— Either, said the Judge.
— What?
— You can take either.
The Judge’s second walked out and drew two lines in the earth of the cinder track, about twenty feet apart. He called Carr over.
— The way this thing is going to get done, well, this is it. Lubeck and Judge Henry will wait, each some yards behind their line. At our word, each approaches his line. When the line is reached, they begin to fire.
— How many shots can they…?
— Eight in each revolver. If they both run out, we start again. He looked at Carr with disgust.
— You were with him, weren’t you? You’re one of them?
— I, well…
The man turned his back on Carr and approached the place where the Judge was waiting.
— All set, he said.
Judge Henry motioned to Lubeck to take a pistol from the hood. Lubeck hesitated, then chose, lifting the gun uncertainly.
Carr was at his side. They took a few steps together away from the others.
— You can leave. You don’t have to do this, he said quietly. Leave the town. Leave the country.
Lubeck looked at him and then away.
— Tell them I’m ready.
—
— To your posts, said the Judge’s second.
The Judge and Lubeck stepped out onto the track.
Carr felt as if someone were squeezing all the air out of his body. Things became slow and strained. He heard the man call “Now!” and watched as Lubeck and the Judge advanced, step by step. Near the lines, they raised their pistols. They pointed their pistols at each other. Carr couldn’t breathe. He was held there, without breath, as the shots began. Lubeck fired and fired. The Judge fired, fired again. Both continued advancing. The noise was incredible. He felt he had never heard anything so loud. Lubeck fired and the Judge flinched, and then they were just walking at each other. The Judge let out three shots in a row. The shots poured from his revolver. Lubeck was not firing. His face was turned away. The first shot came. The second shot came. The third shot came, and Lubeck was backward off his feet.
Carr ran out onto the track. He slowed his pace as he drew closer. The bullet had taken Lubeck high in the cheek and gone straight through his head. The face was a bloody wreck. He was no longer there.
Carr realized he had started to breathe again. He turned. The Judge and his second were conferring. The second came over, passed Carr, knelt by Lubeck’s body. He was taking the pistol back. He removed the pistol from Lubeck’s hand, opened it, dropped the spent shells on the ground, and walked away.
Then he paused.
— You, the second said. Give this to Brennan. It was a letter.
Across the length of track, the Judge was looking straight into Carr’s eye. His face was carved like a mask of a face.
THE THIRD
Carr drove very gently along the road. He had found soft leather driving gloves on the dash and he had put them on and now he was driving gently. He negotiated one turn, then another. He was bringing Lubeck’s mother her son’s body. Such a thing he had never done, but he felt it was within him to do it.
Lubeck was stretched out in the backseat. Carr had wrapped his head in a sack. Other than that, he might have been asleep. One often, however, can take the sign of a bag over a person’s head to mean that something bad has either happened or will happen. So anyone observing the scene would not have to wonder for very long at the difficulties that were assailing young Carr as he drove gently on the twisting road back into town.
Over a small bridge and down by the harbor. Along an alley and stopped beside a huge oak. Then, to the door.
— Come out, he said. Come out.
They came out, many of them, a crowd of them, all down to the road where Lubeck was. Carr went gently away.
—
Do you know the surface of the stream? Do you know its depth? Do you see as fish see, that water is not one but many, that there are paths through it, just as through land, and that to pass along a stream is a matter well beyond the powers of any human being?
Carr was reading from a thin book. He was still near the harbor, on a bench. He felt that he could not leave without giving Brennan the letter. But he did not want to.
A little girl was there with a cygnet on a narrow leather leash. She drew near and looked at Carr. Carr looked at her.
— When it grows up, it will do its best to hurt you, he said. I know that much.
— Her name is Absinthe, said the girl. And I’m Jane Charon.
— Nice to meet you, Jane.
— Not so nice for me, said Jane stoutly. You say such horrible things.
— I saw a swan maul a child once, said Carr. The child had to be removed. To the hospital, I mean. The swan was beaten to death with a stick.
Jane covered the cygnet’s ears. You’ll have to imagine for yourself what that looked like. I don’t really know where a bird’s ears are.
— But, said Jane. If you were there, why didn’t you help the child?
— Sometimes, when you see something awful about to happen, although you are a good person and mean everything for the best, you hope still that the bad thing will happen. You watch and hope that the awful thing will happen and that you will see it. Then when it happens you are surprised and shocked and pretend that you didn’t want it to happen. But really you did. It was that way with me and the swan.
— So you were on the swan’s side? asked Jane.
— I guess so. Yes, that’s right.
— Well, that’s even worse. It’s all right for a person to pick a side, but once he’s on that side he should stay there. You ought to have helped the swan escape. You should have stopped them from killing it and helped it away. Or even helped it to maul the child, if you were really the swan’s friend. How could anyone ever trust you?
Jane gave Carr a stern look and continued on down the path. The cygnet nipped at him as it passed, but its beak got fouled up in Carr’s coat, and it missed.
— You can’t own a swan, anyway, Carr yelled. The Queen of England owns them all already.
And it was true. The Queen of England is the owner of all swans. It was decided a long time ago, and so it has always been.
—
The letter was in a cream-colored envelope. Francis Brennan, it said on the outside.
Carr gave the envelope to Brennan. He was standing on the stairs. Then he was handing the envelope to Brennan.
— What is this? said Brennan.
— They gave it to me. This morning, they gave it to me, for you. Brennan took the envelope reluctantly. He turned it over in his hand.
— Tell me how it happened, he said.
— He shot Lubeck, and then they gave me the envelope. That’s it.
— That’s it, said Brennan. He opened the envelope.
The floor of the room was wooden, and the boards ran for a very long way. Carr saw the board all the way to the wall and then back.
Brennan handed the opened letter back to Carr.
—
— What’s there to do? said Brennan.
He was a man of some principle, Brennan. He was studying for a doctorate in philosophy and believed in maintaining a certain decorum in one’s manner of life. Nevertheless, he had refused to go with Lubeck that morning, and now he was to go himself.