They walked back to the barn. His father kept his hand on him, his shoulder, his head. Many people spoke. Someone played a song on a guitar. They spoke again. People wept. Some laughed through tears. He couldn’t make out the words. He stood in the deep shadow of a makeshift platform. Then he felt his father touch him and he heard him say, “Jack? Jack, can you say a word? Just something. Anything?” He felt himself nod. He stepped up onto the platform. All he could see was sunlight. He said…nothing. He froze. That was it. The air was full of sun. Nobody spoke. What could he say when this was all his fault? His mouth moved and no sound came out and he began to spin. And then he heard a rush like wind and the thump of his father’s boots on the planks and his father’s big hand on his shoulder and heard, “Jack. It’s okay, son, that’s okay,” and he felt his father lift him. He lifted him skyward and covered him. He covered him and squeezed him tight and held him, all the time whispering, “Let’s get something to eat. It’s okay, it’s okay…”
Jack didn’t snap out of it until he heard a rush like surf. He woke up and he was paddling hard and his tears were falling into the skim of water in the bottom of the canoe, the water that was pink with Wynn’s blood. No wind, the air very still; they must not have needed the motor. The evening had chilled and the sun was in the tops of the trees on the left shore. And then he was fully awake as from a dream and he started with panic because he knew the rush was the falls and he knew they needed to get to the left bank. He sucked in a deep long breath, fuck, and he found her with his eyes and what of her face he could see was white, too white, but he saw the slight lift of her breathing and blew out in relief. He did not look at Wynn’s head lying there on his arm in the bow, he looked past it and felt the pull of the swift current downstream toward the flat horizon line and roar, the lip of the falls, and gauged the distance to the open stretch of cobbled beach he could see, which must be the take-out and the portage, and the thought flashed: We might not make it. He dropped the paddle against the seat and reached back and toggled the switch and pushed the starter and the engine chafed and hummed to life, thank God. He shoved the throttle arm hard away and pushed the boat into a steep left arc and swung the bow up into the current at a ferry angle toward the left bank. And then he stood in the stern and scanned. With his free hand he shucked the .308 from where he’d stuck it into the strap of a food-box, barrel down. He tugged it free and gunned the engine full throttle and was surprised again at the power of the electric motor, good, and he sat and held the tiller with his knee and shouldered up the rifle and scanned.
He kept both eyes open and looked through the scope. He let the crosshairs travel over the bank and back and then farther into the tall grass and fireweed and then back into the big pines that stood at the edge of the woods. Nothing. If everything had gone down the way he thought it had, then Pierre would be long gone, probably in the last miles approaching Wapahk, where he would begin weaving lies as fast as he could talk.
Good. But. Still. He scanned, and he could see with relief that he had ferried far enough to make the beach, and he throttled back and slowed and stood and he scanned the beach and the trees with his naked eye and then took up the rifle again and covered every rock and tree and shadow with the scope. Nothing. Good. He did not relax. He was not going to fuck up now.
He slung the rifle and gunned the heavy canoe onto the stones of the shore, heedless of gouges, and he hopped out fast where the stern was still in the water and he splashed the shallows almost at a run until he had gotten around to the front and he grabbed the bow and heaved back hard so the canoe was high on dry rocks and then he ran. He unslung the .308 from his shoulder and ran up the beach and dove into the fireweed and circled back down. He moved with the lightness and speed of a hunt when the bull elk had lifted his nose in alarm and bolted from the meadow. He was not going to get shot now. Not now. He slowed and came down through big scattered pines, eyes following the startled flight of a flycatcher, a shift in the shadow of a limb, the lift of a moth. Nothing. And then he saw it. The glint of stainless steel in tall grass. In the long light that cut through the pines. Stainless steel, and two careful steps and he saw the shining length of the barrel, the wooden forestock of the 12-gauge, and then the man’s arm. Outflung. In a green plaid shirt. The arm, the torso twisted back as if arched, the dark curls of the head and a black fleece hat a foot away in the grass. And the wool shirt caked in dried blood and one neat bullet hole in the center of the breast.
* * *
Pierre, you fucker. Good riddance.
He didn’t feel a thing.
He crouched fast, and now he moved as low as he could to the ground, tree to tree, stopping often to listen. He knew Brent and JD would be long gone, but he’d also known that Pierre would have shot the Texans and he’d been wrong. He wasn’t going to get plugged by Brent now. He moved tree to tree as the shadows of the pines lengthened over the beach and broomed over the stones. He covered the shore and then plunged down the easy trail around the falls and— Nothing.
He ran back to the top and cast around in the brush for Pierre’s canoe—he thought if he could find the sat phone he could call in a chopper—but there was no canoe. Damn. Where had he stashed it? Wherever it was, he’d done a good job. Jack looked for sign, for drag marks, and saw nothing. Fuck it. He didn’t have time to screw around any longer. Anyway, Pierre had probably tossed the phone in the river so the authorities wouldn’t find it when he got to the village and ask why he hadn’t called in an emergency earlier.
Jack went to the boat and lifted her and carried her as gently as he could around the roar of crashing whitewater to the launch beach below and laid her carefully on a thick bed of lichen and moss and ran back up and made himself carry Wynn. Wynn was much too heavy. He was unwieldy with the stiffness, but Jack got under him and heaved himself standing, and he kept him on his shoulder all the way down the trail, and though his knees buckled twice he did not let him drop. His ear and chin were against the cold skin of Wynn’s right side above his belt, and he made himself talk the whole way: “Okay, buddy, we’ve got this, we’ve got this, we’re going home now. I’m taking you home.” Over and over. And then he ran back to the top beach and did not look again at Pierre sprawled in the shadows, and he slid the canoe up onto the wheely thing and took almost none of the provisions or gear, they just had to get through the night, and he bumped and heaved the lightened boat down the trail of the portage, and he laid her back into the boat on a bed of empty dry bags and murmured, “Please please please,” and he laid Wynn as best he could over the front seat, and then he shoved off and did not look back at the falls. He knew it was only forty-three swift-water miles to the village. Three days on a normal trip, but he knew they could navigate it safely at night and that they’d be there sometime tomorrow.
EPILOGUE
Jack drove.
The steep twisting road up Dusty Ridge. He drove with his lights off, because it was not yet full night and he wanted to see all the woods and the sandy track going through them. He hit holes filled with the afternoon’s rain that splashed up onto the hood of the truck, and when the wind blew, it gusted water and leaves out of the trees and spattered his windshield.