Free Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut Page A

sociopath, I think, in love with himself and no one else, craving action for its own sake, and indifferent to any long-term consequences, a classic Man of Destiny.
     
     
    MOST DID NOT even follow him down the slope and out onto the ice. They returned to the prison, where they had beds of their own, and shelter from the weather, and food and water, although no heat or electricity. They chose to be good boys, concluding correctly that bad boys roaming free in the valley, but completely surrounded by the forces of law and order, would be shot on sight in a day or 2, or maybe even sooner. They were color-coded, after all.
    In the Mohiga Valley, their skin alone sufficed as a prison uniform.
     
     
    ABOUT HALF OF those who followed Darwin out onto the ice turned back before they reached Scipio. This was before they were fired upon and suffered their first casualty. One of those who went back to the prison told me that he was sickened when he realized how much murder and rape there would be when they reached the other side in just a few minutes.
    “I thought about all the little children fast asleep in their beds,” he said. He had handed over the gun he had stolen from the prison armory to the man next to him, there in the middle of beautiful Lake Mohiga. “He didn’t have a gun,” he said, “until I gave him 1.”
    “Did you wish each other good luck or anything like that?” I asked him.
    “We didn’t say anything,” he told me. “Nobody was saying anything but the man in front.”
    “And what was he saying?” I asked.
    He replied with terrible emptiness, “ ‘Follow me, follow me, follow me.’ ”
     
     
    “LIFE’S A BAD dream,” he said. “Do you know that?”
     
     
    ALTON DARWIN’S CHARISMATIC delusions of grandeur went on and on. He declared himself to be President of a new country. He set up his headquarters in the Board of Trustees Room of Samoza Hall, with the big long table for his desk.
    I visited him there at high noon on the second day after the great escape. He told me that this new country of his was going to cut down the virgin forest on the other side of the lake and sell the wood to the Japanese. He would use the money to refurbish the abandoned industrial buildings in Scipio down below. He didn’t know yet what they would manufacture, but he was thinking hard about that. He would welcome any suggestions I might have.
    Nobody would dare attack him, he said, for fear he would harm his hostages. He held the entire Board of Trustees captive, but not the College President, Henry “Tex” Johnson, nor his wife, Zuzu. I had come to ask Darwin if he had any idea what had become of Tex and Zuzu. He didn’t know.
    Zuzu, it would turn out, had been killed by a person or persons unknown, possibly raped, possibly not. We will never know. It was not an ideal time for Forensic Medicine. Tex, meanwhile, was ascending the tower of the library here with a rifle and ammunition. He was going clear to the top, to turn the belfry itself into a sniper’s nest.
     
     
    ALTON DARWIN WAS never worried, no matter how bad things got. He laughed when he heard that paratroops, advancing on foot, had surrounded the prison across the lake and, on our side, were digging in to the west and south of Scipio. State Police and vigilantes had already set up a roadblock at the head of the lake. Alton Darwin laughed as though he had achieved a great victory.
    I knew people like that in Vietnam. Jack Patton had that sort of courage. I could be as brave as Jack over there. In fact, I am pretty sure that I was shot at more and killed more people. But I was worried sick most of the time. Jack never worried. He told me so.
    I asked him how he could be that way. He said, “I think I must have a screw loose. I can’t care about what might happen next to me or anyone.”
    Alton Darwin had the same untightened screw. He was a convicted mass murderer, but never showed any remorse that I could see.
     
    DURING MY LAST year in