A Single Shot

He stands up, grabs the money, and looks around for a place to hide it. Beneath the rock, he finds a crawl space big enough to put his head and shoulders into. After making sure there are no animal footprints or droppings near the opening, he lies down on his stomach, holds the money sack out in front of him, and pushes it as deep into the hole as he can. Then he gets to his feet, slings the .308 over his shoulder, and starts for home.

In the woods south of the trailer, he passes a hundred yards by it, then cuts north and crawls on his belly up to the west shore of the pond. From behind a cluster of hop hornbeams, he surveys through the rifle’s scope the front of the structure until he is as certain as he can be that no one is there. Warily, he stands up and moves closer. In the meadow, only a dove’s coo interrupts the shrill buzz of cicadas. He quickly walks to the back of the trailer and onto the deck.

Where Waylon’s body had lain is a circle of half-dried blood and a chalk outline of it. John’s feverous brain abstractively paints a picture of his demise—a glowering troll guards a bridge; a white goat tries to cross it; a lead mallet wavers over the heads of both. Gore tones, harsh yellows, pinks the color of flesh predominate. The cumulative effect is blur; life, suffering, death swirl in a tripartite dance. Two cigarette stubs have been stamped out near the chalk.

John hurriedly enters the kitchen, which smells like exhaled smoke. Now his heart begins to pound. The police have been in the trailer and probably searched it. Have they looked in the freezer?

He lays the rifle on the table and hurries down the cellar stairs. The basement light is on. John stops in front of the freezer, his body suddenly racked by chills. In minute detail, the dead girl’s face comes back to him. He pictures her ceaseless, open-eyed stare, reflecting to the whole world the horror of her death and the identity of her killer. “No matter where I’m at,” he imagines her whispering in his ear, “my soul will always torment you.” He grabs the door and yanks it open.

Abbie’s pound of sausage and half a dozen venison steaks tumble out. John pushes away several more packages to reveal a human hand, an arm, then, where it’s wedged against the roof of the freezer, the dead girl’s skull. John loudly gasps at the sight of her. “Wouldn’t b’lieve what’s happened since I put you in here!” he says. In five minutes he has her sitting on the basement floor, her upper body, with its fractured spine, inclined at a nearly 180-degree angle to her feet. She’s froze solid. “Gotta get you outta here,” he says. “Put an end to this.”

John leaves her there, walks to the rear of the cellar, and takes down from the wall a coil of rope and the toboggan he and Moira bought each other for Christmas one year. He slides the wooden sled across the floor and places it parallel to the cadaver. “Wouldn’t be able to lug ya wit’ on’y my one arm,” he says.

He wrestles her onto the sled so that she’s facing forward, with her head steeply inclined and her feet under the bow, as if she’s plummeting downhill through a snowdrift. He turns away to pick up the rope and hears a loud bang. He wheels back around and sees the dead girl lying sideways on the cement floor next to the sled. John winces as if she’s still alive. He thinks there’ll be no end to her, or his, pain until she’s properly buried. He gets her sitting upright on the toboggan again, then loops the rope several times around her body and the sled’s front, before securing it.

He pulls the toboggan over to the stairs and, with his left hand gripping the circular twine around its bow, climbs laboriously to the top. To maneuver the corner into the kitchen, he has to coincidentally hoist and push the bow, causing the cadaver’s skull to collide loudly with the banister. He tugs the sled into the center of the floor and, panting heavily, sits down at the table next to it. “Sumbitch weren’t even gon’ take you Hawaii,” he says, exhaling derisively. “That’s who you died for. Now I’m in it up my neck!”

He goes into the bathroom and takes the dressing from his wound. It oozes blood still, along with a white pussy substance. The flesh surrounding it is the color of a purple tulip. John’s not sure if the cut’s gangrenous. He pours peroxide on it, rebandages it, and eats another half a dozen aspirins. In the cabinet mirror, his face seems paler than the dead girl’s. Rivulets of sweat pour down his cheeks. His eyes look like they’re drowning in the depths of kettle ponds. He’s about used up, thinks John, unless he sees a doctor pretty quick.

He walks back into the kitchen, picks up the phone, and dials the number of the only person left alive he thinks might still be able to help him. Suddenly remembering it’s Saturday, he is about to hang up when the call is answered. “It’s John Moon,” says John.

A long silence follows.

“You mad at me, Pitt?”