by Craig Nova
“He’s got something,” said Bonowski.
“Well, all right,” said Michaels.
Everything about the wood road was stale. There was something in the air like fatigue from dirt and water that had frozen and thawed too many times. Russell looked around again at the white sun, which was the pale color of a snake belly.
“He’s got something,” said Bonowski.
“Mark it,” said Michaels.
FRANK KOHLER
THE DOG APPEARED ON THE ROAD JUST BELOW Kohler. A German shepherd with black fur on its back, although it was tawny brown on its legs and part of its face. Kohler steadied the rifle against the side of the tree. It was made of good German steel, and it had set triggers, or two triggers, one to make the other more delicate. The road was tedious in its ordinary colors, in the banality of the dead grass and the clay soil of the ruts. Then Kohler saw that the dog wasn’t alone. It was being led by a man.
The man and the dog fell back, and another man, in a green uniform, came up the road and stood there, looking at something in the ditch that ran parallel to the ruts. Kohler put one finger against the first trigger and used it to make the second trigger more delicate. The rear sight was a flat piece of metal with a V in the middle, and he put the bead at the rifle’s muzzle so that it perfectly filled that geometric opening. Down below the men moved under this alignment, the dog going one way and another, the man in the green uniform less active, more pensive. Soon, Kohler guessed, the man would stop puzzling over the ice in the ditch at the side of the road and realize that there was someone just above him, or at least he would look uphill and see Kohler, the rifle braced against the tree and wearing the trooper’s hat.
Kohler saw, out of the corner of his eye, a little flash of movement, a sudden appearance and then disappearance of red, and in a sudden awareness of that color, he thought that the girl was here, that they had caught her and had dragged her in here to talk to him. But then he realized it was just a bird, a cardinal. In this recognition that she had not arrived, his notion of isolation was suddenly larger than it had been before, since if there was one thing he would have liked, at this time, it would have been to see her. Or to hear that throaty, out-of-character voice, that ability to sing in a deep register. He realized that it was a voice that would have left a low, vibrant resonance in the wood of an old church. More than anything else he craved her ability to talk about the mysterious by using everyday details. Her charm had been to combine the enormous and the ordinary, just like that. No big deal. Let’s take a chance. If you’re scared, break what you have to do down into small tasks. Want a hit of this dope? And what, he wondered, would she have made of this?
In the reassuring odor of the oil with which he had cleaned the rifle, in the sense of everything funneling around him, he thought, with angry horror, that the girl would have reduced this to the obvious. She would have said, Well, what’s happening? What are you doing here? He looked around, thinking of her voice, of her way of making things clear, and he thought that this road, this moment, those men below, the fire in the house, the shooting at the side of the road were all obvious signs, and that each one came from one person, and that was him. These events showed how he had come into the world and what he had done here. His desperation, which he hadn’t been able to control, had attracted everything that he hadn’t been able to handle. And while he couldn’t see what details he had muffed, what had been wrong in his perception, what impulses had been erroneous and sentimental, he nevertheless suspected with a trembling thrill that this was just one more flaw. Well, he would take responsibility, even for this last infuriating fact. His last hope and his last sense of beauty, which was the girl, had brought him to the certainty that this was all an expression of him. Where, he wondered, did knowledge stop and self-loathing begin? About right here, she would have said. Up against this tree.
Then he strained against all of the memories, the sounds, the silver bubbles in the water glass by his mother’s bed, all of them blending together in one keen, bright instant, which arrived with a shock and a noise that sounded like the end of the world.
RUSSELL BOYD
MICHAELS FELL BACK WITH HIS HAND ON HIS LEG. He didn’t swear. He just fell on his back and then worked his way to the side of the road, where that ditch was. The dog kept barking, and Bonowski moved back, too, trying to get the dog and himself out of the way. The other men looked up the hillside, where they saw a shadow by the tree against that sun. Michaels was bleeding from the back of his leg, and he said, “Shit. He shot my leg off. Can you believe it?”
Russell came up to him, his gun drawn, still looking up the hillside, and as he knelt there, hearing another shot and seeing where it hit in the middle of the road, he heard Michaels say, “I can move my toes. Well, that’s something. How fast do you bleed out?”
“I don’t know,” said Russell. “You’ll be O.K.”
“Can you see him?” said Michaels.
“No,” said Russell.
He stayed against the bank where they had a little cover. Michaels looked up the hill and asked, “Is he coming down to finish me off?”
“No,” said Russell.
“I think that’s what he’s going to do,” said Michaels.
Russell looked around, back the way they had come, and wondered how far it was. Then Santini sat down, too.
“I’m shot,” said Santini. “That son of a bitch. That dumb fuck.”
Michaels lay on his back, his feet toward the main road, his head toward the hill where Kohler was. He couldn’t turn over on his stomach, so he had to point the pistol from where he was, on his back, so that from his perspective, the hill appeared upside down and disorienting. This combined with the buzzing edge of blood loss and fear.
“I don’t want him coming down here to get me. Is he going to do that?”
“I don’t see him,” said Russell.
“Does that mean he’s coming?” said Michaels.
