Once it had been established that Kennedy was well and truly dead, I didn’t know what to think anymore. Not only had the guy who’d killed him been incredibly successful, but he’d cast a giant shadow over what I’d done. My feeling of being famous had faded away during the afternoon and now I was confused. I thought about taking to the road. But I knew that wouldn’t get me far. A guy like me, more than six feet tall, calls attention to himself. I could take my grandfather’s car and take off but it was the kind of station wagon that guzzled gas and I didn’t have any money. I searched the whole house. It amused me to put myself in my grandparents’ place and imagine where they might have stashed their savings. The old man didn’t trust banks enough to leave all his money in them. What with the farm and his work for the Department of Public Roads, he must surely have put aside a tidy sum. I started by going and taking a look at his wallet. It was inside his jacket pocket. I didn’t feel good about doing that. When my grandfather came back from his shopping, I’d find myself in one hell of a dilemma. Either I let him find my grandmother’s body with all the pain and resentment that would cause him, or I executed him too. I know that after a month or two he would have seen my grandmother’s death as a liberation, but like any good slave he was also in love with his chains.
As the car was coming up in back of the house, I came to the conclusion that I was going to cause him a terrible amount of pain and I couldn’t bear that. I saw him moving along the little track with that smug air that he had. He gave me a little wave to tell me he was pleased to see me, then slowed down some more to enter the garage. Once parked, he got slowly out of the car, stretched, then walked to the trunk and opened it by lowering the tailgate. He was tempted to turn to ask me for help but I didn’t give him time. I shot him twice in the back. Those words of his came back into my mind: “Be careful, Al, with that kind of caliber, don’t shoot at big animals, it wouldn’t kill them, it’d only make them suffer, unless you get them in the head.” I rushed to him. He’d fallen to his knees, his head on the tailgate of the car. I shot him twice in the head. He was dead. I walked back outside to calm down. Killing my grandmother had taken the edge off my anger, but killing the old man made things worse again. Just then, the dog arrived to distract me from my dark thoughts. What was going to become of that poor old mutt now? He went and vaguely sniffed my grandfather’s body, then gave me a cautious look and dropped onto the concrete floor of the garage. I wondered again what I was going to do with him. “Shit, Bobby,” I said, “I can’t solve every problem in the world.” I was expecting at least a gleam of gratitude in his eyes. Nothing. I went back outside.