A Single Shot Page 19

  With his good hand he hefts himself up out of his dark den just as the couple spin another half circle. Suddenly the woman faces directly toward the shore. At first John’s not sure that she sees him, standing fifty feet back from the water, then, skewered on that great hook, she thrusts her head straight at him and John imagines her piercing, devilish eyes purloining his worst thoughts. Then she throws back her head and, not altering in the least the harsh pumping of her hips, bays twice as loud as she had before.

  John starts to run. Behind him he hears, echoing off the water, that awful hyena’s bark. Once he looks back and sees her, still astride the man, intently eyeing John as he crashes through the trees and bushes on his way downstream toward the truck.

  As he drives back down the lumber road to where it intersects with the cleared swath leading over the mountain to the Nobie side of the preserve, his behavior is no longer determined, if ever it was, by deliberate thought. He is the artist striving to complete a mosaic for which no blueprint exists. Not that he is acting aimlessly. On the contrary. Each of his actions, like a domino, follows by rote the act preceding it.

  Barely wider than the pickup, the steep path through a stand of white pine said to be among the oldest in the state is not intended for vehicles. Several times he has to stop and get out to drag fallen trees from the road. Even with four-wheel drive and all-terrain tires, the truck gets hung up in a creek bed. Next to the water lies a mound of bear scat so fresh it steams. John listens for the bear, but can’t hear it. With his one good arm, it takes him half an hour to wedge enough flat rocks under the pickup’s tires to free it.

  Beneath the weald’s dense canopy, headed for the mountaintop, he is like an exhausted homeward-bound horse spurred on by a single thought—the piercing eye of the mounted woman in Hidden Pond: in his mind it becomes the omniscient stare of Ingrid Banes, to whom he has given his solemn oath not to abandon her. Though his mind is not altruistically pure. What if the law discovers her in his freezer? Far better for him that they find her someplace else or not at all. And if she is found already? He tries not to think about it. Either way, they will be out combing the woods for him. Possibly they are waiting for him even now at the trailer.

  At the top of the mountain, the forest tunnel empties into a rolling plain where, before the Conservancy requisitioned it, John’s father and grandfather grazed the few sheep they owned. The brown blanket of knee-high grass is stained purple and yellow by Indian paintbrush, goldenrod, and trefoil. Up here, Simon Breedlove and John once saw a mountain lion, though they’re supposedly extinct this far east. They were sitting in a deer stand in the pines when it loped through the snow—a huge cat—twenty feet from them. It was like seeing God’s light. For the rest of the day, they didn’t want to shoot anything. They kept looking at each other and shaking their heads. Then Simon told John about the only girl he ever loved, Ling something or other, a Vietnamese girl whom, Simon said, if she hadn’t stepped on a land mine and been killed, he would have married and had about a dozen babies with. The memory causes in John a sharp pang of grief for his friend. No one, he thinks, ever knows anyone else’s real story.

  He drives across the field to the east edge of the pines, where, six days before, with the sound of trodden branches, his nightmare began. Turning right and skirting the woods for another mile or so would bring him to the dirt road heading down the west side of the mountain to the hollow. Instead, he veers left several hundred yards before easing the truck through a narrow opening in the trees that leads to a half acre of void forest razed by a lightning fire. Blurred by a thin layer of clouds, the sun’s light casts a greasy veneer on this dead hole striving to be reborn. The few sounds are magnified—a hollow wind whistling through the charred remains, small animals rifling the new growth, the chirps of passing birds finding few trees to land in. John pulls the pickup into an abrupt swale concealed on either side by yarrow and briars, turns off the engine, grabs the .308 and the money sack, gets out, and scrambles up the steep embankment to the forest floor.

  He carries the rifle over his right shoulder, the money sack over his left. His footsteps make a crunching sound on the charred earth. As he exits the fire zone, his pain mysteriously subsides. Suddenly he is aware only of an erratic, surgy pulse at the end of his right arm and, emanating from his torso, a moist heat like the internal steam from a heap of corn silage. He looks down at the blood-soaked bandage, beneath which his injured hand, hanging like a butchered loin by his side, is purply and fat. For maybe five minutes, his mental state is close to euphoric. Then the pain comes back. And he begins to sweat. By the time he steps from the far side of the forest into the scrub pasture a half mile above the trailer, his whole body is drenched.

