Stephen Hunter - Time to Hunt

“Trig, it’s me, Donny. Donny Fenn.” He stepped forward a little hesitantly.

“Donny, Jesus Christ, I didn’t expect you.”

“Well, you said to come on out.”

“I did, yeah. Come on in. Donny, meet Robert Fitzpatrick, my old friend at Oxford.”

“Halloo,” said Robert, pulling off his own bandanna to show a smile that itself showed a mouthful of porcelain spades, a movie star’s gleam of a smile. “So you’re the war hero, eh? We’ve hopes for you, that we do! Need boyos like you for the movement. We’ll stop this bloody thing and get the west field covered in horseshit and ammonium nitrate, if I’m a judge of things. Roll up your sleeves, boy, and get to work. We could use some back. Me goddamned pickup broke down and I’m stuck with this piece of shit to git the stuff out to the spreader. We’re doing it at night to beat the heat.”

“Robert, he’s been on some kind of alert for seventy-two hours. He can’t do manual labor,” Trig said.

“No, I—”

“No, we’re almost done. It doesn’t matter.”

“You left so suddenly.”

“Ah, one more demonstration. I was worn out. What did it prove? I’ve lost my will for the movement.”

“You’ll get your will back, boyo,” said the giant Fitzpatrick heartily. “I’ll go get us a beer for the recharge. You wait here, Donny Fenn.”

“No, no, I just had a thing I wanted to talk over with Trig.”

“Oh, Trig’ll steer you right, no doubt about it,” he said, his voice light with laughter. “It’s a drink I’ll be gittin’, Trig. You lads talk.”

With that he turned to the house and headed in.

“So what is it, Donny?”

“It’s Crowe … they arrested him. Violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. I’m supposed to testify against him in” — he looked at his watch — “about seven hours.”

“I see.”

“Maybe you don’t. I was asked to spy on him. That was my job. That’s why I got close to him. I was supposed to report to them on his off-base activities and try and put him with known members of the peace groups. That’s why I was with him at the party that night; that’s why I came to your party. I was ordered to spy.”

Trig stared at him for a while, then his face broke into the oddest thing: a smile.

“Oh, that’s your big secret? Man, that’s it?” He laughed now, really hard. “Donny, wise up. You work for them. They can ask you to do that. If they say so, that’s your duty. That’s the game in Washington these days. Everybody’s watching everybody. Everybody’s got an agenda, a plan, an idea they’re trying to push or sell. I don’t give a damn.”

“It’s worse. They have some idea you were Weather Underground and you planned the whole thing. I mean, can you imagine anything so stupid? He was feeding you deployment intelligence so the May Tribe could humiliate the Corps.”

“Boy, their imagination never fails to amaze me!”

“So what should I do, Trig? That’s what I’m here to ask. About Crowe. Should I testify?”

“What happens if you don’t?”

“They’ve got some pictures of me smoking dope. Funny, I don’t smoke dope anymore, but I did to get in with him. They could send me to Portsmouth. Or, more likely, the ’Nam. They could ship me back for a last go-round, even though I’m short.”

“They’re really assholes, aren’t they?”

“Yeah.”

“But that’s neither here nor there, is it? This isn’t about them. We know who they are. This is about you. Well, then it’s easy.”

“Easy?”

“Easy. Testify. For one reason, you can’t let them get you killed. What would that prove? Who benefits from the death of Lochinvar? Who wins when Lancelot is slain?”

“I’m just a guy, Trig.”

“You can’t give yourself up to it. Somebody’s got to come out on the other side and say how it was.”

“I’m just … I’m just a guy.”

People were always insisting to Donny that he was somehow more than he really was, that he represented something. He’d never gotten it. It was just because he happened to be good-looking, but underneath he was just as scared, just as ineffective, just as simple as anyone else, no matter what Trig said.

“I don’t know,” said Donny. “Is he guilty? That would matter.”

“It doesn’t matter. What matters is: you or him? That’s the world you have to deal with. You or him? I vote him. Any day of the week, I vote him.”

“But is he guilty?”

“I’m no longer in the inner circle. I’m sort of a roaming ambassador. So I really don’t know.”

“Oh, you’d know. You’d know. Is he guilty?”

Trig paused.

Finally he said, “Well, I wish I could lie to you. But, goddammit, no, no, he’s not guilty. There is some weird kind of intelligence they have at the top; I just get glimmerings of it. But I don’t think it’s Crowe. But I’m telling you the truth: that doesn’t matter. You should dump him and get on with your life. If he’s not guilty of that, he’s guilty of lots of other stuff.”

Donny looked at Trig for a bit. Trig was leaning against the fender of the van. He lifted a milk carton and poured it over his head, and water gushed out, scraping rivulets in the dust that adhered to his handsome face. Trig shook his wet hair, and the droplets flew away. Then he turned back.

“Donny, for Christ’s sake. Save your own life!”

Peter was no good at waiting. He got out of the car and walked along the shoulder of the road. It was completely dark and silent, unfamiliar sensations to a young man who’d spent so much time OCS — on city streets. Now and then he heard the chirp of a cricket; up above, the stars towered and pinwheeled, but he was not into stars or insects, so he noticed neither of these realities. Instead, he reached the gate, paused a moment, and climbed over. He saw before him a faint rise in the land, almost a small hill, and the dirt road that climbed it. He knew if a car came over the hill and he were standing on that road, he’d be dead-cold caught in the lights. So he walked a distance from the road, then turned to head up the hill, figuring he could then drop to the ground if Donny and Julie returned.

Gently, he walked up the hill, feeling as alone as that guy who had walked on the surface of the moon. He reached the top of the hill and saw the farmhouse below him. No sight of Julie but he saw Trig and Donny slouched on the fender of a van in the yard between the house and the barn, and they were chatting animatedly, relaxed and intimate. There was no sign of danger, no sign of weirdness: just two new friends bullshiting in the night.

But then small things began to seem off. What was Trig doing way out here? What was this place? What was going on? It connected with nothing in Peter’s memory of Trig.

Puzzled, he stepped forward and almost tripped as he bumbled into something.

Two figures rose before him.

Oh, shit, he thought, for they wore suits and one of them carried a camera with a long lens.

Clearly they were feds, spying on Trig.

They had the pug look of FBI agents, with blunt faces and crew cuts; one wore a hat. They did not look happy to be discovered.

“W-who are you?” Peter asked in a quavering voice. “What are you doing?”

“Idon’t think I can sell him out,” said Donny.

“Donny, this isn’t a Western. There are no good guys. Do you hear me? This is real life, hardball style. If it’s you or Crowe, do not give yourself up for Crowe.”

“I suppose that’s the smart move,” said Donny.

“So, there,” said Trig. “I made your decision easy for you. All you have to do is cooperate with them. Come on, when the war is over, they’ll reduce his sentence. He may never even serve a day. They’ll work some deal, he’ll get out and go on with the rest of his life. He won’t even be upset.”