We Begin at the End

by Chris Whitaker

He wore a tie, his collar stiff, his shoes shined. His acceptance of place was admired by some, pitied by others. Walker, captain of a ship that did not ever leave port.

She grinned at him, looking like a kid as she did. She still had that way, vulnerable, troubled and trouble.

“Tell me again about Billy Blue Radley,” Robin said. “The way I read it he was fearless. He held up a bank then led the sheriff for a thousand miles.” “He sounds bad.” “He was looking out for his own. His men, like family.” She put a hand on his chest. “That’s our blood right there. We’re outlaws.”

There was a time when she would sing, when she was smaller, before she knew about the world.

“I just wish there was a middle, you know. Because that’s where people live. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing … sink or swim like that. Most people just tread water, and that’s enough. Because when you’re sinking, you’re pulling us down with you.”

She scooted back a little, fussed with the small bow in her hair as he watched. “Subterfuge. People see a girl and nothing else.”

“You were cursed with pathological honesty, Walk. You carry weight you don’t even see. It’s not me who Duchess looks up to, it’s you.” “No, it’s not—” “You remind her of everything good. You are the man in her life, the person that doesn’t lie or cheat or fuck people over. She doesn’t say it, but she needs you. And you can’t ever let her down, because that’d be like turning out the light.”

None of us are any one thing. We’re just a collection of the best and worst things we’ve done.

A sign promised happy hour from two till seven, Duchess wondered what kind of man visited when sun lit the sin.

Hal cracked his knuckles again. “The minister said we begin at the end. It would have made for easier years if I thought for one second Sissy was somewhere better than a small wooden box.

“Guilt is decided long before the act is committed. People just don’t realize it. They think they have a choice. They look back, play it different, sliding doors, but they never really did.”

Duchess said nothing, not wanting to fall into conversation, not wanting to lose that fire that kept her moving through each day.

Most of all she felt tired. Not from the work or the sleep, just from the wretched hatred that lived deep inside her.

“Star said you were hard. She said there was nothing soft about you, not after. She said you were a drunk. She said you didn’t go to my grandmother’s funeral.” “We begin at the end, Duchess.”

She looked down at the blood on her new yellow dress, and then down at the snow, where footprints led her eyes to white fields. She knelt once more. “We begin at the end.” She took the shotgun from beside him.

And his silence did not speak of guilt, but rather of a crushing self-hatred that burned so fierce he’d rather be punished for another’s crime than take his place in a world where the child he’d killed could not.