The Violent Type

You sit there with the collar, Father.
Hands folded like a man at a small fire.
I can smell the soap on you.
I can smell the old wood of this place.
And the steak still on my breath.
They told me you’d come.
Said I could unburden myself.
I don’t know about unburdening.
I think the weight is mine.
I think I’ve carried it so long it’s bone.

You want me to start with the boy I killed.
Or the first man.
Or the bird.
I’ll start with the bird.
It’s always the bird.

I was eight.
Backyard was red dirt and weeds.
Mother asleep.
Father gone.
I had a stick I’d shaved with my pocketknife.
There was a sparrow pecking at crumbs by the porch.
I don’t know why I swung.
Maybe I did.
Maybe I just wanted to know what breaking felt like.
It broke.
It flapped and dragged itself.
I watched.
That was the first time I felt the quiet after.

The doctor called me sick.
My mother called me bad.
The men she brought home called me boy.
They didn’t look at me long.
Not when she was crying.
Not when the bottles were empty.
I learned to go quiet.
I learned to look at them like the bird.
I learned that the quiet after is mine.

By twelve I had fists.
By thirteen I had knives.
Fights in alleys.
Fights behind the school.
I broke a boy’s jaw once.
Left him gasping on the ground.
I didn’t stop.
I never stopped.

The first man I killed wasn’t supposed to die.
Bar fight.
A bottle.
His throat.
Blood on the floor and a song on the jukebox.
People screaming.
I didn’t scream.
I watched him go still.
Same as the bird.
Only bigger.
Only louder.

I ran after that.
New towns.
New names.
Old hunger.
It wasn’t about money.
It wasn’t about rage.
It was about the quiet after.
You ever feel that, Father?
The stillness after the candle dies.
The moment between the prayer and the amen.
That’s what I wanted.
But it never lasted.

You hold that book like it can save me.
It can’t.
I’m not asking.
I’m not begging.
I’m just talking.
They’ll strap me down tomorrow.
Leather. Steel.
Needle or switch.
I don’t care.
I’ve been dead a long time.
Now it’s only my turn to stop moving.

Do you still want to hear it, Father?
All of it?
The bodies?
The women?
The men?
The ditches?
The desert?
Because if you do, I’ll tell it.
And you’ll walk out heavier than you walked in.

You keep your hands folded.
Like you are holding something that might break.
I will keep talking.
You can carry it out if you want.
You can leave it here if you cannot.

The bird was first.
The man in the bar was second.
But there were other things in between.
Small things I told myself were nothing.
A cat with a broken spine behind the cannery.
A dog that would not stop barking until it did.
I was young.
People said boys are rough.
They said it like a bandage.
I wore it until it fell off and the skin beneath was the same.

Mother took me to a foster place once.
Said it was for a week while she got right with herself.
I lived in a house with seven boys and a woman who smiled with her mouth but not her eyes.
There was a man who came at night and checked on us.
He smelled like cigarettes and breath mints and metal.
His keys were a little storm on his belt.
He would rest his hand on my hair.
Said I was quiet.
Said I was good.
I imagined putting his face in the sink and holding it there until the little storm stopped.
I never did.
I just stored the picture in my head.
A whole file cabinet of pictures.
All the ways a person can be undone.

You want me to say it started with pain done to me.
You want the clean line.
Hurt people hurt people.
We like to stitch patterns into the dark so the dark feels knitted and not endless.
I will not give you a pattern.
I saw things, yes.
I learned the shape of fear in a house where the radio was always loud to drown the yelling.
But I also liked the quiet after.
That is the worst part.
Liking it.
Not the reason.
The taste.

I left home at sixteen.
Stole money from a coffee can and a truck that started when asked.
There was a town where the grain silos threw long shadows.
I laid under them like a dog under a train car.
I worked odd jobs.
Shoveled things that stank.
Carried boxes that split my hands.
At night there were bars where everything was bright and ugly.
Men looked for fights like they looked for change under a couch cushion.
I gave them what they were searching for.
Sometimes they went home.
Sometimes they did not.
The ones who did not became stones.
I stacked those stones inside me until I learned not to feel the weight.

