Allen Eskens

This was no longer about getting an A on my project. It wasn't even about my naive belief that right and wrong should balance out in the end. This had somehow become about me, about when I was eleven and watched my grandfather die.I could have done something, but I didn't. I should have at least tried. Now, faced with the choice to act or to wait, I felt I had no choice.I had to act. Besides, what if there was no DNA on the fingernail? Then all the time spent waiting would have been wasted.

"His sergeant put a gun to his head. He was willing to die rather than rape that girl. That's what the story is about. How could that man in Vietnam be the same man who killed Crystal Hagen? If he's re ally a rapist and a murderer, he would have given in to the dark side when he was in Vietnam. "
"You think he's innocent?" Lila asked, her tone more inquisitive than condemning.
"I don't know," I said. "I'm starting to. I mean, it's possible, isn't it?"

An incredible sense of lightness filled me as I brushed the snow off the windshield. A young couple entered the restaurant, releasing a wave of warm air fused with the scent of fresh-baked goods. The aroma sailed on a light breeze and swirled around my head. It caused to pause and remember something Carl had told methat heaven could be here on Earth.

I scooped snow into my bare hand and watched as it melted in my palm. I felt its coldness against my warm skin and studied the crystalline flakes as they changed into water droplets that trickled down my wrist, evaporating into another existence. I closed my eyes and listened to the music of the breeze as it hummed through the nearby pine trees, punctuated by the chirp of some chickadees hidden in the needles.

I drew in a breath of crisp December air and stood perfectly still, savoring the feel, the sound, and the smnell of the world around me, sensations that would have passed by me unnoticed had I never met Carl Iverson.

"But it also means that this is our heaven. We are surrounded every day by the wonders of life, wonders beyond comprehension that we simply take for granted. I decided that day that I would live my life-not simply exist. If I died and discovered heaven on the other side, well, that'd be just fine and dandy. But if I didn't live my life as if I was already in heaven, and I died and found found only well...I would have wasted my life. I would have wasted my one chance in all nothingness, of history to be alive."

"Can't you feel it, Virg? Can't you feel things slipping?"
"Feel what slipping, Hoss?"
"I don't know how to explain it," Carl said. "It's like every time I go into that jungle I feel like I'm standing on a line, a line I know I shouldn't cross. And there's this screaming in my head, like some banshee whirling around me, pulling me, taunting me to step over that line. I know if I cross it, I become Gibbs. I'd say fuck 'em, they're just gooks, so fuck 'em all."
"Yeah," Virgil said. "I know. I feel it, too. The day Levitz bought the farm, I wanted to lay waste to every butter head in the province."
"Levitz?"
"The guy that got cut in half by that Betty.
"Oh...that was his name?I didn't know."
"But Hoss, once you go there you don't come back," Virgil said.
"That sixteen-year-old kid on Grandpa's porch, watching the sunrise, won't be there no more." "Sometimes I wonder if he's there now."

" We don't have a vote on being here," Virgil said, "and for the most part we don't have a vote on how we leave. But we do have control of how much of our soul we leave behind in this mess. Don't ever forget that. We do still have some choices," Carl held out his hand, and Virgil gripped it tightly.
"You got that right partner," Carl said. "We need to get outta here with our shit intact."
"That's all we need to do," Virgil said.

"Guys like Carl?" "
"He's a pedophile, and nobody can tell a lie like a pedophile. They're the best. There's no con artist alive who can lie like a pedophile

I looked at Collins with a blank expression that urged him to explain.

"Pedophiles are the monsters walking among us. Murderers, burglars, thieves, drug dealers, they can always justify what they've done. Most crimes occur because of simple emotions like greed or rage or jealousy. People emotions. We don't condone it, but we understand it. Everybody's felt those feelings at one time or another. Hell, most people, if they're honest, would admit to planning a crime in their head, committing the perfect murder, getting away with it. Every person on a jury has felt angry or jealous. They understand the base enmotion behind a crime like murder, and they'll punish a guy for not controlling that emotion."
"I suppose so," I said.
"Now think of a pedophile. He has a passion to have sex with children. Who's gonna understand that? You can't justify what you've done. There's no explanation for them; they're monsters, and they know it. Yet they can't admit it, not even to themselves. So they hide the truth, burying it so deep inside that they begin to believe their own lies."

-Carl said that there's a difference between killing and murdering. What does he mean by that?"
I thought I knew the answer, but I wanted to hear it from Virgil before I talked to Carl about it.
-"It's like this," he said. "You kill a soldier in the jungle, and you're just killing. It's not murder. It's like there's an agreement between armies that killing each other is okay. It's allowed. That's what you're supposed to do. Carl killed men in Vietnam, but he didn't murder that girl. See what I'm saying?

On the one side, Carl was a man kneeling in a jungle, taking bullets for his friend. On the other side was a sick bastard capable of extinguishing the life of a young girl in order to satiate his deviant sexual desires- two sides, one man. Somewhere in the box on my shoulder, there had to be an explanation of how the first man became the second.The box seemed impossibly heavy as I mounted the staircase to my apartment.

Un mensonge. Ma mère et mon frère ne vivaient qu’à deux heures de Minneapolis, mais même une brève visite à ma mère m’aurait fait l’effet d’une course à travers des orties. Je n’avais jamais connu mon père, et je ne savais même pas s’il entachait encore la face de ce monde. Tout ce que je savais de lui, c’était son nom, ma mère ayant eu la bonne idée de me le donner dans l’espoir que Joe Talbert père ne la quitte pas, voire qu’il accepte de l’épouser et de s’occuper d’elle et du petit Joey. Peine perdue. Elle avait essayé le même coup à la naissance de Jeremy, mon petit frère, et le résultat avait été le même. J’avais passé mon enfance à expliquer pourquoi je m’appelais Joe Talbert alors que ma mère s’appelait Kathy Nelson et mon frère Jeremy Naylor.