Guilty

While going over some old stuff long buried in my computer, I came across this bit I'd all but forgotten, something I'd written for my novel "In a Cat's Eye" but there wasn't room enough to include it so I left it out. I know blog posts are supposed to be brief, but this will be a long one. The narrator is an emotionally detached, psychologically fragmented young man of limited intellect. He's been trying to track down a killer, and incriminated himself in the process.

There was a fly walking upside down on the ceiling and I wished I was him instead of me. He was looking down at the detective and me sitting at the table and water was falling on the table and I thought, “That guy’s crying; he’s guilty.”

It looked like I’d finally solved the case. I thought, Great detective work, Willy.

“It was an accident,” I said. I figured my whole life was an accident and it didn’t matter anymore.

“Are you sorry?” the detective said.

I put my face in my hands and shut my eyes, because I wanted everything to go away.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“Why not try writing a letter to Cindy and tell her just how sorry you feel?”

I figured if I wrote the letter like the detective said, then I could get it over with. I didn’t see how Cindy’d ever get the letter though. The detective gave me a pen and some paper and left the room, and once I started writing I really got into it. The letter said:

Dear Cindy,

How are you? I am fine. I’m sorry I killed you. I thought it was Roy but it was me all along. The Major said I was guilty, and he’s a pretty smart guy and he’s my friend and  he never lied to me. The good news is now they won’t have to send him to the nut house because they’re sending me to prison instead. Don’t worry it’s okay. If I had asked you out sooner, you wouldn’t have taken drugs and gone out with Roy and none of this would have happened. If I had just stayed with you that night, I wouldn’t have come in through your window and killed you, because I would have been in your room with you already and I would have saved you. It doesn’t matter whether it was me or Roy that came in through the window and gave you the hot shot, because either way if I’d been there with you I wouldn’t have let anybody hurt you.

The detective says I  made Mr. Scruffy up and he isn’t real so I don’t know maybe he isn’t. All I know is I don’t want to go back to the hotel if he won’t be there anymore. It’s just as well if he isn’t real because now the police won’t take his eye out and Bessie won’t kick him out of the hotel. I never should have made him up in the first place.  None of this was his fault. Don’t worry about him because I’ll get a message to Gloria and I know she’ll take care of him and give him his cat food when I’m in prison. It’s the only place where I understand what anybody’s talking about half the time. I could always talk with you, though.

When the Major hypnotized me he said I forgot all the bad things I did. That’s probably why I can’t remember ever killing you, but if I ever did kill you, then I wouldn’t want to remember that, and I’d probably blame Roy because I don’t like him. I still think Roy gave you a hot shot, but who knows and it doesn’t make any difference now anyway.

Sometimes you have to say crazy things or people get mad at you, and I think maybe I don’t know what’s true and what isn’t sometimes. I still don’t understand all of it, but I think it’s like one time I heard somebody saying this friend of mine got fired, and I ran over to the guy’s house to make sure he was okay, and he wasn’t even burned. He said, “Don’t worry Willy nobody burned me I just lost my job that’s all.” Then he said maybe he did get burned in a way, because he lost his job and got fired. We both laughed so hard and it was funny, but I still don’t like when they say somebody got fired, because I always see a guy standing in the middle of a fire and then I can’t breathe. You can go to prison for murder if you’re guilty, but you don’t have to kill anybody, it’s bad enough if you leave somebody alone and they die. It’s like if you got fired doesn’t mean you really get burned, but in a way you do. When you do something bad you get burned, and I guess we both got burned, didn’t we, Cindy?  I know you didn’t do anything so bad, though. I don’t know who’s guilty and who isn’t anymore. You’d have to be a lawyer to figure it all out.

I almost got your statue back for you but it got broke. It’s okay and don’t worry about it.

For a long time I didn’t ask you out because I had to think I wasn’t good enough for you. Now I know you’re not the Virgin Mary and you made mistakes just like I did, but that’s okay, because it’s something we have in common. My biggest mistake was that I didn’t figure all this out until it was too late. We could have had a good life together, and it’s all my fault that it turned out the way it did.

They say I have illusions, and I guess they’re right. But you know of all the crazy things that happened, the idea of you and me and what we could have had together is the only thing that I know for sure wasn’t an illusion. It was maybe a dream that didn’t come all the way true, but it was never an illusion. Maybe we both had bad circumstances and that’s why we would have been good together.

 It’s too bad you ever had to get mixed up with me. I hope you don’t hold things too much against me and that you know I can’t help sometimes being sorry, on account of my mother was sorry when she had me. But I was never sorry when I was with you. I’ll think about you every day of my life, and think about the good times we had and I won’t be sorry about that, only that it didn’t turn out better.

 If I don’t hear back from you, then I’ll never know if you didn’t get this letter or if you just don’t want to talk to me, so Cindy if you hear me let me know. You don’t have to write a letter, just talk to me, so we can talk again like we used to. I know you’re dead, so maybe you can’t hear or talk anymore, but we might as well make the best of it and at least pretend we can still talk and you can tell me all about how things are where you are. I promise I’ll hear you even if you can’t talk anymore.

Wow this is a long letter. The detective just came in and asked if I was done yet, so I guess I am. They’re going to take me to my cell now and maybe the guys will be playing cards or something like that, and I can get away from the detective and the cop and their crazy questions. The detective’s not a bad guy, but I don’t like that cop.

Your friend,

Willy

I asked the detective if he had an envelope, and he went out to get one, and he said he had to take the letter with him so he could get the right envelope for it. I didn’t like him taking the letter, but it was no use arguing with the guy. I figured he was probably going to read it one way or another.

He was gone for a long time and then he came back and I said I thought of more things I wanted to put in the letter, but he said he mailed it already.