the sky, and the cold has an edge that cuts through the sweatshirt Cal has taken to wearing in bed. After a few minutes, a light goes on in P.J.’s house. A minute after that, two flashlight beams bob and crisscross their way across the fields, stop and focus in on something on the ground. Cal hears or imagines he hears, very faintly, the low, anger-filled rhythms of their discussion, and the restless jostling of the unsettled sheep. Then the two beams work their way back to P.J.’s place, more slowly. Mart and P.J. are dragging the dead sheep, a leg each.
Cal stays where he is and watches the land. A few late moths whirl in the light from his windows. Nothing much else is moving, only the usual small things in the hedges and the occasional call from a nightjar or a hunting owl, but he waits and watches anyway, just in case. Whatever Mart met, it might have taken cover when Cal came out, and it might be patient.
The unease that started with Mart’s innocent inquiring look has grown and worked its way to the surface. Mart knew that, out of all the sheep in Ardnakelty, this creature would go after P.J.’s.
The more Cal thinks about it, the less he likes that hurling stick. Only a fool would risk getting up close and personal with something that rips the soft parts out of sheep, when he has a perfectly good shotgun that would let him keep a safe distance. Mart is no fool. The only reason he would have left his gun at home was if he was expecting to meet something he wouldn’t shoot. Mart was sitting up in that wood waiting for a human being.
Cal finds himself afraid. He feels the fear first, and understands it only gradually. It has to do with the kid, and the way people around here treat him and his family like shit, and the way his brother leaving threw him into a savage, desperate tailspin. It has to do with the matter-of-fact, unflinching neatness—which seemed like a good quality at the time—with which he killed and butchered that rabbit. He couldn’t handle causing suffering, but then the sheep didn’t suffer, or only for a second or two.
Cal thinks, That’s a good kid. He wouldn’t do that. But he knows that no one has ever made it clear to Trey what, exactly, good and bad mean, or the importance of finding the line between them and staying on the right side.
After a while, a lone flashlight beam makes its way up the fields from P.J.’s place to Mart’s. A while after that P.J.’s lights go out, and finally Mart’s do too. The countryside is dark.
Cal heads for home. On his way up the garden he shines his flashlight over at the stump. Something has taken away the remains of the rabbit, clean as a whistle, not a scrap left behind.
When Cal gets to the meeting point, at three-twenty and by a long rambling route, Trey isn’t there. The mountainside is so deserted that he feels like an intruder. Along the way grazing sheep turned their heads to stare at him, and he passed fragments of lichen-mottled field walls; but up here the only signs of human existence are the dirt track he’s been following, with weeds growing tall along the middle, and the occasional dark scar in the heather where someone was cutting turf sometime.
Last night’s unease builds higher. The only way the kid would miss this is if he was hurt too badly to come.
Cal turns in a circle, scanning the mountain. The wind combs the heather and gorse with a low ceaseless rustle. Its smell has a sweetness almost too cold to catch. The sky is a fine-grained gray, and from somewhere in its heights a bird sends down a pure wild whistling.
When he turns back, the kid has materialized on the road above him, like he was there all along.
“You’re late,” Cal says.
“Doing my homework,” Trey says, with the edge of a sassy grin.
“Sure you were,” Cal says. He can’t see any bruises or gashes. “You get home OK last night?”
Trey gives him a suspicious look, like this is a weird question. “Yeah.”
“I heard noises, later on. Like an animal got hurt, maybe.”
The kid shrugs, implying that this is both possible and not his problem, and turns to head up the road. Cal watches him walk. His long, springy lope is the same as ever; he’s not favoring