  He drops the money sack and sits down on a rock. Through the scope of the .308 he eyes the trailer below. Everything looks the same as it did, except from this high up he can’t tell if Waylon’s body is still on the deck. There are no vehicles in the drive and no signs of life but for two hawks circling above the structure. It strikes him that he has spent most of the last six days sneaking into or out of places. He thinks of his father, who always walked upright, chin jutted out, into a room. “Must be the world one day just twisted under him,” thinks John, “like it can to anybody. Weren’t nothing he could do, probably.”

  He stands up, grabs the money, and looks around for a place to hide it. Beneath the rock, he finds a crawl space big enough to put his head and shoulders into. After making sure there are no animal footprints or droppings near the opening, he lies down on his stomach, holds the money sack out in front of him, and pushes it as deep into the hole as he can. Then he gets to his feet, slings the .308 over his shoulder, and starts for home.

  In the woods south of the trailer, he passes a hundred yards by it, then cuts north and crawls on his belly up to the west shore of the pond. From behind a cluster of hop hornbeams, he surveys through the rifle’s scope the front of the structure until he is as certain as he can be that no one is there. Warily, he stands up and moves closer. In the meadow, only a dove’s coo interrupts the shrill buzz of cicadas. He quickly walks to the back of the trailer and onto the deck.

  Where Waylon’s body had lain is a circle of half-dried blood and a chalk outline of it. John’s feverous brain abstractively paints a picture of his demise—a glowering troll guards a bridge; a white goat tries to cross it; a lead mallet wavers over the heads of both. Gore tones, harsh yellows, pinks the color of flesh predominate. The cumulative effect is blur; life, suffering, death swirl in a tripartite dance. Two cigarette stubs have been stamped out near the chalk.

  John hurriedly enters the kitchen, which smells like exhaled smoke. Now his heart begins to pound. The police have been in the trailer and probably searched it. Have they looked in the freezer?

  He lays the rifle on the table and hurries down the cellar stairs. The basement light is on. John stops in front of the freezer, his body suddenly racked by chills. In minute detail, the dead girl’s face comes back to him. He pictures her ceaseless, open-eyed stare, reflecting to the whole world the horror of her death and the identity of her killer. “No matter where I’m at,” he imagines her whispering in his ear, “my soul will always torment you.” He grabs the door and yanks it open.

  Abbie’s pound of sausage and half a dozen venison steaks tumble out. John pushes away several more packages to reveal a human hand, an arm, then, where it’s wedged against the roof of the freezer, the dead girl’s skull. John loudly gasps at the sight of her. “Wouldn’t b’lieve what’s happened since I put you in here!” he says. In five minutes he has her sitting on the basement floor, her upper body, with its fractured spine, inclined at a nearly 180-degree angle to her feet. She’s froze solid. “Gotta get you outta here,” he says. “Put an end to this.”

  John leaves her there, walks to the rear of the cellar, and takes down from the wall a coil of rope and the toboggan he and Moira bought each other for Christmas one year. He slides the wooden sled across the floor and pla
ces it parallel to the cadaver. “Wouldn’t be able to lug ya wit’ on’y my one arm,” he says.

  He wrestles her onto the sled so that she’s facing forward, with her head steeply inclined and her feet under the bow, as if she’s plummeting downhill through a snowdrift. He turns away to pick up the rope and hears a loud bang. He wheels back around and sees the dead girl lying sideways on the cement floor next to the sled. John winces as if she’s still alive. He thinks there’ll be no end to her, or his, pain until she’s properly buried. He gets her sitting upright on the toboggan again, then loops the rope several times around her body and the sled’s front, before securing it.

  He pulls the toboggan over to the stairs and, with his left hand gripping the circular twine around its bow, climbs laboriously to the top. To maneuver the corner into the kitchen, he has to coincidentally hoist and push the bow, causing the cadaver’s skull to collide loudly with the banister. He tugs the sled into the center of the floor and, panting heavily, sits down at the table next to it. “Sumbitch weren’t even gon’ take you Hawaii,” he says, exhaling derisively. “That’s who you died for. Now I’m in it up my neck!”

