Boy Who Shoots Crows (9781101552797) (40 page)

When I came to, the air was warm, and at first I felt better, refreshed, and I lay there in a state of near mindlessness as I watched a beetle climbing up a stalk of weed. It was Queen Anne's lace, I think, but my nose was only three or four inches from the stem, so close that I could see the little hairs on it. And there was a tiny black bug, shaped like a beetle but not much bigger than a tick, climbing up the stalk, weaving its way around the hairs as it climbed. Sometimes it got sort of impaled on one of the hairs, then had to wiggle its way off before climbing again. I had one arm under my head, as if I had simply chosen to lie down and take a nap. And the grass tickling my nose smelled so sweet, so earthy and clean. For a few delicious moments my mind was blank, except for what I took in through my senses.

And then I sat up, I guess, and looked at the sky, and my God, it was eggshell blue and beautiful. A few long, thin clouds stretched out above me like islands on the calmest of seas. And the only sound was that of a single crow somewhere out in the stubbly cornfield. It cawed twice, fell silent for fifteen seconds or so, then cawed again. The air was warm and clean, and I felt light and airy myself. I just lay there listening to the crow and smiling and breathing in that salubrious air.

But then what I had done came rushing back to me, the full and terrible knowledge of it. When that happened, every detail of the day became offensive and ugly, everything I had loved just moments earlier. The scent of grass and air, the stillness, the once-beautiful sound of a caw echoing from the trees. The heaviness in me was crushing, but I wanted to be crushed. I wanted nothing more or less than total obliteration.

I got up finally and dragged back through the field and into the barn and looked at him. It is impossible to describe how I felt at that moment. But I now understand what compels a father or mother who witnesses their child's death to immediately take his or her own life. The pain is just too great. It permeates every thought and feeling, it poisons and leadens every breath. I again contemplated picking up Jesse's shotgun and propping it against my chin. My head felt ready to explode anyway, so why not?

I don't know why not. I don't know why I did what I did. And I don't excuse my reasoning, if such fragmented, convoluted thought can be called reasoning. But I convinced myself that I would be blamed for what had happened—blamed and punished for what was in fact an accident. I was an outsider in this place, I didn't fit in, and nobody was likely to show an ounce of compassion for me. If this horror were discovered, I would be made to repeat over and over how I had forced Jesse into that stall. The police would dig copper pellets out of the dry wood. First I had frightened the little boy, then tortured him with the pellet gun, then finally I had shot him with his own gun. This would be the accepted truth, and I knew it with absolute certainty. There would be no more lemon sunshine on a meadow for me. No more covered bridges or Amish buggies. No more shows at Margo's gallery or dinners in the city with June, no more browsing the book tables in Washington Square, no more mugs of tea or work at the easel in the dewy mornings. No more crows calling from the woods. This life I had made for myself, this life I had fought for, tooth and claw, would be over. Because of an accident. A stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid accident.

Breaking into that dirt floor with its compacted layers of old manure and straw was like digging into concrete. I'm sure there were more efficient tools for the job upstairs in the barn, but those were Mike's tools, so I went for my garden tools instead, tools I knew as old friends, tools that fit my hands. I managed to break through the hardened dirt with my garden weevil, a tool like a corkscrew on a long metal shaft. It works very well at twisting dandelion clumps out of soft sod, but the tines strained hard against the earthen floor of the stall. I used the long-handled spade for scraping and scooping dirt out of the widening hole. I worked breathlessly, frantically, as insentient as a beast.

By the time I finished, every muscle and bone in my body was burning. My shoulders felt as if they had been beaten with a board. Two blisters had sprouted on my hands, and I had worked them bloody. The ground, after I lay Jesse and the two guns in it and covered everything with dirt, had a noticeable rise to it, so I carried the extra dirt out to my garden a shovelful at a time, flung it and scattered it, then worked it all into the topsoil. I hated myself every step of the way, loathed what I was doing. But I kept telling myself,
You have to do this, Charlotte. You've no choice but to do this.

Afterward I pried two boards off the stall wall, the ones with copper pellets embedded in them. These were all from my air pistol. Jesse had taken the shotgun blast full in his chest. There was no exit wound, maybe because of the heaviness of his hunting coat, or just the nature of shotgun pellets, I don't know. There was almost no blood on the ground—anyway, none that I could discern in the adumbrated light.

My actions, when I look back on them now, appear so calculating and cold. But they were not. I was capable of seizing on to only one thought at a time, of pulling a thought out of a black swirl of panic and acting upon it.
Bury him
—that's as complex as my thinking was at the moment. My body was in overdrive but my mind was barely even conscious. Because all the while I ached with an ache of unfathomable regret, a scalding, red throb of shame and terror and recrimination.

