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Laura looked at him then and started to say something, but it never came out. They sat without words listening for the hissing chatter of pebbles twisting under tires, for voices and the sound of an engine; waiting for a wide nose and a gri
They waited, but nothing came. There was only the noise of grasshoppers.
"Nothing," Michael said at last. "I must be overeager."
"I can't imagine you killing yourself," Mr. Rebeck said almost wonderingly. "Even now I can't really picture it."
"Nor I," Michael said, "then or now. It's hard to explain, but I never knew I was going to kill myself, not the way we think of knowing—pla
He looked at Laura again. "I think that's what Laura can't forgive me. She wants her suicides to be honest with themselves, to choose a death and seek it out boldly. I couldn't do that. I wasn't brave enough or honest enough. Laura is disappointed in me. Perfectly understandable."
"It isn't that at all," Laura said. She did not turn her head. "I haven't the right to ask anybody to be honest. It isn't that. But leaving your death on your wife's doorstep, dying so that she would die—I don't know how to talk myself past that, Michael. If I could, I would."
"Yes. That was bad."
Feeling the need to touch life, Mr. Rebeck reached out and tentatively smoothed the raven's black plumage with his hand. When the bird flinched but did not draw away, he let his hand remain lightly on the dusty feathers. He could feel the raven's heart beating.
"Maybe he didn't know," he said. "It's possible. You do so many things and never know you've done them. He didn't know Sandra would be blamed for his death."
Michael shook his head. "I knew. Thank you just the same." He did not look at any of them, nor was he looking down the road. He seemed to be staring with great interest at a white cloud shaped like a horse's head.
"I knew," he said. "There isn't any real way around it. I felt that Sandy had driven me to suicide, and that it was only right that she suffer for it. Fu
"They have to go to college to learn that?" the raven asked. "Hell, birds know it before they know they're birds."
"People know it too," Michael said, "but it worries them a bit, and they like to avoid the whole subject. I used to tell my classes, 'There is no justice. Justice is a man-made concept, a foreign body in the universe. Tigers are neither just nor unjust when they kill goats, or men, for that matter. There is no such thing as abstract justice. There is such a thing as law. The difference should be apparent.' It's old stuff, not in the least original with Morgan, but the students were very impressed."
Laura said nothing, and Michael sighed. "What can I tell you, Laura? That I confused justice and revenge? People do that a great deal, and they always have. That's no excuse. I never admitted that I thought my wife ought to die for causing my death, but that was the idea. It seemed very fair."
"And all your anger at death," Laura said. "Was that a lie? All the struggling to stay close to life, and all the crying that Sandra had murdered you—did you know all the time?"
"No. Not until the raven came. I didn't remember anything about my death. Only that there was poison and that it had a lot to do with Sandra. That was all."
Still Laura bent her head and would not look at him, and suddenly Michael was shouting. "God damn it, how do you think I feel?" His voice tolled in Mr. Rebeck's head, and it hurt the small man to listen. There seemed to be a great pendulum swinging sluggishly inside his head.
"How do you think I feel, knowing that I was bored enough with myself to stop myself, and vengeful enough to try to drag someone with me? Knowing nakedly, without any possible way of shading my eyes from it, that I'm a liar, and a coward, and a murderer in everything but deed? Knowing that I never loved Sandra, and tried to destroy her because she didn't love me? And I pla
"I wouldn't bang my head on the floor quite that much," the raven said. "Nothing you can do about it now. Anyway, they let her off. Happy ending. The rest doesn't matter."
Michael shook his head. "It matters. How it ends isn't important any more." His voice was quieter. "Fu
Mr. Rebeck felt the raven's compact body moving under his hand and thought, I wish this had not happened. With all my heart, I wish it were June again, late spring, before the heat came, and none of this had happened. He saw Laura gradually raise her eyes to Michael's eyes, and knew without surprise what had happened between them that morning. I suppose it is a wonderful thing, he thought, even a kind of miracle, but I ca
Oh, I wish to God it were spring again, late spring, before the heat came.
Michael's voice was low as he spoke to Laura. "The chase is over. The Morgan-hunt is over. I know what I am. I am everything I feared in life, everything I hated in other people, falseness and brutality and mindless arrogance. And I have to drag them with me, wherever I am dragged, because they are part of me, skin and skeleton. I can never hide from them again."
"That's not true," Laura said. "You're kind, and gentle, and no more evil than breakfast or sunset. Don't you think I know?"
"No. I don't think you do know, Laura, because I didn't myself until just now. I can't fall back on kindness now that nothing else is left. When I was young, I thought I was very kind. I thought that I hated mea
"They're in all of us," Laura said desperately. "They're in me. Michael, listen."
Michael went on. "So I told myself that I was kind and gentle, and other people believed it, and I even believed myself, and look at this thing I've done, Laura. Look at what I've done."
This time they all heard the sound of the truck and knew that the men had come even before they saw the truck. Mr. Rebeck had expected one of the shining black hearses with long to