5

THE FOG PROMISED to burn off completely well before noon. Oliver turned the van onto a logging road and twisted with the switchbacks up a mountain. John sat quietly, enjoying the scenery. They had come to the mountains for some hiking and target practice. They had been chased off the beach by early morning walkers. Oliver knew of a place to shoot in the forest. They parked and marched uphill to a clearing. There were bullet-ridden cans along the dirt bank before the trees and spent casings littering the ground at their feet. From the edge of the clearing they could see a clear-cut on the slope of another mountain.

Oliver set a row of cans on end and stepped away. “Smell that morning, my friend.” He used his thumb to point behind him as he said, “There’s ten, five for you, five for me.”

“Well, it may take twenty shots, but I’ll take them all out.” John pulled back the bolt and loaded.

They fired their first salvos. John hit two cans, Oliver three. John hit his remaining cans with the first three shots of his next turn and handed the rifle over.

“Were you ever unfaithful in your marriage?” Oliver asked, raising the rifle and squeezing off a round.

“Not really.”

“That’s a provocative answer.”

“I thought about it once.” He waited while Oliver fired. “I almost.”

“Patient?”

“Yes, and I wonder sometimes whether I didn’t sleep with her because she was a patient or because she wasn’t my wife.”

“Does it make a difference?” Oliver slipped a shell into the gun, fired and hit a can that had already been knocked down. “The fact is that you didn’t.”

“What about you?” John pulled his cigarettes from his sweater and lit up. “I know your situation is different.”

“I’ll put it this way: I’ve put my cock into other cunts and moved it around, but I’ve never been unfaithful.”

“Does Lorraine know?”

Oliver shrugged. “She’s a bright woman. She probably knows. We’ve never talked about it.” He held the rifle by the barrel and let the butt rest on the ground. “Ah, there was one, though.” He smiled. “Just a couple of years ago, a woman rented a cottage down the road, a young German woman. I couldn’t seduce her to save my life.”

John dropped his cigarette and stepped on it. “She probably thought you were a dirty old man.”

“She had to think so. I wasn’t giving her any choice.”

They began their walk down a trail that ran east from the clearing. Oliver said it led down to a beautiful creek. They walked about a mile and a half, stopping to rest on a ridge above a logging road. Down on the road was a pickup, and a woman in a T-shirt and blue jeans was examining a flat rear tire. She had her spare out and was leaning against the truck with a lug wrench in her hand. Two men on motorcycles drove past her, then turned back, stopped. John and Oliver watched.

The men were not stopping to help. They attacked immediately. One man ripped the wrench from the woman’s hands while the other looked in the cab of the truck, opened the door, rummaged through the glove compartment. The two old men on the ridge looked on, not knowing quite what to do. The first biker knocked the women to the ground with a back-handed slap. He stood over her with the iron raised, shouting.

John took the rifle from Oliver, reached into his pocket for a shell, and loaded. He raised the weapon, took aim, and felt sick. As he stood there, his target sighted, he had the feeling that the man was not a human being, that he had no history, that he was merely a two-dimensional cardboard figure at the end of the barrel. John fired into the air.

The bikers turned and searched the ridge. When they saw John and Oliver, they ran to their bikes and drove away. Oliver slapped John’s shoulder and started down the hill to the road. John followed, still dazed.

The woman was leaning against her truck when they reached her, running her fingers through her light brown hair.

“Are you okay?” asked Oliver.

John handed the rifle to Oliver and looked at the woman’s reddened jaw. “Let me take a look,” he said.

“He’s a doctor,” Oliver said, looking at the tire. He picked up the lug wrench. “And since I’m a writer, I’ll do what I do best, change the tire.”

“Well, I can’t say you won’t have a good bruise. How do you feel?”

“Shaky.”

“Well, that’s nothing to worry about. If you weren’t upset, then we’d worry.”

The woman laughed softly.

Oliver grunted as he loosened a lug, then said, “The good doctor’s name is John Livesey. And I’m Oliver Turner.”

“I’m Ruth Spencer. Thank you both.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Oliver.

John nodded.

“Can I give you a ride anywhere?” Ruth asked.

“No,” said John, “we’re parked up the trail.”

Ruth heaved a deep sigh. “Stuff like this makes you think. I drive up here all the time, just to look around and pick wildflowers, and now this. Pisses me off.”

John saw that Oliver had finished with the tire. “I guess you shouldn’t come up here alone.”

She shook her head. “Pisses me off.”

“You be careful now,” Oliver said as he and John stepped away slowly toward the trail.

She waved. “Thanks again.”

John and Oliver made their way back up the hill to the ridge and the trail. Oliver led the way, setting a good pace back to the car. “I have to say it—good thinking back there.”

John said nothing.

“Not a bad looking girl,” Oliver said.

“If you like the young, beautiful type,” said John just slightly under his breath.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.” John listened to the deep thumping sound of a grouse somewhere. “Funny thing. When I aimed the rifle at the guy I had such a feeling.”

“Fear.”

“No, not fear, though I was afraid. I didn’t recognize the feeling. It was like the guy wasn’t real, as if he was just cardboard.”

Oliver stopped and surveyed the terrain, caught his breath. John leaned against a fir, pulled out a cigarette, but thought better of lighting it. He held it in his mouth.

“Why do you shoot left-handed?” Oliver asked.

“What’s that?”

“You’re right-handed.” He waited for John’s nod and said, “But you shoot left-handed.”

John grabbed the gun and brought it up, left hand at the trigger guard, right holding the barrel at the fore end of the stock. “Huh.” He looked at his hands. “I’d never noticed.”

“I wonder what the reason for that is,” said Oliver, and he stared at John as if this were an important puzzle to be solved.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I think you should figure it out.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s something to this,” Oliver said.

“You’re a sick man, Oliver.” John led on up the trail.