“What is this?” John asked a white man in an old wheelchair. He wore an army surplus jacket and a dirty pair of blue jeans.
“It’s Marie, the Sandwich Lady,” said the wheelchair man.
“Sandwich Lady?”
“Yeah, man. You know? Sandwiches? Two pieces of bread with something between? When was the last time you ate?”
John thought about the lunch box he had left at work. Inside, a can of Pepsi, a convenience-store sub sandwich, an apple.
“Well,” said the wheelchair man. “You better get in line if you’re hungry. Her sandwiches go fast, man. I help her sometimes, you know? Making the sandwiches. Me and her are tight. Yeah, my name is Boo.”
Boo offered his hand, but John ignored it. Shrugging his shoulders, Boo took his place in line, behind a woman talking to herself.
“Here’s a ham and cheese, Bill,” Marie said to the first man in line. She knew their names! “How you doing, Esther? You look good, Charles. Lillian, how’s the tooth? Martha, where have you been? I’ve got a peanut butter and jelly for your son. Where is that boy?”
The wheelchair man and John stepped up next. John was embarrassed. He had nothing to give Marie, no gift, no blanket, no basket. He wanted to run, hoping to run away from everything, hoping he could run into a new skin, a new face, a new kind of music. He wanted to run into the desert. But he wanted to see Marie, wanted to hear her voice.
“Marie,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, not recognizing John for a brief moment, then visibly surprised when she did. John was homeless, she thought, an explanation for his strange behavior at the protest powwow.
“Marie,” John said again.
“John, right?”
John nodded.
“How are you?” she asked.
“I wanted to see you.”
“Well, it’s good to see you. Are you hungry? Do you want a sandwich?”
John looked down at the sandwich in Marie’s hand. He wondered if it was poisoned.
“No,” John said. He struggled to speak. He wanted to tell Marie everything. He wanted to tell her about Father Duncan. He opened his mouth, closed it again, and then turned to run. He ran until he could no longer recognize anything around him.
“Who was that?” the wheelchair man asked Marie as John raced away.
“I’m not sure. A guy named John. Navajo.”
“I think he likes you.”
“Yeah, maybe, Boo. How’ve you been? How’s the poetry coming along?”
“I wrote one for you,” said Boo. He reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a tightly folded wad of paper, and handed it to Marie. She took it, unfolded it, and read the poem.
“Thank you, Boo,” she said. “That’s very nice. Here’s a turkey and Swiss.”
“Thank you,” he said and rolled himself away. Marie handed sandwiches out until her arms ached. For an hour, two. She talked to her friends, consoled, reprimanded, and touched them, her hand on their shoulders, her hand clasping their hands, fingers touching fingers, in greeting, in conversation, in departure. She ate a sandwich herself, washed it down with a Pepsi, and watched the night grow darker by degrees. She knew there were many men and women who waited for her to deliver those sandwiches. They waited for the food, for the company, for proof they were not invisible. For the mentally disturbed, Marie knew these sandwich visits might be the only dependable moment in their lives. She also knew she delivered the sandwiches for her own sanity. Something would crumble inside of her if she ever walked by a homeless person and pretended not to notice. Or simply didn’t care. In a way, she believed that homeless people were treated as Indians had always been treated. Badly. The homeless were like an Indian tribe, nomadic and powerless, just filled with more than any tribe’s share of crazy people and cripples. So, a homeless Indian belonged to two tribes, and was the lowest form of life in the city. The powerful white men of Seattle had created a law that made it illegal to sit on the sidewalk. That ordinance was crazier and much more evil than any homeless person. Sometimes Marie wondered if she worked so hard at everything only because she hated powerful white men. She wondered if she went to college and received good grades just because she was looking for revenge. She woke up at four in the morning to study before she went to class. She rushed from the University down to the shelter, to a protest, to the sandwich van. All to get back at white men? A police car rolled by. Officer Randy Peone. Marie knew him. She knew most of the cops who worked downtown. Patrols had been increased because the police knew something bad was happening. The officer waved to Marie. She waved back.
21. Killing the Dragon
ON A COLD MORNING, the killer walked through the park near home. The killer thought about the owl, the messenger of death for many tribes. The owl had night vision and could turn its head three hundred and sixty degrees without moving its body. The owl was silent, and wasted neither time nor emotion. The owl felt no guilt, no remorse. It lived to hunt, and hunted to live. One kill was no more important than the next, each successive murder replacing the preceding in the owl’s memory. The owl kept no souvenirs, no mementos from the scene of the crime. The killer wanted so much to behave like an owl, to kill without emotion. But the killer felt incomplete, as if more needed to be done, as if the first hunt had only been partially successful, as if one dead body were not enough. The killer also needed trophies, the bloody scalp nailed to the wall, the shrine-in-progress. One beautiful knife, one beautiful scalp, and space enough for more. The killer knew that the next victim would have to be perfect and beautiful. The killer would have to send a message that would terrify the world.
The park was small and lovely. A few acres of perfectly manicured lawn, a softball diamond, a basketball court with chains on the hoops. A dozen picnic tables, pine trees, a man-made pond. A playground, with swing set, seesaw, and slide, where the killer sat and watched the neighborhood nannies congregate with their employers’ children. With the babies in the nearby carriages and the older children climbing, swinging, and sliding through the playground, the nannies shared a morning conversation the killer could not hear. A majority of the nannies were black, a few were Latina, and one or two were young white women. The black and Latina women were older and most assuredly had their own children. Every morning, those brown women left their children behind and traveled to better neighborhoods to take care of their employers’ children. Brown women spent more time with the white children than their own parents did. Brown children were left behind.
Anger growing, the killer thought of those rich, white children holding their arms out to strangers, not mothers, and about brown children holding their arms out to air. A simple and brilliant human connected two knives at a balance point and invented the scissors. And where were all the fathers? The brown fathers were killing themselves and each other. Like royalty, the white fathers crowded into stadiums to watch brown men kill each other. Kill, killed, killing.
The killer watched one little blond boy running across the playground. Mark Jones, six years old, though the killer had no way of knowing his name or age. The killer just saw a beautiful white boy. Blue eyes, blue stocking cap, white tennis shoes, Seattle Seahawks jacket buttoned tight. A perfect child who, through no fault of his own, might grow up into a monster. The killer felt the weight of the knife. Blade, bolster, tang, handle. Right now, the killer could run across the playground, pick up the white boy, and slash his throat before anybody could intercede. Killing the dragon before it could breathe flames. Working quickly and efficiently, the killer could probably kill a number of white boys before the nannies overcame their shock and reacted. One, two, three, the killer counted the white boys on the playground, seven, eight, nine. The killer watched the beautiful boy, Mark Jones, spinning on the merry-go-round. The meat carver held the most prestigious position on the kitchen staff.