Russell Banks - Affliction

“What’ll I say?”

“Just tell them the truth, for Christ’s sake, it was an accident. But forget the details. Tell them they should talk to the state police about it, if they want details. Tell them if they want details your lawyer says you shouldn’t comment.”

“My lawyer? I don’t need no lawyer, do I?”

“No. No, of course not. Just say it, that’s all.” Then he rolled up the window and drove off, with the cruiser following close behind.

The two vehicles disappeared, and it was suddenly silent, except for a light wind sifting through the pines, the ragged call of a crow in the distance, the squeak of Wade’s boots in the snow as he shifted his weight. He lit a cigarette and offered Jack one.

“I got my own,” Jack said. He rummaged in his shirt pocket for his pack, got it out and took a light from Wade’s yellow Bic.

“Did you smoke when you was playing ball?” Wade said.

“Why’s that?”

“I dunno. Just asking. I keep thinking about quitting.”

“Yeah. I smoked since I was a kid. Sure I did.”

“No shit? Even in school you smoked? I don’t remember you smoking till you come back from New Britain.”

“Sure. Coach never knew it. They had a rule. Not in the pros, of course, but in school.”

“Even in Pony League? You were smoking then?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit. You was only — what? — twelve then.”

“I started when I was eleven.”

“No shit. I never knew that. I was coaching Pony League then, remember? I didn’t have no rules about it, but I didn’t think I needed them.”

Jack smiled slyly. “Sure, I remember.” Then he laughed. “You were a shitty coach, Wade. Pretty good left fielder, but a shitty coach. You oughta play some Legion ball next summer.”

“I know it.”

They were silent and both looked toward LaRiviere’s cabin in the pine grove on the rise beyond the snow-covered muskeg — the tall angular young man in the orange hunting vest and quilted jacket and the shorter man in the dark-blue trooper’s jacket and watch cap, both men with hands stuck in pockets, cigarettes in mouths, eyes squinted against the bright light reflected off the snow. They looked like cousins or a younger and an older brother, blood relations separated by two decades, one man favoring the mother, the other favoring the father, two very different men connected by thin but unbreakable ties to a common past. They stood free of the truck and seemed to be waiting for someone to emerge from the cabin, a person bringing them important news — of a birth or a death or the arrival of the absolute truth.

Without looking at Jack, Wade said, “Where’d Twombley get shot?”

“In the chest.”

“No, I mean whereabouts.”

Jack pointed to his left, downhill through the scrub. “About a half mile in, along the old lumber road, down there where it looks out over the lake.”

“You bring him up yourself? That’s a steep climb.”

“No, no. The ambulance guys, they lugged him up.”

“He was dead right away?”

“Yeah. Sure.” Jack turned to him and smiled. “What’re you doing, playing cop?”

“No. I got to make a report to Fish and Game, of course, but I was just wondering, that’s all. What’d he do, to shoot himself, I mean.”

“I don’t know. Fuck, I was watching a fat old buck with a rack like a fucking elk or something stroll past. I guess Twombley slipped on the snow or something, fell over a rock. Who the fuck knows? It’s rough ground down there, and he wasn’t used to the woods. With the snow and all, he could slip easy. Who knows? I just heard the gun go off. Bang! Like that, and he was gone, blown away.” Jack flipped his cigarette butt into the snow a few yards in front of him.

The light breeze had shifted and was blowing into their faces. Now there was a pair of crows calling to each other, and Wade could see one of them, glossy purple-black and nervous, perched near the top of a red pine to the left of LaRiviere’s cabin.

Wade said, “I’ve never seen a man shot and killed before. Not even in the service. It must be something. I saw plenty who’d already been shot, you know, shot dead or wounded, all fucked up in all kinds of ways. When I was an MP, mostly. Same as when I come back here. Even here I’ve seen a couple guys after they’d already been shot, but I never actually saw it. You know? It must be something, to see a man shoot himself.”

“Well … I didn’t actually see him do it. Like I said.”

“Sure you did.”

“What?”

“Saw him do it.” Wade studied the crow as it leapt from branch to branch of the scraggly red pine. “Of course you did.” Wade put himself behind Jack’s eyes and turned from the sight of the huge buck in the draw below to look along the ridge at Evan Twombley twenty feet away, just to make sure, like a good guide, that Twombley could see the buck, too, and was ready to shoot it; he saw Twombley take a tentative step toward the edge of the drop-off, saw him flip off the safety of his.30/30 with his thumb; he saw him slip on a small rock or stick hidden under the snow, toss one hand, the hand with the gun in it, damn it, out to break his fall, twisting the rifle as he went down, his fingers somehow tangled around the trigger guard or even brushing the trigger as he tried both to keep himself from falling and to protect the rifle, and before he hit the ground, the gun went off, and the force of the bullet exploding into his chest sent him flying into the air backward and down into the draw — a rich and powerful fat man blown clean off the earth.

“What the fuck are you telling me, Wade? I never seen the guy get shot. I told you that.”

Wade watched again as Twombley caught sight of the deer below, stumbled and turned his back in the direction of his fall; this time he fell with both hands shoving the fancy new rifle away from his chest, to keep it from being damaged or covered with snow, turning it somehow so that the tip of the barrel passed over his chest — when it fired straight into his chest, smashing his lungs and heart and backbone, splashing blood and bits of flesh over the snow and sending the body of the man tumbling this time, like a broken dummy, like trash, into the gully below.

“You must’ve seen him get shot,” Wade said in a low voice. “I know you did.”

“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Jack said. “You’re not making sense, man. This whole thing has got me rattled anyhow.” He passed in front of Wade and climbed into the truck, slammed the door as if angry and started the engine.

Wade watched Twombley die a third time.

First, from behind Jack’s eyes, he saw the huge buck emerge from its hiding place in the birch copse at the left side of the draw and walk slowly along the draw directly into his and Evan Twombley’s line of sight. Now Twombley could see the animal too, and suddenly excited, he patted the younger man on the shoulder, demanding, with gestures, his rifle back, for he had been unable to walk through the snow with it and had already dropped it once, and finally he had made his guide carry it for him. Wade brought the tip of the barrel up, shoved the stock against his right shoulder, aimed through the scope so that the bullet would hit the meat of the right shoulder from above, pass through the chest and exit from the left side of the animal’s belly, killing it instantly and very cleanly with one shot. Twombley, mad with greed for the shot and the sudden knowledge that he was not going to get it, that his guide was taking it himself, grabbed the rifle with both hands and tried to tear it free, and the tip of the barrel swung around, and the gun went off. Twombley was tossed backward and over the precipice, his already dead body tumbling over the rocks and snow to the bottom, where it lay with its legs and arms splayed, as if it had been hurled from the sky, gushing blood into the snow. The echo of the gunshot died, and then the sounds of the huge buck leaping through the dense tangle of brush farther down drifted back, the clatter and crash of flight growing fainter and fainter, until the woods were silent again, except for the sigh of the wind through the trees and the mocking call of a crow somewhere above and behind, up by LaRiviere’s cabin and the road.