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part one: The First Message, 9♦, 10♦, J♦, Q♦, K♦ 

Summary: 9♦ the barefoot girl  

Ed pays an early-morning visit to 6 Macedoni Street, a middle-class home, the third address on the card. A beautiful barefoot girl comes out and takes off on a run. Ed judges her age to be fifteen and suppresses his attraction to her. He follows her on one of her runs to figure out what his message to her will be. He introduces himself, but she has already recognized him from the newspaper article on the bank robbery. Noting their age difference, she asks if he’s a pervert. Ed interprets her shyness as low self-esteem. Ed attends one of the Saturday track meets that she competes in. Her family calls her Sophie. She runs her race in a worn-out pair of running shoes and fails to win. Ed receives inspiration for the message he should deliver. 

Summary: 10♦ the shoe box  

The next Saturday morning, Ed knocks on Sophie’s door with a shoe box. He tells her father he has a delivery for Sophie and that he hopes they are the right size. Her father accepts the box with a puzzled expression because he can feel that the box is empty. At the meet, Sophie runs barefoot. She falls after one lap and makes up the distance, running with abandon and almost overtaking the lead runner. At the finish line, she only feels the joy of running and not the disappointment of defeat. 

Summary: J♦ another stupid human  

Sophie thanks Ed for encouraging her to run barefoot. Her shyness is gone and she can look Ed in the eye as they talk. He tells her she has beauty to further reinforce her confidence. Sophie asks Ed if he is a saint and he replies no, he’s just a regular, unimportant human. 

Summary: Q♦ edgar street revisited  

Ed feels ready to face the rapist on Edgar Street. Ed walks into the house but stops at the door to the bedroom. Their young girl Angelina comes out of her room crying and asks Ed in a whisper whether he is there to save her mother and her. He says he is, but he can’t bring himself to confront the man and ends up leaving. At home, he gets a phone call telling him to check his mailbox. Ed finds a gun there. 

Summary: K♦ murder at the cathedral  

The gun has only one bullet. Ed tries to talk himself out of pursuing the matter any further, but he ends up worrying that the voice on the phone will come for him if he doesn’t take action. He puts on music for inspiration and spends a sleepless night trying to talk himself into murder. The next day he asks his boss to allow him the use of his cab after hours. When his boss erupts in irritation, Ed won’t take no for an answer and quietly reminds him of the overtime he puts in without complaint. That evening, Ed dissolves sleeping pills in a flask of vodka. With the gun in his pocket, he drives to the pubs at closing time and offers the drunk rapist a free ride home. Ed offers him the drugged vodka, which the man drinks, falling asleep. Ed bypasses Edgar Street and heads out of town to a rocky summit called the Cathedral. 

Ed stops the cab, hits the man in the face with the gun to wake him, and orders him to get out of the vehicle. Ed walks him to the edge of the cliff at gunpoint and then loses his nerve. The man collapses to the ground and falls asleep again. Ed addresses the reader, asking what he should do. At dawn, Ed tells the rapist he’s going to die for what he does to his wife. The man begs for his life, admits to his crimes, and promises to stop. Ed feels peace and pulls the trigger, the gun again feeling soft and warm in his hand. 

Analysis of 9♦, 10♦, J♦, Q♦, K♦ 

Ed’s discovery that his next mission at Macedoni Street involves a beautiful fifteen-year-old athlete puts him in a quandary. He’s sensitive to social norms and holds women in high regard. Dealing with an underage teen requires avoiding even the hint of impropriety. When Ed and Sophie do meet face to face, she nervously asks him if he’s a pervert, acknowledging the difference in their ages. He notes her withdrawal from people and figures out a way to bolster her self-worth in a way that validates her own choices. The empty shoebox is Ed’s message encouraging Sophie to compete just like she trains, barefoot. The fact that he goes through her father shows his respect for Sophie and her family’s boundaries. Sophie asks Ed if he’s a saint because she associates selfless good deeds with godliness. In response, Ed identifies himself with flawed humanity, no better or worse. 

Ed still has no plan to stop the Edgar Street rapist the night he enters the house. Angelina asks him to commit to saving her and her mother. When he fails to accomplish his mission, the gun is delivered to his mailbox that same night, suggesting that someone monitors all of Ed’s doing. A phone call alerts Ed and he feels the weight of the caller’s expectations. Ed muses if he’s more afraid of killing the rapist or of what might happen if he fails to kill him. That the gun has only one bullet means he must not miss. As the tension builds for Ed, he listens to the Proclaimers’ “Five Hundred Miles,” a rousing song of a person who would do anything for his beloved. The next morning, he is uncharacteristically assertive with his boss. Not only does Ed not back down when his boss ridicules his request to use his cab after hours, but Ed calmly explains that he should reward Ed for working illegal overtime. The challenges to Ed’s status quo from the missions he has embraced are changing him into a stronger individual despite himself.  

Ed plans to commit the murder in the dead of night on a rocky prominence outside the town called the Cathedral, the religious significance blessing his endeavor. His savvy planning results in easily getting the rapist into his cab and keeping him there for the ride through the drugged alcohol. Once Ed arrives at the Cathedral, he fiercely debates with himself. Ed breaks the convention of dramatic realism called the fourth wall by addressing the reader. Typically, an author carefully preserves the distinction between the imaginary world and the audience’s world. The so-called fourth wall supports the suspension of disbelief that an audience brings to creative work. Ed as the narrator breaches the wall between himself and the reader to put the reader into his shoes and force a judgment on the murder he is contemplating. No reasonable person would want to face the consequences of a vigilante act no matter how much they want to see justice done. “Five Hundred Miles” plays again in Ed’s head and he worries that the song will forever be associated with the murder. The song represents a source of meaning and connection to a larger consciousness than his own which can inspire heroic concepts. 

Ed dominates the big rapist so convincingly that he seems capable of murder. Ed the avenger comes right to the edge of a criminal solution. He extracts a full confession from the man, who owns that he has been raping his wife, and recognizes the fear for his life that he now feels is the same as his wife feels every night. Before he pulls the trigger Ed says, “a moment of peace shatters me.” The oxymoron of a peace that shatters furthers the suspense as it conveys a settled conviction that breaks Ed down. The reader must wait to find out the decision that Ed makes at this moment. The gun again turns surreal in Ed’s hand, its cold, deadly form transformed into a skin-like softness, merging with his hand, becoming an extension of himself.

Previous section part one: The First Message, 5♦, 6♦, 7♦, 8♦ Next section part two: The Stones of Home, A♣, 2♣, 3♣, 4♣, 5 ♣, 6♣

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