A Single Shot Page 9

  He enters a forest of virgin pine. Inside, it’s dark and steamy. John can’t see his feet for the mist. The canopy leaks water. Needles, cones, dislodged branches drop all around him. He stumbles into an elderberry thicket. Before finding his way out, he fills his hat with the sweet fruit. On the far side, he sits on a tree stump and eats what he’s picked. Perched overhead, a pair of grackles angrily squawk at him. He watches a pileated woodpecker drill for bugs in a rotten stump. Idly he wonders if, in these mountains, he might forever elude his pursuers. He knows he could survive. And what of his current life would he miss? His wife, who is trying to divorce him? His son, who cries at the sight of him? Yes. He would miss them both, but that would be all he would miss, and they might be better off without him.

  Past the forest, he turns right again. Now several hundred yards beyond the quarry, he walks parallel to it. He crosses over a small stream, made bigger by the rain, then quickly skirts the outer edge of Quentin’s swamp, where the mosquitoes and black flies are thick, passes through an older stand of birch, oak, and elm, the last half-devoured by caterpillars, and emerges on the back side of the hill leading to the cliffs above the quarry. He walks along the spine of the wooded hill, undergrown with field grass, hawkweed, and patches of soft moss, until he reaches the quarry’s upper lip, where he lies down on his stomach between two mountain-laurel bushes, places the 12-gauge on the ground next to him, and through binoculars gazes a hundred feet down into the rock bowl.

  Not exactly sure what he is looking for or how to react if he sees something unusual, he peers behind the bushes and into the crevices in the quarry walls. Everything looks the same as it did three days before, except the stone is water-stained, the plastic top of the lean-to sags beneath the recent rain, and John doesn’t remember if he left the pick and shovel lying, as they are now, in the entrance to the cave or standing next to it.

  He lets the binoculars dangle from his neck and, delaying the inevitable for close to an hour, stares with his naked eyes into the quarry. He curses himself for being so stupid as to have left the body aboveground, even temporarily, with a slug from his gun in it and covered with his fingerprints. Then he remembers that when he should have buried the girl the thought felt like killing her all over again. Doing so now will be even harder, but he must. This time he’ll keep her photograph and personal items so that when she is lost to the rest of the world she won’t be to him. The money is a separate issue. It had been no more hers than John’s, Waylon’s, Obadiah Cornish’s, or whoever else might know of its existence. Despairingly John thinks again of Simon Breedlove showing up in the middle of the night, asking after Mutt, and of his feeling that morning that the trailer had been searched.

  He walks the two hundred yards around the rim to the west edge of the bowl, where he stops and through the binoculars gazes down the mountain toward Hollenbachs’. The farm is hidden around a sharp bend a mile below, though John can see a short stretch of the rock-infested dirt road winding from there up to the quarry. He puts the binoculars away, then picks his way down the front side of the slope to where the cliff ends in less than a ten-foot drop near the quarry’s entrance. The road is puddled and muddy. Any tire tracks have been obliterated.

  His ingress commences a cacophony of caws and squawks. To his left, a Scotch pine shimmers and bounces beneath the weight of hundreds of crows that have gathered there to escape from the storm. Sweeping his eyes and the shotgun left-to-right, John feels an edgy, life-lived-in-a-second adrenaline tug that must be what soldiers feel when going into battle. Barely glancing at the patch of nettles behind which he shot the girl, he walks straight for the cave, stopping before he gets there next to the pond, which is roily and brown from the recent rain. There is no sign of the deer carcass. No footprints mar the bank, though mostly it’s rock, and where it isn’t, the rain would have washed them away.

  John wishes he were a smoker so that he could sit and slowly smoke a cigarette before going farther. He pulls out his water bottle, drinks, then puts the bottle away. The drizzle is now a mist more than a rain. Heavy, post-storm air covers the bowl like a warm, drenched blanket. John’s sweat smells of beer. He considers removing his poncho, but doesn’t want to carry it. The cave’s entrance is mostly fog-filled. Approaching it, John wonders if the cadaver will be at all decomposed.

  He picks up the shovel and pick, leans them and his shotgun against the quarry wall, then pulls off his pack, takes out his flashlight, and lays the pack on the ground.

