Andrew Vachss - Choice of Evil

“Yes.”

“In. . . these different places?”

“In other places too, Zoë. Kurds and Iraqis. Turks and Armenians. Serbs and Croats. Hausa and Ibo. The list is endless.”

“But not in America, right?”

“Child, what you must understand is that those thoughts are everywhere. In America too, certainly. Do you know anything about Adolf Hitler?”

“Yes. He was an evil man. He wanted to kill all the Jews.”

“That is correct. And there are people in America who still follow Hitler.”

“They want to kill all the Jews too?”

“Yes. And there are others who want to kill all the blacks. And blacks who want to kill all the whites. And—”

“Why?”

“The reasons are too complex to explain simply, Zoë. Some are mentally ill. Some are inadequates who can only feel superior by denigrating others. Some are profiteers, who make money from hatred. Some actually believe in a sort of manifest destiny—that God has designated them to rule the earth.”

“Will America be like that someday?”

“It is not impossible,” I told her. “With the technology for mass destruction so readily available that any moron can kill thousands all by himself, race war in America is not out of the question.”

“So where is it safe?”

“There’s no *place* that is safe, Zoë. Only people are safe.”

“I’m safe now, right?”

“Yes, you are perfectly safe here.”

“Do they kill children too?”

“Exterminators do not discriminate on the basis of age,” I explained.

She started to cry then. I was. . . confused by that reaction, especially as I had assured her of her own safety. Her immediate safety, in point of fact, and children have a more truncated view than adults—the “future” to them usually is not very much beyond the present. I had no wish for the child to be in distress, and vaguely understood that I could have responded to her inquiries in a way different from that which I had elected. Still, beyond the usual platitudes so beloved of adults, I was bereft of any actual comfort potential, and I sensed that Zoë would be impervious to hollow clichés. However, by the time I had reasoned all this through in what I acknowledge to be a laborious fashion, the child quieted down, utilizing some self-soothing inner mechanism I could not immediately detect.

“Aren’t we going to play checkers?” she asked me, rubbing her eyes as though to banish traces of her just-departed tears.

It induced no consternation that the child grasped the principle of checkers almost immediately. By that time, I had grown accustomed to her quickness. We played only three games—“practice games,” she termed them—with me showing her the consequences of each move as she proposed it, before she announced she was ready to play “for real.”

This proved problematic. Unlike Risk, checkers is a finite activity, with all probabilities susceptible to near-instantaneous calculation. Therefore, it was impossible for the child to defeat me. And having proposed the activity myself, it would be unseemly for me to dominate the contest. Fearing she might detect a deliberate miscue, I provided full disclosure: “You understand, Zoë, this game really isn’t for children.”

“Why not?” was the reply, as expected.

“Well, because it takes years to actually win a single game. Years of practice. And most children don’t have the patience for that.”

“I’m very patient,” she assured me.

“I am certain that you are. But, still, won’t you get bored playing if you never win?”

“It’s still playing,” the child said. “It’s just not winning.”

That comment seemed far too sagacious for a child of her age, but I allowed it to pass and we began to play “for real.”

Zoë lost every game for almost three hours without a word of complaint.

“Sleepy,” she finally said, her head lolling.

I did not think it proper to undress the child, so I simply opened the bed and placed her there, covering her against a possible chill.

############################################## “Would it work if we put something inside first?” the child asked me early the next morning.

“I’m not certain what you’re asking,” I told her. Which was certainly the truth.

“Inside the biscuits.”

“I don’t. . .” I began, but then, upon actually looking at what I had been doing, I understood the question. The “biscuits” to which the child had been referring were not fresh from a bakery. Rather, they came in a tube designed to be stored in a refrigerator. One simply pops open the tube by pulling a strip down the side of the container. Inside, there are eight white disks of dough which, if placed in the oven for the requisite time, emerge as biscuits. I eat such products frequently. So frequently, in fact, that I go into auto-pilot mode as I cook for myself, never paying attention to the process.

“You want to put something inside the biscuits *before* they are baked?” I asked her.

“Yes, please.”

“Why would you want to do that, Zoë?”

“Just to make it different. Maybe. . . even better. Just to. . . I don’t know. . . see what happens. Do you think it would work?”

“I must say I don’t know. The biscuits are a specific design. If they are separated to insert something, that might alter the result. And whatever was inserted would be subjected to the same degree of heat for the same duration.”

“But can’t we *see*?”

“If you like.”

“Goody!” the child exclaimed, clapping her hands. She immediately began to forage through the entire supply of foodstuffs, holding up various options much as an artist might examine a dab of color before applying it to canvas. She finally settled on an entire palette: Celery, onion, radish, parsley, and other herbs.

“Are you going to put all that in the biscuits?” I asked her.

“No, silly. Each biscuit gets a different one.”

“Very intelligent,” I complimented her. “That increases significantly the prospects of success for at least a portion of the experiment.”

“And they might *all* be good too.”

The child was still during the baking process, but stole occasional glances at the oven. When the timer sounded, she reached it before I did. She turned the oven off, opened the door, and took out the metal tray with the biscuits, being careful to wrap her hand in a towel first. I never use a pot holder for such tasks and the child had apparently observed my propensity for utilizing whatever was at hand.

“They *look* real good,” she said, holding out the tray.

I was constrained to agree. The appearance of the finished product did not vary visually from what I had grown accustomed to over the years.

“Which one do you want?” she asked.

“Do you remember which is which?”

“Yes,” she said proudly. “Just tell me which one you want, and I’ll pick it out.”

“Oh, the. . . parsley.”

“Here!” she said, reaching unerringly for the correct biscuit. She watched as I took a tentative bite. It tasted as it usually did but, perhaps, there was just a hint of parsley. . .?

“It’s quite good,” I told her.

“See?”

“Yes, I do. Now perhaps you would like to sample one yourself?”

“I’m going to try the onion,” she declared.

We then reversed roles, me watching her with some interest. “Ummm! It’s really, really good!” she sang out.

The radish biscuits—she had, for some reason, made two of those—were, we both agreed, the least successful of the batch. “Now you have your own recipe, Zoë,” I told her.

“My own?”

“Certainly. You are the originator, so it is certainly your own.”

“You mean it’s a secret?”