I came out of the house. I looked at the outdoors, the sun finally coming out, the animals still a bit shy to poke their noses out of their shelters, and then the lake with its silvery color, with a few little waves on it from the wind. Everything was like before again, only nothing was the same anymore. It was beautiful but everything felt frozen numb.
Nature was out and watching, just waiting for something to happen. I had to give it what it needed, and then it’d come alive. Them’s the rules, as Pa used to say. I didn’t know whether to go back to Cole’s for my brother’s sake or to keep looking for the kid. There was nobody around to tell me what to do. I was the last man.
At the bottom of the steps, I saw footprints in the snow, and my heart started pounding when I realized that there were two sets. Men’s shoeprints and, ahead of them, smaller shoeprints. Bess or the kid—I couldn’t be sure which. I took the shovel off the machine, cursing myself for not thinking to bring my rifle, too, because I had no idea what I had waiting for me, let alone who had killed Clifford.
I ran as fast as I could in the snow. All this had lit a fire under me. I crossed the last thicket, where the forest ended and the land stretched out before it dropped down to the first crevasse, the deepest one around these parts. It was barely as wide as a man’s chest, but Pa said it was at least forty-five feet deep. He’d warned Thomas against living beside it, especially if he was fixing to have kids one of these days. He couldn’t have known. He hadn’t seen a thing either. If he had, he’d have killed Cole with his bare hands.
And, right then, I saw them, although I wasn’t sure what I was seeing. She didn’t have her hat on and her hair was so red next to the snow and the blue sky that it was like one of those abstract paintings I’d seen in Faye’s books. I really wanted to run my hands through those curls, bury my face in that hair, tell her all the things I’d never said.
She was walking and Cole was behind her. The way his elbow was crooked, I could tell what he was holding. I didn’t think: I just ran straight, the snow muffling my strides. But Cole still heard me. He was a hunter after all. He turned around and aimed the barrel at me, right as I’d almost caught up to him.
He lowered his rifle, smiled at me, and, nodding at Bess, said: “Let me, it’s for your own good.” And when I saw him smile at me, I lost it.
I hit him with the business end of the shovel. The sound of his jawbone cracking was as sharp as if I’d stepped on a dry twig. He dropped his rifle as he fell to his knees and it went off. He grabbed at my jacket and gave me a sad-dog look, like there was something he could say that would explain everything. His jaw was half dangling to the left. I swatted his hand away, I didn’t want any of his blood on me.
I took two steps back. I said, “That was for my brother,” and then I hit him again with all the strength I had, this time driving the shovel straight down. I wanted the blow to kill him. The bone of his jaw stuck out of what was left of his cheek, and he went limp like an old rag.
Bess stood there. She was watching me, shivering in her sweater, in the exact spot Thomas had taken me when we were little, like she was standing in for him, completing the picture, becoming my missing half.
All I ever hoped was that she’d never leave. I told her that I read Thomas’s notebook, that I knew the whole story now, or just about. She didn’t say a thing. The way she stayed quiet, I knew she’d figured it all out long before me.
Bess licked her windburned lips and all she did was ask me, in a voice I’d never heard before: “What about Thomas?”
I shook my head and she started sobbing like a baby.
I looked at Cole lying at my feet. He had a funny look on his face, like he wasn’t all that surprised by what had happened to him. I guess men like him expect to go out with a bang, that’s just how their lives are supposed to end. After Pa, he was the man who mattered most to me, the one who had taught me the most, but if he gave one brother something, he took so much from the other that it just about killed him every day.
The man wasn’t dead. I could hear him groaning, choking on the blood in his throat, it was like the sound was coming from deep in his guts. I grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and dragged him to the crevasse. It was hard to believe how little his body weighed.
I set his body down along the edge and then I pushed him with my foot into the void like a heap of trash. He got stuck for a bit, like he was hanging over the edge, and then he slipped all the way in, and I could hear some echoing from his fall, but it was dull and far away.
Maybe someday they’ll find him, with his jaw hanging loose and his body in pieces, but in the meantime I’d gotten justice for my brother. And now I had time to think about what I wanted to do with this life, or what was left of it.
I took Bess by the hand and told her it was time to head back to the house because there was nothing else for us to do.