  He squats down, switches on the light, and cautiously enters the cave. Water is trickling somewhere. John shines his light at the sound. In the back of the cavern, a thin, sporadic drip comes through the ceiling. He directs the beam farther right, then blinks his eyes several times to make sure he is seeing correctly. Hadn’t he left the girl’s face undraped? Now the sleeping bag is covering it. In his agitation, he tries to stand up and bangs his head against the ceiling. He curses and rubs the hurt. Then he waddles over to the sleeping bag, grabs the top, and yanks it back. The lion grins up at him. The girl is gone.

  He sits on the hill above the trailer, watching it through his binoculars. Dampness stiffens his joints like the beginning of a flu. Melancholy—for the girl’s lost body, for his solitary life, for what he foresees as a quick or imprisoned end to it—takes hold like the germ itself. His thoughts dance arrhythmically, whirl like drunks trying to do a four-step. His senses play tricks on him. Shrouded by fog, the silver-white trailer floats like a ghost in and out of his vision. Flying birds look like rocks hurled into the mist. Whole trees disappear. Nobie’s hollow shout, at exactly 4 p.m., echoes up from the valley like the reverberating clank of hell’s gate.

  He watches the herd, like a row of condemned souls, sullenly parade in single file from the upper pasture toward the barn. Later, he hears the electric milkers whir and watches steam rise up from where he knows the barn to be, then vanish in the mist.

  He eats an apple and the two remaining peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches in his pack. With his Bowie knife, he files his fingernails to the quick. In the damp grass between his legs, he draws a circle, then repeatedly throws the knife into its center. Later, touching his three-day growth of beard, he remembers his father had worn one for maybe six months. It made him look old. Then he turned mean, got sick, and died. John hacks with the knife blade at the growth. He cuts his cheek. He dabs with his shirttail at the spot until the bleeding stops. He puts the knife away. He folds his hands, closes his eyes, wonders if there’s a God and, if so, what His plans for John’s future are. The gray day gets grayer, darker. Dusk comes to the mountain. The drizzle stops, but the fog stays put. No one approaches the trailer. No one leaves. John remembers his little son crying, “Mommy.” He wishes it were so easy.

  Down the hill to his left, from a thick patch of fog, sound the stomp and suck of footsteps in the wet ground. He grabs the 12-gauge, cocks it, flicks off the safety, and dives behind a spruce bush. Ten feet above the dirt path, he nervously waits for whatever it is to emerge from the mist.

  Clomp-suck. Clomp-suck.

  Slowly comes a horse’s head, with its pointy ears and sloping snout, then its long neck and muscular torso, atop which elegantly sits the dead girl.

  John drops his gun and screams.

  The horse shies. Then rears. The girl tries to rein him in.

  “Whoa! Easy, boy! Easy, now!” The horse comes back down onto its four feet, hop-steps sideways, then stands there in the path, skittishly tossing its head. “Steady, Diablo. Stea-dee.” Now she talks soothingly to the animal, while rubbing its neck. “John Moon,” she says.

  John’s heart echoes loud in his ears. He leans down and picks up his gun. The girl shakes her head. “What do you mean, calling out like that?”

  “Thought you was somebody else.”

  “Who’d make you scream that way?”

  “A ghost.”

  “Jesus, John Moon.”

  “Sorry ’bout it.” He steps forward, kisses the wet nose of th
e horse, Nobie’s big dappled-gray Arabian. “Was sleepin’.”

  “In the rain?”

  “Nappin’s all.”

  “You and Mr. 12-gauge?”

  “Thought I might see a rabbit or somethin’.”

  “On the preserve or on my daddy’s land?”

  “Neither. I was back in further. Headin’ for home I ’bout gave out.”

  “Look at you, John Moon.”

  “I know it.”

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

  “I told ya.”

  “And you’re soaked!”

  “Was some storm.”

  “I wouldn’t tell on you even if you were stalking a deer, John Moon. Daddy says you put to good use everything you take, which is more than can be said for most of the world.” She smiles. She’s half John’s age, but already so much he isn’t—intelligent, good-looking, self-assured. In a few years, like her brother, she will go off to college and then only occasionally come home to ride Diablo up past John’s trailer toward the woods, when she will smile and call out, “John Moon!”

