Wingshooters (18 page)

There is nothing more lonely than sitting in a car late at night in the middle of an unfamiliar forest. Although this was thirty-seven years ago now, I still remember the feel of the seat against my legs, how I suddenly became aware of a tear in the fabric. I remember the way the temperature began to drop inside as the air lost the warmth of the heater. I remember how the edges of the car became visible as my eyes got used to the dark; how the trees slowly took shape in the blackness. And I remember the weight of that gun on my leg, which was nowhere near as heavy as the weight of Charlie making me take it; the weight of knowing why it had to be taken.

By now, the beams of the flashlights had disappeared into the forest. I heard the sound of my breathing and tried to count, tried to sing, anything to keep myself from thinking too much about what we were doing there, what might be out there in the woods. Then Brett let loose a torrent of barks so sudden and loud that I jumped and felt the gun slip from my hand.

“Brett! What?” I asked. He went to the window, turned back toward me, and then barked again—loud and full-throated, lifting his head to let out the stream of sound. His bark had always been loud, but it had never sounded so insistent, so deafening, as it did inside that car. My heart was racing and I kept telling him to stop, to be quiet; I didn’t know what he was barking at and the gun had fallen to the floor and I wasn’t sure that I could handle it anyway. Finally he stopped, as suddenly as he’d started. My heart began to slow a little and I stroked his back to calm us both down. He looked at me—I could see better now—with his saddest, most soulful expression. I didn’t know what he was asking me for, or telling me just then. But he looked at me that night like I was his best and only friend, and for a moment I began to feel safe again.

We sat there awhile longer, and then Brett started to whine and paw at the door and I felt a wave of relief; I understood that he just needed to pee. I thought about Charlie’s instructions not to open the door. But Brett had been in the car for a couple of hours by then, and Charlie wouldn’t want him to piss on the seat, and I didn’t see anything wrong with letting him out for a second if I locked us back in again. So I unlocked the door and opened it and Brett jumped out. He went to the edge of the clearing. But instead of just sniffing around and lifting his leg, he trotted off into the woods. He headed the opposite direction from where Charlie and Pete had gone, and I wondered if he’d smelled a deer or raccoon. I waited a few seconds and then called out to him softly. He didn’t come. But I heard a rustling sound nearby, Brett picking his way through the fallen branches, so I got out of the car to find him and bring him back.

“Brett! Damnit! Come here!” I cried out. I walked across the small clearing, trying not to look at Earl’s car, and entered the woods where my dog had gone. Now that my eyes had gotten used to the dark, it was actually quite easy to see. The moon was full and the stars were out, and while I couldn’t always tell where I was putting my feet, I had no trouble making my way between the trees. My ankle still hurt from my fall at the clinic, but I just gritted my teeth and kept walking. Ahead, I could hear my dog sniffing and panting, engaged in some ancient, blood-borne need to hunt. But each time I got close enough to reach out and grab his collar, he dodged me and ran off a bit further.

The woods were getting thicker now, and as the trees grew dense, their tops shut out more of the sky. I put my hands out in front of me to feel for branches. Once or twice I tripped over a twig or a rock and tweaked my sore ankle, but I managed to keep my balance. My dog was going further ahead, increasing the distance between us; I could still hear the panting and the twigs beneath his feet. But maybe because I was with him, maybe because I was so focused on getting him back, I wasn’t as scared out there in the woods as I had been sitting in the car. At least I wasn’t until I looked up and saw a light ahead, a torch or lantern that had no business being out there. And now I realized that this was what Brett had scented or seen, for that was exactly where he was headed.

I picked up my pace a bit, trying to catch up with the dog before he got too close to the light. Once, twice more I whispered, “Brett!” but he was on the trail of something, and wasn’t listening. My heart pounded in my chest and I wanted to turn around, run away and go back to the car. But my dog was out there in front of me and I couldn’t leave him. And maybe, just maybe, as afraid as I was, my curiosity was stronger than my fear.