  He goes into the bathroom and takes the dressing from his wound. It oozes blood still, along with a white pussy substance. The flesh surrounding it is the color of a purple tulip. John’s not sure if the cut’s gangrenous. He pours peroxide on it, rebandages it, and eats another half a dozen aspirins. In the cabinet mirror, his face seems paler than the dead girl’s. Rivulets of sweat pour down his cheeks. His eyes look like they’re drowning in the depths of kettle ponds. He’s about used up, thinks John, unless he sees a doctor pretty quick.

  He walks back into the kitchen, picks up the phone, and dials the number of the only person left alive he thinks might still be able to help him. Suddenly remembering it’s Saturday, he is about to hang up when the call is answered. “It’s John Moon,” says John.

  A long silence follows.

  “You mad at me, Pitt?”

  “Lots of folks are wondering where you are, John.” The lawyer’s voice sounds hollow and faraway—almost sad—though partly that could be John’s perception and that Pitt is on a speaker phone. “Sounds as if your world’s turned into an awful mess.”

  “It’s why I’m callin’.”

  “The police found one of your fingers.”

  “Ain’t doin’ so good without it.”

  “I’m afraid it’s too late to sew it back on, John. I’m awfully sorry.”

  “You still my lawyer, lawyer?”

  “I wasn’t clear that you hadn’t fired me, John.”

  “Was confused ’bout things—my family, the Hen. I weren’t gon’ shoot ya.”

  “I hoped not, John. Still, it shakes a man up.” Pitt delicately clears his throat. John imagines the lawyer’s tiny Adam’s apple bobbing as his apparently constant pain exits through his eyes. “Did you know, John, that poor little Obadiah was raised by about eight different people because his parents didn’t want a thing to do with him, and one of them—an aunt, I believe—used an electric cattle prod on him and, when she caught him eating in bed, made him sleep in a cage with live rats?”

  “I know he sliced up Molly and Ira Hollenbach.”

  “… He was ten—cutest little fella you ever saw—when the court first assigned me to represent him.”

  “You drunk again, Pitt?”

  “Just tired, John.” The lawyer sounds like he’s about to cry. John thinks he’s made a mistake calling him. “I’m not a very good lawyer, John. All my clients lie to me. I allow them to play on my good graces.”

  “How’s Abbie?”

  “Recovering well, I’m told. And wondering about you.”

  “I made a mistake ’bout a week ago, Pitt. Don’t seem to be any end to it.”

  “… And did you know our good friend Simon Breedlove is also gone?”

  “Was how he wanted it,” says John.

  “A few years ago—five, to be precise, right after… well, you know—he had me draw up a will. He’s left everything he owned to some Vietnamese immigrant family in San Francisco.”

  “I din’ know him so good,” says John.

  Pitt clears his throat again. “There’s lots of dead bodies, John, and you’re still alive. My guess is, the police aren’t sure what to think.”

  “How many, ’xactly?”

  “How many what?”

  “Bodies.”

  “Well, John—they count three. If you include Simon and Obadiah.”

  “They ain’t lookin’ for no others?”

  “Bodies?”

  “Whatevers.”

  John hears a slurping sound on the other end of the line and guesses Pitt’s emboldening himself. He glances over at the dead girl, touching her toes, and thinks if lives could back up, the world would soon be out of room. “Maybe you ought to call a real lawyer, John. One of those ex-football types. I know you’ve got the money to pay for it.”

  “That’s good as buried.”

  “Are you sure you want to do that, John? Even gullible old Daggard Pitt requires a substantial retainer for a mess like yours.”

  “How much?”

  “Ten to start, I’d think.”

  “Thousand?”

  “I’d guess, yes.”

  “Would it keep me out a’ jail?”

  “Well, John, I’d feel more comfortable about that if the arithmetic didn’t keep changing.”

  “Whadda ya mean?”

  “I’m afraid one more body would push credulity beyond its limits.”

  John thanks him for the advice, then hangs up the phone.

