Daniel stared at me, a pleading in his eyes, as if I could answer a life-or-death question. I stared back. I had no answers for him. Bob Peterson spoke to me – words that I couldn’t understand, couldn’t hear – and Daniel and I held each other with our eyes. Then Daniel seemed to find his own answer. He turned the rifle away from me and aimed at Edward Phelps.
Bob Peterson spoke again, and I heard him over Edward Phelps’s keening. He said, ‘No.’
Daniel shot Edward Phelps in the belly. He watched the old man as if he wondered whether a single bullet would be enough. Then he shot him in the head.
No one moved. Even Phelps seemed to hang in the air as his cry carried through the woods and over the marsh. When he fell to the ground, Stephen Phelps tried to speak, but his broken jaw mangled his voice.
Daniel swung the rifle so he aimed it at Bob Peterson, paused, then turned again until he found Stephen Phelps. As Peterson watched, Daniel shot Stephen Phelps too.
THIRTY-NINE
Johnny
When Edward Phelps finally went silent and the trees and the marsh absorbed the sound of the gunshot that killed his son, when Peter Lisman carried his dead mother in his arms, like a groom at a threshold with his bride, away from the hole, through the gap in the fence, and across the construction site, Bob Peterson lifted the revolver from his side, pointed it at Lillian, and pulled the trigger.
The hammer slammed into the empty cylinder.
As if he couldn’t understand the sound, he turned the gun on me, drew the hammer, and pulled the trigger.
Daniel said, ‘It’s over, Bob. It’s done.’ Daniel pointed the rifle at him.
Peterson turned, aimed at him, and pulled the trigger.
Nothing.
He stepped toward him, stepped again, pulled the trigger.
Nothing.
He seemed in no hurry as he moved toward Daniel and pulled the trigger once more.
When Peterson was close enough, Daniel threw the butt of the rifle into his forehead. A bright line of blood creased Peterson’s brow and he fell. Daniel went to him and held the rifle barrel against Peterson’s head. Peterson stared at him, and Daniel looked into his eyes as if he was looking for a reason to let him live. Then he shot him dead.
Daniel set the rifle on the ground, which seemed as much as stripping himself naked. Then his body started shaking.
Lillian came to me and touched me. My shoulder burned where Cecilia Phelps had shot me, and the arm below it was numb and weak, but I knew that the bullet had only skipped through skin and muscle. I looked up. The night above looked black and thick. The generator on the pickup stuttered, then hummed. Lillian asked, ‘Can you walk?’
‘I don’t know.’ I pushed to my feet. My shoulder burned.
‘Lillian?’ Daniel said. He wanted reassurance.
‘Get Papa Crowe’s gun,’ I said to her.
She found the revolver at Peterson’s feet.
‘Lillian!’ Daniel said. He needed her, but she came to me.
‘Can you do it?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know.’ I stepped and stepped again until we reached the fence. We skirted the construction site, stumbled through the grass and brush. Orange light glowed on the dirt and sand lot on the other side of the fence. When we found the rough trail back to the clearing, we shoved through the branches like animals breaking from a predator. We crossed the clearing and then we were running, our flashlights strobing against the leaves, long grasses, and tree trunks. The burn in my shoulder died away as I found my muscles and I breathed the warm night deep into my lungs.
Lillian drove us home and bathed my shoulder in the kitchen sink. The towel came away soaked in blood, then pink, and soon almost clear, though the wound bled until she wrapped it. ‘You need a doctor,’ she said.
‘No.’
‘What do you need?’
I pulled her to me.
That night I knew that the disintegration of bodies is nothing to fear, that stars shine brightest as they collapse, the gas and flame changing into pure energy. This knowledge wouldn’t lessen the pain of disintegration – my own, that of the soldiers whose bodies the distant minefields obliterated, that of a Gullah family whose bones the salt and sand would chew away on Little Marsh Island – but it made me believe that I could live on the crumbling earth while my life lasted. Morning might shake that belief, but first I would hold Lillian close to me, not with fear but with love. That was all we had left, and it might be enough.
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