He finally opened his eye and stared where Emmy sat in the gloom of the barn.
“You like that one, Sophie?” he asked.
“I’m Emmaline.”
Which seemed to startle him. “I know you’re Emmaline, goddamn it.” For a moment, I thought he might throw his fiddle at her. “Evening’s over.” He grabbed his shotgun, which had been leaning against his hay bale the whole while, and stood. “Pick up that bottle, girl. You boys, back in the tack room. Now!”
Emmy hurried to do as he’d asked. I put my harmonica in my pocket and started toward the tack room, then I heard the soft thud of the milk bottle and turned back. Jack and Emmy stood together, looking down where the bottle lay on its side, its contents making mud of the dirt on the barn floor.
“Goddamn it!” Jack screamed. “Goddamn it to hell, girl! Look what you done.”
“I’m sorry,” Emmy said. “It’s dark. I can’t see.”
“Excuses,” he said. He grabbed her arm. “We’ll see about excuses.”
“Let her go,” Albert said.
“Shut your trap, boy.”
“Let her go,” Albert said again, standing straight and tall, blocking the door to the barn.
Jack did let her go, but only to take his shotgun in both hands and level the barrel on Albert. “Move aside, boy.”
“Promise me you won’t hurt her.”
I saw Mose edging toward the workbench where the tools and such were kept. Out of his one good eye, Jack saw him, too.
“Hold it right there, Indian.”
Mose stopped. But now I turned and began to walk.
“You, Buck, where you going?”
“The tack room, just like you said.”
Jack gave a snort. “One of you knows what’s good for him anyway.”
Inside the tack room, I grabbed the gun from where I’d hidden it under the loose straw that morning, and I stood in the doorway. I didn’t think Jack could see what I held in my trembling hands.
“Move,” Jack ordered Albert. “Move, boy, or I swear you won’t live to regret it.”
“Emmy,” I said. “Step away from him.”
Jack turned his good eye my way, which meant he couldn’t really watch Emmy, and she ran quickly to Mose, who put himself between her and the shotgun.
“Mutiny,” Jack said. “I take you in. I feed you. And what do you do? You turn on me. Every one of you.”
“We’re leaving,” Albert said.
“Like hell,” Jack said.
And looking at that shotgun, I also thought, Like hell.
“Don’t push me, boy,” Jack warned. He brought the shotgun up and nestled the stock against his shoulder, and he and Albert stared at each other and there was not a sound to be heard in the whole world.
Move, Albert, I wanted to cry. Because I knew, knew absolutely, that Jack would carry through with his threat. There was something in him, some monstrous rage, and because of that mattress lying shredded in the upper room of the farmhouse, I’d already seen the evidence of what it could do.
I didn’t think. I just pulled the trigger. The sound of the gunshot shattered the evening into a million pieces.
Emmy screamed, and Jack dropped in a heap to the barn floor.
* * *
LOSS COMES IN every moment. Second by second our lives are stolen from us. What is past will never come again.
I’d killed Vincent DiMarco, which had done something to me that could not be undone. But if you asked me, even to this day, I would tell you that I’ve never been sorry he was dead. Jack was different. I knew it wasn’t his fault, the rage inside him. I’d seen a different Jack, a Jack I liked and, who knows, given time and other circumstances, a Jack I might have been happy to call my friend. Shooting him was like shooting an animal with rabies. It had to be done. But when I pulled that trigger, I lost something of myself, something even more significant than when I’d killed DiMarco, something I think of now as a sliver of my soul. And in the moment after, I sat down hard in the dirt of the barn floor, done in by regret.
Albert bent over Jack, then looked up at Mose and said, “Right through his heart, looks like.” He walked to me, but I barely felt his hand on my shoulder. “We need to go, Odie.”
He helped me up and walked me outside, where Emmy and Mose were already waiting. Emmy hugged me and put her cheek against my chest.
“Your heart, Odie,” she said. “It’s beating like a wild bird all caged up.”
I saw Mose sign to Albert, Money?
“Gone,”