When I got within thirty feet of the light, I saw that it was coming out of another clearing, like the one where the cars had been parked. This one was larger, maybe forty by twenty. I slowed down as I got closer, trying to make out the scene in front of me through the branches. On the left side of the clearing was a jagged stump with a lantern set on top of it. And off on the far side someone was moving, laboring, lifting things and replacing them again. I knew from his green winter coat and black wool cap that it was Earl Watson—but when he turned for a moment to grab another armful of branches, I was shocked by the sight of his face. The weak orange light of the lantern made his eyes look deeper set, and some basic human quality seemed burned out of them. I slowed down some more and moved forward as quietly as I could, and Brett too seemed to realize that caution was in order, because he stopped and waited for me. But the man in the clearing was involved in his work, and the branches he was moving were making noise as they scraped together, and then there were his own heavy grunts of exertion, and he did not hear anything else.

I crept closer to get a better look at what he was doing. I wanted to see if Mrs. Garrett was with him, but there wasn’t any sign of her. I stood maybe twenty or twenty-five feet away from him now, when I was suddenly struck by the position I was in. I was alone in the woods with a man who had beaten his son and kidnapped a woman. I knew he had a gun, and I’d left mine in the car, and my grandfather wasn’t there to protect me. All this knowledge made my heart and stomach lurch, and I knew that I had to get out of there. And I would have; I would have turned around and gone back to the car, if my dog hadn’t run into the clearing.

To this day I don’t know what he was doing. Was he simply running forward because he recognized Earl? Was he following his spaniel instincts and taking those last steps forward to complete the job of flushing his prey? Or was he just stepping out and announcing himself? It might have been that; it might have been as simple as that, for what Brett did was take a couple of bounding steps forward, pose in his “ready” stance, and let out a declarative bark. I called out, “Brett!”—I couldn’t help myself—and now Earl spun around, looked at Brett, and then stared out into the woods.

“Who’s there?”

I didn’t answer and Brett stood staring at him, his tail erect and moving in small, tight circles.

“Charlie?” Earl called out now. “Charlie, is that you?”

Then he looked at Brett again and back out toward the woods and spoke in a different tone. “Mike, I know you’re there,” he said, quieter now. “You better come and show yourself, girl.”

I could have just turned and run. I could have hobbled through the woods and gone back to the car, where the gun was, where Charlie might find me. But I knew that Earl was faster than me, and I wasn’t going to leave my dog.

And there was something else, too. Maybe, despite the evidence that Earl was dangerous, I didn’t think he could do any further harm. He was so familiar to me, so normal, and I didn’t want to believe that evil appeared in such everyday forms. I didn’t know yet that violence and hatred aren’t things that exist outside us, looming threats that we can recognize and keep from our lives. I didn’t know that they are everywhere, everywhere we look, in the hearts of the people we know and live with, and in our own.

I stepped forward into the clearing and my dog looked up at me happily, proud to show me what he had found. Earl was standing straight up now, his cap pulled back, the top of his winter coat unbuttoned. His coat and pants were streaked with dirt, and as he stood he brushed some leaves from his shoulders. His face—I could see it more clearly now—had an odd, calm expression. He didn’t look frenzied, as he had earlier at his house. He looked like he had things well in hand. For a moment my fear subsided and I was lulled into thinking that everything would be all right, as if maybe there was some good reason he was out here in the woods, in the middle of the night, moving branches. But that ease vanished quickly when he shook his head and said, “You shouldn’t have come out here, Mikey.”

“I … I didn’t mean to,” I stammered. “Brett jumped out of the car, and … and …”

“You came with Charlie, I know. They’re looking for me, aren’t they?”

I nodded and didn’t say anything. Beside me, my dog sat down with a grunt.

“And they’re probably looking for that woman too, but guess what? They ain’t going to find her. At least, not in the shape they want.”

He laughed a sharp, bitter laugh, and I realized then that what I saw on his face was not calm at all, but anger—an anger so focused and pure and distilled that it had burned away all other expression. There were no rages coming, no tantrums, no loud bursts of fury. The anger in him was so thorough and consuming that it didn’t need further expression.

