Calvin couldn’t look away from Angie’s eyes, the way those eyes were begging him to save her, begging him to make everything okay. Her cheeks were red from weeping, her blond hair silken in the light. Bare legs streaked with mud, her knees were bruised and bloodied, but those emerald eyes seemed almost prayerful, like she was praying to him, like everything rested solely in his hands.
Angie braced tightly to Dwayne’s arm and he held the knife’s edge against her throat, her head tilted up like she was trying to keep her nose above water. Sweat streamed down Calvin’s face and he kept opening his hands and clenching them tight on the rifle. His fingers were dead, sweat stinging his eyes as he glared down the sights. A voice in the back of his head kept saying, Just shoot him. Shoot him, Calvin. The top of her head didn’t reach Dwayne’s collarbones, but he’d never been a good shot and all he could think was how he’d fuck it up like everything else, how he’d pull the trigger and miss.
“How long you think you can follow me?” Dwayne said. He was taking long strides backward through the woods, the two of them no more than twenty feet apart.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“But I am, my friend. I am going somewhere. And we’re getting close to the point where we part ways. Pretty soon you’re going to have a decision to make.”
The dirtied jeans Dwayne wore hooked under his heels as he back-stepped barefoot through the trees. His pale skin was dark with hair except a bright red stain over part of his chest and covering the arm he used to hold her. The mark was raised and blistered like he might’ve been burned. His face was this clean-shaven juxtaposition to the rest of his body, with eyes that seemed to hold the very end of the world. Reaching back into those hollowed eyes, Calvin could see there was nothing inside him. It was foolish to follow, to take a man like Dwayne Brewer on his word.
They ascended a gradual slope broken with post oak and poplar. Rusted leaves crackled under their steps and a flurry of tulip poplar seeds whirled down around them as wind bowed the treetops. It was one of those days where warm air rolled up from the gulf, the wind carrying the smell of saltwater six hundred miles from ocean to mountain. Off to the right, Calvin spotted an outcrop of boulders and he thought, If I can back him into those rocks, I can force his hand.
Calvin quickened his pace and rounded Dwayne to push him, and Dwayne seemed confused for a second as he turned, staring at Calvin like he was trying to read his tell. Dwayne trod carefully so that he never gave angle to his back. He kept Angie hugged to his chest, that knife pressed so hard into her neck that her skin lapped the edge. Peeking over his shoulder, he seemed to see where Calvin was forcing him and he sidestepped quickly, Angie’s feet dragging the ground, but Calvin cut him off.
Soon Dwayne was backed against the boulders. Fallen leaves had blown against the outcrop in knee-high drifts, dark stone splotched with olive-gray patches of lichen. Dwayne tried to rush to his right but she was a burden to him now, and Calvin headed him off with the rifle, pulling the trigger, that .45-70 blew apart the mountains like a stick of dynamite.
His ears wailed and he racked the lever. Smoking brass ejected to his right as another cartridge rode forward. A wide circle was blown into the rock to the left of Dwayne’s head, the stone opened white to quartz and feldspar.
“You’re going to force me to do something I didn’t want to do, Calvin,” Dwayne yelled, all of their heads ringing. “When I cut her throat, that’s on your hands.”
“You’re not leaving here with her.”
“That’s where you’re mistaken.” Dwayne shook his head and smiled. “You’re getting awfully brave staring down the barrel of that rifle, but you’re not thinking clearly. God be the man with the gun, but not today. Not this time. Not when you know what I’ll do just to see the shattered look on your face.”
“Calvin, please,” Angie stuttered. “Please, just put the gun down.”
“She’s making good sense, Calvin. You put that gun down.”
“Let her go.”
“I let her go and you’ll shoot me where I stand.”
“No, he won’t,” she said. “He won’t shoot you. Will you? Put the gun down, Calvin. Put it down.”
“You ever think the three of us were meant to be right here, that all our lives we’ve been headed right here to this place, that it’s fate? It’s fate that brought us here.”
“Shut your mouth, Dwayne.”
“What if I told you I was a prophet?”
“I said shut your fucking—”
“What if I told you I was sent to teach you something, Calvin, that that’s all the meaning my life ever had?”
Angie was sobbing, her eyes like glass, her breath sputtering from her lips.
