A Single Shot

Simon grunts. “When haven’t I?”

“I mean, don’t even breathe it.”

“You thinking it’s like a vampire buck or what?”

John flicks his eyes at him.

“It’s the middle of the night, Johnno.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re sitting here shit-faced with a loaded pistol.”

“And you’re sitting next to me.” John plucks a piece of hay from the field and starts chewing on it.

“I guess Moira ain’t changed her mind?”

“She’s educating herself. Worries about missing classes.”

“That ain’t so bad. Wished I’d had a little more.”

“Why didn’t ya?”

“Vietnam come along fucked with my aspiration. I was gonna be a nuclear fizzy—you know like Einstein was?”

“I think she’s got a boyfriend.”

“That ain’t the end of nobody’s world neither. The end of the world’s when your heart stops beating.”

“Yeah,” says John. He thinks of the dead girl, the end of her world a 12-gauge slug. He remembers Simon, thirteen years older than John, once saying that the world is divided into those who’ve killed someone and those who haven’t and that the second group doesn’t know how lucky it is or about the danger it’s in. That was the closest he’d ever come to discussing the war with John. “You ever heard of a guy named Obadiah Cornish?”

Simon raises his eyes at John. “I don’t brag on it. Why?”

“He pulled a gun on me last night over to Moira’s.”

“You don’t mean to say, Moira…?”

John waves dismissively. “Cornish was over there balling the babysitter. He seemed to know a lot about me. I don’t know diddly ’bout him.”

“Last I heard, he was upstate, though that was a lot of years ago.”

“How come I can’t place him and he can place me?”

“He ain’t much to place is why you can’t him. Probably why he can you is ’cause he was foster kid one summer to Old Ira Hollenbach. This was back ’fore the killings—when Ira had the stone quarry. Cornish I guess got sent to Ira’s after he wore out ’bout every other family in the county. Reason I know is I used to work for Ira. I was there when this psycho Obadiah stabs one Ira’s cows to death.”

“A cow?”

“One of Ira’s top milkers. Kicks a pail of milk over onto Cornish and he runs and gets a pitchfork and jabs it straight through the cow’s heart.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. Ira sent him the hell back the county after that.”

John spits out the grass.

“He was one the hundreds the police talked to after Old Ira and Molly got sliced up. Has himself little Daggard Pitt for a lawyer, same as me.” Simon pulls off his boots, then lies back on the bank and wriggles out of his jeans. Beefier and taller than John, he’s got a long scar on his leg that he brought back from Vietnam and never talks about. As much as John’s father, he’d taught John how to hunt. “Rule numero uno, Johnno,” he used to say. “Don’t shoot at rustlin’ branches, footsteps, farts, or hallucinations.” A few years back, after a downstate hunter had shot and killed his companion for a deer, Simon claimed the guy must’ve done it on purpose. Nobody, he’d said, could make a mistake that bad. And John had agreed with him. “Where’s that three-colored mutt a’ yourn?”

John whips his head around. He stares wordlessly down at Simon.

“He’s usually slobbering all over me, I show up.”

“I don’t remember you ever giving a rat’s ass.”

“Still don’t.” Pantless, Simon stands up. He starts unbuttoning his shirt. “Just wonderin’ where it’s at, that’s all.” When he came back from the war, he’d gone to work for John’s father, milking cows. He had a temper back then—once he’d gotten mad, punched a breed bull in the snout, and nearly killed it, and later spent time in jail for having similar run-ins with people. For weeks at a time he would disappear, then show up looking for his job back, and John’s father would give it to him because finding good help was nearly impossible and Simon Breedlove, John’s father used to say, could work the tits off a mule. He hadn’t stayed long, maybe a year or two, but by then he’d become like an older brother to John, sometimes like a father, even though John didn’t have any idea, and still doesn’t, what Simon did on his long absences.

“Was shot,” says John.

“Dead?”

“Yeah.” John gazes down at the pond, where the smaller woman, her naked backside to the bank, has climbed on the shoulders of Colette, standing waist-high in the water. “Don’t know by who.”

“When?”

“Earlier this evening.”

“What for?”

John’s seeing tracers in front of his eyes. “How would I know?”

“I mean, might somebody had a reason?”

“I’d guess not.”

“Well, shit.”

“I buried him up by the garden.”

“Musta been a reason.”

Now John’s ears are ringing. He doesn’t answer.

“Nothing you can think of?”

“I loved that dog, Simon.”

“Yeah, well, I know, John, but the thing to remember is—he was just a dog—not a human being—ya know?”

“We’re getting awful lonely down here, boys!” The small woman, gyrating her backside, stands on Colette’s shoulders. Simon shakes his head admiringly.

“Ain’t that Colette a strong one, John?”

John doesn’t say.

“With that equipment she must’ve fucked little-bitty Ralph Gans right down to a carrot stub. ’Member how godawful small he was? Like a mouse. Had that half ear?”