“It’s only her, you know,” he continued. “He’s out of town, like Charlie said. She said he went to visit his people.” He gave that strange, bitter laugh again, and I realized with horror how he—and Charlie—had learned she was alone. “His people! Well, someone so damn caring, someone who’s such a family man, should have shown more respect, don’t you think? More respect for Earl Watson and
his
people.”

Above us, an owl gave its three-part cry. The wind rustled through the branches and I pulled my coat tighter. I wanted to point out that the Garretts had, in fact, cared for “his people”—they had cared about his son. But I knew that anything I said would increase the distance in his eyes. And besides, he just kept talking.

“They took Kevin today,” he said. “They just up and took him away, and they won’t tell me where he is, like I’m not even fit to talk to him. As if they have any right to tell me how to raise my own children! You don’t
do
that, you understand? You just don’t do that. And somebody had to account for it.”

I was struck by what he said. Listening to him, I realized that what so offended Earl was not that his son was off in the care of strangers. It was that something of his had been taken. Something had been removed from him against his will, a possession whose fate he believed he should control completely. He would have been angry, too, if someone had taken his car or one of his pistols. That it was Kevin who’d been taken wasn’t substantively different. It was simply a matter of degree.

“But it wasn’t them who reported you!” I protested, and as soon as the words were out I regretted them.

Earl stared at me now like he was startled that I’d spoken, like he was surprised to find me there with him at all. “What did you say?”

“It wasn’t them who called,” I repeated. “Ray said it was somebody else!”

And now a darkness passed over his face and I knew he was still capable of rage. And I wondered again where Mrs. Garrett was, what Earl had been doing before I got there. “It
was
them,” he insisted. “It
was
them. And even if they didn’t make the call today, it was them who got this started. They should have just minded their own fucking business. They should have just never come here!” He spat something out in front of him, chew or gum or the flavor of bitterness. “You too, goddamnit. All of you. You should have just stayed where you belonged.”

He reached toward a fallen log to his right and picked up something I should have seen earlier—what looked like a .357 semiautomatic that had been lying within his reach the whole time. He lifted it quickly and almost casually, as if to show me a new item from his store. But when it stopped moving I was staring down its barrel.

“You shouldn’t have come,” he repeated, and my dog stood up again, alert to the abrupt change in the atmosphere. “You shouldn’t be here, and I’m sorry for it. You should have stayed at home.”

The owl gave its cry again, louder this time, and I was suddenly gripped with fear. It felt like my whole body had been reduced to my heart, which was beating so violently I thought it might burst; and my lungs, which could not draw breath.

“But Charlie would kill me if something happened to you,” Earl continued, “so I’m going to let you go. But you didn’t see
anything
, Mike, you understand? That’s what you’re going to say. You didn’t see me. I wasn’t even here.”

Beside me, my dog gave a low warning growl; he must have felt the tension in the air. I didn’t really hear what Earl was saying because my eyes were fixed on the gun. I was staring at its barrel, its sleek long shape, wondering about my chances if I stepped back into the woods and what would happen if he actually shot me. Would I lose consciousness right away, or would I feel the impact of the bullet? I was still looking at the gun when Earl said, “Because if you
do
say something, anything at all, you know what I’ll do to you, don’t you?”

I was staring at the barrel when I saw it move away, point lower and to my left. And I was staring at it still when the gun went off and my dog dropped down to the ground.

I screamed, “Brett!” and just stood there, frozen. My dog had fallen onto his left side. The bullet had entered through his chest, and blood poured out of the wound, dark red against the white of his fur. He lay still for a moment and I thought he was dead, but then he began to work his legs, trying to lift himself up off the ground. I started toward him and Earl swung the gun back in my direction. “Don’t move,” he said. “Don’t take another step.”

My dog struggled to get up, but he couldn’t, for something was shattered inside, and now he looked at me and his eyes were hurt and pleading. Every cell in my body told me to go to him, and I thought, I have to save him. I have to stop the bleeding and get him to town so that someone can take out the bullet. He kept trying to stand and then falling, whimpering each time he hit the ground. I stepped forward again, sobbing, and cried out, “Brett!” but Earl moved too and cocked his trigger and said, “Don’t make me shoot you, Michelle.”