by Lou Cadle
“I know the smart thing to do is shoot you.”
“Arch. I have a family.”
“You should have thought of that before you turned criminal!” his father shouted.
“Dad,” Dev said, “I’m coming up behind you.”
“You get your man?”
“No, I’m sorry. He made it out to the road, and I heard all the yelling so came back.”
“Damn it, Devlin—”
“It’s my other son out there,” said the man who knew his father. “You can’t shoot my other son.”
“I swear, I’d shoot the lot of you with about one more excuse.”
Dev believed he’d likely shoot them anyway. He pointed out what his father must already know. “They’ll go back to town, and they’ll come back with more men next time. It won’t be a half-assed raid we can fight off like tonight. It’ll be worse.”
He was up to almost his father’s side now. His father held three people at gunpoint.
“Then you shouldn’t have missed your man either.”
“I know,” Dev said. “So what do we do now? Call the sheriff again?”
“Sheriff won’t come,” the man said. His voice sounded vaguely familiar, but Dev still couldn’t place it. Someone from church maybe? “Too little gas, and too many crimes.”
“So if I shoot you all dead, I won’t be in trouble.”
“You will be. First time, maybe not. Shoot five people? You’ll end up in jail. I hear you already shot one man.”
“You heard right.” His father said nothing for several seconds, then he said, “Does your other son have a weapon?”
“Just a handgun,” said the man. “An old Smith and Wesson.”
“How much did he take?”
The man said nothing.
His father fired his rifle over their heads, and one of the men squeaked in fear. Dev himself had jumped at the noise. “How much?” His father.
“Pretty much all the fish.”
The smokehouse. They had trout in the smokehouse, and that’s what these guys must have hit first.
“So you’re willing to let my family starve so yours can eat.”
“You’d feel the same.”
“I would not. I’d have planned better. And I wouldn’t steal from a man who had done it right.”
“Look, maybe you can take us in. We’ll work for our food. We’ll do anything.”
“Like stab us in our sleep. A man who’d steal from a friend at night would do anything. How many are up here? At the Crockers’, down the road, waiting in a car? How many?”
“We walked all the way,” the man said.
Dev spoke up. “I bet the other one I saw is waiting for them then. We can get our food back if we have this one yell for him.” And then kill all four? Yes, probably so. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it. It was the smart thing to do. But was it the right thing to do?
“Arch,” the man whined.
“Ask him how many people knew their plan. How many are here, and how many back in Payson knew,” Dev suggested.
His father said, “I got this. You go hunt down your man. You have your scope.”
“Okay. Kill him? Or let him live?”
“You’ll know by what I do.” That meant if Dev heard shots up here, he should kill his man as well.
As Dev left to track down his man, he heard the fellow begging his father for his life and the life of his sons. He’d begun to cry. Dev could have told the man that was not a good strategy. Not with his father. It was only a way to piss him off more. His father loathed weakness.
As Dev hunted his first human prey, he thought that the crying guy had been right about one thing. His father should have made more of a secret of what they had up here. If these men had talked, probably half of Payson knew there was a neighborhood up the hill with plenty of food. This might be only the first of many attacks they’d need to fight off.
Maybe if no one went back into town tonight, anyone in town who had known the plan would understand it was far too dangerous to try anything else up here.
He crawled through the bush at the edges of the downed tree, scope on, hunting for the green-white light that told him where his prey was. The rifle had a hell of a lot more range than a handgun, but he didn’t trust that’s all the man had, and he kept alert. His mother would kill him if he let himself get shot.
After ten minutes of hunting, he heard three quick shots from the direction of his house, then a pause, then more slowly three more. He knew that his father had executed the men. So Dev would have to do the same. If he could find the guy, that is.
Though he worked at it for over two hours, keeping to the shadows, he never did see a glimmer of life through his scope, except for some mice on the hunt. Never heard a sound, either. The man must have been telling the truth about them being on foot, for he never heard a car engine, or tires from an electric moving on the highway, and he thought he would have in the still night.
The man must have run back down the hill as soon as he got away the first time. Turned his back on his father and brother and run for home. It disgusted Dev. First a thief, then a coward who’d leave his own family to die while he saved himself. Pretty low behavior. He’d probably eat everything he’d stolen before he made it home to his mom too, if there was a mom back in Payson. People like that would.
His father would yell at him for missing. Dev felt bad enough about it. He believed he had shot high in the dark. It was a common mistake, and he’d forgotten to adjust his aim.
Still, a small part of Dev was relieved he couldn’t find the man. He knew his father had killed the other three. But no matter how despicable he found the thieves, Dev worried that he’d have still hesitated when it came time to kill a man who was looking at him with hands raised, caught in the act, but begging for his life.
He was afraid he’d never become the man his father was.
Chapter 18
No one called the sheriff. At dawn, the neighborhood met, everyone short on sleep, everyone still dazed by the attack. Dev leaned on the railing of the Morrows’ deck and listened to the adults talk about it.
“A stranger is one thing, but this,” Crocker said. “People we knew. People from town.”
