Gerard Donovan - Julius Winsome

Had Troy shot Hobbes? I believe I was leaning that way. His manner when he denied it, the quickness of his explanation, what he knew. He admitted being around the cabin and had the streak required for such an act, to silent what was already voiceless.

I stood with the Enfield, pointed it at his stomach.

Tell me she’s happy, I said.

He looked surprised and said nothing for a change, maybe because the lights were out in the sky, only stars in the clear night ahead of tomorrow’s storm. He thought for a minute or looked at his boots without thinking, I couldn’t tell. And that chill at my arms, at my ears. The trees seemed to move differently behind him, surely the numbers on their way, that’s what it was, sucking any heat from the air.

Is she happy? I haven’t—I think so.

The first uncertainty out of him all day. I looked again at the beds, the width of snow I’d scraped away, a small scrap off the face of death, as useless as digging him up and holding him again. To have him so close and not have him at all.

So she was happy. I knew at those words that she was truly gone and likely never to pass before me again, no woman come out of the woods, no ointment in the air of the cabin, no voice reaching out a hand for mine in the kitchen after nightfall, by the fire. I still loved her, if that’s what this feeling was in me, this memory. But there was Hobbes, taken from me, taken from his own life, his joy.

I stood and said, That’s good then. You’ll need to be on your way.

I glanced to the trees that led to Fort Kent, as if some trees held a highway in them and those were the ones for him to follow.

You’re going to kill me, he said.

I said nothing to that, but it was true, I had gone back and forth. He was the one. I had him now.

HE LOOKED WHERE I POINTED, AT THOSE TREES, THEN at others around him as if to confuse me or himself as to where he intended to run. He breathed deeper, storing air for the dash.

You’re going to shoot me.

I told you to go. How many times do you have to be told something?

I owed Claire that much, to bring this man back to his house and to her. The impulse to let him go needed quick nurturing before a stronger one came back, before my eyes passed over the flowerbeds where Hobbes lay on his side, silent in his end, what waits for everyone.

He stepped to the rear, one foot searching, then the other, facing me, not taking the chance to turn his back and run.

You will do something for me, I said.

He stared.

Never, I said, never on your life say another word to me, and don’t look in my direction ever again, unless it’s to be your final glance.

He did not wait for further instructions, and I saw that he was walking away from town and my cabin, back into the woods where we met earlier. That meant he had a vehicle parked somewhere near where I found him.

Very presumptuous, I said.

What? He did not move to face me again.

You’ll be walking back to Fort Kent, I said, or some of the way. And Fort Kent is that way. I waved the rifle at the invisible town in the other direction. Go on. Forget your car. And cover your gulf.

He did not ask what a gulf was but curled the scarf around his throat anyway and walked across the yard in front of me, this policeman heading off to Fort Kent on foot. When he was twenty yards into the brush, fifty steps distant in the snow, I aimed the rifle at the back of his head, as he no doubt expected me to do, and pulled on the trigger until a finger’s tension and release balanced him on this and the far side of life.

Look around, Troy, I said.

He did not. That surprised me. He struck me as the type who has to do what you tell him not to. I thought he would shout something at me then as he flitted along the floor of the woods, walking faster. I would shoot him if he did, pursue him to the very end of him. He ran finally, sifting himself away into the trees, and I loosened the trigger and brought him back to this life, and he was gone, along with my chance of shooting him into the next, gone carrying my last embrace to Claire, this man who took her from me and whose life she had just saved.

There were no houses this side of the first major road, and that was a good three-hour walk in these conditions, at the very least, assuming he didn’t get lost. Then he would be picked up, someone would be driving the St. John Road on a Saturday night, and then there was another twelve miles to Fort Kent, so at least five hours until they came this way, more likely after midnight by the time they had all their men and cars and plans, and he with them, of course, to regain his dignity. That was fine. I leaned the rifle on the porch and went inside.

FIRST I MADE TEA AND GOT THE FIRE BURNING HIGH, packed with logs, then did something I could not remember having been done in all the time I had grown up in that cabin: I took the New England chair from its place in front of the woodstove and carried it out to the clearing, set it down in the middle between the porch and the flowerbed, facing the space in the trees where the sky held most of the stars. When I walked back into the cabin I saw the giant space where it had been and the man who sat in it, and all the reading that had passed months and years in it, the stories that turned the pages on that chair.

In the spare bedroom I lifted the cover from the gramophone and placed a record, turning the volume till I knew I’d hear it outside and setting the arm to repeat; all that was left to do was select a book. I walked the shelves to S for Shakespeare, midway between the cold books at the back and the warm ones on the other side of the horseshoe of bookshelves that ended at the kitchen counter. With my coat and gloves with the fingers showing I took it outside to the chair and sipped the tea as the song floated overhead.

Wouldn’t be long now, not that long to wait. I leaned back in the chair and watched the stars and guessed from the disposition of cloud that it was snowing in a corner of the woods, yet I hoped that my patch of sky would stay open for another hour. The record played from deep in its scratches the lute and a tender voice from long ago and far away. I closed my eyes and let it drift over me, kept the cup against my fingers for the heat:

I thought I might as well read for a while, the part of The Winter’s Tale that she held up to me near the end, the part I thought she must have meant, though she was not the type to read much of anything aloud:

I drew the gabardine around me to wrap out the chill, and at that second the page brightened and I knew, looked up, there, sharp and icy in the night, now above the trees and out of the ringing cloud, the white rock spun its stringed music, unheard, above the white lamp of ground and into the black rooms of the air.

Won’t be long now.

Soon the cold was upon me, the merciless and nameless cold, and I needed the blanket I’d draped on the porch railing. Walking it back to the chair reminded me of my grandfather, when he lived under that same cloth as now kept me warm and had earlier saved my life: he spent the day long under it by the fire, and when I asked him once what he was thinking, he put his hand on my shoulder and said he was thinking of my mother, as she had died only six few years before, and that he had been fond of her, that I would have liked her, and not to worry about the bits of me that didn’t make sense because I never knew her. She was in me, and that was all.