Vox Clamantis In Deserto

Snowden Wright

On the day they were found dead in their home, some of us were in French class, where we learned words like la peur and la honte but none we could use to state our own; some of us were at the gym, which stank of sweat and rang of grit teeth; some of us were in Reed Hall, that place of eyes gone red and nights viewed as day, where we flipped through books held by hands that shook as though cold; and the rest of us, our dire throng of boys and men, were at Five Olde, round of drinks in hand—shot glass or two of scotch, of gin, pint glass or two of Bud, of Coors—next to stools sat on by girls whom none of us but those who’d been caught would deem a catch, our mouths fraught with smiles and filled chock of joke, as we had not yet heard that a man and wife, two of our school’s profs, were killed the past night, were slain in their beds, were found dead in their home.
…..They who did them in left one clue.  On the walls of the man and wife’s home, writ red with blood, were smeared two words, “Death kills.”  That the words seemed those of a child, that they made no sense but rhymed mad with the act, led the cops to the doors of the town’s young, the town’s passed by, the town’s poor and out of luck.  We, the brains of our school, the strength of its teams, were this side of blame.  We, the frosh and the sophs, were in the clear.  We, as ones learnt of book and sound of mind, were pure, safe, out of reach.  Our doors were not knocked, our lives were not changed.  Now, years long past, we still hold that much true.
…..As the news teams came to town, mikes in hand, cheeks cast in sad hues, we heard the facts of the two profs’ lives cut so short by the knives found in a bush near their house.  The dead man had taught of the past at our school.  For nine years, he told us tales of Rome felled by its might, of myths Greek and gods’ wrath, of a world lost to time and lack of heed.  “Good class,” said one kid.  “A’s all round.”  The dead wife had taught of cents in flux, the trade of stocks and bonds, cash made a scale of one’s worth, the rise and fall of the yen.  “This one day she wore a blouse cut low.  I mean, real low,” said some kid with a wink.  “So now, God damn it, I won’t get the chance to tap that.”  He shook his head at us.  “Those tits, man.”
…..At that time and still to this day, we asked all we knew for the whats, hows, whos, whens, and whys of the two profs reaped grim, but few could tell us things that held weight.  Tom, the frat guy, spoke of the night he saw them in front of the Hop.  “They kissed like they were in a film.  I could have cried,” he said with his then beer gut.  “But next I saw it was not his wife he kissed.  No, this girl was young,” he said with his now bald head.  “She went to our school, I swear.  Sat next to me in ‘Rocks for Jocks.’”  Chris, the rich one, took her course his first year.  “What was she like?  This one time she took me out for drinks,” he told us.  “She said she’d like to touch me down there, no joke.  I told her fat chance.  Don’t dip the wick, you know.”  Matt, who has now quit the booze and found the Lord, told us of their hearts that beat no more.  “They gave love to all those they touched,” he said.  “I was touched by their love, as I am by God’s.”
…..The cops found a trail of blood in the halls between two dorms, Mass Row and the Gold Coast.  We feared the perps, they who snuffed such bright flames, were hid in the depths of our school or holed up in one of our rooms, set to kill once more.  Folks from home, our kith and our kin, were scared for us, but they did not know of our cure for the pain, our flight from the real.  They did not know our taste for pills and lust and smoke.  They did not know our days of squint eyes, our nights all blacked out.  “No, Mom, no, Dad,” we lied.  “I’m well.  I go to class.  I am safe from hurt.”  Jeff, the man who cleaned throw up from our dorms, told the cops he had cut his hand last week, shed blood on the floor and left the red trace.  His tale gave our lies truth and, for a time, took us out of harm’s reach.
…..On the day the cops caught the two who’d dealt the deaths, some of us were on the Green, spurned by the day’s light, wrung out by the night last; some of us were in Food Court, plates of raw eggs and dry toast in front of our closed mouths; some of us were next to Main Street, slumped on a bench with our damp heads in hand.  We learned how the two of them, who were in high school and lived near our town, planned the deaths of the man and wife.  They bought a pair of stun guns through the web and found knives in a tool shed.  They dug graves near a dried lake.  They dressed in black, cut the phone line, and kicked through the door on the night of dread fate.
…..They stabbed the man in his back, not once, not twice, but eight foul times.  His screams were wet from the blood in his lungs: He was not stabbed to death but drowned into that big sleep.  They slit the wife’s throat and crushed her skull with their blades’ blunt ends.  The next day, they searched St. Jude Books in the state next door for guides on how to live with their deeds, how men of war cope with the deaths they have wrought.  While at the store, they were seized by the law.  Their wrists were cuffed by cold, gray bands, their guilt charged by the red, the white, the blue.  Now, years from the fact, they are in jail for life.
…..“It’s a house of cards.  Took me years to build my life and I just blew it down,” said one of them through his bars.  “I can’t build it back up now.”
…..Of course, we mourn the man and wife to this day.  Of course, we feel the loss of the school yet, the gloom of the town still.  We ask those who were there, then as well as now, the one thing we do not know.  Why?  For years since the deaths and for years to come, we will ask that one thing whose truth we can’t find.  We will search in texts and dig through graves.  We will find no clues.  We will find no whys.  The two of them, as our school claims in a dead tongue, were but a voice cried in the woods.  Once heard, now mute.
–

Snowden Wright holds a BA from Dartmouth College and an MFA from Columbia University. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming at TheRumpus.net, The L Magazine, Hamptons, Gotham, Esquire.com, and Nerve.com. He lives in New York City.

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