Free The Throat by Peter Straub Page B

an almost invisible trail.
His face looked frozen—it was almost funny, all that amazement. I
watched the Chinese man carry his daughter toward a Sabrett's hot dog
cart. The girl's round face filled like a glass with serious, gleeful
concentration. Her father held a folded dollar in his hand. He was
carrying a ridiculous old rifle that was probably less accurate than a
BB gun. He got a hot dog wrapped in white tissue and handed it up to
his daughter. No ketchup, no mustard, no sauerkraut. Just your basic
hot dog experience. I raised my M-16 and I shot him in the throat and
he fell straight down. It looked like a trick.
    Charlie Carpenter and Lily Sheehan had turned away from me, they
were grinding their teeth and wailing.
    I sat down on a bench in the sun. I was sweating. I was not sure if
I had been going east toward Fifth Avenue, or west, deeper into the
park. I slowly inhaled and exhaled, trying to control the sudden panic.
It was just a bad one. It was just a little worse than normal. It was
nothing too serious. I grabbed one of the books I had bought and opened
it at random. It was The Gospel
According to Thomas, and here is what I read:
    The Kingdom of Heaven
Is like a woman carrying a jug
Full of meal on a long journey.
When the handle broke,
The meal streamed out behind her, so that
She never noticed anything was wrong, until
Arriving home, she set the jug down
And found that it was empty.
       
The Kingdom of Heaven
Is like a man who wished to
assassinate a noble.
He drew his sword at home, and struck
it against the wall,
To test whether his hand were strong
enough.
Then he went out, and killed the
noble.

    I thought of my father drinking in the alley behind the St. Alwyn
Hotel. Hard Millhaven sunlight bounced and dazzled from the red bricks
and the oil-stained concrete. Drenched in dazzling light, my father
raised his pint and drank.
    I stood up and found that my legs were still shaking. I sat down
again before anyone could notice. Two young women on the next bench
laughed at something, and I glanced over at them.
    One of them said, "You are sworn to secrecy. Let us begin at the
beginning."

    Back on Grand Street I typed my notes into the computer and printed
them out. I saw that I had mapped out the next few days' work. I
thought of going downstairs for lunch so I could show Maggie Lah those
enigmatic, barbaric verses from the gnostic gospel, but remembered it
was Friday, one of the days she worked on her philosophy M.A. at NYU. I
went into my own kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Fastened to the
door is a photograph I cut out of the New York Times the day after Ted
Bundy was executed. It shows his mother holding a telephone receiver to
her ear while she plugs her other ear with an index finger. She has
bangs and big glasses and concentration has pulled her thick eyebrows
together. The caption is Louise
Bundy, of Tacoma, Wash., saying goodbye by telephone to her son,
Theodore Bundy, the serial killer who was executed for murder yesterday
morning in Florida.
    Whenever I see this terrible photograph, I think about taking it
down. I try to remember why I cut it out in the first place. Then I
open the refrigerator door.
    The telephone rang as soon as I pulled the handle, and I closed the
door and went into the loft's main room to answer it.
    I said, "Hello," and the voice on the other end said the same thing
and then paused. "Am I speaking to Timothy Underhill? Timothy
Underhill, the writer?"
    When I admitted to my identity, my caller said, "Well, it's been a
long time since we've met. Tim, this is John Ransom."
    And then I felt an of course :
as if I had known he would call, that predetermined events were about
to unfold, and that I had been waiting for this for days.
    "I was just thinking about you," I said, because in Central Park I
had remembered the last time I had seen him—he had been nothing like
the friendly, self-justifying captain I had met on the edge of Camp
White Star, parroting slogans about