"You are a grown boy now. You must stop playing as a child. Your father. Without him you will have to be the man in the house. You must be brave."

"No, Mother." My chest aches.

"There will be a great deal of work now, more than any child should know. But we have no choice. You must accept that God has chosen to take him from us, that you are all the man I have to help me."

"No, Mother."

"Now you are a man and you must put away the things of a child."

Eyes streaming, I am barely able to straighten, leaning wearily against the doorjamb, tears rippling from my face down to my shirt, wetting it cold where it had just begun to dry. I wipe my eyes and see my mother reaching for me, smiling, and I recoil along the hall, then stumble down the stairs, down through the sitting room, the kitchen, down, down to the milk, splashing through it to the dollhouse, and in there, crammed and doubled, Sarah. And in the wicker chest, Meg. The toys not on the floor for Sarah to play with, but taken out so Meg could be put in. And both of them, their stomachs slashed open, stuffed with sawdust, their eyes rolled up like dolls' eyes.

The police are knocking at the side door, pounding, calling out who they are, but I am powerless to let them in. They crash through the door, their rubber raincoats dripping as they stare down at me.

"The milk," I say.

They do not understand. I wait, standing in the milk, listening to the rain pelting on the windows while they come to see what is in the dollhouse and in the wicker chest, while they go upstairs to my mother and then return so I can tell them again, "The milk." But they still do not understand.

"She killed them, of course," one man says. "But I don't see why the milk."

Only when they speak to the neighbors down the road and learn how she came to them, needing the cans of milk, insisting that she carry them herself to the car, the agony she was in as she carried them, only when they find the empty cans and the knife in a stall in the barn, can I say, "The milk. The blood. There was so much blood, you know. She needed to deny it, so she washed it away with milk, purified it, started the dairy again. You see, there was so much blood."

That autumn we lived in a house in the country, my mother's house, the house I was raised in. I have been to the village, struck even more by how nothing in it has changed, yet everything has, because I am older now, seeing it differently. It is as though I am both here now and back then, at once with the mind of a boy and a man.

For the next ten years, I worked exclusively on book-length fiction. After finishing First Blood in 1971, I wrote several different types of novels, including a pursuit novel, Testament, a non-supernatural horror novel, The Totem, and a historical western, Last Reveille. Simultaneously, I continued to commit myself to teaching. There wasn't time for short fiction. Or energy – whenever I did sit down to attempt a short story, I found the effort frustratingly difficult. My block was finally broken in 1981 with "The Partnership." My inspiration for the story was a graduating senior who was worried about his job prospects. He did well, as it turned out, but I got to thinking about the lengths that some graduates might go to land a job.

The Partnership

Sure, it was cold-blooded, but there didn't seem another way. MacKenzie had spent months considering alternatives. He'd tried to buy his partner out, but Dolan had refused. Well, not exactly. Dolan's first response had been to laugh and say, "I wouldn't let you have the satisfaction." When MacKenzie kept insisting, Dolan's next response was, "Sure, I'll let you buy me out. All it takes is a million dollars." Dolan might as well have wanted ten. MacKenzie couldn't raise a million, even half a million or a quarter, and he knew that Dolan knew that.

It was typical. MacKenzie couldn't say "Good morning" without Dolan's disagreeing. If MacKenzie bought a car, Dolan bought a bigger, more expensive one, and just to rub the salt in, Dolan bragged about the deal he got. And if MacKenzie took his wife and children on vacation to Bermuda, Dolan told him that Bermuda wasn't anything compared to Mazatlan where Dolan took his wife and kids.

The two men argued constantly. They favored different football teams. Their taste in food was wildly different (lamb chops versus corned beef). When MacKenzie took up golf, his partner was suddenly playing tennis, pointing out that golf was just a game while tennis, in addition, was good exercise. But Dolan, even with his so-called exercise, was overweight. MacKenzie, on the other hand, was trim, but Dolan always made remarks about the hairpiece MacKenzie wore.

It was impossible. A Scotsman trying to do business with an Irishman, MacKenzie should have known their relationship would never work. But at the start, they'd been rival builders, each attempting to outbid the other for construction jobs and losing money in the process. So they'd formed a partnership. Together they were more successful than they'd ever been independently. Still trying to outdo each other, one would think of ways to turn a greater profit, and the other would feel challenged to be twice as clever. They cut costs by mixing too much gravel with the concrete, by installing low-grade pipes and sub-spec insulation. They kept special books for the IRS.

MacKenzie-Dolan Enterprises. Oh, the two of them were enterprising all right. But they couldn't bear to talk to each another. They tried to solve that problem by dividing work so MacKenzie ran the office and Dolan went out trouble-shooting. For a time, that did the trick. But after all, they had to meet to make decisions. Although they saw each other less, they saved their tension up and aggravated each other more.

To make things worse, their wives became good friends. The women were constantly organizing barbecues and swimming parties. Both men didn't dare argue at these get-togethers. If they did, they heard about it later from their wives.

"I hate that guy. He bugs me at the office, and he makes me sick at parties."

"You just listen to me," MacKenzie's wife said. "Vickie Dolan's my friend, and I won't have your childish antics ruining that friendship. I'll be sleeping on the couch tonight."

So both men braced their shoulders, staring toward the distance or peering inside their highball glasses (Scotch opposed to Irish whiskey) while their wives exchanged new recipes.

What finally caused all the trouble was that Dolan started making threats. "I wonder what the government would do if someone let them know about your special way of keeping books?"

MacKenzie replied, "And what about the sub-spec plumbing and the extra gravel in the concrete? You're the one responsible for that."

"The judge would simply fine me," Dolan quickly answered. "Now the IRS, that's a different kettle. If the tax man knew you were keeping separate books, he'd lock you in a dungeon where I'd never have to see your ugly puss."

MacKenzie stared at Dolan and decided there wasn't another choice. He'd tried to do the right thing, but his partner wouldn't sell. His partner even planned to turn him in and take the business for himself. There wasn't any way around it. This was self-defense.

The man was waiting at the monkey cage. A tall, thin, friendly-looking fellow, he was young and blond. He wore a tailored, light-blue jogging suit. He was eating peanuts.

At the water fountain, leaning down to drink, MacKenzie glanced around. The zoo was crowded. Noon, a sunny weekday. People on their lunchbreaks sat on benches, munching sandwiches. Others strolled among the cages. There were children, mothers, old folks playing checkers. MacKenzie heard tinny music from an organ grinder, muffled conversations, strident chattering and chirping. He was satisfied that no one paid attention to him, so he wiped some water from his mouth and walked over to the monkey cage.