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Show Anting Alone Page 275 in such a brave, good-natured tone of voice, that it seemed to be the ideal thing to say at this awkward moment. She relaxed a tiny bit and felt something in her heart and stomach other than dread for the first time since embarking on this trip. She had only a couple of hours ago observed two Indian men knifing one another in the Colorado Springs bus station. She had seen and smelled the blood jetting from slashes in their red flesh. She'd seen still more blood shooting from headwounds that a policeman inflicted upon the already half-unconscious Indians in "subduing" them, to put them in the proper frame of mind for arrest and extended detention without trial. Not only Dr. Ediwne's red smell, but the flat, dead, somehow savage expression in his eyes reminded her of. the Indians and the officer. She'd been trying to deal with the memory of them all the way from the terminal today. She wanted to talk about that sanguinary scene to somebody. From looking at the two Indians she had guessed they must be brothers, possibly twins, and that made it all the more horrible. She desperately wanted to disburden herself of that scene as soon as possible before facing the equally gory people she was going to have to face in Washington, D.C., for it only added to the burden of blood she'd already been carrying around for the past couple of days: this terrible thing that all the papers had been accusing her dull-witted but (she'd always assumed) sweet cousin Spikey of doing. But she didn't even consider mentioning the Indians or the policeman or Spikey to her baby sister's English professor. He seemed to have plenty of strife on his own mind already. She decided, instead, to do the Christian thing: to swallow her own pain and try to divert the man from his pain |
