Lee Martin - Late One Night

Biggs told Shooter to go home. “I’ll come by this evening,” he said. “I’ll have a talk with your boy.”

“He’ll tell you,” Shooter said. “Count on it. He’ll tell you exactly what I did.”

Then he left the courthouse and drove straight home. Captain was in the barn with the goats.

“Come on,” Shooter said to him. “Let’s go for a ride.”

“What for?”

“No reason. Let’s just go.”

In the emergency room, Missy went to the front desk to ask about Brandi.

“Are you family?” the woman at the desk asked.

Missy put her hands on Angel’s shoulders and nudged her forward a bit. “This is her daughter,” she said.

Angel reached up and laid her right hand on top of Missy’s left, and then Missy let her go. Angel followed the woman to a set of double doors, and as the doors opened Missy got a glimpse of nurses bustling past in scrubs. She saw an empty gurney against the wall, a row of cubicles with curtains drawn closed. For a moment Angel hesitated, looking back at Missy, who smiled at her and motioned with her hand for her to go on. Angel mouthed the words Thank you , and then she was gone.

Shooter just drove. He had Captain in the truck, and he didn’t know where he was going. He only knew that for the time he didn’t want to be at home, didn’t want to think about that evening when Biggs, if he were true to his word, would come to talk to Captain.

For now, Shooter only knew he wanted to keep moving. He didn’t want to sit still and have time to think. So he drove into Phillipsport and then out of it, letting State Street become Route 50. Soon he was driving past Wabash Sand and Gravel and WPLP, and then he was crossing the river, driving over the bridge that would take him into Indiana.

He slowed down and took a look at the river. The swirls of gray and white and blue in the ice made him think of clouds, puffy white against a blue sky, and it was easy from the height of the bridge to imagine a heaven. There were times like this when he could believe in an afterlife, when he could convince himself that someday he’d see Merlene again.

What would he tell her about Captain? Would he be able to say he’d done his best by him?

“Where we going?” Captain asked.

Shooter glanced at him. “Nowhere in particular. We’re just driving. You in a hurry?”

Captain looked down at his hands. He rubbed at some brown streaks of oak stain on his fingers. “I’m making a gun cabinet in shop.”

“Looks like you made a mess.” Shooter tried a little laugh, as if he’d been cracking a joke, but he could tell that Captain was hurt. He pulled his coat sleeves down over his hands. “I thought I got rid of that coat.” Shooter had buried it down deep in a cedar chest that had been Merlene’s. The chest was in the basement now, full of the clothes of hers that Shooter hadn’t been able to bring himself to get rid of. Apparently Captain had found the coat and dug it out sometime that morning when Shooter was out to the barn getting the Bobcat tractor ready to go. He hadn’t even seen Captain get on the bus wearing that coat.

“I like it,” Captain said.

“It’s ratty.” Shooter reached over and pinched the coat sleeve in his fingers. “You didn’t have any business snooping around and snatching this up.”

The coat was a fake leather bomber jacket that Captain had always favored since Merlene bought it for him from Walmart. The sort with vinyl made to look like leather. Shooter raised Captain’s arm and made him look at the patch as big as a pancake where the vinyl was missing. The quilted lining beneath was dappled, light brown in some places and black in others.

“Mom bought it for me.” Captain yanked his arm away from Shooter’s grip. “She said it was a bomber jacket fit for a Captain.”

They were over the bridge now, coasting down onto the flat plain of the river bottoms. Shooter pulled off onto the shoulder and they sat there while the wind swept across the barren fields, not enough of a treeline anywhere to stop it. The truck shook a little when a gust came up, and out across the fields a fine powder of snow swirled.

“Stay here,” Shooter said.

Then he got out of the truck and tromped through the snow and the corn stubble, fifty feet or so, until he was confident that he was far enough away so Captain wouldn’t be able to see him very well. He listened to the wind howling around him, felt its sting on his face, let it bring tears to his eyes. He forced himself not to look back, not wanting to see Captain’s face looking out the window of the truck.

He reached into the pocket of his barn coat and closed his hand around Captain’s Case Hammerhead lockback knife. He dug out a spot in the snow with the toe of his boot until he could see the frozen ground of the furrow. Then he dropped the knife into that hole and covered it with snow. If luck would have it, he thought, no one would find that knife and spring would come, and the farmer who worked this field would plow the knife under.

It took everything he had to turn around and walk back across the field to the truck where Captain was waiting. He wanted to lie down in the snow and let the cold have him. He wanted to close his eyes and think of Merlene. He wanted to just slip away from the living and not have to answer for anything.

But Captain was waiting. He could feel him watching. Captain, who was his to take care of. No one else’s. He’d promised Merlene that he’d do that much.

“What were you doing?” Captain asked him when he came back to the truck.

“Had to take a leak,” Shooter said. “Let’s go home. It’s getting late.”

“Almost time for supper,” Captain said, and Shooter told him, yes, it was, and after supper the sheriff, Ray Biggs, was going to stop by to ask Captain some questions.

For a long time, Captain didn’t say anything. He rubbed at the stains on his hands some more. Then he said, “About the fire?”

“That’s right,” said Shooter. “You remember what you’re going to say?”

Captain nodded. “I remember.”

“All right then,” Shooter said, and then he pressed down on the gas pedal, hurrying now toward home.

Missy watched the doors close behind Angel. Then she turned to find a seat in the waiting area, where Hannah was keeping Sarah and Emma entertained at a table that had puzzles and games on it.

To Missy’s surprise, she saw Lois Best occupying a chair back in the corner, nearly hidden by a half wall. She’d nodded off with her pocketbook on her lap, her hands resting on top of it, and with her head down like that, Missy nor the girls had taken any notice of her.

Missy wasn’t sure whether to wake her, but she could only assume that Lois was there because of Wayne, and it would certainly be rude not to inquire. So she took the seat next to Lois, hoping that the motion would make her open her eyes.

But it didn’t. Missy reached over and touched her on the arm. “Lois,” she said. “It’s me. Missy.”

Lois snapped up her head and opened her eyes. She blinked a few times as she studied Missy, and Missy knew she was coming back to the living with reluctance.

“Oh, honey,” she finally said. “It’s Wayne. He’s not a bit good.”

Missy asked her what the trouble was, and Lois explained that he’d gotten out of bed that morning and fallen, striking his head against the corner of the dresser.

“Opened up a big old gash.” Lois felt her own scalp. “It just bled and bled. I knew I had to call for the ambulance. They’re sewing him up now but honey, I’m not sure he even knows where he is or what happened. That’s how out of it he is.”

Lois reached out her hand, and Missy took it. She felt the dry skin, cracked from the cold, and she put her free hand on Lois’s back and rubbed slow, gentle circles to give her some comfort.