The Ballad of James McKenna

Day Fourteen: Introspection

Day Fourteen
         Introspection
Word Count: 1016

Jimmy strolled through Central Park, because that was the only thing that seemed to clear his head anymore.

It was something odd for him, this feeling of floating, stranded in the middle of nowhere, with no one and nothing to turn to. It was a shifting, quaking tumultuousness, like he just couldn't get his feet under him anymore. He was normally a pretty solid man, a man of even tempers and cool-headed understanding. Very little got to him, really, that he couldn't later bring under control with some quiet contemplation and hours at his work desk.

But lately, ever since he'd seen the body of poor Eugenie Baker, whose brother hadn't bothered to look for her while she was being eviscerated, torn limb from limb, her heart ripped from her chest and stolen away from her, ever since then he'd been unable to bring quiescence to his troubled soul. "I assumed she was off fuckin' her way through half the town. Girl'd let anyfin' into her cunt." These words spun through his head, the girl's brother spitting them out (along with most of his lunch), chewing in between each word, which then faded into him, pumping and thrusting his way into his half-sister, whiskey on his breath and hand over her mouth. Her eyes, dark and soulful, wide with fear. Jimmy had been certain the bastard had raped her. They always did.

He couldn't rid himself of the image. Nor could he prevent it from shifting once more to a knife in the dark, quick and deadly, flashing briefly in the light of hissing gas lamps, dancing along Eugenie's flesh. Her eyes, bright with terror, straining at the night, pleading with her attacker. She must have known who he was, must have known what was in store for her. Her screams, bloodcurdling and spectacularly ignored, fading into a gurgle and then, finally, a last sigh as she slipped into merciful death.

There were ten Eugenie's now, but Jimmy couldn't help but see her. She was the youngest of the Tourist's victims, only eighteen, fresh and beautiful and charming. He could see it in her smile, her bright teeth in the picture on file with the police department. She'd been scanned at age sixteen, her curls bouncing and gleaming in the light, the bright light of freedom gleaming in her eyes. Six years of slavery slowly fading away, terror giving way to cautious excitement about the world ahead.

Jimmy might well have fallen a little in love with that smile, the shy optimism in her dark eyes. She had been beautiful. But her smile had been more so.

He heard screaming when he slept, and saw her frightened gaze when he woke, first her brother brutally raping her and calling her slut, Jezebel, Whore of Babylon, always morphing into a knife in the darkness and blood flying through the night. There were times he would awaken in the morning with her name on his lips and tears in his eyes. He'd turned to his tools, his machines, his solace, but he saw only parts and cogs. His song was gone, lost in the maelstrom of his incomprehensible feelings, and no matter how hard he tried, he could not erase the images that played in his mind's eye, an infinite loop of rape and murder and a shy smile, every day and every night. And when he pulled out his fiddle, the strings seamed only to scream and to cry as Eugenie did. The music he pulled from his instrument reflected his turmoil; striking dissonance and shrieking wails dissipating into a dangerous nothing.

He had not touched his fiddle since then. Not since the night after Jacob had cursed him, had reminded him that he was alone in this world. That none but he would have seen the shy confidence blooming in a young Negro woman's eye, or imagined the beautiful radiance of her smile as she stared down at a child or a grandchild. That no one but he (and possibly Nate, though his partner certainly seemed capable of handling this case with only the merest discomfort) would shed a tear for a dead Negro woman.

The sun had just peeked its way above the horizon, painting the world emerald and sapphire. Jimmy closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, desperate to draw in just the tiniest bit of the peace that surrounded him here at dawn. Walking exhausted him, he'd found, so that he didn't have to think so much. It was only in exhaustion that Eugenie left him alone, perhaps off to haunt her half-brother or the psychopath that had murdered her. Jimmy certainly hoped so. The Tourist hadn't struck in three weeks. Nate thought it was probably due to the fact that he had a surfeit of body parts, and would not need to purchase one with a Negro's life for some time.

Jimmy hoped it was Eugenie, seeking vengeance for her stolen life. But it was precisely that hope that had driven him to such distraction. When had he ceased to be the intellectual, rational man he'd always tried so hard to be? And, deep down, he wondered...had he ever been that man, or was it simply a façade, an attempt at being a real, proper man?

Maybe he was truly a sensitive man, a poet, a romantic at heart? Perhaps his way with machines, his song, was nothing more than an expression of himself. Why else would Eugenie Baker haunt him so? Why else would he shroud himself in justice and societal norms, but to understand and control the world, to shape it into something beautiful and something seamless, its song an unending cadenza?

Jimmy breathed in again, deeply and slowly, his eyes still closed as he felt the warmth of the sun splashing across his face. The only way he was going to bring himself to himself again was to solve these crimes. Only then would the image of Eugenie Baker in his head be of her face-splitting smile and bashful eyes. An image worth loving, even if only a little bit.