The Ethical Assassin

“There’s always the long-distance relationship,” he pointed out.

“I guess. It sounds like it would be hard to keep up, with all the distractions and everything. But I suppose it’s less frightening when she’s going to a girls’ school.”

“Women’s college.”

“What?”

He sipped at his beer. “It’s not a girls’ school. It’s a women’s college.”

“Who, if I may ask, cares?” I was in no mood for stupid nitpicking.

“I care. And you do, too. Words count, Lemuel, they have power and resonance. There will never be true equality without gender-sensitive language.”

It was at that moment that something hard smacked me in the back of the head. It came on suddenly, and it startled me more than it hurt. I turned around, and two men with pool cues stood there. Laughing.

They both wore faded jeans and T-shirts- one was tattered and black, the other was pale yellow and said BOB’S OYSTERS across the front. Underneath there was a picture of an oyster with the words Shuck me coming out of its- I don’t know, mouth, oyster hole, or whatever they call it.

Against the tightening of my throat and the pounding of my heart, I felt a raging anguish building inside. The anguish of Why me? There were two of us sitting there. I, as far as I knew, looked like just an ordinary kid. I had a tie, sure, but so what? Melford, on the other hand, with his freaky, post-electrocution bleached hair, would surely be a better target. Instead, they went for me. They always went for me.

The silence lasted less than a couple of seconds. They stared. I looked away.

“You guys are kind of far from the pool table, aren’t you?” Melford said.

He’s going to kill them, I thought, numb now with powerlessness. There’s going to be more killing, right here. I’m going to have to watch more people die, a whole room full of them.

Bob’s Oysters gri

“Me?” Melford shrugged. “I don’t really want to do anything about it. What do you want to do about it?”

“What?” he asked.

“What?” Melford asked.

“What did you say?”

“What did you say?”

“I don’t know what in fuck you’re up to.”

“To be honest, I’m not up to anything.”

“I don’t like no faggots coming in here,” said the one in the black T-shirt.

“I think our foreign policy in El Salvador is misguided,” Melford said.

The black T-shirt guy knit his brow. “What the shit are you talking about?”

“I don’t know. I thought we were just saying, you know, stuff we think. Your comment seemed pretty random, so I figured I’d come up with one of my own.” He lifted his beer and drank down half the bottle, finishing it off with a mighty gulp. He wiggled it at them, documenting its emptiness. “You want another beer?”

“What’s it to you?”

“Nothing. I was just going to order up some beer, and since we’re having a conversation, it seemed polite to order one for you. You want it?”

The guy paused as his desire for beer clashed with his pointless anger. Maybe if Melford had seemed nervous or twitchy or afraid, it might have gone differently, but I was already begi

“Okay, sure,” said the black T-shirt guy. He blinked rapidly and bit his lip, as though he had misunderstood something and now didn’t want to admit it.

The two pool players exchanged glances. Bob’s Oysters shrugged.

Melford signaled the bartender and ordered the beers. The pool players took theirs, the black T-shirt nodded his thanks at Melford, and he and his friend wandered back over to the table. They were dazed, not looking at each other.

“What the hell,” I whispered into a basket of steaming onion rings, which had arrived during the confrontation. “I thought we were going to get our asses kicked.”

“I didn’t. See, that guy figured one of two responses- I’d fight him or I’d turn coward. All I did was take a different angle, and suddenly the threat of violence is gone. Nothing to it.”

He made it sound so simple. “Yeah. What happens if he decided to knock you off your stool and go upside your head with the pool cue?”

Melford patted his pocket. “Then I’d have killed him.”

I let that hang in the air for a moment, unsure if the answer pleased or terrified me.

“Why didn’t you just kill them anyway?”

“I’m willing to defend myself, and I’m willing to fight for what’s right, but I’m not indiscriminate. All I wanted was to get out of the situation without you getting hurt, and I took care of it in the way I thought would cause the least harm.”

I stared at him, feeling not only relief and gratitude, but a strange sort of admiration. It was then that I first realized that, in the same way I liked it when Bobby praised me for books well sold, I liked Melford’s attention, too. I liked that Melford seemed to like me, wanted to spend time with me. Melford was somebody- a crazy, violent, and inexplicable somebody, but a somebody all the same and, as I’d just seen, an occasionally heroic somebody.

“What are we going to do about the checkbook?” I asked.

“We’re going to wait.”

“For what?”

“Well, you know where that mobile home is located? What the jurisdiction is?”

I shook my head.

“The city of Meadowbrook Grove, a remarkably unpleasant little slice of land carved out of the county, that consists of a very large trailer park and a small farm with a hog lot. The cop you saw outside the trailer is the chief of police. Also the mayor- a monumental creep named Jim Doe. And he doesn’t much like the county cops. Chances are he’s going to hold off on calling the real cops until the morning. Otherwise he’ll have to be up all night. So we’re going to wait. We’re going to wait until it gets good and late, and then we’re going into the trailer, sliding under some yellow crime scene tape, and getting the checkbook.” He looked over at my basket. “Can I have an onion ring?”

I didn’t know when, if ever, bars around here closed, but this one showed no sign of slowing down at a quarter of three, when Melford tapped me on the arm and said it was time to go. I followed dutifully.

In the car, Melford was playing another tape now, a sad and jangling something that I liked, mostly despite myself. Maybe it was the four beers. “What is this?”

“The Smiths,” Melford said. “The album’s called Meat Is Murder.”

I laughed.

“Something’s fu

“It just seems a little strong,” I said. “I mean, if you want to be a vegetarian, that’s fine. But meat isn’t murder. It’s meat.”

Melford shook his head. “Why? Why is it okay to expose creatures who have feelings and wants and desires to any pain we choose so we can have u

I probably wouldn’t have said it without the beer, but I’d had the beer. “Okay, fine. Meat is murder. But you know what else is murder? Wait, let me think. Oh, yeah. I remember now: murder. Murder is murder. That’s right. Killing a couple of people who are minding their own business. Breaking into their home and shooting them in the head. That’s murder, too, I think. The Smiths have an album about that?”

Melford shook his head as if I were a kid who couldn’t grasp some simple idea. “I told you. They were assassinated.”

“But I’m not ready to know why.”

“That’s right.”

“And I’m a bad person for eating meat.”

“No, you’re a normal person for eating meat, because the unchecked torment and painful slaughter of animals has become the norm in our culture. You can’t be judged for eating meat. Up to this point, anyhow. On the other hand, if you listen to what I tell you, if you think about it even a little, and then you go back to eating meat- then, yes, you’re a bad person.”