Russell Banks - The Reserve

“What?”

“Cry over them.”

“Yes.”

“What about you, Hubert? You want to say a few words over her?”

“I can’t tell if you’re joking or not,” Hubert said.

“I’m serious enough. I’m not religious myself, but I thought maybe one or both of you might be.”

“I guess I’m not especially religious, either. Not in a churchy way, anyhow. But it seems a shame to just bury her like this. Like she was a dog that got put down or something.”

“That was my thought,” Jordan said, and it was. He hadn’t been joking.

Vanessa said, “Will you two stop! Just put the rocks into the hole, and shovel the dirt back in.”

“Hubert? You want to say the words?” Jordan asked.

I really ought to do it, the guide thought. Of the three, he was the one most responsible for her death. But he shook his head and said, “No. You say the words, Jordan. You’re better at talking.”

Jordan nodded and stood at the foot of the open grave and addressed the dead woman. “Mrs. Cole, Evelyn, Mother. This is not easy. I speak for all of us. We are truly sorry. We’re sorry that, for reasons no one could have anticipated, we were unable to prevent your accidental death this morning. No one of us wished you dead, especially by such violent means. We’re also sorry that we were unable to provide you with a proper funeral and that we cannot comfort your many friends and acquaintances from all—”

“Jordan! For God’s sake, stop it!” Vanessa shouted. “You’re making a mockery of her!”

Hubert said, “No, he isn’t. He’s just saying the truth. Except he’s not saying that I might have prevented her death, if I hadn’t tried to take the gun out of her hands. He should say that, too. Go ahead, Jordan, and finish.”

“We’re sorry, yes. We’re sorry that we can’t comfort your many friends and acquaintances, because we have promised to protect your daughter, Vanessa, from being charged with kidnapping and confining you against your will and possibly even charged with your murder. Although we all know that your death was an accident. It’s not her fault that a family quarrel got out of hand and ended tragically like this. It’s not my or Hubert’s fault, either, that we found ourselves witnesses to your unfortunate demise.”

“You see, Hubert? He is mocking her. And us, too. You and me. Are you through, Jordan?”

“Yes, I’m through. We can bury her now,” Jordan said.

When they finished filling the grave with large rocks and had shoveled back all the dirt they had taken out of it, they tamped down the low mound and scattered a thick layer of pine needles over it. They took dead branches from the trees nearby and raked over their tracks, and when they were done it was midafternoon and the forest had been restored to its former condition.

At the shore of the lake they tossed the bloodstained rocks and clumps of moss and sod into the water. Jordan wondered about the gun. He told Vanessa that Dr. Cole’s shotgun should disappear, too.

“Take it with you when you leave in your airplane. Drop it in the lake.”

“Sorry. I’ve committed all the crimes I’m going to commit today.”

“Do you want it?” Vanessa asked Hubert. “I know you admire it,” she said, thinking that possession of the gun would tie him even more closely to the shooting, making him a more trusted ally in this — trusted to lie about the whereabouts of Evelyn Cole and how she came to be there.

“It’s a good weapon. But I’d have to explain how I came by it.”

“You can say I gave it to you. As a remembrance of my father and in gratitude for all the years you worked for him as a guide and hunting companion. I would have given it to you yesterday, if I’d thought of it. If I’d known it was there.”

“Too bad you didn’t,” Jordan said. He stripped off his bloodstained shirt and squatted at the water’s edge to rinse it clean.

Vanessa glared at his bare back for a second, then smiled, because his back was pretty and because he was right and was bold enough to say it. She liked that about him — his willingness to say out loud whatever he thought was the case.

“This isn’t working,” he said and stood and shook out the shirt. “I’ll have to burn these clothes when I get back to my studio.”

Hubert scanned the lake and saw a guide boat putting out at the Carry, a pair of fishermen in it. “We got company,” he said.

Quickly, Jordan ducked behind a ledge a few yards from the shore, well out of sight of the fishermen. “This means I’m stuck here till they go in,” he said, more to himself than to the others. Jordan was not eager to go home and face Alicia again. For a few hours he had succeeded in not thinking about her, in spite of Hubert’s presence, which had briefly released him from the dark, painful grip of his busted marriage. At the same time, however, he wanted to leave this place and put this particular mess behind him. Also, he believed that as soon as Hubert was gone and he and Vanessa were alone, she would begin to weep over the death of her mother — he suspected she was saving her tears for the occasion — and he would have to comfort her. One of the things that had most attracted him to her from the beginning and especially today was her refusal to be comforted, and he didn’t want that to come to an end. Being swept up by a woman’s unfocused anger was new to him and had a fresh, erotic charge to it. Jordan Groves was used to responding to the sadness of women, not their anger, and in recent years that had grown old and tired.

“I don’t think they saw you, Jordan,” Hubert said. “But if we can see them,” he said to Vanessa, “they must be seeing me and you standing here like dummies.”

“That’s all right. It’ll only corroborate that you were at the camp and Mother and I were here together. So go ahead,” she said. “Leave now. Don’t forget the gun.”

Hubert said, “All right, I’ll keep the doctor’s shotgun and say you gave it to me as a remembrance.”

“It’s the truth. Daddy would have wanted you to have it.”

He pushed the boat into the water and saw the pool of blood in the bottom. Without comment he rocked the boat and dipped the near gunnel into the lake, letting a few inches of water in. Then he drew the boat back onto land, turned it over and emptied it. Gently, he wrapped the shotgun in his jacket and lay it and the oars in the boat and pushed the boat into the lake again. He seated himself in the stern and took up the oars. “Against the rules, you know, for a guide to be carrying a shotgun or rifle in the Reserve. Only the clients. Handgun’s all right, though.”

“Don’t hurt yourself thinking about it too much, Hubie,” Jordan said. “Just remember, you don’t have to lie. All you’ve got to do is leave a few things out. Like the fact that you saw me out here.”

“There’s a few other facts I got to leave out.”

Vanessa said, “Can you see who that is?” She shaded her eyes with the palm of her hand and gazed at the fishermen, now in the middle of the lake.

“I think it’s Ambassador Smith and his guide, Sam LaCoy. They’ll probably fish till five or so and then head back to the clubhouse, so as to get there before dark. Ambassador Smith, he always stays at one of the clubhouse cottages.”

“Tommy’s a friend of my parents. When you pass near, tell him that Mother and I want to be alone, okay?”

Hubert nodded and without saying good-bye commenced to rowing across the lake, toward the Carry. He kept the boat on a line that would bring him close enough to the other boat to be heard, close enough to give Ambassador Smith and Sam LaCoy the message from Miss Cole, who was staying at Rangeview with her mother to mourn the death of Dr. Cole in the place he loved best. As he rowed, Hubert began gradually to feel that he was no longer a partner in crime with Jordan Groves and Vanessa Cole; he was a loyal Adirondack guide again, a man with a known role in life and fixed protocol, and was relieved by it. He thought about the hand-tooled Belgian shotgun wrapped in his wool jacket in the bottom of the boat. A beautiful weapon, he said to himself, almost calling it a beautiful animal. To him, guns were living creatures, and he was going to enjoy keeping company with this one, admiring it with his eyes, holding it in his hands, walking in the woods with it, using it to hunt down and kill other living creatures.