Chapter 41
Forty-One
They parked at The Briars, behind the Caddy, and let themselves in. Gwen had wept for a while, in the dark of the car, but
had mastered herself by the time they arrived—although anyone who looked at her could see she had been in tears. Arthur hadn’t
wept himself. He was too full of a stunned emptiness to feel anything like heartbreak or horror or shame or whatever you were
supposed to feel after someone you hated was burned to death by your command. The others were in the library, Colin hunched
down to arrange logs for a fire, and when they walked in Allie whooped:
“Hey, college girl, your education begins toniiiiiiiiiiiiiight!” Then she saw Gwen’s face and clapped a hand over her mouth.
Colin remained crouched by the hearth but regarded them with bright, avid eyes.
“King Sorrow,” Colin said. “He got her. Didn’t he? He caught up to them.”
Gwen nodded, walked shakily to the card table, and sat down.
“How did it happen?” Colin asked.
Arthur reported the little that Tana had told them. Colin went on constructing his fire, setting a match to fine cedar shavings
and newspaper, feeding it a few sticks to build it up. At last, he rose and went to the bar and poured Scotch.
“Well,” Donna said, when Arthur finished. “Now we’ve got two things to celebrate.”
Arthur looked at her, genuinely surprised. “You really don’t care?”
“I care. About you. And us.” Gesturing with her hand to indicate everyone in the room. “I’ve got my limits. I never pretended otherwise.”
“I’m not sorry either,” Van said. “Not really. I’m only bummed we had to find out now, because it ruined Gwen’s special day.”
Colin handed Gwen a Scotch rocks. She drank half in one swallow, then shut her eyes and rested her wrists against the card
table’s leather bumper. Colin sat on one side of her, Arthur on the other. Van took Colin’s usual spot, on the dealer’s stool,
and began to shuffle.
Colin squinted through his own glass of Scotch, peering into the firelight, enjoying the play of the light through the whiskey.
A small, philosophical smile played at the corners of his mouth. At last, he said, “We financed a war in Biafra to secure
access to their oil fields. By the time we were done, the whole country was littered with bodies. Half a million dead.”
Allie slipped up behind Gwen, put her arms around her, and rested her chin on her head. Gwen leaned back into her embrace
and shut her eyes. Allie said, “I guess I’m crossing Biafra off my list of future spring break possibilities. We’ll have to
go someplace safer. Like Nicaragua.”
“I know what you’re getting at, Colin,” Arthur told him.
“I’ll say it anyway: none of us—the six of us in this room—directly killed anyone in Biafra. But our country did. The CIA did. They did it for us, so we
could live in peace and security. No one rips themselves up with guilt about it every time they fill the tank.”
“Maybe we should. Ever think that?” Gwen asked him.
“Maybe. But if we started hating ourselves for Biafra, I’m not sure where we’d stop.
Because most of the good things in our lives were purchased in blood.
We don’t think about it, but any number of things we enjoy and take for granted—starting, first and foremost, with each other—are held at the cost of other lives.
If you unfocus your eyes, Gwen, it’s possible to see Jayne Nighswander’s death in that context .
. . the red backdrop of American life. The slave labor in Indonesia that made Donovan’s sneakers.
The miner dying of black lung so we can turn on the lights.
The construction worker who fell off a high girder so the World Trade towers could kiss the sky.
Because we care about each other, we make peace with a certain level of horror. ”
“Is that what we have to do?” Gwen asked. “Unfocus our eyes so we can’t see who we hurt? Walking around with your eyes unfocused
sounds like a good way to get hurt yourself.”
“Oh, fuck this,” Donna said. “Fuck this feel-bad bullshit. Jayne Nighswander was rancid and murderous trash. I’m not going to feel sorry for her now. Fuck that. Let’s play poker.
Deal the cards, Van.”
Van dealt them their cards and then turned over the flop: a queen of spades, a king of hearts, and a dragon of diamonds.
For a moment no one besides Arthur seemed to notice. They were all looking at the hands they had been dealt. Then Gwen cried
out and dropped her cards. She had a dragon of clubs. Instead of a king or a queen, it showed a skinny golden reptile with
a sly smile and gold whiskers suggesting a dapper mustache.
Allie coughed and waved at a blue haze in the air. “Colin, the fire’s backing up. My lungs are full of smoke.”
“You get used to it,” King Sorrow said, as the lights went out.