Andre Dubus begins his short story Killings at the cemetery where
his main protagonist, Matt Fowler, Matt’s wife, Ruth, and his oldest son Steve,
have just buried Frank, the youngest of the Fowler’s three children—the baby of
the family. As the story proceeds, Matt discusses an as-yet-to-be-introduced
character who one can quickly surmise is responsible for Frank’s death. Matt
visits with an obviously close friend, Willis, and the two engage in a
conversation that clearly revolves around this unidentified figure, whose
presence among the town’s citizenry obviously greatly upsets Matt and Ruth. The
interaction between Matt and Willis begins with the former commenting, “He
walks around the Goddamn streets.” In this small New England town, sightings of
the man Matt and Ruth hold responsible for their youngest child’s death are
frequent and inevitable. Additionally, Matt and Willis lament the deterioration
of the town, with crime apparently rising: “. . .we got junkies here now too.”
In short, Dubus has quickly depicted the decline of a town and of one
particular family suffering the loss of their son and the continued freedom of
the man they hold responsible. As the opening passages come to an end, it is
revealed that Matt is contemplating taking the law into his own hands to avenge
Frank’s death. It is now that Dubus employs his first flashback.
The second part of Killings describes the life of Richard Strout,
a once-promising athlete who was failing in school and whose prospects were,
once the possibility of professional sports was eliminated, limited at best.
This biographical detail leads directly to the flashback. Strout is depicted as
a thug, a ne'er-do-well with tendencies towards violence:
“One night he beat Frank. Frank was living at home and waiting for
September, for graduate school in economics, and working as a lifeguard at
Salisbury Beach, where he met Mary Ann Strout, in her first month of
separation.”
As Frank explains his wounds later that evening to his parent, it is clear
that Dubus is using this flashback to provide the necessary background for the
reader to understand the opening scene at the cemetery. The flashback sets the
tone for the history of tension between Frank and Richard Strout. Absent this
background information, the anguish tearing at the Fowlers and Matt and Ruth’s
desire for revenge would be missing. The tone of the story would be confused,
with the reader left to surmise the context in which everything that preceded
this flashback took place. We now know that Frank is involved with the young,
divorced mother whose ex-husband is the violent, oft-drunk Richard Strout, and
that Richard has physically beaten Frank in at least one instance prior to the
latter’s eventual death. And Mary Ann is four years older than Frank,
contributing to Matt's and particularly Ruth’s disdain for the relationship.
Finally, both Richard and Mary Ann’s history of extramarital liaisons further
complicates the picture.
Dubus continues to use flashbacks to fill in the gaps, to illuminate the
extent to which Matt and Ruth contended with what they believed could lead to
negative consequences. Matt is the more forgiving, a man understanding his
grown son’s biological and emotional demands. Ruth, the protective mother, is
far more wary of Frank and Mary Ann’s relationship. Another flashback describes
Matt and Frank going to a baseball game at Boston’s Fenway Park, the long drive
an opportunity for Matt to talk to his son about the difficulties of such a
young person becoming engaged in such a serious relationship, his plans for the
future potentially impeded by such an entanglement. All of this builds the
foundation for the act of revenge to follow. Dubus is meticulously establishing
the inherent goodness of the Fowlers and the innate evil lurking in the heart
of the story’s
antagonist, Richard Strout. These flashback sequences are
immediately followed by the scene of Richard shooting Frank, another flashback
sequence, and one that illuminates the depravity of Richard’s nature. The
passage begins, “Richard Strout shot Frank in front of the boys. They were
sitting on the living room floor watching television. . .Strout came in the
front door and shot Frank twice in the chest and once in the face with a 9 mm
automatic.”
By providing these flashbacks, Dubus sets a very ominous tone and compels
the reader to be silent and acquiescent witnesses to the act of vengeance that
follows. Certainly, the reader could sympathize with Matt and Ruth’s situation
without the flashback scenes, but the story would be empty without them. We are
presented with human beings whose lives are tragically torn apart, and without
the details provided in the flashback sequences, the reader would be bereft of
the emotional baggage that places him or her squarely in the Fowlers' camp.
Questions of revenge and of vigilantism provide the grist for many a
contentious debate. By depicting Frank in almost angelic terms while portraying
his killer as violent and seemingly beyond redemption, Dubus allows for the
complicity of the reader in the vigilantism that provides the story’s climactic
sequence.
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