Christian Kiefer - The Animals

But then the voice again, closer this time and calling that name he hoped he could forget but knew now that he never would: Nat, the voice said. Nat.

He started to speak, stopped, tried to sit up, stopped that too. Fuck you, he said at last. His voice sounded weak and far away and when Rick called his name again he took a deep breath and shouted the words: Fuck you!

There was silence for a long time. Then Rick’s voice came again, slowly, quietly, like a tiny bird out there in the snow. Like something already lost. Everything beyond the orange crackle of the fire, an empty hole. I’m freezing out here, he called, his voice stuttering with cold.

I don’t care.

Nat, goddammit.

Fuck you.

I’m coming in.

I have a gun.

Nat, please.

You poisoned them, he said. You killed them. He was shaking, his grizzled face cradled in his hands. Just leave me alone. Leave me alone.

You left me there.

I didn’t want to.

You should have helped me, man. You were my best friend. Why didn’t you help me? His voice cracked over the words.

Nat said nothing in response but the tears came fully now and he sobbed into that firelight. His body shaking and wet in the snowmelt. Tears transpiring into invisible clouds that fled into the darkness beyond.

I went to prison for twelve fucking years, the voice said. I could’ve turned you in. I could’ve done that.

You should have.

I didn’t.

I don’t care.

You’re my best friend, Nat, the voice said. I’m going to fucking die out here. I’m freezing.

Silence.

I’m fucking freezing to death.

Again. Silence.

Nat, goddammit. I’m sorry. OK? I’m fucking sorry.

He thought of Bill then, his dead brother, smiling at him as he held that broken-winged bird in his hands. And then he thought of the broken-

backed deer he had shot soon after his uncle died, and when he spoke again, his voice was loud and clear: All right, he said. All right. Come in.

You’re not gonna shoot me?

No, he said.

He waited then, the dart gun remaining in his lap. He could see almost nothing beyond the fire, only a blur of snow that ended in absolute darkness, and out of that darkness Rick materialized like a ghost, a wet snowman shaking with cold, his face a pale mask. If he still had the pistol, it could not be seen. Instead, there was only the figure of the man, tattered and freezing, his eyes sunken in his head.

Bill lifted the dart gun to his shoulder and fired.

Rick said a single word, No, and raised his hand. The dart hit him mid-thigh, the red feathers like a strange flower that had sprouted there. Rick looked down and tried to pull it away but his hands did not seem to work and the dart wobbled and finally fell loose.

What the fuck was that? Rick stuttered.

Just a warning, he said.

Fuck you, Rick said, but he kept moving forward, his steps stumbling. What the fuck was that, man? A fucking dart? His words seemed to slur through his frozen face.

That’s exactly what it was.

What the fuck? Rick said. He staggered forward and then

crumbled — half sitting, half falling — to the snow by the fire. His teeth were chattering so loud that they sounded like a child’s wind-up toy. You said you weren’t gonna shoot me.

I’m not anymore, he said. He set the dart gun beside him in the snow.

Fuck, Rick said.

Stop talking.

Snowflakes continued to fall beyond the light of the fire. He watched them come. His name was in the air, although he did not think Rick had said anything at all. It moved as if vaporized, as if it had become the snowflakes that fell above the flames, breaking back into water, then vapor, then disappearing entirely as if they had been pressed by heat alone to return to the ether from which they had come.

I’m so tired, Rick said.

Yeah?

Aren’t you?

No.

What was in that dart?

Ketamine.

What did you do, man? Rick said. What the fuck did you do?

I’m taking care of my people.

And now Rick laughed, a long weird braying that seemed, midway through its run, to slow down, to shift lower, as if the world was spinning apart.

You need to know something, Bill said. My uncle took that safe to a guy he knew in Spokane the day after I got here. He figured out the combination.

Rick did not answer for a long time, only staring at him. Then he said, slowly, I fucking knew it. His voice slurred out like a drunkard. His eyes slipped closed and then opened again. How much?

About three grand is all.

Where is it?

The guy who cracked it took a cut and I paid off Johnny Aguirre and there just wasn’t much left after that. Couple hundred.

You still should’ve sent it to my mom.

I wanted to.

So why didn’t you?

He exhaled. Then he said, When I paid off Johnny, that guy Mike asked me if I wanted to make another bet for old time’s sake.

Rick just looked at him, eyes sunken, face still coated in snow.

I thought about your mom all the time. I got a little money when my uncle died but by then she was already gone.

You should have just told me, Rick said, his voice a mess of slurring syllables.

Bill looked at him for a moment, at his glassy, unfocused eyes. I made something for myself here, he said. And you were gonna fuck it up. I just wanted you to go away. I thought you’d just give up and go home if I gave you the safe.

Ha, Rick said, deadpan. Bad bet.

Turned out that way.

Rick was silent, staring now into the flames, and when he spoke again his voice was like a long single word mashed to pieces: Man, he said, you’ve always been the survivor. Even when we were kids.

Bill sat forward now. That’s not true at all, he said. His voice sounded loud in the little cave. You were. Not me. You.

Oh yeah? Well, look at us now, my friend. Look at us now. His voice trailed off and after a moment his body slumped to the side in the firelight.

Bill sat for a long time, staring at the thin, soggy shape before him, at the steam rising from the wet coat and pants. His hands were trembling, although they were no longer cold. Rick lay at his feet, eyes closed. Bill thought he was unconscious but when he leaned in and grabbed his coat collar and pulled, Rick’s eyes rolled open. What are you doing? he whispered. Then the eyes closed again, slowly, like the eyes of a doll.

Bill stood and staggered backward out of the tiny cave, back into the blowing storm, Rick’s body a low heavy weight that he dragged behind him like a sled dog pulling his load, and when he was done, when he had come out beyond the glow of the fire and into the dark curl of the snow, he stopped and released his grip and stumbled back to the cave again.

When he reached its warmth, he sat and closed his eyes and prayed sleep would come to claim him. After a time even the fire disappeared. The darkness complete. He could feel his body floating in that black emptiness. Desert all around. His mother. And the brother he had lost. Other things too. The blue Datsun. The trailer he had grown up in, its metal siding sheeting off to wobble in the empty air. Impossible shapes in the snow. And Grace. And Jude. And himself. And Majer. He could feel the animals as they unscrolled themselves in that single loop of endless time and he wondered if there had been any meaning or purpose in it at all but then he knew that such questions held no meaning or purpose. And Rick. Of course. And Rick.

The forest was only wind.

WHEN MORNING came at last, the fire was only a heap of smoldering coals. It was freezing and he was shaking again and could not stop. His feet and his fingers had gone completely numb but as he lay there the sun appeared from behind the clouds and shone into the mouth of the little alcove and for a few moments he could feel a faint warmth against his face. Beside him in the frozen slush lay the dart gun and what was left of the book, its pages gutted but the cover remaining, and from that the pronghorn antelope stared back at him with the same guileless and implacable expression it had held for all his life.