Matt Bell - Scrapper

Afterward they lay naked beside each other, waiting without talking for the end of the year, and in the quiet dark preceding the midnight hour he didn’t speak the sudden sadness she couldn’t see. The new year came and went and at first he said nothing, instead thinking about how distant all the other years he’d known had become, how everyone he’d ever loved then had been lost to him, their faces gone dark, the smell of their skin faded from memory. Now here he was in the zone, in a new year, living some new life. But every new affection bred its own fears. Because anyone you loved became a responsibility. Because to be a good man meant taking their protection seriously, meant removing every danger it was in your power to remove, no matter what the consequences.

Because any responsibility taken far enough inevitably risked an atrocity.

He could only rarely speak openly but now he turned toward her, tried to tell her what he felt for her, how he wanted what he felt to last. But as he spoke she moved closer, then stopped his mouth with hers.

No, she said, pushing herself up on one elbow, her pale body lean and luminous in the streetlight descending through the window. This is all temporary. I won’t last. Sooner or later the attack that ends all this will come.

He shook his head, denied the obvious truth. He said, I am with you either way. I am with you no matter what happens.

Temporary, she said again. Everything you love about me is temporary.

Her hands pushed upon his stretched chest, lifted her body atop his again. He was so much bigger than her, the difference greater than ever before.

She said, I think you are temporary too. I think you believe you know who you are because of something that happened to you a long time ago. You haven’t told me but I know. But there’s always a choice. You could be this person or you could become someone else.

There is a good man, she said. There is a good woman. We could become those people. Sometimes it feels so easy to choose.

THE KILLER WAS NOT AFRAID. The killer knew who he was, how he had been made, made himself: The killer almost joined the marines. The killer almost remained a Catholic. The killer almost had a successful insurance business. The killer almost earned a criminal justice degree. The killer almost went to jail for threatening his then fiancée. The killer almost went to jail for shoving a police officer. All this in the almost-distant past and now the killer was almost thirty. Now the killer rented his home but he almost always thought of it as his .

The killer did not think of himself in the third person but there almost wasn’t enough of him to justify the first. The killer was living a life of almost but surely almost had not made him afraid.

The killer was not afraid. There had been four hundred police responses to his neighborhood in thirteen months but still the killer was not afraid and because he was not afraid he had placed fifty of those calls himself.

The killer was not afraid when he made his complaints: This loud party, he said; This garage door left open; These unbearable potholes; These children playing in the streets, where they might be hurt.

The killer was not afraid when he reported suspicious persons, loose dogs.

The killer was not afraid when he said Burglar into his cell phone, when he said Thief . Even if he had not seen any actual burglaries, any actual theft. Only almost , the potential of.

When the dispatcher asked him to describe the suspicious persons, he was not afraid when he said he was almost sure they were black males, when almost every single time he said they were young and black and suspicious.

The killer was not afraid of the suspected burglars or the suspected thieves. The killer was not afraid of the thugs he thought he saw, their dark shapes moving from house to house, looking in windows, eyeing flat-screen televisions and surround-sound systems.

The killer, who did not know he was a killer yet, was not afraid of meeting one of these thugs while he patrolled the streets, in command of the neighborhood watch.

Why not? Because the killer was not afraid.

Surely the killer was not afraid behind the wheel of the car, with his pistol on the passenger seat. Not just because it was raining and hard to see. It wasn’t the weather the killer wasn’t afraid of.

The killer was not afraid for his home.

The killer was not afraid for his wife.

The killer was not afraid because he was there, watching and waiting.

He would not let them make him afraid.

Even though he couldn’t say who they were.

The killer was not afraid when he dialed the emergency number.

The killer was not afraid when he said into the phone, There’s a real suspicious guy here.

When he said, Walking around in the rain. This guy is up to no good or he is on drugs.

When he said, These assholes. They always get away.

The absence of doubt. The pushing back of almost . This was what the killer wanted. To be sure. To be right. To be righteous.

The killer was not afraid of what he knew. These assholes.

The killer was not afraid when the dispatcher said, Stop.

When the dispatcher said, We don’t need you to follow him.

When he said, I’m not afraid.

The killer was not afraid because he knew he was in the right. The total absence of doubt. The end of almost .

These assholes, said the killer. They always get away.

The killer was not afraid when he drew the gun from his waistband.

Because at that range the killer couldn’t miss.

Because there was nothing to be afraid of.

Because all he had to do was close his eyes and squeeze the trigger.

The killer was not afraid because squeezing the trigger required basically nothing.

The killer was not afraid of the sound of the shot. He could barely even hear it, the blast muffled by the body.

These assholes. They almost always get away.

Not always. Not this time.

The killer was not afraid.

The killer was not afraid when the police arrived.

The killer was not afraid when they cuffed his hands behind his back or when they asked him if he needed medical attention or when they pushed his head down as they helped him into the back of the squad car.

The killer was not afraid when the ambulance came for the body.

The killer was not afraid when the news vans arrived.

The killer was not afraid when the squad car drove him from the scene in front of their cameras.

The killer was not afraid when the detectives questioned him at the station.

I stood my ground, the killer said. I saved myself first.

The killer was not afraid when he walked out into the lobby of the precinct, when he saw outside the protesters already gathering their anger against him, or when his wife appeared to take him home, when he saw she knew she was the wife of a killer.

The killer was not afraid because he had kept safe his family, his home, his community.

These assholes. The killer did not think in the first person except when the killer thought us and them. And so what if the kid had been living there too, if he had been a part of their community. Because inside a community there were other communities.

The killer was not afraid when he watched the television news, where the reporters and the pundits called him a killer for the first time. Nor when the pundits asked themselves who the killer was because if there was anything the killer knew it was this, who he was . He had almost been the killer before. Now there was no doubt. The law could quibble over whether he was a murderer but forever he would be a killer either way.