You ask if I ever tried to stop.
You do not say it.
But I see the question on your face.
Once.
There was a girl at a diner who poured coffee like it was a blessing.
She had a tooth that crossed the other just a little.
It made her smile look like it had a story.
She asked my name.
She said she liked men who looked like they could lift a refrigerator.
We went walking by the freight yard.
She told me about her kid.
A boy who slept with his shoes on in case they had to move in the night.
I told her about the bird.
I do not know why I told her that.
She said maybe I should not say that again.
She was right.
I tried to follow her home once.
Stopped at the corner and watched the light in the window.
They were moving shapes inside a warm square.
I left.
Next day I bought a bus ticket and pretended that was redemption.
It was not.
I only moved the stones.

Out west the sky was large and blank like a wall with no pictures.
There was a man who picked me up on a frontage road.
Truck had a crack in the windshield like a river on a map.
He wore a bolo tie and talked about rodeos.
He asked if I knew where to find a girl.
I told him I knew where to find silence.
He laughed.
I laughed too.
Later I watched him try to take more than he paid for from a woman behind a gas station.
I told him to stop.
He did not.
I made him stop.
He had a sound when he realized he was going to die.
A wordless trying.
He looked like the bird then.
I tell you this not to make myself hero or judge.
I tell you this so you know that even when I killed a man who deserved a beating, I did not give a beating.
I gave the end.
Because that is the only tool I carried.

The desert took him.
The sand closes over a thing like water does.
The coyotes finish the rest.
Nature is a cleaner I could never be.
I kept his bolo tie for a while.
Sometimes I put it on in a motel mirror and tried to see a different man.
He never showed up.
Just the same eyes.
Like two old buttons on a coat that no one wants anymore.

You shift on the chair.
The wood complains.
Your book lies on your knee.
You have not opened it yet.
Maybe you are waiting for a place to set it down.
A place where the words will not sink into what I am saying.
I will keep going.

There was a winter that felt like punishment.
A town by a river where the water made a skin of ice that looked solid until you touched it.
There was a man who ran a loan shop.
Men came in with guitars and watches and hope.
He treated hope like it was something with a price tag.
I watched him for a week.
Watched the way he smiled at a woman with three kids when he said no.
He liked that smile.
It fit his face.
One night he went to his car and I went with him.
He called me friend.
I was not his friend.
He offered me a cigarette with his hands shaking.
It was not cold in that alley but he shook anyway.
I did what I do.
The river took him.
The ice broke and the water made its mouth like a dark animal.
I stood there a long time waiting for something like guilt to arrive.
Nothing came.
Only wind.
Only the way a town sleeps after midnight when it has done all the sinning it can do for the day.

You clear your throat.
You ask if I know the names.
Yes.
I know the names I can stand to say.
I know the faces of those I do not dare speak of because if I do I might see them as people and not as stones.
Do not tell me about mercy.
I have asked none.
Do not tell me about forgiveness.
It sounds like a word men use to tidy things they cannot fix.
I am speaking to give shape to my end.
To lay the stones out in a line so the men with the straps and the needle can see they are not making a mistake.

A woman in a bus station sat beside me once and told me the names of all the birds that landed on the wires outside.
She had a book with drawings.
She said sometimes people kill because they are trying to erase a noise.
She said sometimes people kill because they want to hear a new one.
I looked at her like she had read a page I kept folded in my shoe.
She said a bird is a miracle that dies easy.
I nodded.
I did not touch her.
I want you to hear that.
I did not touch her.
I let her go where she was going.
I kept the page she showed me, though.
It is still folded in my shoe even now.
Habit.
Lucky charm.
Rotten luck.

You ask about children.
Your eyes go there like they always do.
I did not.
Not the little ones.
I left them to their bad dreams and their clean mornings.
I am not telling you this to be spared a corner of hell.
I am telling you so you know the shape of my line.
It is a crooked line.
But it is a line.

There were rules I made for myself that I broke when they got in the way.
No neighbors.
No cops.
No one who looks you in the eye and says your name.
Names make things heavy.
I did not want heavy.
I wanted the quiet after.
The small still room where the breath runs out and everything sits down.
That room never lasted.
The door would open and the world would come back in with the same clatter and stink as before.
So I kept trying to build it.
Again and again.