His mom said, “I’ll bet you even if they didn’t know about us, and it sounds like they did, they’ll be systematically going through the roads up here soon enough.” She was excusing his father’s role in making them the target of the attack, Dev thought.
His father said, “I hope they understand now that this is one road to avoid.” He talked tough, but he looked tired and troubled. Dev would be too if he was responsible for the three lumps under the tarp back by their smokehouse.
Mr. Morrow said, “What have we lost?”
Mr. Crocker answered, “Eggs, one hen, and they trampled some chicks. I’ll have to start again on breeding next year’s hens.”
His mom said, “Lucky it’s still early in the summer. We only had ten pounds of smoked fish stolen, but it could have been worse.”
His father said, “At least three men got away.”
Mr. Morrow: “I lost two hens too, though that might have been by the same men that hit Pilar’s henhouse.”
His mom said, “You can have a couple of ours, Mitch. We have plenty still, and the rabbits weren’t bothered.”
“Not necessary. With only me eating the eggs this year, I still have enough hens to see me through the summer. More than enough.”
“The offer is always open. You only need ask.”
Sierra was silent during the whole conversation. Dev felt awful for her, that she’d had to kill a man, but even more, that Bodhi had died. She loved that dog. So did Mr. Crocker. Dev was fond of him too.
He cleared his throat.
Mr. Morrow looked up. “You have something to add, Dev?”
“I’m so sorry about Bodhi. I don’t mean to hurt your feelings or seem cold about it, but I think Bodhi might be our worst loss. We can catch more fish. We can breed m
ore hens. But twice, he’s alerted us to danger. We’ve lost our best possible warning system. We need another dog.”
Mr. Crocker said, “I have no idea how we’d find one. It’s not as if we can go into town now or that people will have signs up about puppies for sale.”
His father said, “If they have puppies, I’m sure they’ll be thinking of eating them soon.”
Sierra made a sound, jumped up, and ran off the deck. She made it to the edge of the Morrow property, but then she stopped.
Dev wished they were closer friends. He’d follow her and try to say something kind to her, something comforting. But even with the four sessions of hunting and training out in the woods, they still hadn’t become the best of friends, and he felt awkward intruding on her grief.
“Poor kid,” his mother said. “I hope she’ll be all right.”
“She has to be,” Mr. Crocker said. “We all have to be all right. And ready for the next time. Though I hate to think there will be a next time, I can’t deny it any longer. There will be.”
There was a long silence. Finally, it was broken by Mr. Morrow. “I’ve been thinking lately on the tragedy of the commons.”
Dev said, “What’s that?”
“In England, in centuries past, there’d be a common area, owned by everyone, and they could use it to graze sheep or cows. There was an honor system, an unwritten code, about how you’d use it. An economist wrote about how that system could never work for long, that given the opportunity someone would cheat on the code, use the land a little more than his fair share. Seeing this, the next guy would tell himself he had to up his use to keep things fair. And so on, until the common ground was entirely ruined and of use to no one.”
“My land is not owned by everyone,” his father said angrily. “It’s owned by me.”
“This is true,” Mr. Morrow said, unperturbed by his father’s tone. “But I was thinking more that in town, a town as small as Payson, they might have been able to use park land and empty lots, and plant gardens back in May when they heard about the port being destroyed, and they’d have enough food now—at least enough to get by. And maybe they did that to some extent. But then the tragedy of the commons would likely have come into play.”
He went on, “Not only that. I was thinking about oil itself, a common resource for the humans of this planet, and how its misuse applies. And too—” and here, he looked around, catching the eye of everyone who was watching him “—I was thinking of us as a neighborhood. Yes, we each own our own land, but right now it might be better to think about our resources as things we can pool, all use, and use wisely. That includes human time, human hands, human eyes and ears to watch for possible attack.”
Dev said, “You’re saying we need to hang together or we’ll all surely hang separately.” He made a face. “I don’t think I got that quite right.”
“Close enough,” said Mr. Morrow. “I’m sure Mr. Franklin would forgive your inaccuracy and applaud your good sense. Yes. I believe we need to act as a team. Compromise. Put our own individual needs aside.”
“Things will get worse before they get better,” his father said.
“Exactly,” Mr. Morrow said. “All the more reason.”
Curt Henry said, “Are you thinking about anything in particular, Mitch?”
“I think we might patrol our perimeter. I’ll take my turn, same as everyone. And, while I’m not entirely comfortable with what happened last night, with the fact that men died, I’m willing to go along with not involving law enforcement. I know I’m outvoted on that matter. So I’ll go along for the common good.”
His mother said, “I don’t think any of us are entirely comfortable with it. But if Arch—and he seems the most likely to be—is hauled away to jail, we’re going to have a much harder time defending against the next attack. We can’t lose anyone, not for any reason.”
Curt Henry said, “I’m not sure you’ll get the sheriff out here anyway. He has lost two deputies—they resigned and left and it sounds like they took off for mountain land they had set aside for this sort of event. They are short-handed enough that they can’t—or won’t—respond to minor calls. If someone calls them while there’s shooting going on, that’s the only case where I’ve heard the dispatcher promise immediate response.”
