Thrown-away Child

that dangerous trash lying close by their doorsteps? Good folks, the right kind of folks.”
    “I admit we got a little problem on that account.“
    “Well, we best take care fast as possible. Bad enough to be having our own dollars blowing in the wind. We got to protect our investors.”
    “Like I say in the first place, it’s going to take us a subtle mind to solve the problem.”
    “Subtle as dynamite soup.”
    “There you go again, talking all disturbed like. Look at you, scratching your head like some old mama fuss about her wayward boy. What you fretting about?”
    “Scheme you come to me about the other day is what.”
    “You ought to get a load of your puss. I swear to God, anybody see you right now they’d say you’re about as embarrassed as a priest with his pants down.”
    “I’d say embarrassment’s the least of our worries.“
    “Sit back. Relax. Pull your damn self together.”
    “I need a drink.”
    “Lately you’ve been awful needy.”
    “Never you mind about that. Just give me a reasonable answer to the question I put.”
    “ ’Bout our little problem?”
    “Little problem that’s needing a big answer.”
    “Else a solution old as wickedness.”
    “Any wonder I’m drinking? Give me that bottle there by you if I got to consider all this grotesquery again.”
    “Here now, go ahead, suck down your whisky. Drunk or sober, you hear me loud and clear.”
    “God help me if I do.”
    “You know what we talked about before—why, it’s your scheme as much as mine. And you know what I’m saying’s purely clean and simple.”
    “I highly doubt you on speaking terms with purity.“
    “Considering what an evil bastard you are, I’ll forget you said that.”
    “Of course you will.”
    “I’m willing to forget your insult. And now I will tell you the most important thing you already know.“
    “What’d that be?”
    “To make folks behave according to your liking, you must understand human nature.”
    “A less philosophical man’d probably just come straight out and declare what’s on his depraved mind.“
    “Killing’s not necessarily depraved.”
    “Well, murdering to keep folks in line—what the devil you call that?”
    “Here now, there’s murder and then there’s killing. Only thing they got in common’s death. Your civic leadership types—preachers, politicians, policemen— they can tell you the difference.”
    “Them and the philosophical type.”
    “Listen to me close, because killers got to be close if they keep themselves alive.”
    “I’m listening.”
    “Folks are naturally docile and obedient. All folks I’m talking about, including the high-classed ones who been to schools where they trick you into believing you know what time it is.”
    “Ignorance is most democratic.”
    “My exact point. You and me, being philosophers and longtime students of human nature, all we got to do here about this problem we’re facing is twist up what folks been variously trained to believe. Twist fast and loose so nobody sees our own hands on the wringer.”
    “I need another drink.”
    “Twist good enough, and before you know it, things go to chaos. That’s when we got folks halfway scared to holy hell.”
    “Scared folks, they’ll listen to any fool thing.“
    “Especially when it’s reassuring. For instance, law and order.”
    “Just goes to show. Folks take their foolishness real serious.”
     

FIVE

    The master bedroom upstairs where Perry stayed was “nothing but a damn slum the way he keeps it,” according to his Aunt Violet. That was one of a long list of complaints she had against Perry. He was also too smart for his own good, he had no interest in looking for a job, and he would steal everything but a red-hot stove.
    Chief among her grievances was that Perry Duclat was past forty years of age and still utterly lacking the inclination to live on his own.
    But Perry was family. So Violet loved him in her abiding way, which she worried was doing him very little good. And now with Ruby on her way home— her prodigal daughter, married to a white policeman, no less—Violet had a whole new set of worries about her nephew.
    God bless you in heaven, Rose...”
    Violet would say these words often, right out loud, hopes the Lord would oblige and look after her dead sister somewhere up in Kingdom Come. She prayed now, standing at the foot of the stairs.
    “But that boy of yours up there... Oh, Rose, now you got to help me with