In Cold Blood -- Truman Capote

Until one morning in mid-November of 1959, few Americans--in fact, few Kansans--had ever heard of Holcomb.  Like the waters of the river, like the motorists on the highway, and like the yellow trains streaking down the Santa Fe tracks, drama, in the shape of exceptional happenings, had never stopped there.  The inhabitants of the village, numbering two hundred and seventy, were satisfied that this should be so, quite content to exist inside ordinary life--to work, to hunt, to watch television, to attend school socials, choir practice, meetings of the 4-H club.  But then, in the earliest hours of that morning in November, a Sunday morning, certain foreign sounds impinged on the normal nightly Holcomb noises--on the keening hysteria of coyotes, the dry scrape of scuttling tumbleweed, the racing, receding wail of locomotive whistles.  At the time not a soul in sleeping Holcomb heard them--four shotgun blasts that, all told, ended six human lives.  But afterward the townspeople, theretofore sufficiently unfearful of each other to seldom trouble to lock their doors, found fantasy re-creating them over and again--those somber explosions that stimulated fires of mistrust in the glare of which many old neighbors viewed each other strangely, and as strangers.

So I read it.  And I'm all confused.

First, I kick myself for being such a huge wimp and avoiding it for so long.  It was fantastic.  I was late for work yesterday because I started discussing it with a co-worker and completely lost track of time.

I had been scared of reading it because somehow, I was under the impressing that Perry Smith and Dick Hickock entered the Clutter home specifically to massacre the family.  You know, for kicks.  But they actually entered the house for a reason--they were under the impression that there was a money-filled safe there.  Of course, there wasn't.  And they killed the entire family.  For what amounted to about forty dollars.  But the idea of a couple of guys going in to a secluded farmhouse just to kill people vs. the idea of two guys going into a secluded farmhouse to rob people... it's slightly different.  Less scary (to me).  Less Manson-esque, maybe. 

Although, Dick Hickock was quoted a few times as planning to "cover the walls with hair".  So he, at least, seemed pretty sure of the outcome.  Which is odd because he wasn't the one that pulled the trigger.  Well, maybe.  That was kind of in question--he said that Perry Smith killed all four Clutters, then Smith said that Hickock actually killed two of them, but later Smith changed his story and said that he killed them all.  But Smith said that he changed his story to lessen the pain for Hickock's mother.  So nobody will ever know the truth, really.

I seem to be rambling horribly here.  What I really want to know is this:  Did Truman Capote have a closer relationship with Perry Smith than Dick Hickock?  Because Perry Smith, the man that actually admitted to killing the entire Clutter family, comes off as much more sympathetic.  Dick Hickock just scared me.  I kind of felt bad for Smith.  Which was strange.  It felt strange to feel sympathy for someone that said this:

Just before I taped him, Mr. Clutter asked me--and these were his last words--wanted to know how his wife was, if she was all right, and I said she was fine, she was ready to go to sleep, and I told him it wasn't long till morning, and how in the morning somebody would find them, and then all of it, me and Dick and all, would seem like something they dreamed.  I wasn't kidding him.  I didn't want to harm the man.  I thought he was a very nice gentleman.  Soft-spoken.  I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat.

So I wondered if the book was colored by Capote's emotions at all.  He did mention, though, that even Dewey, the man in charge of the investigation felt that "Perry possessed a quality, the aura of an exiled animal, a creature walking wounded".  Whereas he's quoted as saying that Hickock was "a small-time chiseler who got out of his depth, empty and worthless."

Perry Smith killed the Clutters.  Dick Hickock ran over dogs for fun.  Dick Hickock wanted to rape Nancy Clutter and Perry Smith wouldn't let him.  Dick Hickock lettered nine times in high school while Perry Smith was almost getting killed by nuns in an orphanage. 

So yes.  I feel all confused and torn.  (Not about what happened to the Clutters, just Hickock vs. Smith).