“This is exactly how it was supposed to end,” Dwayne said. “Every one of us fighting to hold on to what we love most, one no better than the other.”
Calvin watched him but didn’t speak.
“This is the only way it could have ended, ain’t it? We’ve all been headed right here all along. All our lives. Every step we ever took brought us right here. Can you see that? Can you see that, Calvin?”
“You’re out of your fucking mind.”
“I’m no more out of my mind than you are, friend.” He stretched his eyes wide and stared long into him, a look Calvin Hooper could feel boring through him.
“We’re nothing alike,” he said.
“You can’t see it yet,” Dwayne said.
“I can see fine.”
“What I’ve taught you is all that there is, friend. It’s everything.”
“You haven’t taught me a goddamn thing.” His cheek was hot against the buttstock of the rifle and he could see his breath fogging and fading from the stainless receiver.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Dwayne said. “I think I’ve taught you the most valuable lesson in the entire world. For whom are you willing to lay down your life? Till a man knows that, he doesn’t know anything. ‘For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.’ For whom are you willing to lay down your life, friend? Outside of that there is nothing.”
“Shut the fuck up, Dwayne!”
“That’s the reason all of us are here. That’s the reason, but the difference is you took mine. You took everything I love. I watched it slip away like water through my fingers. You stole the only thing I loved in this world.” Dwayne looked for a second like he was about to break, but then his brow lowered and he showed his teeth like an angered dog. He growled loudly as if in pain. “But that’s okay. I can see that now. It’s okay,” he said. “Maybe it all had to be piled on me. Maybe I’m the only one on this goddamned earth could take it. And maybe that’s what had to happen for your eyes to be opened. We’re exactly the same, me and you.”
“I’m nothing like you. Now, let her go. It’s over.”
Dwayne took a single step backward, his bare back pressed against the stone. He watched the sky and closed his eyes, took a few deep breaths, and a smile spread over his face. “You still can’t see it,” he said. “You still can’t see it and it’s right in front of your eyes. It’s the reason we’re gathered here. The only reason we’re here is because of the ones we loved. That’s the line that held us. I would’ve done anything in this world to keep my brother from enduring the slightest suffering. I would’ve given my life if I were asked. The reason you’re here, Calvin Hooper, is because of this woman in my arms, and the reason she fought like hell is because of that little baby inside her. Are you so blind you can’t see?”
Calvin didn’t think he’d heard Dwayne clearly. He thought he’d misunderstood. But those words settled into him like he was being filled full of sand, weighing him down and holding him motionless. Confusion bent his face and he twisted his cheek against the rifle, staring hard into Angie’s eyes. “Is it true?” he tried to say, but those three words fell silent, no air to breathe them over his tongue, so that she had to read what he was trying to say on his lips.
“Yes,” she whispered. She was crying and there seemed to be little else inside her but that word. Her head rocked against Dwayne’s chest. “Yes,” she said.
Dwayne Brewer lowered his face to the side of her head and spoke as if he were telling her a secret. “He didn’t know?”
“No,” she said. Her head was shaking and she was blubbering hysterically. “No.”
“What a strange, strange world, how a man ends up where he does,” Dwayne said. “Sometimes it’s his own doing, but most the time, most the time, it’s like we’re led along like starved dogs.”
“Let her go.” Calvin’s voice was weak now, absolutely broken. He could feel his knees buckling beneath him, his legs about to dissolve. “I’ve already called the law, Dwayne. I called and they’re on their way. They’ll be here in a matter of minutes.” He hesitated, his brain flooded with emotion. “You’re not leaving here with her.”
“I wish you hadn’t done that,” Dwayne said. “There was never any need for anyone outside of me and you. This was between us, friend. Just us. And I really wish you wouldn’t have made me do this.”
“Put the gun down, Calvin,” Angie squealed. He could see Dwayne’s arm tightening around her, the knife pressing harder into her throat. “For God’s sake, put the gun down.”
“I never wanted to hurt her,” Dwayne said. “I never wanted anything to do with the lot of you. All I wanted was what you took.” There was a deep and furious anger kindling on his words. “All I wanted was one thing, one thing, and I could’ve gotten by, but even that you took.”
“Let her go,” Calvin pleaded. “Just let her go.”
There was something inexplicable in what Dwayne Brewer said next. It was as if he weren’t talking to anyone there.
