Chris Whitaker - We Begin at the End

She let go and ran for the phone in the kitchen. Iver County PD on speed dial, she told all she could.

She left prints of Hal’s blood on the receiver. She fetched whisky from the cabinet and ran back out.

“Fuck.” She put the bottle to his lips.

He coughed, the blood there now.

“I got him, Duchess. He ran but I got him.”

“Don’t talk. People are coming, people who know what to do.”

He watched her. “You’re an outlaw.”

“I am,” she said, her voice breaking.

“You make me proud.”

She clutched his hand tight, pressed her head to his, closed her eyes and held her tears back. “Fuck,” she yelled it. She hit his arm, his chest, slapped his cheek hard. “Grandpa. Wake up.”

She looked down at the blood on her new yellow dress, and then down at the snow, where footprints led her eyes to white fields.

She knelt once more. “We begin at the end.” She took the shotgun from beside him.

She no longer felt the biting cold, no longer noticed the fullest moon. She did not see stars or the red barns or the frozen water.

At the stable she saddled the gray and led her from her place.

She pulled herself up with one hand, the shotgun in the other, and she snapped the reins as they ran after the prints.

She cursed herself, complacent, the way she had fallen into the promise of a new life. She remembered the anger, the hot twisting anger.

She told herself who she was.

Duchess Day Radley.

Outlaw.

Part Three

Restitution

28

HE MADE THE DRIVE FROM day to night, high beams, blinking wildflower, Mojave nothing but morphing shapes.

Route Fifteen, the lights of Las Vegas, dazzling like some grand alien craft had fallen from the sky.

Rising billboards, styled magicians with eyebrows arched and aging starlets taking their back catalog all the way to the bank.

He watched it fade in the rearview and before long it was like it had never been. He skirted the Valley of Fire, Beaver Dam and the eternal shadow of the Canyon behind. Motel lights and gas stations and a highway that emptied as the hours drifted.

Cedar City, he stopped at an all-night diner, historic downtown in Iron County, mostly sleeping. He sat at a booth and listened to a couple guys talk about “Clarke’s sendoff.” He couldn’t figure out if Clarke was dead or getting married.

He rubbed his eyes to signs, POCATELLO and BLACKFOOT, IDAHO FALLS.

As Caribou-Targhee came to view he saw the first blue in a thousand miles of black. He slowed on 87 and watched the sun rise by Henrys Lake, the water so many refracted colors he rubbed his eyes once more.

The first snow at Three Forks, white fields ran to white sky. He closed the window and blew the heater but did not feel the cold nor the heat.

When Iver County PD called, Walk had been home, laid up, some kind of palsy gripped him so tight he almost could not reach the phone. But then after, when the cop hung up he slammed the receiver down again and again until it broke apart. Then he’d heaved the contents of his desk onto the carpet, kicked his computer screen until it cracked. And then, slowly, he’d cleared it all up again.

Any illusion, the postcards, Friday night calls with Hal, any illusion the girl and the boy might yet get their deserved life had died such a cold and final death that Walk did not speak to anyone for three days. He had taken leave, vacation time backdated a decade, got them so worried Louanne had stopped by and hammered on his door. He did not answer. Nor did he answer Martha’s calls.

He spent the first day in his apartment, Darke’s life mapped out on the wall behind his television set so he could never get the man from his mind. He chased leads so old the numbers did not connect or if they did he reached confused people that had not heard Darke’s name in twenty years. He tried drinking, a bottle of Jim Beam, made it a quarter way through before he gave up. His meds, with the alcohol, just made him drowsy. He longed for a mistake, a reason he could carry the blame on his shoulders and sink down deep, but again he found nothing. It was a cruel hand of fate, a nothing anomaly. Darke made a choice and saw it through. And they could still not pin a thing on him. No witness. Snow buried blood. They’d put out all points, blocked the only roads, sent a team in as deep as they could. Iver County worked the theory the killer was dead, buried in a tomb of ice somewhere amongst the woodland, likely torn apart by the animals once he thawed.

Walk returned to the station and got on. He wrote up routine violations, stopped by routine elementary schools and worked routine shifts, four days and one night.

Martha stopped by, uninvited, and when he told her she pressed a hand to her mouth like she wanted to scream. If Walk was broken before, what happened in Montana scattered the pieces so far and wide he gave up all hope of being whole again.

He visited Vincent, sat in the hot waiting room for three hours in case Vincent changed his mind and came out. He stood with Cuddy and watched basketball and did not flinch when men took hard falls or lost a tooth to an elbow.

The beard was long now, past his neck down to his skeletal chest. He had aged a decade in months, his skin pursed tight over hollow cheeks.

The snow thickened at Lewis and Clark, he washed up in a gas station on 89. It smelled of piss and he tried shallow breaths as he pulled off his uniform. He stood naked beneath flickering light. No bulging stomach, sagging chest, instead he saw ribs and hip bones. He dressed, shirt on, slacks, tie. His hair was cropped close now so he did not need to comb it. His hands shook. He did not fight them. They no longer cooperated, if he held the phone with one, he could not grasp a pen with the other. It was exhausting, maddening.

Canyon View Baptist.

Someone had cleared the lot, walled it off with snow piled high. He was early by an hour so rolled his seat back and closed his eyes. A night on the road should’ve seen him grab thirty minutes but his mind would not leave him. He thought of Duchess when she was small and the way she had looked at him, like he was a man who could solve her problems.

First cars rolled into the lot. He watched them, old people that wore the cold on their faces, cheeks red as they ambled into the small church.

He found a corner at the back. An organ played something serene.

At the front was the coffin.

He stood when others did.

And then he turned and saw the boy, Robin, holding the hand of a lady he did not recognize. The boy looked older, suddenly, like the child had once again been robbed by the pull of a trigger.

Behind them, she appeared, her dress dark and simple. She kept her eyes up and hard, challenging. She gazed around the church, people tried their best to smile sad smiles. She did not return any. She was not a child now.

When she saw him she stuttered, just one step, a reluctant memory, and then she was past.

As she sat at the front he saw the bow in her hair, tucked out of sight but it was there.

Behind her was a slight boy with glasses, and when the priest spoke and Robin began to cry the boy placed a hand on Duchess’s shoulder. She did not turn, just shook his hand from her.

After, Walk followed them back to the Radley farm.

Inside were sandwiches and cake. A lady who introduced herself as Dolly handed Walk a coffee.

Robin stood with the lady and looked as lost as a child ever had. He said no thank you when Dolly offered him a donut. He said no thank you when the lady asked him if he wanted to head up and take a last look at his bedroom.

Walk slipped out and crunched the snow, following small prints.

He found her at the stable, her back to him as she patted a handsome gray, her small hand on the horse’s nose. The horse bowed, nuzzled against her and she kissed it gently.