  “You gonna take the job Daddy offered you?”

  “Ain’t decided.”

  “You ought to.” She turns red, looking then like the fifteen-year-old she is. “Not everybody gets a chance to do what they love and get paid for it, too.”

  “Shoveling shit and milking cows?”

  “Uh-huh, John Moon.”

  “How you figure?”

  “ ’Cause I’m daughter to one just like you.”

  John grunts.

  “Daddy’d be lost without farming. He had to work in a factory, he’d die.” The horse shakes its head and blows. John steadies it with his hand. “I’m taking an economics course in summer school, John, and you know what we’re studying on?”

  “What?”

  “Profit sharing.”

  “Good you’re gettin’ educated.”

  “You know what that is?”

  “Nope.”

  “It’s when employees own a piece of the companies they work at. The bosses figure they’ll get more for their money from workers who share in the profits and workers work harder because they got a stake in things. What do you think about that, John?”

  “Nifty.”

  She laughs. “Nifty?”

  “Ain’t that your word?”

  “Sure. I just never heard you use it before.” The horse dances backward. John takes hold of its rein. Abbie says, “Cool your jets, Diablo.” She looks at John. “Was me, I’d suggest something like that to Daddy.”

  “Like what?”

  “What I just said.”

  “Somethin’ ’bout jets?”

  “Don’t act stupid, John Moon!”

  John spits.

  “I’d tell him I’d take the job if part of my pay could go toward buying a piece of his farm.”

  John laughs.

  “There’s nothing funny about it, John. Our professor says workers with leverage ought to use it to empower themselves.”

  “What’s your daddy think about what they’re teaching you in school?”

  “I didn’t discuss this particular matter with him and don’t you dare tell him I did with you!” She purses her lips. “I wouldn’t ask for too much at first, maybe just that Daddy let you buy some heifers from him and raise them up in the barn, then—you know, after that—a piece of the land, and Daddy would listen too, John, because he’s real worried that after Eban and I go off to college he and my mom won’t be able to keep up with the work.”

  “Buy back a piece of my own farm, you mean?”

  She pushes hair out of her eyes. “John Moon. If you keep looking back, you’ll never get ahead!”

  “Maybe you ought to worry ’bout losin’ your inheritance.”

  “I won’t need one because I’m going to be a millionaire before I’m thirty. I got a thousand ideas how to do it, like making you my daddy’s partner.”

  “Huh?”

  “I have faith in you, John Moon.” She giggles. “You’ll only make my inheritance bigger.”

  “Glad I ain’t married to you.”

  “Me too. We’re not at all compatible.”

  “No, we ain’t.”

  “We can still be friends, though, can’t we?”

  “Uh-huh.” John lets go of the horse. “Be careful back in them woods. It’s nearly dark and is slippery underfoot.”

  “Don’t worry about me, John Moon. I’m an experienced horsewoman.” She starts to ride off, then reins Diablo in. “What’d that man you told Daddy shot Mutt have to say?”

  “Huh?”

  “When he was up to your trailer today?”

  John raises his eyes at her.

  “An hour or so after the Cadillac left. His car went up by, then come back down a while later. You weren’t there?”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  “You think he’s telling the truth about what he’s doing around?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “I told Daddy we ought to call the sheriff, but he didn’t want to.”

  “That’s probably for the best.”

  “I only hope none of us regret it later.”

  “Me too.”

  “Think about empowerment, John Moon. Daddy’s feeling a lot of pressure. And, same as me, he likes you.” She turns in the saddle, nudges the horse’s belly with her feet, and slowly rides off in the direction of the pines.

  Against his tired body, the heavy wet branches feel like grasping arms, then bullwhips, so, going down the hill, he cuts right through the woods and, from there, walks the dirt road running like a funnel through thick forest that impedes his view of the valley.

  Less than fifty yards from the trailer, he sees, in the not quite dark, moving on the grass below the pond, several large, ominous shapes. As if by instinct, he veers left and, stealthily as he can, slogs through the rain-battered meadow to the near corner of the trailer, where he crouches down to watch and listen to, with their distinctive gobbles, half a dozen wild turkeys picking at the drenched timothy. Among them are two large males. He thumbs off the shotgun’s safety and, to keep from tainting the meat, aims for the head of the larger. In his mind he hears the shot loudly shatter the still air and sees the headless bird fall sideways onto the grass, but before vision becomes reality, his hands begin to tremble, his teeth to chatter, and his heart wildly palpitates.

