Earl comes over. “Why don’t you head back to my house? For right now, the stuff with that Corson kid is the last thing they care about.”
Jessup looks over Earl’s shoulder. The body in the middle of the road and the body by the gate are still there. He’s glad there are enough people milling around so that Jewel can’t see. The EMTs already have one of the injured protesters on a gurney, an oxygen mask on her face, and one, two, three, and up into the back of the ambulance at the same time as a second ambulance comes in, sirens just one more thing to pierce the early afternoon.
The reporter for Fox News comes over trailing a cameraman, but one of the body-armored cops stops the reporter, says in no uncertain language to get out of the way.
Jessup’s mom reaches out, touches the side of his neck. He flinches. “Ow,” he says.
“You’re bleeding.”
He reaches up, touches it himself. Broken glass from where the rear window in the truck shattered. Safety glass, but still enough to leave little cuts. Feels like a sunburn. “It’s nothing,” he says.
His mom is suddenly shaking. “You could have been killed,” she says.
Earl starts shooing them. “But he wasn’t. Go on now. Head into the house.”
David John’s face is ashen. He’s still holding Jewel. “This is my fault,” he says. He has his hands tight around his daughter, as if he’s worried she’ll be pulled from him.
Earl shakes his head. “You didn’t have anything to do with this. Some crazy person out there with a gun—”
David John is come to Jesus cutting Earl off. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have asked you for help. But I wanted to keep Jessup safe. Keep my family safe. My fault. I should have pushed back when you said we needed Brandon. If Brandon wouldn’t have turned this into something big . . .” His voice is losing steam now. “I was trying to do the right thing by my family, but this, this . . . I made a mistake. This isn’t the right place for us,” he says, his voice so quiet now that Jessup isn’t sure he catches the words completely.
His stepfather sounds lost. He is lost, Jessup realizes; David John has always used family and church as his compass, and the one might not survive the other.
David John figuring this out is too little, too late, Jessup thinks sourly, and he’s immediately overcome with a sense of shame at how angry he is at David John. At Earl and Brandon and all of this, all of the things that he has never had any control over, but at David John especially. And shame because he’s never questioned David John directly, never asked him how he could hold this hatred inside of him, how he could believe it would come with no cost to the people he loved. How could he fail to understand the sacrifice?
Sacrifice. The word rattles in him.
Earl’s gentle in response to David John. “Go on to the house, now. Go on.”
Sacrifice.
David John turns and starts walking to the house, Jessup’s mom going with him.
Jessup doesn’t move. He’s thinking about what Brandon said last night, in his casual aside about meeting with Wyatt: that Wyatt “does his duty. Understands sacrifice.”
Jessup takes one more look before he turns toward the house. There are two cops in the pickup truck where he and Brandon were standing. They’re kneeling, so he can only see the top of their torsos, ostensibly giving Brandon first aid until another ambulance gets here. He looks past the truck to the field, where he sees several of the geared-up SWAT cops walking toward the trees, pointing, still holding their M16s. But he’s not interested in the cops; he’s looking at the edge of the field, where the land humps up and the trees are thick. Even though it’s November, it’s the kind of place where you can see out but people can’t see in.
He thinks about sitting in the woods yesterday morning, staring across the field at the buck, taking his time and pulling the trigger. The hill across the open field, choked with trees, would be a good spot to hunt from, Jessup thinks.