I have meant well, haven’t I?
You took care of yourself.
Don’t we all do that first?
No.
No.
Jess lay in a patch of sun on a rock ledge above the town. He had been glassing the lie of the buildings, the wooded hills cloaked in fall color, the slate strip of county road; also the harbor, the boats moored and docked. All intact. Actual living townspeople walked the streets. One dock was occupied by a long metal shed, “Matinicus Lobster Co.” Matinicus was an island, wasn’t it? One of the farthest out in Penobscot Bay, the famous one where lobstermen feuded and shot each other over territory for their traps. Now he lay back, face to the sun, which reddened his closed eyelids; he thought he could see there the fine branching of arteries like the map of some river system. He floated on his own fatigue, which somehow buoyed and rocked him.
He thought of the airline safety injunction to strap the oxygen mask on oneself first before helping others. More than once he had heard people use it, flippantly, to justify selfish behavior. Strap the mask on first. Go hunting with Storey two months a year, a mental-health prescription that he told Jan he needed so that he could stay centered and work the other ten. “Are we ever gonna go on vacation?” Jan had asked. “We used to talk about Spain.”
He did not have to have the affair in Vermont. He did not have to make love to Storey’s mother that first time; he might have closed his eyes, shut out the sight of her, called his parents to come get him. He did not have to shoot the little buck in the meadow when he was fifteen. He might have lowered the gun, whispered, “Graze on. Live on. We will both live out our lives.”
Is that what people did on their deathbeds? Inventory their starkest failures? Was this granite overlook his last perch?
He wished he was in Spain. More than anything. With Jan. Sipping sangria at an outdoor table, on a cobbled street, above another harbor, maybe Barcelona. Anywhere but here and now.
Now he was going to walk down through the woods and straight into town. A living town. That was a shock; it made him queasy. How many weeks had they been out? Not many. He couldn’t tally them. He would find the drop-off spot, surveil it, watch for anyone who looked like Collie’s family. Maybe he would make discreet inquiries: Is there an older Mrs. Beckett? Is it safe here? We are out-of-state visitors—hunters—caught in the cross fire. We have no dog in this fight. Can we get home to Vermont and Colorado? Is there a refugee center?
Would he tell them where they’d been? What county? Where they seemed to take no prisoners? He didn’t know. He didn’t know anything. Would they believe him? Or would they look at the beard, the dirty clothes, the streaked campfire char on his thighs, and shoot him on sight? As some kind of spy or outlander.
He had studied the town for close to an hour. He had tugged the torn page of the Maine gazetteer from the inside pocket of his fleece jacket and unfolded it carefully and confirmed the numbers he had jotted in the upper-left corner. Confirmed again that the indicated lat-long lines touched the coast at one spot, the town of Grantham. And now he didn’t need to turn on the iPhone to check his current position: he lifted the binocs and again scanned the street and found the flagpole flying the Stars and Stripes and read on the façade of the low brick building “U.S. Post Office, Grantham, ME 04031.”
So this was the right town, good. He felt his heart thud in his chest, almost the way he felt back home when a bull elk stepped out of the aspen into a meadow and all he had to do was unsling the rifle and lift it slowly and brace the barrel against the fir tree against which he leaned. Good. But this wouldn’t be that simple.
He moved the glasses now methodically from the north end of town, his left, down to the south end, his right, and from the moored boats in the harbor into the docks and across the clustered downtown. He followed the occasional pickup and the sand-colored convoys of armored Humvees and troop carriers that passed up and down the main street, which was the state highway. Groups of ten vehicles at most. Numbers, it seemed, for an occupation, not an invasion. Were the towns along the coast sympathetic to the federal government? Pro-union? The American flag still flying at the post office seemed to indicate that this one was. Towns like this were packed with folks From Away, second-homers, retirees, quality-of-lifers. They tended to vote much more liberal. Would the feds even need to occupy such a town? Would partisans and secessionist sympathizers sabotage and harry it? Would he be mistaken for one of them?
No telling. He would have to be careful. He would walk down. He would suss out the town and return to Storey and Collie and guide them in. If it wasn’t safe, if he didn’t return, they would know.
He had insisted. Somehow he owed Storey that much. The girl, too; he wasn’t sure why.
Storey had said it out loud: “You don’t owe me anything.”
“Well.”
“You don’t. You—we were seventeen.”
“I—”
Storey had cut him off. His face behind his two weeks of beard was haggard and his eyes were stony. “All you had to do was tell me. We were brothers. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Jess could not hold his gaze. He looked away. “Like you said, we were seventeen.”
“Yeah.” The word not agreement, but judgment. Flat and hard. Jess flinched. We were seventeen. And people are hardwired, cradle to grave pretty much the same. If I had some problem looking truth square in the eye…
“Yes,” Jess repeated. “I owed you that.”
Collie’s face was welted from bites she’d gotten four days before. Angry red swellings. Smudged with dirt and tracked faintly with tear salt. She had stared up at the two men, looking from one to the other, not understanding but feeling the import. Then Jess had touched her head, just that. And picked up his pack and the rifle and walked off the four-wheeler track and into the deep midday shadows of the trees.
Now he stood. He hefted the pack beside him and leaned it against the trunk of a black birch. He put his nose against the silk-smooth and peeling bark and inhaled the wintergreen scent. It smelled like sharp mint and cool water. He closed his eyes. I have known this. He opened his hand and placed his palm gently against the trunk, as he would the flank of a horse. Felt the warmth in it, almost as if it were an animal. It’s enough, isn’t it? Almost enough.
He opened his eyes and rubbed them with the same hand. The fragrance of the birch was on his fingers. He unslung the rifle and leaned it there, too, against the pack. And then he turned away from the tree and made out the deer trail that dropped off the bench and through the ferns, and he walked.