Do you see the problem, Father.
A man who only has a hammer sees a world of nails.
People say that.
They nod and think they have said something wise.
I say a man who lives for the silence only learns to make it the worst way.
That is not wise.
It is only a map of the hole I dug.
I kept digging because I mistook down for through.

There was a factory with a foreman who liked to put his hand on backs.
He pushed men the way you push cattle through a chute.
He laughed when a boy lost a finger to a belt.
Said he could count easier now.
I watched him a long time.
Watched how the men stood straighter when he passed and then slumped when he turned away.
The machines howled all day like dogs in a bad dream.
I invited him for a drink.
He said he did not drink with men like me.
I said he did now.
We went behind the loading dock.
There was a stack of pallets and the moon looked like it had been kicked and dented.
I told him I was going to take something from him he would miss.
He asked if it was his life.
I said it was his laugh.
He did not laugh.
I did what I do.
He went still.
The machines slept fine the next day.
The men stood the same.
Nothing changed.
I learned nothing changes but the tally.

You open your book now.
Your finger sits between two pages like a little gate.
You ask if I want to say sorry to God.
I do not know how to talk to someone I cannot look in the eye.
I know how to talk to you.
I can see your breath.
I can see your pupils widen when I say certain words.
When I say throat.
When I say river.
When I say desert.
God would be better than you at listening.
But I think he would be worse at looking the same after.
You will go out into the night with your collar and your soap and your quiet feet.
You will still be a man.
If I hand this to God and he takes it, what is left for me to carry into tomorrow.
What is left to say yes to when they ask me if I have anything to add.

There was a summer carnival once.
The kind that shows up like a rash.
I worked a game where you throw rings at bottles and the rings never fit.
A man decided I had cheated his girl.
He grabbed my shirt.
I saw his hands shake with love and cheap beer.
I almost walked away.
Almost.
He said I had wolf eyes.
Some words are keys and you do not know what door they open until it swings.
We went behind the generator trucks.
He told me not to.
I did it anyway.
A carny with wolf eyes.
That is what the papers wrote when they found him under the grandstand.
They came to ask me if I had seen anything.
I told them I had been counting rings.
We all lie to ourselves.
Sometimes we lie to make a house livable.
Sometimes we lie to make a prison.
I was building both.

You ask if I remember their voices.
Sometimes I do.
One man called for his mother like he was six again and the night light had burned out.
One woman would not stop telling me her address.
Like I was a driver who had lost the turn.
It is worse to remember the small things.
The mole on a cheek.
The way a tooth crosses another.
The way shoes sound on tile.
It is easier to say bottle.
Alley.
Rope.
Desert.
River.
Let the nouns hold the blood so the verbs do not have to.

I had a knife I kept too sharp.
I cleaned it like prayer.
I said I would leave it in a place where no one would find it when I was done with it.
I never did.
I kept it.
It felt like the only thing that knew me.
That is a sick sentence.
I can hear it as I say it.
There are layers of sick inside me.
An onion that makes no one cry but me.

Years blur when you do not allow holidays.
No birthdays.
No Sundays.
No marks on a calendar.
Just towns that smell like diesel and towns that smell like fried food and towns that smell like dirt that will not take water.
Sometimes I worked in kitchens.
Sometimes I hauled things.
Sometimes I slept in church basements where men snored like old engines.
I said nothing.
I always said nothing.
Now I am saying the rest because there is no next town.
The map ends at this door.

You ask if someone ever tried to save me.
A teacher once.
He caught me carving a bird into my desk.
Said it was good work.
Said I should draw for a living.
He gave me charcoal wrapped in paper.
I took it home and blackened a wall with it like I had a fire inside and no chimney.
Mother said it looked like the sky after a factory fire.
She moved a dresser in front of it and that was that.
Later I used the charcoal to darken the blade of my knife so it would not shine.
I made art with it anyway.
Just not the kind he meant.

