Print Miguel Guitterez, twenty-two in town running the water lines down from Miami. It turns out he was American, naturalized. He’d been here as a political refugee for three years, came over on a make-shift raft. A few weeks later, there was another story about the kid's family in Cuba. They weren’t allowed to give a statement to American media, but their State Department called the killing an outrage and demanded justice. The whole thing got lost in the tension about the nukes on the island, and I never heard anything else about it.”

 

She continued to stare, mouth open, a look of horror in her eyes.

 

“I’m not crazy,” he said, mainly just to fill the silence.

 

“You killed him?”

 

George watched out the windshield, his eyes seeing the traffic pattern, but his mind not registering it. Almost fifty years had passed, and he hadn’t said a single word about that incident to anyone other than his own reflection. I thought confession was supposed to make you feel better. So how come I still feel like shit? How come I still feel like I shouldn’t have said anything, maybe I should’ve told her that I might be a hell of a lot sicker than she thinks. How come I couldn’t just keep my mouth shut and take it to the grave?

 

He looked over to her. She looked like he’d just told her he killed someone. “I always felt really bad about it, you know. I never turned myself in because I’m scared of jail, but don’t think I didn’t suffer. They say you need to go to jail to be punished for your crimes, and if you don’t get caught then you’re a free man. But they don’t know what it feels like to carry that regret and pain for the rest of your life; they don’t know that there’s no worse punishment than that. I’d have turned myself in the very next morning if jail would’ve taken away the memories of that night, the hatred I felt for that guy because of what his country was doing. That’s been the worst. I’d give anything for it to be gone. I still hurt everyday from that.”

 

He’d felt tired for the last week, but the added weight of his confessed guilt nearly crushed him. His chest felt heavy, his shoulders drooped. He expended all his energy just keeping his hands on the wheel and steering the big truck down Route 1.

 

“You’re probably scared of me now,” he continued, the confession sapping his body of its remaining strength, “like at any minute I’ll loose my temper and hurt you. You’ll probably lose sleep thinking about laying in bed next to a killer, but I’m really not dangerous. Please don’t leave,”

 

“George,” she interrupted. “Stop it. I’d have noticed in the last forty-two years if you were dangerous, and I’m not going to lose no sleep over this, and I’m certainly not going anywhere. Where would I go? I’ve lived my whole life for you, I ain’t about to start over now. Nothing you did that long ago is going to change what we’ve had ever since. I’m just surprised you carried this for so long. I wish you told me sooner, we could’ve talked about it and maybe you’d have felt better.”

 

“So you’re okay with this?” George asked.

 

“I wouldn’t say that, you killed somebody, of course that bothers me. But I’m not going to worry about my own safety around you. I don’t think you’re dangerous, it sounds like you just let your temper get the best of you. I remember what it was like back then. I was scared all the time thinking we were going to have a nuclear war. Those missiles would’ve been here so fast all these shelters everyone had would’ve been useless. There’s no way anyone would’ve made it in time. I remember hating the Cubans with everything inside me. I remember wishing the people who made the important decisions for us would find a way to sneak in that country and kill the ones making the important decisions for them. I understand how you felt, because I felt the same way. I don’t think I could have killed anyone though, but you were in the Navy; you were trained to kill. That probably had something to do with it, right?”

 

“I guess,” George said. His stomach began turning on him,