Mark Dunn - We Five

Lyle waited. He finished his Big Mac. After a few minutes the kids were called home.

There was a young woman in a deck chair sunning herself next to the pool. Lyle waited until she went inside, until the pool and the area around it was empty.

Until there were no witnesses.

Then he got out of the cab. He went up to the door to which he’d been directed. He gave it a strong kick. It was a cheap door. It was a cheap, poorly built condo thrown up in a few weeks to house transient casino workers, and the door was no problem.

Lyle found Tom Katz sitting on the toilet taking a shit in one of the bathrooms.

Tom barely had a chance to look up from his Sports Illustrated when Lyle pulled the trigger, aiming for his head. Lyle’s sister’s rapist fell sideways against the wall, the broken streak of blood left on the drywall forming something like a red exclamation point above his head.

Lyle flushed the toilet with his gloved hand and walked out.

Tulleford, England, September 1859

Maggie Barton had stopped talking. She lay in the bed which Miss Mobry had prepared for her. She lay quiet and still as Miss Mobry and her mother took turns placing wet compresses upon her head and speaking to her in soft, dulcet tones. “There’s a good girl,” said Lucile Mobry. “You sleep, my dear.” Then, turning to Maggie’s mother, who stood next to her, rubbing her hands one against the other with maternal unease, Miss Mobry said with whispered concern: “Not a wink? All through the night?”

Mrs. Barton nodded. Then she confided, “Each time I entered her room, I found her lying on her back and staring at the ceiling with open-eyed insensibility. A most frightening picture. And each time I spoke, I could extract not a single word from her in response.”

“Her eyes are closed now. Mayhap the cordial I administered will put her into a restful sleep from which she’ll awaken feeling more herself. Will you stop here, Clara, or go off to reunite with your Mr. Osborne?”

“I wish I could bring him hither . He would know just what to do to help Maggie.”

“Clara, I doubt very much that Mr. Osborne’s offices would be of benefit to our present purposes. I should think you’d prefer he stay away and not risk exposure to the police.”

Clara cast a fearful glance out the window. “They will catch him — most assuredly they will. I begged him to go to London, to Glasgow — anywhere he might lose himself in the throng and create a new name and a new life for himself. But he said he couldn’t bear it were he never to see me again.”

“And is there anyone else he should miss?”

Clara resumed with a hint of irritation, “Well, of course it should be naturally assumed that he wouldn’t wish to part with his daughter — to lose the chance to make amends for what he’s done. Next to ruing the violent act itself, that should be his greatest regret.”

“My dear Clara, the time has come for me to withdraw endorsement of your blind allegiance to Mr. Osborne. A crime has been committed, and if the man is guilty of that crime — as we know he is — then he should be made to pay the price for it. You have clearly failed to learn the lesson I learnt long, long ago.”

Clara placed herself wearily into the chair next to the bed. “You are bent upon telling me your lesson. Be quick about it. I’m so very tired.”

“That there are few men upon this earth who do not bear the mark of Cain. And here I do not mean that unfortunate Mr. Pardlow who inexplicably killed himself, but Cain of the Bible who slew his brother. And here I do not mean all men are murderers — not in a literal sense — although most men do own a tendency to murder in the abstract that which is good, that which is beautiful, that which is noble, that which is innocent and should be held dear. It is man’s nature — this dereliction. You have now loved two men, each of whom has borne the mark. I dare say if another comes your way, he will be similarly stained.”

“Upon my very soul, Lucile! All men are evil save your blessed brother who has been inoculated by God himself?” Clara shook her head with undisguised rancour. “And I thought the scriptures taught you always to seek good in others.”

“The scriptures , dear Clara, have taught me to beware the iniquity of men…a lesson those five girls did not learn from us as they were growing up. And as a result, take note of all the misfortune that has befallen them.” Lucile cast a tender glance at Maggie. “Poor, poor Maggie, falling in love with her very own brother. And Molly, giving her heart to a young man with only one purpose to his pursuit. And what has happened to Jane is all but unspeakable!”

Clara laughed ruefully. “Yet Ruth, who follows in the footsteps of her aunt, who will have truck with no man, succeeds owing to admirable forbearance. Pooh and pho, Lucile! How tidy is your view of that cursed gender and how wise it be to avoid all intercourse with its constituents!”

“Clara, I sought long ago a man who would love me and uplift me. Finding no such creature over the long course of time, I abandoned the search. Ruth has done better for herself by never having looked. ”

In the next moment that very referent came into the little room where Maggie slept and where Maggie’s mother and Ruth’s aunt believed they had been speaking without audit. Yet Ruth had been standing just outside the chamber door and had heard all.

Her appearance drew startled gasps from the two older women. One side of Ruth’s face was chafed to a state of rubicund rawness, beads of bright blood bubbling up in spots where the upper layer of skin had been fully abraded away. “Oh my dear!” cried Lucile, going to her adopted niece. “Pray tell us what has happened!”

Ruth spoke without emotion: “You say I have never sought a man to whom to affix my heart for reason of mistrusting and denigrating the whole species. That has never been true, my aunt. I did once meet a man who could be upheld as exemplar of his sex, but he is now dead and gone, perished by his own hand. And there are other men, I am certain, of whom much good can be said. It is merely the absence of propitious circumstance that has kept them from society with my sisters.”

“Speak to me, dear girl,” said Miss Mobry. “Was it one of those three who did this?”

“I must correct you, Auntie. ‘Those three’ are now become ‘those two,’ for I have just learnt from Holborne that Tom Catts is dead.”

“ Dead ?” Clara Barton had sprung up from her chair upon hearing the word.

“Someone has put a fatal bullet into him. I must go and find Jane to tell her. She should know that the man who has hurt her will never do so again. Would that it did not grieve her so to learn the identity of the one suspected of having done the deed.”

Now came a voice that had previously been silent. It derived from the bed. It recited a rhyme, paraphrased for a purpose:

“ Five little kittens, standing in a row.

See them bow to the little girls so.

They run to the left. They run to the right.

They stand and stretch in the bright sunlight.

Along comes a dog, looking for some fun.

Tom Cat is dead and can no longer run.”

Maggie opened her eyes. “I don’t fancy the dog was looking for fun, though. I think he was seeking revenge.” Maggie rose up. The damp cloth fell away from her brow. Her eyes were sharp and there was the gleam of strong purpose in her gaze. “I wish to come with you, Ruth. I have an idea I wish to put to all of you: I’d like us to take Higgins to my uncle’s cottage on the Isle of Anglesey in Wales and hide him there.”