He drops down onto his ass and folds his arms across his knees and lowers his head and weeps.
A few moments later, Jackson Davies comes in and sees him and kneels down and takes Russell in his arms and rocks gently back and forth, whispering, “It’s all right now, it’s okay, it’s over, you’re safe, hear me? Safe. Just... give it to me, kid... you’re safe... that’s it... give it to me...”
Davies looks up into the camera, and the expression on his face needs no explaining: Turn that fucking thing off.
Cut to: Tanya, outside the house again, standing next to the porch steps. On the porch, two men are removing the broken bay window. A few jagged shards of glass fall out and shatter on the porch. Another man begins sweeping up the shards and dumping them into a plastic trash barrel.
Tanya says, “Experts tell us that violence never really ends, that the healing process may never be completed, that some of the survivors will carry their pain for the rest of their lives.”
A montage begins at this point, with Tanya’s closing comments heard in voice-over.
The image, in slow motion, of police officers and EMTs moving sheet-covered and black-bagged bodies.
“People around here will say that the important thing is to remove as many physical traces of the violence as possible. Mop up the blood, gather the broken glass fragments into a bag and toss it in the trash, cover the scrapes, cuts, and stitches with bandages, then put your best face forward because it will make the unseen hurt easier to deal with.”
The image of the sheet-covered bodies cross-fades into film of a memorial service held at Randy Hamilton’s grade school. A small choir of children is gathered in front of a picture of Randy and begins to sing. Underneath Tanya’s voice can now be heard a few dozen tiny voices softly singing “Let There Be Peace on Earth.”
“But what of that ‘unseen hurt’? A bruise will fade, a cut will get better, a scar can be taken off with surgery. Cedar Hill must now concern itself with finding a way to heal the scars that aren’t so obvious.”
The image of the children’s choir dissolves into film of Mary Alice Hubert standing in the middle of the chaos outside the Leonard house on the night of the shootings. She is bathed in swirling lights and holds both of her hands pressed against her mouth. Her eyes seem unnaturally wide and are shimmering with tears. Police and EMTs scurry around her, but none stops to offer help. As the choir sings, “To take each moment and live each moment in peace e-ter-nal-ly,” she drops slowly to her knees and lowers her head as if in prayer.
Tanya’s voice-over continues: “Maybe tears will help. Maybe grieving in the open will somehow lessen the grip that the pain has on this community. Though we may never know what drove Andy Leonard to commit his horrible crime, the resonances of his slaughter remain.”
Mary Alice dissolves into the image of Russell Brennert kneeling before the stain on the foyer wall. He is touching the dried blood with the index finger of his left hand.
The children’s choir is building to the end of the song as Tanya says, “Perhaps Cedar Hill can find some brief comfort in these lines from a poem by German lyric poet Rainer Maria Rilke: ‘Who weeps now anywhere in the world, without cause weeps in the world, weeps over me.’ ”
The screen fills with the image of Jackson Davies embracing Russell as sobs rack his body. Davies glares up at the camera, then closes his eyes and lowers his face, kissing the top of Russell’s head. This image freezes as the children finish singing their hymn.
Tanya’s voice once more, soft and low, no singsong mode this time, no inflection whatsoever: “For tonight, who weeps anywhere in the world, weeps for Cedar Hill and its wounds that may never heal.
“Tanya Claymore, Channel 9 News.”
11
After the tape had finished playing and the lights in the classroom were turned back on, a student near the back of the room — so near, in fact, that Irv Leonard’s ghost could have touched the boy’s head, if he’d chosen to — raised his hand and asked, “What happened to all those people?”
“Tanya Claymore was offered a network job as a result of that tape. She eventually became a famous news anchor, had several public affairs with various coworkers, contracted AIDS, became a drug addict, and drove her car off a bridge one night. Jackson Davies remarried his ex-wife, and they live in Florida now. He’ll turn seventy-one this year. Mary Alice Hubert died of a massive coronary six months after the killings. Most of Cedar Hill turned out for her funeral. Russell Brennert stayed in Cedar Hill and eventually bought into Jackson Davies’s janitorial service. When Davies retired, Russell bought him out and now owns and operates the company. He’ll turn fifty-two this year, and he looks seventy. He never married. He drinks too much and has the worst smoker’s hack I’ve heard. He lives in a small four-room apartment with only one window — and that looks out on a parking lot. He told me he doesn’t sleep well most of the time, but he has pills he can take for that. It still doesn’t stop the dreams, though. He doesn’t have many friends. It seems most people still believe he must have known what Andy was going to do. They’ve never forgiven him for that.” I looked at the ghosts and smiled.
“He was so happy when I told him who I was. He hugged me like I was his long-lost son. He even wept. I invited him to come and visit me and my family this Christmas. I hope he comes. I don’t think he will, but I can hope.”
The room was silent for a moment, then a girl near the front, without raising her hand, said, “I knew Ted Gibson — he was the first person that Dyson shot. He... he always wanted me to go to Utica with him to try their ice cream. I was supposed to go with him that day. I couldn’t... and I don’t even remember why. Isn’t that terrible?” Her lower lip quivered, and a tear slipped down her cheek. “Ted got killed, and all I could think of when I heard was I wonder what kind of ice cream he was eating.”
That ended my story, and began theirs.
One by one, some more hesitant than others, some angrier, some more confused, my students began talking about their dead and wounded friends, and how they missed them, and how frightened they were that something so terrible could happen to someone they knew, maybe even themselves, had the circumstances been different.
The ghosts of Cedar Hill listened, and cried for my students’ pain, and understood.
12
Before they left that day, someone asked me why I thought Andy had done it. I stopped myself from giving the real answer — what I perceive to be the real answer — and told them, “I think losing out on the scholarship did something to him. I think he looked at his future and saw himself being stuck in a factory job for the rest of his life and he became angry — at himself, at his family, at the town where he lived. If he had no future, then why should anyone else?”
“Then why didn’t he kill his grandmother and Russell, too? Why didn’t he kill you?”
Listen to my silence after he asked this.
Finally, I said, “I wish I knew.”
I should have gone with my first answer.
I think it runs much deeper than mere anger. I think when loneliness and fear drive a person too deep inside himself, faith shrivels into hopelessness; I think when tenderness diminishes and bitterness intensifies, rancor becomes a very sacred thing; and I think when the need for some form of meaningful human contact becomes an affliction, a soul can be tainted with madness and allow violence to rage forth as the only means of genuine relief, a final, grotesque expression of alienation that evokes feeling something in the most immediate and brutal form.