With a dark swish he flung the covers back. Rising darkly, he made his soft way across the room to the black chest of drawers, where he kneeled darkly five feet from my straining eyes. Slowly and creakily he pulled out the heavy bottom drawer. For a while he groped inside. Then slowly removing two black objects, and carefully pushing in the drawer, he returned to his bed and sat down softly. “Jeffrey,” he whispered. “Jeffrey.” With a dark swish I flung the covers back.
I sat down close to him in the middle of the bed. Sitting in Indian fashion, we faced one another nearly knee to knee. In the imperfect darkness I was able to distinguish his features faintly. “Hey,” he whispered, “how do you work this thing?” and handed me the gun and clip. “Careful,” he whispered. And although I had never held a real gun in my hands before, it seemed a mere matter of instinct to slip the loaded clip into the hollow handle. A dim memory from an old movie stirred; with some difficulty I removed the clip and examined the gun with my fingertips. I found the safety and quickly discovered its relation to the trigger. Setting it, and explaining the mechanism to Edwin, I was about to push the clip back into the handle when Edwin thrust his handkerchief at me, whispering: “Fingerprints.” For a moment I did not understand. Then with a wild, forlorn feeling, with a feeling of doom, of farce, of unspeakable melancholy, I realized that he wished to prevent a grotesque contingency. Carefully I wiped the clip and gun and then reloaded without touching metal. For indeed I had no desire that his suicide should be mistaken for murder. I then wrapped the gun in the handkerchief, preparatory to handing it back to Edwin; and only then, dear reader, did I suddenly feel the weight of the loaded gun pressing into my palm, and in a burst of lucidity I knew, I saw, I felt, that it was all horribly real, and that if I did not stop him, if I did not say something … “Edwin!” I whispered. “Hey,” he whispered, “don’t point that thing.” And angrily he seized the gun.
In the darkness he began to examine his dangerous toy, bringing it close to his eyes, turning it over, holding it against his ear like a clock. “What time is it?” he whispered. “Quarter of,” I whispered. “Tell me when,” he whispered. “Okay,” I whispered. Several days passed. “What time is it?” he whispered. “Twelve to,” I whispered. “That’s all?” he whispered. “That’s all,” I whispered. Then raising the gun to his right temple he whispered: “Like this?” And moving the barrel awkwardly to his forehead he whispered: “Or like this?” And slowly turning the gun toward me he whispered: “Or like this?” “Stop it!” I whispered, pushing away his hand, and Edwin began to giggle.
That giggle seemed to release something in Edwin. It marked the beginning of a madcap mood that swelled to a mindless frenzy of frantic mirth, as if he were a bubble of mad merriment about to burst. And perhaps it was only a sign of my overwrought condition that in some dim way I felt he was making fun of me. Leaping lightly from his bed, he scurried across the darkness to my bed, entering feet-first and disappearing entirely under the heaving covers. Beneath the black map of the United States I perceived a dark, wriggling mass as Edwin proceeded to turn himself around under the sheets and clumsily make his way to the foot of the bed near one of the black bookcases. A final groping from the inside of the low-hanging spread at the foot of the bed reminded me of Edward Penn behind his curtain. At last, with a gasp, Edwin’s dark featureless head appeared, followed by the confused rest of him as huffing and puffing he crawled forward on his hands, one of which, as I knew by an occasional soft clank, contained the gun. His head reached the bookcase, knocking softly against a box, and he had to twist to one side as he continued to crawl from his soft cage, pausing to reach back with one hand in what was apparently a modest effort to hold up his invisible pajama bottoms. Free at last, he crouched in the black space between the bookcase and the bed, and suddenly began to pull out boxes and books, piling them up in front of him to form a wall. I sat rigidly on his bed, listening fearfully for sounds from the hall; and as I stared in dazed disbelief toward the quiet commotion at the foot of my bed, suddenly something came hurtling out of the dark and hit me softly in the shoulder. I gasped, and mad Edwin giggled, and the next missile hit my knee. They were his slippers. I clutched them in fearful silence, wondering whether the next thing to come spinning out of the dark would be a loaded gun. “Bang bang!” he whispered, his dark head bobbing up and down from behind his barricade. Suddenly he leaped onto the bed and began bouncing or dancing in wild silence across it, holding up his arms; a rectangle of light from a passing car rippled over his face like an illuminating mask. Then stepping onto the floor he began to spin round and round: holding out his arms he whirled faster and faster, he seemed a dark dancer whirling in darkness, I saw for a moment the glint of the gun, and suddenly he flung himself onto the bed before me, landing half on and half off but freezing as he fell, gripping the spread and squeezing his eyes shut as in his brain the black room turned and turned, and as if infected by his dizziness, I too felt the dark walls turning and turning. And as he lay there before me, clutching his gun, it seemed to me that he was already dead.
The magic potion wore off, and Edwin, breathing rapidly, climbed onto the bed and took up his position crosslegged before me. “Time?” he whispered. There were three minutes left. And now I noticed that Edwin was grinning, rather fiendishly it seemed to me, and in a mirthful whisper he said: “Make sure you put that in your book,” and softly laughed. Oh, he was mocking me, he was mocking me, and again I felt a sense of dim foreboding, as if I feared for my life, and with a curious feeling of self-pity I whispered: “You’re making fun of me, Edwin.” “Who, me?” whispered Edwin, blinking in dark astonishment. “Why should I make fun of you? Time?” There were two minutes left. And again pointing the gun at me he whispered: “You’re so serious, Jeffrey.” “Oh what are you doing, what are you doing,” I moaned, pushing away his hand, and still grinning he whispered: “What’d you get me for my birthday?” “Huc” “Don’t say!” he whispered, “I want to be surprised. Time?” There were ninety seconds left. And now Edwin became serious, bowing his dark head in thought. After a time he looked up and whispered: “Well, it’s been nice knowing you, Jeffrey.” And despite my sense that things were somehow rushing out of control, I was moved almost to tears by the sound of those words. Placing his hand gently on my shoulder he whispered: “Goodbye, O friend.” He began to giggle but stifled his mirth. “Time?” “Twenty seconds,” I whispered. Placing his hand over his heart, and looking up at the ceiling, he whispered: “Goodbye, O life.” Looking at me he added: “Jot that down, Jeffrey.” He released the safety and whispered: “Start counting.” “Thirteen,” I whispered, staring at my glowing wrist, “twelve, eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one”—I raised my eyes—“zero.” And calmly raising the gun to his right temple, Edwin whispered: “Bang, I’m dead,” and fell backward on the bed with his eyes shut, clutching the silent gun. A moment later his eyes opened and he said: “Now what?” In a split second I was leaning over him, gripping his gun-gripping hand; and I remember thinking, quite lucidly in the midst of a dreamy numbness, that the entry under “I Am Born” in MY STORY: A BABY RECORD allowed a certain leeway in the matter of seconds.