them by Joyce Carol Oates

Author:Joyce Carol Oates [Oates, Joyce Carol]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2018-02-21T00:00:00+00:00

4

September 1956. Jules was driving a truck filled with flowers around the unflowery streets of Detroit. He had become so accustomed to driving that the motor’s drone was confused with his thinking, his energy. In a sweet flowery daze he thought about Bernard’s niece, though he had nothing to think about her, no reference point.

When he had the opportunity to drive out to Grosse Pointe he cruised near her house, unafraid of being seen, feeling himself invisible. His hair was combed down flat beneath his delivery boy’s hat. Of Bernard he did not often think because the sight of that man had a little unnerved him. So much blood, and blood smeared on an eyeball…But of Bernard’s niece he thought constantly. She was the opposite of the sight of that dead man, she had somehow to do with the fragrant burden of flowers he hauled about the streets, their stems and leaves and heads nodding in rhythm to the demands he made on his truck, in a constant hurry but without any destination. He had no clear reference point. He thought about the girl and mixed her up with the cool, disdainful lovely distance of Faye’s body—Faye had now disappeared—and the futility of Bernard’s quest, a mystery to Jules.

He tried to avoid close thoughts about anything. Better to stick to himself, to keep driving. He liked to be tired at night so he could sleep without any thoughts, except thoughts of Bernard’s niece; but these were not really thoughts. Still, it had puzzled him that Bernard had died so quickly and so permanently. One minute he had been bounding up to the car, the next lying flat on his back, and that was the end. It was no surprise to Jules that the police never picked him up, since he knew how they smudged fingerprints and lost evidence, working in a hurry, but he was surprised that he never found out what had happened—he’d searched through the newspapers for weeks, looking for notice of Bernard’s death, but found no mention of it. So a man could die and disappear? It was like the rifle shot that had been fired through the window of a friend of Loretta’s, in August. A shot had rung out, a bullet had crashed through the window and gone into a wall, and nothing else—some screaming, some alarm, but nothing else. A rifle is fired, but most of the time a rifle is not fired. Nothing follows.

He was drawn to Grosse Pointe though it was out of his way; he made up for lost time by driving fast along ordinary streets. Grosse Pointe was for him a paradise of evergreens and brick. There no one fired through windows; doors were left unlocked; the officials of the Detroit Mafia, seeking genteel lives, bought mansions and hired nursemaids for their curly-haired children; everyone settled down, settled in, breathed deeply the air that blew from the lake. Jules wished his employer did more business in the Pointes. Jules liked

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