An Absolute Gentleman is fiction, the memoir of self-confessed serial killer Arthur Blume, in prison for killing twelve, perhaps seventeen, women. He wishes to correct the media’s distorted view of him and his mother. He juxtaposes memories of his childhood in the hands of that loving, but psychotically cruel woman, with his more recent history as aging writer and itinerant instructor, and with observations about the nature of the world—no place for any creature. Offhandedly, he slips in horrors, some of which he endured, and others, perpetrated. While he’s a nice guy, champion of the insulted and outcast, he is also a monster who will, most certainly, strike.

Arthur Blume took shape from my association with murderer Robert Weeks in the mid-eighties, from lengthy research, including consultations with police officers, detectives, and psychologists. The Afterword to An Absolute Gentleman answers some anticipated questions about the inspiration for this novel.

About the Author: Rose Marie Kinder, who writes under the pen name of R.M. Kinder, won the 2005 University of Michigan prize for a collection of short stories titled A Near-Perfect Gift. Another of her short story collections, Sweet Angel Band, was awarded the Willa Cather Award in 1991. R.M. Kinder’s prose has also appeared in Other Voices, Short Stories, and The New York Times. She holds an MFA and Ph.D. from the University of Arizona and currently resides in Warrensburg, Missouri.

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Read an excerpt from An Absolute Gentleman after the jump!

Chapter 1

Missouri 1994

Some time ago, two reporters visited me and I was as open with them as I could humanly be. They came every day for about two weeks and asked maybe a thousand questions. They seemed like nice guys, but just a little edgy. One sloshed coffee around as if I might be somewhere in the dregs. I’m no fool, so I knew they were searching for something no one else had—a slip on my part, an odd phrasing, a gesture, name. I could have toyed with them, made up corpses buried here and there. But I just answered straight. I try always to tell the truth.
Now, their account of our interviews is in the bookstore, laden with black and white photos of me at my typewriter. O-h-h-h, look at the demon creature at work. Don’t be misled by the triviality of its habits or the blandness of its gaze. They write that they “occasionally saw glimpses of the monster within.” The monster they expected me to be. I remember them pretty well, feature by feature, movement by movement, and they never behaved as if they were dealing with something fearful or distasteful. I liked them overall. They seemed compassionate and kind, and won me over. If they saw something they didn’t like, they were looking for it.
The reporters were unfair to me, but I understand that they wanted their book to do well, and I was their material. They shifted me to fit their needs—a kind of early death, dying by hyperbole. They wanted me not to be boring. Be a real monster, they implored silently. Please. Less than a monster will not sell our book.
We may be spectacular in our dreams, but our doings often diminish us.

* * *

They’ve butchered my mother in their depiction of her. I need to rectify that.

* * *

So, I’m going to tell my own story; my truth. I lived it. I know it best. If anyone’s words are going to unravel me, let them be mine. That’s justice. Unadorned truth from me to you.
Bluntly—people believe I’m guilty of killing at least eleven women, and perhaps seventeen of them. They think I’m a case of “arrested development,” a “child of horrific abuse,” a “tortured, twisted psyche.”
They’re wrong. I am a boring man, an observer. Deviancy in any species fascinates me, particularly if the deviancy is an act of true choice. I would be enthralled with my own nature if it held anything so grounded in will as defiance.

* * * (page 16-17)

I knew a woman once who took her son for a stroll. They lived on land that was only planted when neighboring farmers leased land from the mother. It was an attractive farm, cut through with a creek and spotted with walnut, oak, hickory, and other huge trees. A narrow wooden bridge spanned the creek. There were no side railings. Sometimes, when the mother paused at the highest end, the little boy held his breath.
This particular day, she didn’t stride onto the bridge at all, but walked under the trees shading the creek. The boy was careful to stay a little behind her. When she moved into a clearing, he followed.
“Look there,” she said, and pointed at vines growing up the base of a trunk. He saw the leaves trembling in the breeze. He didn’t know what he was to respond, so he said nothing.
“You see how that vine grows around the tree? It’s choking the tree, that’s what it’s doing.” She stared at him as if to verify that he understood. She shook her head. “Just choking the tree.”
He nodded.
“Someone should pull it off, shouldn’t they?”
He nodded again.
“You think you could do that?” she said. She was resting her weight on her back-stretched arms. Her black hair hung straight and heavy almost to the ground. She smiled at him. “You want to do that for me? Pull off those vines?”
He got up immediately and walked to the tree. He tried to grip the vine but it had rooted in the bark. Still, he managed to break the vine in places and to strip it of leaves. He moved on to other trees as she directed him to do.
Later, in the kitchen, when eruptions burned on his entire body and swelled shut his eyes, she said “Guess that was poison ivy you got into.”
She made a paste of baking soda and water and dotted it all over his naked body. “You’re a sight,” she said. “A real mess.”
On another summer day, she pointed at a brown ribbon emerging from beneath a creek rock. “Water moccasin,” she said. “Poisonous snake. Really likes little kids.” The boy went rigid in her arms. The ribbon undulated in the water, finally disappeared from his sight. The boy was uncomfortable with her gripping him so tightly, but he didn’t move at all. He hoped she would turn back home, but she didn’t. She slipped her shoes off and stepped into the water. She waded to the flat rock where the snake had emerged, and set him down feet first. He kept his hands locked behind her neck, but she unfolded his fingers. Then she walked away, and squatted on the bank, resting her elbows on her knees. She wore a light yellow sundress, and the cut of the dress’s front revealed her shoulder bones.
He stood there a long time, maybe hours. He could see rocks on the bottom, some dark green as if a miniature world were under there, with soft grasses and waving trees. He waited for ribbons to curl up over the edge of the rock and hurt him. He knew then she’d take him home. When she tossed a pebble near the rock, he wet his pants.
“We can go home when you’re ready,” she finally said.
A few moments later he stepped into the water and walked out.
That, too, was my mother. I amused her. And she loved me.
* * * (from page 18)

I once saw a special on a crazed chimpanzee, female, a new mother. She couldn’t care for her offspring. She would carry the baby around in her left arm, just under the teat, and occasionally shake the baby, urging it to nurse. But she didn’t hold the baby quite close enough, and didn’t urge it right. The researchers interfered with the third offspring. They took it away to feed it and that inept mother grieved. You could see it in her expression, her posture, the curving of her empty arms. She longed to feed that baby. She just couldn’t get her desire and her nature to blend.

Reprinted with permission by the author

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