T. Boyle - When the Killing's Done

Alma, ignoring them, turns to the big man. “Call the Coast Guard,” she says. “And the ranger station.”

“What,” Dave breaks in, “Ranger Rick to the rescue? Again?” He can’t believe what he’s hearing. “I told you — you’ve got no authority here. None. Zero. Zilch. And you”—raking the loudmouth with his eyes—“you want to start giving orders, let’s see your badge. Where is it, huh? You’re not even an American citizen. You’re just some hired gun, some shithead with about as much respect for life as, as—”

“Shut it,” the man says, and now the gun, the pistol, is in his hand.

“I’m making a citizen’s arrest”—Alma glances round the circle of faces, her mouth set, eyes hard. “Until the proper authorities get here and we can—”

It’s Suzanne who cuts her off. She throws back her head and shrieks, all the misery and frustration and horror of the day pouring out of her in a long shattering fusillade of helplessness and rage. “Don’t you understand? There’s been an accident!” she cries, her shoulders heavy with the burden of it, all her facial muscles pulled tight till she could be wearing a latex mold of her own face. “Somebody got hurt, a girl, she, she—”

“She’s dead.” Toni Walsh, the cigarette at her lips, finally adds her voice to the mix. She’s come up silently to stand beside Dave, her shoulders hunched, strands of salmon hair laminated to the side of her throat just above the seasickness patch. She shoots him a look of impatience — worse: of hate, of doom — then addresses Alma. “You’re going to need to call the coroner.”

The night is like the first night the island ever saw, still, enveloping, silent but for the regular thump of the waves, the sky close and breathing out its moisture, life-giving and sustaining. Wild night. Night apart. Night on the island. They’ve all had a look at the motionless form encased in the wrapped-up tube of the poncho like a nymph in its chrysalis, a nymph that will never emerge, death come down to sit amongst them and quiet them. Wilson passes round a thermos of hot coffee overloaded with sugar, the big man’s radio crackles at his lips, people recede into the gloom and emerge again with gnarled lengths of driftwood to toss on the fire. Ten minutes have sifted by. The hunters — almost human — have shared around their energy bars and jerky with Cammy and Suzanne, whose chewing muscles work greedily in the firelight despite their shock and grief, and while Dr. Alma and the big man stand apart with their radio, Dave gathers Wilson and Josh to him on the far side of the fire, out of hearing, because his mind’s been racing the whole time, the fury in him, the rage, held in reserve for just this moment, the moment of decision, of extraction, of getting the fuck out of here before the Coast Guard shows up and damn the consequences.

“I don’t care,” he says, spitting it out, “they can shoot me if they want. I dare them to. I tell you, they’ve got no right to hold us here.” He kicks angrily in the sand at his feet. “It’s kidnapping, you know that? Forcibly detaining somebody. You know what a court of law would do to these clowns?”

Wilson, the faintest shade of the barrio creeping into his voice: “But it looks bad. I mean, who would’ve thought? This girl — Kelly, right? The one with the PETA thing?”

“Yeah, it sucks,” he says, staring into the darkness out beyond them. “No, worse than that. It’s a disaster. A tragedy. And we all feel it, don’t we? But it’s our problem — right, Josh? You with me? — and it’s for us to deal with it. An accident, that’s all. We were hiking and there was an accident.”

Josh says nothing. He’s there, though, compact, gleaming, his face buttery and soft in the glow of the fire, the tough guy reduced. The thing is, can he be counted on?

“You know what we’re going to do? We’re going to take Kelly to Cottage Hospital, that’s what we’re going to do. She died in an accident, it’s nobody’s fault. And what we were doing out here today is nobody’s business but ours, am I right?”

The fire cracks and hisses. Smoke, a dead stinking pall of it, runs at their faces, then sweeps back to chase away on the breeze. After a moment, sotto voce, Wilson says, “I’m with you, man. We don’t have to listen to these pendejos , I mean, who are they?”

“Exactly.”

Then they’re moving, he, Wilson and Josh, downwind of the fire and across the short stretch of sand to where the body lies wrapped in its dark winding sheet. They have it — her — in hand, him in front, Josh in the middle, Wilson at her feet, the weight staggering, concentrated, enormous, and they actually make it across the beach to the inflatable before one of the hunters shouts out, “Hey, what’re you doing?” and everybody’s shoving in all over again, even the dogs.

His wet boots are wetter suddenly, socks squelching, surf foaming at his shins. It’s hard to keep hold of her, hard to see what they’re doing, the black rubber bottom of the dinghy like a hole cut out of the earth — like a grave, that’s what he’s thinking — but he never hesitates. “What do you think you’re doing?” the hunter elaborates, but the three of them, wet all over again, ignore him, laying their burden in the bottom of the boat while Wilson takes hold of the line to drag the boat into the water.

This is not a matter of reason, reflection, debate. He’s had it, stacked right up to his ears with it, and when one of them puts a hand on his arm he flings it off so violently he has to stagger to keep his balance. “Get your fucking hands off me,” he says, and his voice is low and even because he’s ready for anything now, beyond threat or calculation or even caring. “What are you going to do, shoot me? Go ahead, you motherfucker. Because this is our problem, this is our”—he hesitates, wanting to say comrade but thinking better of it—“friend here. Kelly. And we’re going to do what we were going to do before you”—he slashes his arm in Alma’s direction—“and your hired goons butted in.”

“You can’t—” she sputters, and she even takes a step toward him, toward the surf, but whatever the prohibition is she can’t seem to find the words to frame it.

“Can’t what?” he throws back at her, shouting now, enraged. “Live, breathe, save the lives of innocent animals, get in our own boat with the body of this girl you’ve never laid eyes on in your life? What, leave your stinking fucking island?”

They’re ranged round him in silhouette, the bonfire leaping behind them. The surf is like ice. The dinghy scrapes at the sand, the line tight, Josh pitching in now to get her afloat. He doesn’t bother to say Try me or repeat that they have no authority here because whatever he might have to say is just wasted breath at this point. “Get in the boat, Josh,” he says. “And anybody else who’s coming.”

The surf sucks out. He’s thigh deep now. “Cammy?” he shouts into the darkness. “Suzanne? You coming?” He gives it a beat, two. “Okay then,” he announces, “it’s your choice. We’re out of here.”

And when one of the hunters, he can’t tell which in the dark, comes for him, he’s ready, more than ready, the son of a bitch, the blind stupid pathetic interfering excuse for a human being, wrestling him down in the surf till they’re both soaked through, and in that crucial moment when one or the other of them is either going to have to relax his grip or drown, he breaks free to heave himself up onto the lip of the inflatable and kick the lurching white ball of the man’s face with every particle of hate he can summon. They’re cursing him. He’s cursing back. “Go ahead and shoot!” he screams. “Go ahead!” And then the engine catches, the boat swings round, and the sea rushes in to take all the burden out from under him.