three second bursts the tankers had been taught. When it was over, the satisfaction he felt was electric. "Something happened to us a long time ago, Drema," he said, knowing she could have no more idea what he meant by that than he did. Still, he felt better speaking the words, convinced of their truth in the way a man waking can understand the rightness of things left behind in a poorly remembered dream. "Do you think people change?" she asked in a whisper, her hand moving towards the pistol. He watched the bones of her wrist and arm under the paint of shadowed skin. When she gripped the gun firm ly in her fist and placed the barrel between her lips she seemed to part from herself, dividing the seconds into true slowness through the simple act of physical will. He admired her strength-too well he realized. Too well to let her take the burden from him. He unwrapped her fingers from around the chamber one by one and held the pistol, welcoming the deadly weight of it as the sum total of whatever he believed was the correct end of right and wrong. Time did not stop, though he wished it might. "I used to love you," he said, measuring the words for their truth before continuing. "But you mean nothing to me now. Cab is dead and God is quiet. I can't kill for something I don't believe in any more. And I'm not letting you do it either." She did not begin crying until he started the truck and pulled back towards the road to take her home. By then he did not understand the wetness on her face or the smallness of her suffering because he raged with a new conviction. The name Christ was on his lips. And as he spoke the name a certain joy broke through his heart, a knowledge that only the best should be granted the favor of dying forsaken. f
134 I CHARLES DODD WHITE