When the hole was covered and smoothed out and, to my eyes, the stall looked in no way odd, would call no attention to itself, I carried the boards outside to the fifty-gallon metal drum I burn my trash in. Then I went back inside the house and removed every stitch of clothing I had on and crammed it all into a plastic garbage bag. I put on an old house dress, and, using one of those sawdust bricks I use to start fires in the fireplace, I set the boards and my bagful of clothes ablaze in the trash barrel. I stood there for several minutes, alternately peering anxiously toward the road (nobody slowed down or showed any interest in me) and watching the fire eat up the evidence of my guilt.

Afterward I went inside and scrubbed myself raw in the shower. I worked quickly, knowing I had to get through this before I let myself fall apart. I then put on jeans and a pullover shirt and took the old house dress outside and tossed it onto the embers too. Then I went inside again and sat by the window and watched the road and waited for it to come alive with police cars.

G
ATESMAN stood up then and, carrying the journal, made his way to his vehicle. He opened the door, reached inside for his flashlight. The long, thick-handled light felt especially heavy in his left hand, the journal in his right hand peculiarly light. What felt heaviest were his footsteps, his breath, the slope and drag of his shoulders. To keep himself from becoming short of breath, more exhausted by his thoughts than the much-less-demanding exertion of walking, he turned his mind elsewhere.
On a morning like this,
he thought,
Deer Creek will be clear and fast. The trout will glitter in the sunlight.
In his mind's eye he could see a fat one moving in on the fly as he twitched it through the water, the trout's rainbow scales glittering red and orange as it swam.

He crossed close behind the barn then, came to the corner of the fenced-in pasture. He unlatched the gate and stood for a moment, considering the weeds. Even now there was a vague hint of a sinuous path.
You thought it was made by some animal,
he told himself, and shook his head, stood still for half a minute, then turned and continued on.

In the barn he switched on his flashlight and aimed the powerful beam into the corner stall. In the center of the stall was the same stack of twelve bags of fertilizer he had glanced at a month earlier, four courses of three bags each, crosshatched atop one another, the top bag split open, its contents spilled onto the floor—everything exactly as he remembered it. But now he had to wonder why Charlotte failed to mention the bags in her journal entry. Not a single mention of them.

He pictured the little boy crowded up against the wall, the too-large hunting jacket, the boy's face split by shadow and light. It was then he noticed the missing boards. He moved into the corner of the stall, played the light over them.
Yes, there, right along the edges. This wood hasn't been exposed to the weather as long. Lighter in color. This is where she pulled off the boards. Why didn't I see that before?

Because you were looking for the boy, that's all,
he reminded himself.
That's all you were looking for then.

Still...
he thought, and regretted the oversight.
Not that it would have changed anything,
he told himself.
But still...

Next, he played his light around the bottom of the bags.
Twelve bags at forty pounds each,
he thought.
Four hundred and eighty pounds.
The thought took the last of his strength away, sucked him dry.

He went back out to the pasture as quickly as he could, stood for a while leaning against the top rail. He could hear the intermittent squawks of crows squabbling in the trees. Normally they would be out scavenging at this time of day. Either rain was on its way or else they had found a meal out there in the woods. This realization made Gatesman think of an old riddle: If a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound?

And he answered it,
Yes.
At the very least, other trees hear it. The animals hear it. The bugs and ants and snakes hear it. The woods, he knew, all woods and other secluded places, hear accidents daily, accidents no human eye ever sees, no human ear ever hears. Squirrels fall off branches and break their necks. Birds collide in midair and tumble to the ground. A running doe can step into a chipmunk hole, break a leg, then lie on the ground for days and days before it dies. And before long, all traces of that deer will be gone. The crows and vultures and other animals clean up the meat, then bacteria cleans up the hide and bones. The teeth are the last thing to go. Eventually they get scattered too, little seeds that never sprout. In this way the forest cleans itself, as does the desert, the ocean, all the natural places.

Nature does its job,
he told himself.
Now you do yours.
When he thought he was ready to return to the journal, but still in no condition to return to the house, he sat against a fence post with his face to the sun. The light glared off the parchment and stung his eyes as he read.

W
ITH every passing minute I grew more apprehensive. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that I was literally out of my mind with fear. I kept trying to think logically, but what an irrational mind sees as logical is just the opposite. All I knew was that the police would have to show up here sooner or later, and before they did, I had better cover my tracks.

I got the push broom from the basement and took it out to the barn and swept the entire plank floor clean of any trace of my footsteps. But then the floor looked too clean, suspiciously clean. So I climbed up into the hayloft, yanked a couple handfuls of hay out of a bale, and sprinkled it down onto the floor, tossing it out in all directions. Then I had to get back out the front door without leaving any footprints in the new dust, so I literally tiptoed along the wall until I was outside again.

Then I took the broom down to the stall and swept the stall, not neatly this time, but as messily as I could, just trying to cover up the shovel marks. But this time, a rise in the center of the floor was noticeable to me. I knew I had to do more.

I chose the Walmart in Lewistown for two reasons. First, I had never shopped at that one, only the closer one in Carlisle. So I was less likely to be recognized there. Second, Walmart keeps their gardening supplies outside, so I had a smaller possibility there than at my favorite nursery of being noticed when I loaded up the Jeep.