A Single Shot

The rifle is John’s sole inheritance from his father, who used it to hunt deer. Though he keeps the gun in his truck as a constant reminder—good or bad—of Robert Moon, John has only occasionally shot it at paper targets. For hunting he prefers his 12-gauge, finding the shorter, more wieldy weapon handier in this thick mountain foliage, where normally one must get close to his prey before shooting it. Until now, he has never had need of the rifle’s magnified scope. When last he used it, it sighted slightly north or south of the crosshairs, making the gun fire high or low. Now John can’t remember which. If he guesses wrong either way, Abbie is dead. From John’s bullet or Waylon’s knife.

“I’ve stripped her naked, you goddamn raccoon-balled son of a bitch!” Waylon’s strident shout cracks the thin air like a hawk’s shriek. “You’re two minutes past the deadline! Where hell you at?”

John thinks the gun shoots high, but is not sure. He lowers his aim to the point of Waylon’s chin, thinking—or hoping—if the bullet rises, it will enter his forehead, and if it sinks, the top of his sternum, inches above the crest of Abbie’s skull. He places his finger on the trigger. Now his hands begin to shake like two days ago when he was aiming at the wild turkeys in his yard. John closes his eyes and silently prays that, at this juncture in his fated journey, he be allowed a steady grip. He takes a deep breath, then gradually blows it out, trying not to think what Waylon might be doing during those few seconds.

He opens his eyes again. Through the scope he sees side by side on a single neck, like the faces of victory and defeat, the heads of Ingrid Banes and the wounded buck. In less than a second, he is made to understand that triumph and tragedy always travel coterminously like this. He sees the dead girl bleed. Imagines her pain. Watches it ooze from her chest and, in a thin stream, trickle down her pale front. She opens her eyes, which, through a moist fog of hurt, beg to be saved. They look straight at John. John raises the rifle’s scope above their gaze. He squeezes the trigger. He watches, almost congruently with the rifle’s report, Abbie and Waylon tumble backward onto the deck.

His eyes won’t open. He cannot say for how long. From that internal dark place, he screams—silently or aloud—at the plague of injustice fated to him; at the curse of history repeating itself. Wordless ruminations, like large, swooping shadows of predatory birds, are reminders of invisible forces more powerful than he. In muted words, he begs, pleads, beseeches, one of these to alter its course. But they are heartless. Pain lopes as athletically as the unwounded buck through their umbrageous world. Fear is the rustling of branches. Death is what lies on their far side.

An external shriek returns him to sound and light. At first he thinks the noise is self-induced. Then, with his eyes open, he hears it again from a far-off place. A nightmarish screech that in its escalating tone incarnates terror. With his good hand still cradling the rifle, he falteringly lifts the scope to his left eye and peers toward the source of the sound.

His blood-soaked redeemer cowers on the deck; on her haunches against the trailer wall, she stares outward in paralytic horror at a half-headless creature staggering toward her on its knees. But for its exposed teeth, frozen in a garish clench, the right side of Waylon’s face below the nose is gone. He still grips his knife. He externalizes his internal monster. John can’t believe he isn’t dead and thanks the invisible forces Abbie isn’t.

He grips the rifle’s stock between his chin and right shoulder, then with his left hand pulls back the bolt and shucks out the empty shell. He levers in another bullet, fits the barrel back into the twig’s crotch, tucks the gun into his shoulder, and puts the crosshairs just beneath Waylon’s right eye. With as little effort as breathing, he pulls the trigger.

Abbie attempts to push John away as he tries to calm her. She looks at him as if he is the monster who has inflicted her pain. That look strikes him as the stare of all humanity and it suddenly frightens him to have this small, naked child in his arms. Finally, she collapses like a felled tree on the deck. In a cataleptic trance, she trembles and begs for Mommy.

John hastily examines her and determines that the blood on her body is mostly Waylon’s, and her cuts, though several, are not severe. He cleans and dresses the wounds as best he can with only one functional hand. Then he wraps her up in one of Moira’s old bathrobes.