“We’re seeing the end of the rule of law,” his father said. “So we have to make our own laws.”
“That’s a grand scheme, and I support it in theory,” Mr. Morrow said. “But for now, I think we have some immediate needs to take care of, before we convene our constitutional congress.”
Mr. Crocker said, “Like what to do with the bodies. I guess we should bury them.”
His mother said, “Not here. Not on any of our land.”
“Why not?” Mr. Crocker said.
“Why invite trouble? If the families of the missing men report them missing, and the police investigate, and they hear they’d planned a raid on us, I don’t want four fresh graves sitting up on a hill. We might all end up in jail—not you, Mitch, but the rest of us. And everything we’ve worked so hard for, for so many years, will be lost to marauders. I don’t feel any better about it than you do, but we need to hide what we’ve done.”
“We didn’t start it,” his father said.
“No, but we finished it, Arch.” She held a hand up. “I’m not second-guessing you. I’m just being practical. We need to bury the bodies. But first, we need to move them.”
Mr. Crocker said, “I should have left my car parked somewhere in the forest, beyond the tree.”
Dev almost groaned when he realized what this meant. “We’ll have to move the tree.”
“We can do that,” Mr. Crocker said. “Hang on. I need to make sure Sierra is okay. It’ll probably help her to have a job to do anyway.” He rose and went to follow Sierra, who was still standing, looking up at the wind turbines, thinking who knew what.
“We’ll have to use our truck anyway to haul the bodies,” his father said, rising. “C’mon, son. We need to put them in the truck. We’ll drive over for the one in the Crocker barn last thing.” He got up and left.
Mr. Morrow said, “I’m not sure how much use I’ll be in moving that big tree.”
His mother went over and put her hand on his shoulder. “It’s fine, Mitch. If you think you can manage it, I’m sure the Crockers would appreciate it if you started a grave for their dog.”
“That much, I can do. I’ll ask them where they want it. After I check on Sybil.” He went inside.
His mother said, “Are you doing okay, Curt?”
“I’m mixed. Glad I was there to stop that guy last night, stop him from raping her.” His eyes flicked to Dev. “But I’m horrified at what we’ve been reduced to. A month without oil, and we’ve already descended to this.”
“I know what you mean. It’s sliding fast. C’mon, Dev. Help your father, and I’ll get ropes and straps for moving the tree again.”
Dev had never touched a dead body before, and by the time he had helped his father load four of them onto a tarp laid in the bed of his pickup, he profoundly hoped he’d never have to do that again. They were unwieldy and heavy, and they stank of shit. It was hard to have any room in his mind left to feel bad about them, or guilty, or wonder about the moral implications when his mind was filled with the gross, practical side of it. But they finally had the truck loaded with bodies, three shovels, a push broom, and a pick, and his father left it in the road halfway between their driveway and the main road.
All of them, Sierra included, though she didn’t say a word the whole time, worked to haul first the camouflaging branches and then the main tree out of the way, just far enough so his father could drive around it.
Dev, Mr. Crocker, and his father went together in the truck, leaving the women and Mr. Henry behind. His father asked Mr. Crocker if he had any better ideas than his suggestion for the gravesite, a particular forest road up the hill about fifteen miles that wasn’t well-traveled. “It peters out about a mi
le in. I figure we go to the end and pick a place.”
“Fine by me.”
Devlin would remember those hours of work until the day he died. It was hard work, and disturbing work, and all the time he felt fear that a sheriff or ranger would come and arrest them all for murder. He was pretty sure that by burying the bodies and trying to hide what had happened they were all guilty of it—or of breaking some law almost as bad.
The ground was hard from months without rain, and the work was harder. The man who had gone after Sierra was tall. His head—or what there was left of it—hit the edge of the tailgate on the way out, leaving a smear of goo. Instead of digging a longer grave to accommodate his length, they folded his legs under him, and the body looked misshapen, almost alien, lying there. Dev was happy when he was able to throw the first shovelful of dirt over the messy head.
They replaced the forest duff they’d scraped off before digging, and if you didn’t know they were here, the graves would not draw your eye. Dev’s last job was taking the push broom and following his father down the road, brushing over his tire tracks, so that if the graves were found, they couldn’t link tire tracks directly to them.
Dev thought that was kind of stupid. If one of the wives or kids of the missing men called the sheriff, told where the men had been headed, and the sheriff ever found the bodies, he’d know who had killed them. It wasn’t like his father could afford to ditch the rifles he’d used as well, nor Sierra the shotgun.
On the short drive home, the truck cab stunk of all their sweat, sour-smelling. Dev wondered if it smelled more bitter than usual because of their nervousness and guilt.
He barely had the energy to help replace the downed tree and branches, disguising again from strangers where their road was. Funny though. It hadn’t been strangers last night, had it? His father had told Crocker that the man he knew and killed was the junk yard owner. His younger son had been the second man his father shot, and the third man his father didn’t know. “Could have seen him around town, I guess, but I don’t recall.”