  He opens the gun’s breech and, panting heavily, lays it on the grass next to him. He remembers his father telling him that the Indians native to this region believed turkeys to be cowardly and stupid and for fear of becoming so themselves refused to kill or eat them. Seeming to have little instinct for danger and with their fantailing and loud prattle constantly calling attention to themselves, the birds are, John agrees, dumb. He sits there watching the flock until it is dark and he can’t see it anymore, but can only hear its inane patter. Still, he sits. He wonders if he’ll ever again be the hunter he was. If ever again he’ll be who he was. He hears Abbie Nobie slowly walking Diablo back down the hollow road, her earnestly conversing about star constellations, and the horse’s brusque snort. After its footsteps have faded away, he picks up the shotgun, stands, and walks through the kitchen entrance into the trailer.

  Lying on the floor are pots, pans, silverware, dishes, letters, canned goods, condiments. Every drawer and cabinet looks rifled. The cushions are thrown from the couch. The back of his father’s old recliner is sliced open and its stuffing torn out. Beyond the grease fire’s lingering stench, a faint, unpleasant odor mars the air. Moira’s breakfront is trashed; lying beneath it, atop bank statements, personal letters, photo albums, and John’s Instamatic camera, are his Polaroids of Moira posing nude, and others of him holding Nolan as a newborn, of Moira nursing the boy, of John giving him a bath. A stabbing pain breaches John’s chest. He kneels down, slides the snapshots back into the envelopes from which they had come, then carefully places the envelopes back into the breakfront.

  He stands up and walk
s down the hallway, the stench getting stronger, into the bathroom, where the medicine cabinet is ransacked, the ballcock to the toilet ripped out and its porcelain top smashed on the floor. Every sheet and towel is thrown from the linen closet. Bottles and cans of cleaning solvents roll on the floor. The trapdoor covering the pipes is open.

  He steps back into the hallway, turns left, glances into Nolan’s old nursery, where the closet doors are thrown back and the empty toy chest is turned upside down.

  Halfway down the corridor toward the master bedroom, he sees, through the open doorway, clothes, magazines, and bureau drawers littering the floor. He smells what he smells more distinctly. In a frightened half-jog he enters the room. Lying face up on the bed, her body wrapped below the neck in clear plastic, is the dead girl. Attached to her chest a yellow sheet of paper declares: “John Moon murdered me!” In the middle of the rug, John drops to his knees, puts his hands to his face, and blathers in a mysteriously poignant way.

  Beyond cerebration is a place clearer than thought. Equivocations don’t exist in this realm. There is no moral compass. Inside, only him and the dead girl. Outside, the world circling like vultures.

  Oblivious to the stench, he sits down on the mattress near her head and studies her pale, bloated face. Her mouth is slightly open and a small particle of food is still lodged between her teeth. Her eyes are closed, her nostrils exaggeratedly flared. The ponytail lies like a thick nest beneath her head. Mashed to her forehead is a dead mosquito. He imagines her voice, medium-pitched and resonant, sounding beyond her years. She laughed often, a free-flowing verse, occasionally at things that others didn’t find amusing. She sometimes cried without provocation. The world struck her as ridiculous or tragic. She wasn’t sure why. She had a weakness for bad men. Mean men. Men who beat her up, then brought her roses.

  He reaches down with his forefingers and gently pushes at her eyelids. They’re swollen shut. He pushes harder. The lids open with a quiet pop to eyes the color of deer hide. She kept getting into situations. Her parents were pathetic. Her friends were the world. She liked sex because they did and she was supposed to, but what really got her hot was pushing things to the limit. She had trouble seeing a point beyond that. She didn’t like to hurt people, though, or to see them hurt. She was compassionate toward those who were helpless. If she could, she would avoid stepping on an ant. She didn’t like to think about growing old. She had a sneaking suspicion she wouldn’t. Old people were like robots. She once dreamed her parents ran on batteries. She wrote a short story about this and while reading it to her English class felt so liberated she thought of becoming a writer but decided she couldn’t spend that much time sitting down.