I hear the men on the tier.
Three doors down someone is crying the way a grown man cries when he has no words left for it.
He will stop.
We all stop.
The body cannot weep forever.
It has other work.
Breathing.
Pumping.
Wearing out.
Mine is almost done with all that.
I am lighter than I have ever been.
Not in body.
In choice.
There is only one choice left and it is not mine.
You see how that feels like sleep.
You see how a man who chased the quiet after ends up here smiling at the small mercy of not having to decide.

You ask about the last one.
The one that put me here for sure.
I will tell you.
There was a motel with a sign that buzzed all night.
I could feel the current in my molars.
A man came to my door by mistake.
He was looking for someone with money and powder.
He thought I was that man.
He pushed the door.
I pushed back.
I told him to look again and still he would not.
I did what I do.
He went quiet on the cheap carpet with the pattern of leaves.
The manager came because the buzzing sign went out.
Funny.
A light dies and people notice.
A man dies and it depends on who he owes.
They found the carpet like a country on a map with new red borders.
They found me two towns over sitting on a curb while the sun made a hot penny of the world.
I did not run well anymore.
I was tired.
I think I wanted to be caught.
Not to be forgiven.
To be finished.

You close your book.
You ask if you can pray.
Yes.
Pray.
Say the words you were taught to say to men like me.
Paint the air with them.
Let them dry on the walls.
I will sit here and listen to the sound of your voice and try to remember some small good thing.
The girl at the diner.
The boy who learned to count with nine fingers.
The way the river skin breaks and heals and breaks again and still the river goes on under it, cold and sure.

I will tell you one more thing and then you can put your hand on my head and say the words and I will not move when they come for me tomorrow.
Once, after the carnival, a kid brought me a bird with a broken wing.
Said I was good with my hands.
He had hope like a pulse you could see in his throat.
I told him the truth.
I said I break things.
He said we all do.
He said sometimes we hold them while they break so they do not feel alone.
I wrapped the bird in a towel.
We sat together while it shook.
Then it stopped.
The kid cried and thanked me anyway.
He said the bird did not have to be scared at the end.
He walked away with the towel and the small weight inside it and I stood there with my empty hands.
I did not kill that one.
I only kept it company while it died.
If there is a mercy in me, Father, that is the only shape it ever took.

Now pray.
Pray for the bird.
Pray for the man in the bar and the man in the desert and the foreman by the pallets and the loan man under the ice and the others I left out because I cannot fit them all in one mouth.
Leave me for last.
If there is anything left in the cup after the names, pour it over my head.
I will not lift my face to meet it.
I will just sit still and let it run down.
I have been chasing the quiet my whole life.
Tomorrow it will find me without asking.
I will not argue.
I will not beg.
I will take it like the last light going out in a clean room.
No furniture.
No pictures.
No sound but the small click that says enough.

Your hands rise.
Your lips move.
You say the words you have said to men who wept and men who lied and men who were innocent and men who were me.
I listen.
They open the gate.
It is not a storm of keys.
It is only metal on metal and then the step of shoes.
A man calls my name like he is counting.
I answer like I am present.
You touch my shoulder.
For a second I am a boy again and someone has found me in the yard and told me to come inside because the light is going and the bugs will bite.
For a second I do not have a knife in me at all.
Then the second ends and the corridor opens and the men are waiting and the straps are waiting and the chair is quiet like a mouth that is about to close.

Walk with me as far as they let you.
Stop where they tell you to stop.
I will go the rest of the way.
When I sit, I will not fight.
When they ask for last words, I will say the names I can carry and then I will be done.
You can finish your prayer without me.
God will hear you if he wants.
The room will do what rooms do.
Hold the air.
Hold the men.
Hold the electricity or the needle or whatever we built to make an end look like a procedure.
I will be in it like a nail in wood.
Then not.

When it is finished, go outside and breathe.
See if the world is different.
It will not be.
The same cars.
The same birds on the wire.
One will lift and another will land and the line will take both like it was made for them.
Walk home if you can.
If anyone asks what I said, tell them I confessed.
If they want the details, give them none.
They have enough stones of their own to carry.
Let the river keep its secrets.
Let the desert do its work.
Let the factory doors close.
Let the carnival pack up and move on to the next town that thinks bright lights mean safety.

I am ready.
Say amen.
I will answer it.
Then I will follow the sound of my name down the hall into the small still room that finally belongs to me.