Jim Shepard - Kiss of the Wolf

She leaned back in her crouch, her forehead cooling in panic. She shouldn’t move him, but she shouldn’t leave him here. The car: she’d have to bring the car around, block the road, put her emergency blinkers on.

She looked closer at his head and neck. It welled up inside her like a confirmation of her worst sense of herself: he was dead. There was more blood, under his chest. She could see the edge of the jacket soaking it up like a spill.

Something cracked in the forest off the side of the road. She got up and walked fast, the little girl turning her back to the haunted house, walked back to the car. Todd was crouched inside, his head low and his knees up. One of the presents, the board game, had flown onto his lap. He clawed it away from him with some alarm.

She moved along the front of the car. The hood was sprung, but otherwise looked no worse than it usually did. She shut it and it stayed down. The bumper had a gentle dent under the right headlight. It did not stand out. The body was pushed in a little, too. She imagined people in the woods. She got in the car. She started it. She was in a new world.

She edged the gas, and they pulled free of the bushes with a bump and rocked onto the road. Leaves were caught under the windshield wipers. She turned right. She was thinking, I can go for help instead of waiting here. She was thinking the first gas station or cop car. Todd didn’t say anything.

Something scraped and dragged beneath the car and then fell away. In slow motion, she pulled onto the ramp for the Merritt Parkway. She thumped up onto the shoulder and straightened the car out.

Todd shifted around in his seat. He peered over the side of his door. “Where’re we going?” he asked.

Where were they going? “We’re gonna call,” she said. She didn’t know where.

They were going too slow. They were crossing the bridge. She could hear the whine of the bridge metal beneath them. A car rushed by her, swerved, and honked. She turned on her lights.

“That was a phone booth down there,” Todd said, meaning farther along 110. “There’s no phone booths up here.”

“We could call from home,” she said, and knew it was wrong when she said it. She looked over at Todd. He was looking at her piercingly.

Was she crazy? This was possible. She saw exit signs ahead. She slowed down and took the exit.

“Now where’re we going?” Todd said. “What’re you do ing?” He sounded a little hysterical.

At the stop sign, she looked both ways. She turned left. She turtled forward under the highway, and stopped, and looked both ways again. The road, whatever it was, was dark and quiet. She turned left again.

“I’m going back,” she said.

He didn’t say anything.

Heading back toward the body, she thought of her life changed: she saw newspapers, flashbulbs, and jury trials, all images from movies. The triviality and theatricality of her imagination were appalling. You killed someone, she thought. But even that was theatrical and lacked weight, as if she were a scold.

The tires drummed back onto the bridge. A police car appeared from behind them and surged by, and its siren bolted on as it passed. As she came over the crest of the arc she saw the lights, yellow and blue, flashing around the scene of the accident. There were red taillights glowing, too: two or three cars. Her heart seized up. The police car that had passed her slowed as much as it could and careened off onto 110. She sailed frozenly by the exit.

“What’re we doin’?” Todd cried. “What’re you do in’?”

“ Shut up, ” she said, and he gave off a wail, and put his head in his hands, and left it at that.

God forgive me, God forgive me, she said to herself.

That meant she had to turn around again and go back. The car handled like a truck. The wheel lurched and jerked at her hands. Once again: under the highway, up the entrance ramp. It was nightmarish. She was becoming something comic. They could see the scene yet again. Various people were illuminated in red, posed kneeling and crouching around the central figure of the body. It reminded her of a Christmas crèche, and she was amazed at her blasphemy and detachment. She couldn’t conceive of herself as part of that group now: driving up, approaching the cops standing around their cars, and saying, I did this.

They were back on the bridge. Todd looked out the window at the river, his head against the headrest in despair.

You can call from home, she thought. She had to go back, she understood. But leaving had made it impossible to return: she was twice as criminal. Three times as criminal.

“I’m trying to think,” she said. Todd didn’t answer.

The car was making ominous, rhythmic scraping noises, and she thought, not even sure what she meant, Not this, too.

She passed the exit where she’d turned around the first time. She had the feeling she was coming to moral turning points, one after the other, and failing each one. She kept putting a hand to her cheek, as if to cool it.

When she slowed for their exit, Todd said, “It’s hit-and-run. It’s hit-and-run if you leave him and don’t say anything.”

Joanie took an audibly deep breath and let it out, as if she were blowing smoke. She recognized it as what she did to signal Todd during debates that things were a lot more complicated in the adult world than he realized; that sometimes she wished he only knew how patient she could be. She let the fraudulence of her response stand. Todd didn’t seem much affected by it, anyway.

“If you leave him—” Todd said.

“I know, ” she said, trying to control her voice. She swung into a turn so that he slid into the door on his side. “I know all of this,” she said.

From that point to the turn into their street, she ran through variations on Why me? and Why does this have to happen now?

The garage door was open, though the light was out. She sailed right up the driveway and braked only at the last minute. Lucky he had put his bike away this time, she thought grimly. The front bumper clanked the junk against the wall. She turned the engine off and hung forward on the wheel.

Nested bicycle fenders and a hubcab Gary’d hung on a nail were still making noise. The streetlight penetrated only as far as the back bumper, so she could just about see her hands.

“You were going too fast,” Todd said.

“Was it my fault?” Joanie said. “Did he just come out of nowhere at us, or not?”

“You were going too fast,” Todd said.

“I was not going too fast,” Joanie said. “I was not going that fast.”

Todd shifted around on the seat next to her. It was possible he’d refuse to get out of the car. Decide to go next door and call the police.

“How could I have seen him in time?” she said. “What could anybody have done?”

Her ears were ringing, like she’d been shouting. She sat back against the seat and closed her eyes. She’d been going too fast.

The engine was ticking as it cooled, the way it did after the accident. Todd noticed it, too, and got out of the car and slammed the door. When she got to the front door, he was standing there with his head down, like a dog waiting to be let in.

“I’m going to call,” she said as she wrestled with the key. She swung the door inward, and he slipped by her and through the front hall.

“How ’bout some lights?” she said. He went directly to the back door.

She hit the lights and put her bag down and stood near the phone. Her chest felt the way she did at the beach when she’d breathed in too much water, too much mist.

“Audrey’s back,” Todd said. He opened the door, and the dog pitter-pattered in across the tile.

He closed it behind her and relocked it and crossed to the kitchen table. He sat in one of the chairs. Audrey checked her dish and then walked over to him and put her head beside his knee. He played with her ears. He was waiting for Joanie to call.