“No,” said Russell. “It’s going to be all right.”
“Bullshit,” said Michaels. He moved his boot again. “I can still feel them. But it’s changing. It’s getting a little numb.” He looked up the hill, still on his back. “If he comes down here, you’ll kill him, won’t you?”
“Yes,” said Russell.
Michaels lay there, his uniform green against the cinnamon-colored leaves on the bank and the grayness of the ditch. Russell knelt next to him, looking uphill, trying to see where Kohler was.
Santini sat farther up the road, and when Russell tried to get closer, another shot came from the hilltop. He pulled back and lay against the bank, hugging it, looking up but wanting to be careful about even that, since he wasn’t sure if he was exposed. Santini said, “I’m lung-shot.” He looked around, trying to see the hillside, and he said, “Is he going to come down here and kill me?”
“No,” said Russell.
“I bet that’s what he’s thinking. He’s got us down and now he’s going to finish us off,” said Santini.
The dog looked uphill and barked, and then Bonowski took out his radio and tried to speak and then listened, but all he heard was static.
“We can’t receive here,” said Bonowski. “But does that mean they can hear us?”
“I don’t know,” said Russell.
“Is he coming?” said Michaels.
The dog went on barking, moving from side to side on the leash, lunging uphill, its feet slipping on the ice at the side of the road.
“I’ll be right back,” said Bonowski.
He crouched over and started walking quickly, pulling the dog and still trying to stay low, against the bank, and when he was far enough away, he stood up and starting running. As Russell leaned up against the bank, he turned his head and saw the man and the dog as they disappeared in the V the hills made as they came down to the road. They just vanished, and when they did so the landscape seemed darker, the grays looking sootier and the browns appearing wetter and redder, too.
Russell trie
d to move closer, to get beyond Michaels, who still held the pistol on the hillside, and when Russell passed him, Michaels said, “What are you doing? He’ll kill you. Don’t you see?”
Russell could only see that pale sky and the shapes of the trees, and then when he tried to look at the spot where he thought Kohler was, his perspective had changed and all of the trees seemed to be in different places.
“I’m getting numb now,” said Michaels.
“It’ll be all right,” said Russell.
“No,” said Michaels. “What happens if I pass out and then he comes down here?”
Russell tried to get a little closer to Santini.
“I’m lung-shot,” said Santini.
“You’ve got to promise me that you won’t let him come down here,” Michaels said to Russell.
Russell looked up the hill again. All he saw were those gray trunks and the light, the leaves, and all of it had the smell of dirt and rotting vegetation. And as he hugged the bank, Russell saw those long streams of light, filled with dust and looking as though they were drawn with a ruler. Then he tried to think of what to do. He found that he was waiting, looking to see if the man up above would show himself, and then he was hoping that he would, but he knew that this was going to get him nowhere.
Bonowski came back alone, running along the road and crawling along the bank, coming along until he stopped right at Michaels’s feet.
“I got through on the radio out at the road,” he said.
“Did you?” said Michaels. “What the hell did they say?”
“It won’t be long,” said Bonowski.
“Yeah,” said Michaels. “Well, you know what, that depends on your point of view.”
“Come on,” said Bonowski. “I’m going to try to get you out of here.”
They crawled along the road, keeping to the bank, starting and stopping, and then looking up. Russell thought maybe when they moved along like that, they’d have a chance. Michaels held his leg with one hand while he held his pistol in the other, and he and Bonowski kept moving and stopping, moving and stopping, and then they disappeared around the V of the hillside, leaving Russell and Santini alone. Russell wished that he could reach out for Santini and pull him in, and as he sat there he saw, about ten feet away, that the ice in the ditch had long threads of blood on it, seeping down toward him, and mixed in with the slow ooze there was water, too, which had melted because of the warmth. Then he looked up the hill again.
He guessed that help was coming, but he still felt the sluggish drag of time. It was so slow that he seemed aware of the space between his heartbeats, which he could hear as he kept his head down against the ground. More shots came from up above. Santini said, “I’m getting a little hazy. Kind of buzzy.”
Russell had the sensation of being underwater too long, and that he needed to come up. He kept trying to make it to the surface, but he found that he was still down in the green depths and still desperate to breathe. He saw the light that came down in long rays from between the trees, and as he watched their milky illumination, he smelled the dirt. He wanted to move over to Santini, but when he did, there was another shot. And when he tried to wiggle back away from the place where he was exposed, down in the dirt and the damp, half-frozen ditch, there was another shot for that, too. So, he was stuck.
“It’s so buzzy,” said Santini. “Like everything is made out of bits.”
“We’ll get you out of here,” said Russell.
“Just watch that guy so that he doesn’t come down off of that hill,” said Santini.
Russell looked around, when he dared, trying to stay still and yet looking for a moment when he could reach out there and grab Santini, but what then? Russell would have him in the same spot where he was, but the two of them together might stick out so much as to be exposed. Then Russell pushed up against the bank, trying to think. What settled over him, with a sensation of something like mist, was the certainty that he was here without knowing a thing. He didn’t know if there was only one man up there, or how much ammunition he had. He wasn’t even sure how exposed he was. Everything he had known, all the precision that he had learned, such as the ability to know what was going on without even really being aware of it, wasn’t anywhere near enough. He was still down there in the green depths, desperate to inhale. Should he just step out there and get shot?
