“Well, I do,” Jim said. “I think the people who are smart enough should make the choice.” He waved his arm to take in the four of us. “People like us.”
“No way,” I said. “I don’t want that kind of power over anybody else, and I sure don’t want other people having that kind of power over me. I’d be happy just being able to make my own decisions.”
“Definitely,” Louise said. “People have to make their own decisions, and as long as those decisions don’t interfere with the rights of others, we have to respect them.”
“I don’t,” Jim said. “I don’t respect them at all. If they aren’t going to be decent parents, we shouldn’t let ’em breed. It’s just that simple.”
We all knew there was no point in arguing further, so we dropped the topic and moved on.
After the movie, I gave Louise a ride home. On the way we ended up talking about individual rights, the limits of personal freedom and responsibility, what we each thought good governments should do, and on and on. We kept talking in her living room, long into the night, and when our hands accidentally touched around two A.M., we held them tightly. I had never known how much power could come from one small hand until that moment. I was on fire, almost giddy from that small touch. Louise’s mother came down and kicked me out a little while later.
Louise and I didn’t kiss that night, but as I looked her in the eyes at the door, I knew one day we would. It took a whole month more for me to work up the courage, a month in which I found an excuse to sit alone with her for at least a few minutes almost every day. By the time we kissed, we knew we belonged together.
* * *
After my shower, I threw a few days’ worth of clothes into my duffel bag, which by default I kept loaded with my toiletries kit, a specially encrypted cell phone, a leather indoor/outdoor basketball, and some workout clothes in a smaller gym bag that fit inside the duffel. I added some color printouts of photos of Jim the papers had run in the days right before the execution. Last to go in was an old favorite, an over-and-under, sawed-off Winchester shotgun I hoped I wouldn’t need. R.C. was already gone. I gathered up Greg, and we headed out.
The Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area of North Carolina had for decades been merging into a single population center, and today almost every major link between the cities showed the typical artifacts of modern American suburban sprawl: well-maintained roads, clumps of fast-food restaurants yelling for your attention, malls spaced so you were never far from one, and the occasional outlet stores claiming unheard-of bargains. Every such sprawl also has its darker arteries, where everything takes a step down and the businesses cater to the appetites that every such area inevitably both has and feels obliged to deny. The center of the run along the top of the triangle between Durham and Raleigh was one such route. Here you could still find car lots that would accept cash and forget to report the transaction, restaurants with truly cheap food for those brave enough to eat it, discount gas you’d put only in cars you didn’t plan to keep long, check-cashing places with rates that would embarrass loan sharks and a shotgun always in sight behind the wire mesh, and older ranch homes set back from the road with neon signs noting they were open until two A.M. and offered all-girl companionship.
When we stopped at the first one, a white clapboard joint with no name I’d ever known and simply a red neon “Massage” sign out front, Greg asked, “Why are we stopping at this place?”
“What’s the first thing a man will want when he gets out of jail?” I said.
“I do not know. We fed Peterson and provided him shelter.”
“Have you ever dealt with large groups of males stuck with only males for long periods of time?”
“Of course,” Greg said. “Sex. We failed to provide it. We take care of this appetite between engagements with the legions we use on other planets, but we failed to do so with Peterson.”