“All my life I’ve been begging You for mercy and not a day has it come. Not one day. Now I’m asking once more, and after this I’m done. I’ll never ask You again,” Dwayne said. “Now this is how it’s going to play out if you want this baby to live, Calvin. I want you to walk right over there by that dogwood and sit that rifle down.”
“Let her go.” Calvin could tell that Dwayne was coming apart at the seams, and that instability scared him to death.
“Please, Calvin.” Angie wept. “Just do what he says.”
“I’ve asked you twice and that only leaves once more,” Dwayne said. “You need to think about what you stand to lose, friend. Your load is heavy and my burden light. I cut her throat and everything you love is gone.”
“You hurt her and I’ll shoot you dead you son of a bitch.”
“And I’ll welcome that moment like company, friend,” Dwayne said. His words were soft and calm.
“Put the gun down,” Angie whispered. Calvin looked at her eyes, those eyes begging for salvation, begging him for something man was not meant to provide.
“I told you all along your time would come,” Dwayne said.
“Do it, Calvin. For God’s sake, just do what—”
“Are you willing to lay down your life for the ones you love?” Dwayne cut Angie’s words short. “Are you willing to lay that rifle down and let me kill you to save her, to save the child she carries?”
“What?” Calvin’s mind was whirling.
“It’s simple,” Dwayne said. “Are you willing to die for the ones you love?”
Calvin watched Angie’s face flush white. Off from where they’d come, he could hear voices echoing in the distance and he knew the law would soon be upon them.
“Make up your mind, friend. One of you is not leaving this place today and only you can decide. If they reach us, it’s over. You’re the only one who can decide whether it’s you or her.”
Calvin had the rifle aimed at the bridge of Dwayne’s nose, but he lowered his eyes to the ground. From her feet, he followed her legs upward settling on her stomach, imagining an entire life stretched before him. The swimming of his thoughts stifled the sounds around him. In that moment, his mind cut from madness to absolute certainty. There was no balancing between what it would be like to live without her and what it would be like to die. It was as easy a decision as he’d ever made in his life.
Without a word, he dropped his left hand from the foregrip, his right still bearing the rifle as he lifted the barrel to the sky. Backing toward the crooked dogwood, its bark scaled like snakeskin, he laid the rifle on the ground, held his hands at his chest with his palms open before him.
“Now get back over there where you were,” Dwayne said. He neither lowered the knife nor lessened its pressure.
“Okay,” Calvin said. “Okay.” He sidestepped and Dwayne moved toward the rifle.
When he reached the dogwood, Dwayne shoved Angie forward and she crumbled loosely to the ground. There was no breath in Calvin’s lungs as Dwayne shouldered the rifle, settled his cheek against the stock, and took his aim. He came forward and soon enough the muzzle was within feet. Calvin lowered his head and stared at the ground, the place he would fall. This is it, he thought. This is where it ends. He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes trying to imagine what would come, death the greatest question of all.
“Raise your head,” Dwayne said.
Calvin lifted his eyes to Angie. She was curled on the ground wailing and beating her fists bloody against the earth. She screamed his name at the top of her lungs but he heard nothing. He met Dwayne’s eyes only for a moment, looking upward until there was only sky, cloudless and blue, the last of light filtering in from somewhere off to his left.
“Now can you see it?” Dwayne asked.
“Yes,” Calvin said, and he could. He could see that there was a single, magnificent truth holding this world together. “Yes, I can see it.”
“And isn’t it beautiful,” Dwayne said. “Isn’t it the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?”
Calvin closed his eyes. He waited for the hammer to fall, the explosion of sound and light, the everything and the empty. Years passed in that waiting. Lifetimes. And though he was certain he was near, he would wait like all the rest for that great question to be answered, for when he opened his eyes and followed the sky down to where Dwayne had stood, he was gone, the woods empty, the devil having disappeared as if he’d never existed at all. Over the western horizon, the sun rode low on the ridge, a dull sunset so ordinary and unspectacular he would likely never remember. The voices neared, footsteps now loud in the cove.
Calvin fell to his knees and crawled to her. He wrapped his arms around her and held on to Angie as tight as he could, their bodies melding into a singular beating thing. His mind spun too fast for thought, his heart as wild as a panther’s. He knew what it was to need and what it was to have plenty.
She was all there ever was.