the great thrill in his heart were all instantaneous, and right away he lowered the rifle and looked for the casing where it had rung like a coin on the porch, picked it up still hot and put it his pocket and closed the door again.
He returned to the utility room and zipped the rifle back into the case and set the case far back in the corner again, and all this he did in the dark. And still in the dark he got into his boots, his jacket, and he stepped onto the porch and turned the deadbolt with his key and went down the porchsteps and crossed the clearing to the outbuilding, and five minutes later he was on the 52 North, and fifteen minutes after that he pulled over to scrape the frost from the inside of the windshield, and “Just what in the hell,” he said, but not to the frost or to the van. “Why don’t you just mind your own business?” And after he’d scraped off enough frost, the frost falling like snow inside the cab, he put the van in gear again and drove on.
6
She stood at the kitchen window staring out at the night, and it was still that night ten years ago, the night her son came home with the wet dog, so that when the dog now shook itself at her feet, clapping its ears and rattling its tags, she looked down absently, unthinkingly, and was shocked by the sight of him—the hunched and wasted body, the whitened muzzle, the filmy eyes turned up to her, searching for her in the fog of his world—and it was the shock that returned her to her place in time, to this kitchen, this farmhouse where she lived now with the old dog and her other son.
She took the dog’s face in her hands and felt his trembling and tried to soothe it from him with her touch and her voice but it was not enough, it never was anymore, and finally she stood again and picked up his vial of pills, shook one into a cereal bowl and began crushing it with a spoon. She folded the grit into a soft dog treat, and when she turned again his snout was already raised, his nose tracking the treat’s descent, his yellow teeth taking it gently from her fingertips.
She watched him chew, swallow, lick his lips.
“Go drink your water,” she said, and he limped over to his bowl and lapped sloppily, then turned to her once again, dripping water onto the floor she’d just mopped. Staring at her with those milky eyes, waiting to see what she would do next, where she would go. Rachel staring back at him, going nowhere, saying nothing. She was back in time again, at the old house, ten years ago. Danny had gone to help Jeff and she’d gone back to bed, she remembered. But half an hour later she heard him knocking about in his room and she’d gotten up again. The door to his room open, Danny hunched over and stuffing clothes into his duffel. Stink of wet dog in the room, and the dog lying on the bed, watching Danny’s every move.
Now what are you doing? she’d said from the doorway.
Gonna go see Cousin Jer, he said without turning. Shoot some birds.
On a Wednesday night?
Why not?
T-shirts, a pair of jeans, purple Vikings sweatshirt.
Danny, she said. It’s two thirty in the morning. Does he even know you’re coming?
Of course he does, he said—it was all set up: he’d be at Jer’s in an hour, he’d sleep a couple of hours and then they’d head up to Uncle Rudy’s cabin. Back by Friday, maybe Saturday . . .
Rachel stood watching him, confused and strangely heated. As if she’d done something stupid. Something embarrassing.
And all this is fine with—your boss? she said, and her son paused then, they both did, as the idea of Gordon Burke came into the room: His smell of earth and copper, a certain kind of deodorant. His big good face. His hands. There’d been a few men over the years, after Roger, but there hadn’t been any for several years, and at forty-three, with two grown sons, she’d been ready to believe that that part was over for her. But it wasn’t, not quite. Gordon Burke’s daughter was still at home, Holly, a moody girl all her life and now a troubled girl who did not make things easy, and so the