Morgan Nyberg - Since Tomorrow

Noor stopped rocking for a moment but did not raise her voice. “Will?”

Will stopped scooting the chair.

“Will, could you stop that? It’s awful noisy.” She waited. There was no further sound of rolling. She started rocking again.

Will said “It’s not raining.”

Noor did not reply.

Will said “Can I go outside?”

Noor shrugged. She said “Where?”

“Just out to the barns. Maybe down to the river.”

“Stay where they can see you from the bridge. Take your bow.”

“I don’t like carryin’ that bow all the time. It gets in the way.”

Noor turned sideways to the fire. She leaned back on her hands and looked at Will. She said “Could you shoot someone with it?”

He sat slouched in the office chair, looking back at her. Then he lowered his eyes.

Noor said “Take it anyway.”

Will scooted the chair back and forth a few inches. “I wish I could be alone some time. With nobody watchin me. I wish I could just be alone someplace peaceful. Like I always used to do.”

“There’s no place like that.” The bruise on the right side of her face where Langley’s man had hit her had faded to yellow. The scab of the split was dark across her cheekbone. There were now also three long red scratches on the other cheek from her tussle with Langley.

Will put his poncho and sandals on and got his bow and slung his bag of arrows over a shoulder by its long twine. Then he took a potato and went out. It was a cloudy forenoon. He walked to the barns. When Beauty saw him coming she stretched her head over the spaced two-by-fours of her fence and snorted. Two frosty plumes shot from her nostrils. Will stroked her neck and leaned his face close, to get the horse smell, but she nodded him aside. She wanted what was in his hand. He let her take the potato. Then he turned south, toward the burbs.

He crossed the limp winter stubble of the hay field that ran along the old road. He crossed the road itself, and the black soil of a carrot patch where a few rotten carrots were scattered. He passed a couple of foundations, inside which squash vines and leaves were turning to earth. He entered the expanse of scrub that ran for miles to the South Arm.

He passed the toilet bowl and the pile of drywall gypsum near the place where he had fought with Shaughnessy and where he had shot the rabbit. There was a thick mossy log, too rotten for anyone to burn. He sat on it. Today there were no coyotes yipping. The only sound was a breeze moving through the blackberry vines and through the bare twigs of salmonberry and thimbleberry and huckleberry.

Will set his bow and his arrows on the ground and lay back on the log. He watched the uneven layer of cloud crawl from the southwest. He pulled out a handful of moss and studied it. A small brown worm was wriggling among the roots. He inhaled the smell of the decayed log. He dropped the moss and closed his eyes and lay there listening to the breeze and feeling the way it touched his cheek. He opened his eyes when he heard twigs snapping. Then he heard a man’s voice.

About a hundred feet away someone was moving through the brush. Will lay still. He reached down and grasped his bow. He rolled off the log and crouched behind it. Over the log he could see the indistinct form of a man passing through the brush. The man had something draped over his shoulder. He was headed toward the farm.

The man muttered as he walked, in a deep but quiet voice “That’s it, Langley. You think you can give me all the dirty work? Well, I’ve had it. You touch me again and I’ll break your neck. You little rat. You little rat, Langley. You think I won’t? Just try me. Just try me, you little rat.” In spite of the brush, Will could tell that the man was enormous. He disappeared in the scrub, and his muttering faded.

Will lay on his back on the ground, hidden by the log. He fitted an arrow to the bowstring. He waited. After a few minutes he rose to his knees and peered over the log. He was about to stand, when he again heard a twig crack. He crouched down again and saw the man pass back in the direction he had come from. He was moving fast, no longer muttering, but making a lot of noise as he crashed through the brush. He did not appear to be carrying anything now.

Will ran toward the farm. His steps were light and precise. He did not make a sound. As he came to the carrot patch it started to rain. He crossed the old road. Just at the top edge of the hay field, where it sloped up to the road, he found the body. The woman was lying on her back with her arms thrown out to the side. She was naked, and her throat had been cut. On her neck and chest there was dried blood that the rain could not wash off.

Will stared. He was unable to move or even to blink. Finally he managed to close his eyes and turn away. He wavered on his feet and reached out for support, but there was nothing there to hold on to. He dropped his bow and knelt, panting, with his head down and both hands flat on the ground. After a minute he retrieved his bow and rose and began walking toward the domicile, but when he had gone nine or ten steps he had to throw up.

Wing slid off the back of the two-wheeled cart. He was holding a folded throw of rabbit skins. He joined Frost, who had walked up the slope of the hayfield. Frost said “It’s Mitchell’s woman, isn’t it? From your place.”

Wing said “Yes, it’s Willow. She’s the mother of the baby. Little Pigeon.”

As they tucked the throw around the body Frost said “I’ll tell Mitchell.”

Wing said “No, that’s up to me.”

Beauty watched them coming as they lugged the body toward the cart. She shuffled a little and looked fearful.

The moon was full in a cloudless sky. Frost stood hidden by a squared-off stack of concrete blocks, watching Brandon. Among the “inventory” there was a messy pile of reinforcing bar. From this pile Brandon was trying to pull out some straight pieces. The metal made only a little noise as he slid three lengths free. He placed these on his shoulder and headed south. He walked at a steady pace and in a straight line. Frost watched him in the bright moonlight. He waited until Brandon had gone about seventy-five yards before following him.

Crossing the old road Brandon began to sing, but not loudly. Frost could only make out some of the words. …song I wrote… and, as Brandon reached the carrot patch, Don’t worry. Be happy.

Frost crouched at the edge of the road, hidden by the slope leading up to it. He saw two men waiting for Brandon in the carrot patch. One of them took the rebar from him. The other one handed him something. Frost heard their voices, but they were too far away for him to understand what they were saying. The two men headed off with the farm’s rebar, and Brandon started back toward the domicile.

Frost saw that Brandon was going to cross the road a ways from his own position. He lay on his back. He looked up at the stars and for a few seconds his face lost a little of its tension.

Brandon crossed the road, singing, …if you worry you make it double…. He had a bottle now. He took a swig from it and sang some more. When Brandon reached the far edge of the hay field, Frost stood and started after him, toward home. But at the bottom of the slope, he stopped.

He had seen something. Farther along the road, a few yards to the east, among some bushes that had grown up through the asphalt, there was a pale shape. Frost walked toward it. He stepped carefully over the broken lumps of pavement. Not far to the south the coyotes had started up.

Frost looked down at the naked body of a man lying on his back. His eyes — the one blue, the other green — were open. But if Frost thought he could see the colour of Steveston’s eyes he was imagining it. The moonlight was nowhere near that powerful.