Then he looked up again and saw at the top of the hill, at the side of the tree, a man who was wearing a trooper’s campaign hat.
“He’s wearing a trooper’s hat,” Russell said to Santini.
“Well, maybe he’s a cop,” said Santini.
“Do you think a cop would do this?” said Russell.
“Not on purpose,” said Santini.
“What is that supposed to mean?” said Russell.
“What it means is that I don’t know if that’s a cop or not. Or what is going on,” said Santini, “aside from the fact that I’m getting shaky and everything is buzzing.”
The silence oozed down the hill, like cool air. The radio from the cruiser was quiet, and he heard Santini’s ragged, wet breathing. A slow, steady tick, tick, tick came from Santini’s belt as repeated, rose-colored drops fell from it onto the ice and then flowed back toward Russell. He had the sense of claustrophobia that came from two things: the desire to sit tight, to do nothing, to stay right there, which came on him with a weight and that ugly sparkle which filtered down through the woods. The other impulse, which was as strong as the first, but intermittent and horrifying, was the desire to reach out to the rifle that Santini had dropped.
Russell’s knees, arms, and face were cold from hugging the dirt, which smelled like the cellar of an old farmhouse. He looked at the rifle.
The coldness of the ground was irritating and unfriendly, too, since as Russell pressed against it, the cold dirt was unyielding and wouldn’t let him get in where he wanted to be. As he struggled, thinking of how it would be good if he was down inside the ground, just a little, he suddenly wanted to push himself away with all the horrified revulsion one feels at a grave. And as he waited there, the odor of the earth changed, too, no longer just the ammonia-like stench of leaves rotting from the fall, but the smell of a newly dug hole in the ground where someone was going to be left forever. Then he glanced at the sky and the shapes of the trees with all the horror of obliteration. All of the vagueness disappeared in the realization that one specific man wanted specifically to kill him. And what was the next thing to discover here, in that now thoroughly illuminated fragrance of the earth?
Santini had dropped the rifle when he fell back, and the muzzle had leaves around it, which could have been just debris, but then it was possible that there was mud stuck into it, too. The ice and the oily metal of the rifle were lost in the glare of sunlight.
It couldn’t be too much longer before other men showed up, and yet sitting here was wrong: the silence overwhelmed him and left him with a sense of being reduced, pressed down to nothing. He listened to the ragged breathing and turned on his back to see if anyone was coming up the road, and realized he couldn’t see very far that way, either. What he needed, in that moment, with that flowing silence and the sense that it was impossible to breathe, to think, to do anything correctly, was a sense of certainty, which was the last thing in the world he had. So he looked at the glare of the ice, saw the blood drip onto it in that appalling cadence, and heard the sound of the breathing. Then the radio in the cruiser came on again.
He heard the radio and the voice on it, the steady, repeated, unempathic voice of the dispatcher. Then Santini started a slow, constant swearing, a cursing that missed no one and nothing. In the sound of that despairing voice, Russell thought of the white horses in the hunt, which had come along beyond the screen of brush. All he knew was that he was disoriented by his contradictory, constant impulses, which mixed so perfectly with the smell of the dirt.
He reached out and took hold of Santini’s black boot. It was soft and had been shined that morning. Russell could sm
ell the polish. He put his hand out there and realized that he had shoe polish on his fingers. Then he pulled himself closer. Santini grunted and said, “What the fuck are you doing?” Russell stumbled beyond him and picked up the rifle, and sat back down against the bank. He tried to think, Put on the safety, put it on before you dig the leaves and the mud out of the muzzle, because it makes no sense to shoot your fingers off. Then, as he picked the leaves and muck out, lying on his back and hearing Santini’s breathing, he had the sensation of having been suspended in a moment in which nothing had happened at all, an emptiness, that left him trembling. He swallowed and looked around, and then rolled over and put the bead on the side of the tree, and when the man in the blue shirt leaned around the trunk, Russell shot. It was the recoil and the obvious impact that seemed to clarify everything. The noise was loud, and as his ears rang, the man slumped back behind the tree, but Russell kept shooting, keeping him there, and when the man looked around again, Russell shot and saw him snap back and drop.
A station wagon backed up the road. Bonowski and other men were using it as a shield, all of them coming along slowly, and when they were pretty close, Russell went on shooting and the others picked up Santini and loaded him, although they dropped him once. Then, when the station wagon drove away, two other men took places around Russell, one looking on one side of the tree and one on the other, and all of them waiting: what Russell had was that sense of everything and nothing, that coming and going, that silence and noise like an A-bomb.
After a while they began to work their way up the hill, a group of men giving fire while one of them moved closer, and finally Russell saw that Kohler was lying there in a circle of dirt where the leaves had been pushed away. He wasn’t moving. Then the other men came up and looked, too, and after a while they walked right up to him.
“Do you recognize him?” one of the men asked.
“Yes,” said Russell. “I recognize him.”