after our courtroom battle and a few weeks after she stopped calling and sending letters, I get a phone call.

“It’s me, don’t hang up,” she says. “I want to give you a quick uncontested divorce.”

“What’s the trick now?”

“No trick, darling, it’s love. I met a beautiful man and we want to get married.”

“I hope he’s a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than you.”

“He happens to be even thinner and shorter than you, but don’t be mean.”

“I can see why you want to marry him. So you can beat him up even worse than you did me.”

“Not true.”

“Don’t tell me.”

“And don’t argue with me either. You want the divorce or not? Don’t grant me it and you’ll never see the end of me for a lifetime.”

“I want it.”

We agree to file for divorce on the grounds of mutual mental cruelty. We get the divorce in a month, and a week later she marries. I saw the man at the divorce court. He’s a little guy all right, older and weaker-looking than me too. I wanted to warn him about her but then told myself to stay out of it. It’s his business. And if I say anything he might not marry her and then she’ll be on my back for life. Besides, if she does beat him up and he presses charges, the court and most of my old friends will know I wasn’t crazy after all. Two men pressing assault charges against the same woman — that’s no coincidence.

A year later she and her husband are in the newspaper. He’s in a very bad coma. His sister, the article says, got a call from her brother saying Melanie was trying to break down their bedroom door to attack him. When the sister got to the apartment she found her brother on the floor and Melanie kicking him repeatedly in the head. The sister tore into her, knocked her out with a pan and then called the hospital and police.

Melanie’s arrested. Her husband’s still in a coma. A newsman calls me and says “Mrs. Delray’s your ex-wife. So what do you think of the charges against her now — husband battering, attempted murder? Where it might end up a homicide, as he’s got no more than a fifty-fifty chance to survive. Even if he does she’ll still be in serious trouble, as he hasn’t got any chance of being anything but totally brain-damaged for the rest of his life.”

“If you don’t mind I’ll save what I have to say for the jury trial. Because I might be prejudicing the case if I told you all that happened to me and then because of some legal technicality she got away free,” and I hang up.

They never let me out in the sun anymore. I don’t know why. My lawyer and I have never gotten a clear ruling on that. But when night comes and it’s dark, I’m allowed a ten-minute rest period outside. There I see the other suns — the stars. I learned that from some library books here and the newspaper articles I’ve been reading regarding this country’s space effort. The other stars are supposed to be suns, like ours, though in varying degrees of intensity depending on how big they are and how long they’ve been around. And every one of the other suns is capable of having its own solar system and our sun is only one of about one hundred billion in our galaxy and there are about five thousand galaxies in our cluster of galaxies and we’re all revolving together because we’re all held together by the force of gravitational pull each galaxy in our cluster exerts on the other, despite the fact that the closest galaxy to ours is two million light-years away from us and each light-year is approximately six trillion miles in length, and actually all of us — Earth, solar system, galaxy and cluster of galaxies — may be part of an even larger system called a cluster of clusters of galaxies, though because of limitations in astronomical equipment scientists haven’t discovered it yet. Meaning: no matter how big we think the universe is, it’s probably even bigger than that. Meaning: no matter how many billions of trillions of light-years of space we know about or can imagine going in every which direction starting from Earth, there’s probably trillions of trillions of times more space than that. So why do these prison officials have to be so petty as to deny me a relatively small sun to look at and which they know is what I like to look at and do almost most, and particularly in its setting state? And why only the night for ten minutes to see those other suns? Because I’m a condemned man, they probably reason, and they got to deny me more than the usual prison freedoms they deny the other men on death row, since I once committed that most heinous crime of all of making hay with a girl who was a minor and when she was through with me and tying her hair in back with a ribbon she said “God, if you’re not the worst lay in all these creations, then I don’t know who is,” and kept on repeating that opinion in various ways till I said lay off and she wouldn’t so I insulted her a bit and she said “Goddamn you, fag, you can’t go insulting me like that,” and still nude she grabbed a branch and came at me as if she was going to cream me with it, so I slapped it out of her hand and shoved her with my palm just to protect myself from the rock she was picking up and she fell back over her own foot and banged her head against the top of a tree stump and rolled off it onto some stones just as I leaped forward to stop her from rolling and falling, and knocked herself out and died. I knew I was in trouble and there was nothing I could do for her now, so I beat it out of there and someone found her soon after and the police came and the doctors at the hospital said she had been viciously attacked and carnally assaulted and some people in town said she was last seen riding off with me on the back of my motorcycle and I was picked up and charged with rape, murder and running away from the scene of a crime. I was jailed and written up in newspapers as a young mad killer and charged with the rape-murders of three other girls in the area, though those charges didn’t stand up, and brought to trial for the rape-murder of one Jenny Lou House and convicted and sentenced to die by hanging. For three years now I’ve had a stay of execution, since the state I was tried in has a law saying the crime I was convicted of carries a mandatory death penalty, and my lawyer who’s against capital punishment on any grounds except treason and for someone who kills a federal employee who’s on duty, even a postman, contends that that state law is unconstitutional. It’s taken him the three years to get my case to the nation’s highest court and in all that time I’ve never once seen the sun. And when I am allowed out in the high-walled six-by-six-foot space for my ten-minute rest period, I’m always accompanied by two guards with guns — as if I could ever escape to any other place but my adjoining locked cell — and the space is always brightly lit as a main city square might be, making it impossible some nights to see the stars.

I wish I had another chance. If I did I would never shove another girl, or at least not till I first married her. I think a married man has less chance of being sentenced to death for killing his wife rather than a girl he recently met, even if he confesses to the charge, which I didn’t since the girl I supposedly raped and murdered was actually the one who seduced and nearly murdered me. I met her in this doughnut place she was countergirling at and it wasn’t a minute after I settled on the stool that she said “That your bike?” meaning my motorcycle in the lot, and I said yes and she said “When do you get off work?” and I told her I’m not working now, only riding, and she said “That was intended as a play on words, young man, as what I meant is when do you want to take me for a ride around this dinky town and maybe even out of it?” and I said I really don’t like putting girls on my back who aren’t at least twenty-one and who also know how to sway with the rider, meaning leaning right when I go right and so on, and she said “I’m twenty-one except I look older from working in this nut house and living in another, and I’ve been on the backs of more riders than we have doughnuts in this shop, and besides I once owned a bike myself and if I still had it I could outride you from here to the Coast by a day and a half.” “Bull,” I said. “Buy me a bike and I’ll prove it,” she said. “Ha,” I said. “Want a free cof and French jelly?” she said. “You’re something,” I said. “And you’re something for saying I’m something, and also for having such a big beautiful bike. Now what time did you say you got off work?” “Seven?” I said. “That’s about the time I lay off also,” and she told me to meet her at the corner across the street, not here in front. “This is a small town with big mouths and I don’t want my folks knowing I’m going with riders again. And here — no one’s looking,” and she slipped me a bag filled with French jellies and two containers of chocolate fizz.