HE DRAGGED the dead boy to the tree line and kicked dust over the blood that had pooled beneath him. He took the rifle and tossed it in the trunk, then closed and locked it. In the boy’s hip pocket he found a half-empty pack of Parliaments and a Bic. He thanked the dead boy for the unexpected gift and smoked, thought of all the flawed paths that had brought him to this.
“I told you, didn’t I? I told you not to make yourself a party to this, didn’t I? Young buck wants to rut. Damn you. Rut away now, fool.”
He walked to the river and retraced the dead boy’s steps. He had known he had been planning something, driving the old highway in the evenings without headlights, not knowing how the river threw back those road sounds on the ear. The boy’s plan had been clear to him from the moment he let him follow him back to the camp, though perhaps then the plan hadn’t yet grown to its completion. Perhaps that had needed time, though it all came to this eventuality, regardless of intent. It had been written by the same hand that had written the details of his blood. Now the story of the boy was over. Forever.
Once he’d found a good and accessible pool, he went back to the car and got out the pry bar and the old spare and a comealong cable puller. He sat and inserted the tip of the bar where the rubber seal met the rim. Once separated, he tossed the tire aside and held the wheel to get a sense of its weight. Lighter than he would have liked, but it was an older full-size wheel, so it should still serve. He carried it over to where the dead boy lay and put it next to him so he could do what he needed to with the dead boy’s hands.
First, he unfolded the arms out to each side, palms raised, so that it looked as though the boy were appraising the broad worth of a world he no longer knew. He positioned the sharp tip of the pry bar in the web of the left hand, an inch to the inside, and stepped down on the blunt end until the metal pushed through. He twisted and gouged to dilate the wound. Once satisfied, he did the same to the other hand. He was surprised at how little blood came, how the natural channels and coves of a body could hold what it no longer needed.
The boy was heavy and the trail was not wide or level. He stopped halfway to rest before he realized he could loop the boy’s belt around his neck and drag him on that way. It went much quicker then. Much easier. An achievement of reason, he decided.
He went back, fetched the rim and the comealong. He set it at the boy’s head, then ran the thin chain through the opening of the wheel and in and out of each of the hand holes, linked it back to its source. After he was certain that the latch had caught, he cranked the lever on the comealong, tightened the weight until it was clasped firmly in each palm. The boy held the wheel like a prize. He sat and reviewed his work for a while, smoked another of the cigarettes, then went back to camp to get something to eat.
He rummaged through the plastic bag in the backseat of the car, found only a single can of Vienna sausages and a box of shelf-stable milk. He stuck these in his jacket pockets and walked back to the river to see to the boy.
He swung the head over the sheer ledge and then it required only a simple kick. Gravity took the boy swiftly down and under. He sat there with his legs dangling over the eddy, cracked the can of sausages open, and ate them slowly as he watched the complicated patterning of water.