Bile rolled up in my stomach and spread out in my mouth. I started retching and caught myself. The sun beat down on my bared head like showers of rain. My skin was tight and burning hot, but it wouldn't sweat. Only in the palm of my hand holding the knife did I sweat. I had lost my hat; I didn't know where.

I could see the blond boy's bloody body lying half across his machine, blood all over the floor, all over the shapes; blood on my hands; his face all cut to pieces, one eye hanging out and wrinkled like an empty grape skin. I came to the copper shop, kept on around to the back. For a moment at the back door I stopped and steadied myself. I took the knife out and opened it and got it in a stabbing grip. Then I saw a piece of wood on the ground. I picked it up and held it in my left hand, the knife in my right.

I stepped through the door and stopped. The blond boy looked up at that instant and our gazes locked. He stuck his right hand out slowly and gripped a ball-peen hammer on his work-bench.

It was then I decided to murder him cold-bloodedly, without giving him a chance. What the hell was the matter with me, running in there to fight him? I thought. What the hell did I want to fight him for? I wanted to kill the son of a bitch and keep on living myself. I wanted to kill him so he'd know I was killing him and in such a way that he'd know he didn't have a chance. I wanted him to feel as scared and powerless and unprotected as I felt every goddamned morning I woke up. I wanted him to know how it felt to die without a chance; how it felt to look death in the face and know it was coming and know there wasn't anything he could do but sit there and take it like I had to take it from Kelly and Hank and Mac and the cracker bitch because nobody was going to help him or stop it or do anything about it at all.

The sick, scared, gone feeling left my stomach. I kept looking at him, thinking. There's one goddamned thing, you can't take your colour with you, until I felt only a cold disdain. I turned around and went out.