on benches and chairs made from logs. He had glanced over them at first, thinking of them ordinary taxidermy creations, animals Will had trapped and stuffed. But he had sewn the corpses back together in unusual ways. A muskrat’s body joined with the head and wings of a pheasant rooster to make what looked like a baby griffin. A doe’s preserved head sprouted a single polished bone like a unicorn’s horn. The body of an old boar, gray and bristly, had been stood up on its hind hooves and then joined to a mannequin’s head draped with a shaggy wig. Half pig and half child, the creature’s front hooves raked the air as though fending off some attacker.
His mind tried to match the creations to the man he’d known, his dark good looks and military buzz cut he’d kept after leaving the service. Will had been a man who watched and saw everything.
A lone chair stood against one wall.
Grizz sat in it and felt it creak under his weight. His fingers traced the wood and found the place where it was scarred by rope burns. His son had been here. He had been roped into this chair.
He shut his eyes, tried to see it. Will lifting the pliers from the wall, running them along the blue flame in the stove. The black, ashy smell of it. Will bringing it close to Seth, pulling up the boy’s shirt to expose the soft, pale flesh. The burning. Burning him in secret places. Following it with a fist to the ribs, a slap. Seth wetting himself in fear and shame. Will hurting him just enough so that Seth could walk away once more.
Had Grizz seen marks on the body? He hadn’t looked. He had lacked the courage. It came to him that Sheriff Steve Krieger had known about this place from the beginning. He had been the one who trained Will Gunderson about law and order. As in-laws the two had trapped and hunted these woods together.
No one wanted to see this, Grizz knew. In town they already had the story they wanted, one about a Vietnam veteran, a hero, and a violent teenage delinquent. Grizz breathed in the acrid smell of the room, his eyes stinging. Across from him the pig child stretched open his mouth in a solitary scream.
Grizz stood and let the chair clatter behind him. Somewhere out on the road a car passed, spitting up gravel. He was aware once more of the outer world, those crows cawing as they fought over the last of the fish down at the river. Farther off in town the bells were ringing. The bells of Trinity Lutheran. Grizz knew in that moment he was hearing the end of Will’s funeral service.
RITES
Logan faced the congregation in his alb, a white robe meant to remind them of their baptism, as he began to tell them about Sheriff Will Gunderson. Clara listened to his homily now and measured his words against the man she had known, if only in passing.
Gossips had told her that during divorce proceedings his wife, Laura, alleged physical abuse. Within a few days Clara had been warned what might happen if she drove even a few miles over the speed limit or failed to come to a full stop at any intersection. The ex-wife sat in the very front pew, flanked on either side by her sons. Directly behind the family sat Steve, Laura’s father, and the rest of the sprawling Krieger clan, including Gretel and Bynthia in a side aisle in her wheelchair.
Clara’s only encounter with Sheriff Will Gunderson had happened in the town grocery store. Will had been a thin man, black haired, his arms long and ropy. When she entered the store, he had been leaning against a counter, his hand lightly touching a cashier’s, a teenage girl laughing too loudly at something he said. His smile vanished the moment the bell dinged to announce Clara’s entrance. She had felt his gaze on her, tracking her as she moved to the next aisle and left them alone. No, she had only seen him in passing, but Will had seemed a man at ease in his skin, a man of appetites. The entire town packed the sanctuary. Normally, the front of the church was a no-man’s-land that only Clara occupied, but today she was wedged in tight a few rows behind the grieving family, surrounded by people she had never met. Like others in the crowd, she fanned herself