  He walks down the hallway into his bedroom, yanks open the top drawer of his bureau, and reaches beneath his underwear. He pulls out the envelope there, then goes back to the kitchen and from cold tap water makes a thick cup of instant coffee. He sits down with it at the table and pictures a southward winding road that never ends, just gets narrower and narrower. Outside the window, darting swallows filch flies from the air. Perspiration drops from John’s brow onto the tabletop. His scent is gamy. As they thaw, the dead girl’s bones creak and groan. “Must be you figured Waylon as your best chance for somethin’,” he tells her, “even if he weren’t much a’ one. That it?”

  She doesn’t answer.

  From the envelope John takes the Polaroids he snapped of her and aimlessly shuffles through them. He envisions the world as a populous plain interwoven by a network of tiny creases in which man’s evil little secrets hide. He imagines the worst retribution as a self-inflicted paralysis. He thinks of the physical aspects of being incarcerated—prodding hands and clubs, restraining iron bars, the close smell of so many people, even sunlight rationed like a scarce commodity. He finds himself shivering. Tears mix with the sweat exiting his body.

  Falteringly he stands up, walks over to the dead girl, and runs a hand through her hair, which is cold, with an oily texture. He bends forward and hugs her frozen, soulful torso. His field of vision starts to blur. He feels like he’s looking down through a haze of smoke at the imagined life of Ingrid Banes. What if it were possible to alter history—even emotions—with only words? To manipulate talk into facts and verbalize facts into dreams? Even for those—like John and the dead girl—born on the wrong end of it, this would be a world worth living in. “You’re gon’ make it Hawaii, Ingrid,” he says, kissing her on the cheek. “Ya lucky girl, ya.”

  Fearing someone might drive up the road and spot him, he takes the same route back up the mountain as he did coming down. Fueled by adrenaline and a belief that from fate his own feebleness cannot swerve him, he pulls the heavy toboggan with his good hand, allowing the other to swing loosely by his side. Over the grassy field leading to the woods, the sled’s slick bottom passes unrestrainedly. The pollen is thick in the air. Several times, John stops to catch his breath or sneeze.

  Entering the forest, he is struck by the unusually large number of crows and grackles perched or circling above him. Or else he is suddenly m
ore attuned to their presence. There are seemingly hundreds of the birds, all of them black as night. Their cacophony grates on his ears. Though the toboggan still slides with relative ease over the needle-and-leaf floor, the going is slower. In the eighty-plus-degree heat, the cadaver, beneath its tarpaulin, melts more rapidly. Soon the increasingly flaccid flesh begins shifting side to side, making the job of tugging it harder. Thawed some, the half-rotten corpse again exhales its gone smell. John temporarily engages himself in searching for a nonblack bird.

  At the start of the steep grade leading to the pines, the number and size of rocks multiply. John’s upward course becomes more serpentine, and the work intensely taxing. He has trouble keeping his feet beneath him. Every five yards or so, he falls to his knees. Finally, instead of standing up again, he loops the lead rope around his shoulders and, with his three functional limbs, scratches and crawls his way toward the top.

  His hand lands on a nest of fire ants. Abruptly rearing back from their bites, he hears behind him a distinct crack. He turns around and the cadaver, now half unveiled beneath the tarpaulin, is sitting upright. John watches its upper torso, the spine completely severed, creakily ease backward until the dead girl is supine on the sled, staring straight up at the sky. A crow drops down and hovers above the body. John shoos it away. He thinks what awful things happen to flesh once it’s dead. More awful even than when it’s alive.

  It takes him another half an hour to reach the scrub pasture where the money is stashed. Gasping for air, the rope still circling him like a cinch, he sits down on the rock concealing the sack. Hanging half off the sled, the cadaver, where it has banged against impediments on its upward journey, is scuffed and bruised. One of its eyes, half-dislodged, peers at an impossible angle behind it where two of its teeth must lie. In a way that he can’t describe, John, while eyeing the body, is struck by the irony in mankind’s vaingloriousness, that day-to-day conceit which, like air from a puffball, is instantly expunged by death.

  After retrieving the sack, he tucks it, alongside the shovel, between the dead girl’s legs, then once more pulls her upper torso forward, folding her like a wallet over the money. He loops the rope twice around the corpse so it won’t flop backward again, re-covers it with the tarpaulin, and heads into the pines. On the flat terrain, he doesn’t have to work so hard. He has more time to think and feel his pain, now more like a general sickness infecting his body. One minute he is hot. The next, cold. In between, he has surges of energy.