“What now?” Shelton said.
“Now?” said Krebs. “Now nothing. Now, I’m going home. Clemens is still out there somewhere though. That sonofabitch is hell bent on that five thousand dollars. He told me he planned to shoot Portis Dale dead if need be. Thing is, I borrowed that sonofabitch my little six-shooter last week.”
“You’re saying Clemens is still out there looking? And that he intends to shoot Portis Dale if need be?”
“With my gun,” Krebs said.
“Well,” said Shelton. “That sounds like a plan.”
“It ain’t no plan,” he said. “You fucking moron. You ain’t never had a plan in your life and this whole thing is so fucked I’m going to go home and spend the rest of the night wishing I’d never met your stupid ass.”
Krebs hung up the phone and Shelton was not unbothered by his tone and accusations. Krebs had a right to be upset, that much was true, but his anger had seemed a touch excessive, a bit too personal in nature, if you wanted Shelton’s opinion.
Shelton let his own gun fall to his side. Little Hector looked at him for a moment, his eyes wide and unblinking. Poor bastard, Shelton thought.
“Go on home then,” he said.
The boy turned and ran and Shelton watched him until he reached the path at the end of the road, until he disappeared into the smudge of trees Shelton could see through the gently falling snow. He was relieved he did not have to kill Hector after all, and hoped they might remain friends when all this was over.
Shelton got back in the truck and gassed himself a balloon. It was time to refocus. Arrow was dead, but Shelton didn’t have any ideas about what to do about that fact. Clemens was still out on the prowl but he was damn near sixty years old and on his second hip. So Shelton wasn’t exactly sure what the next move was. Times like these made him doubt his abilities as a leader. He did a balloon, and then another. His head went wha-wha-wha.
He put the truck back in gear and all of a sudden recognized the song playing on the radio. It was the one about a rocket man, and being gone a long, long time.
Shelton flipped his blinker on and made the turn back onto Gibbons Road. The clouds had dropped again and the gray sky had gone bright with snow. Revelation indeed, Shelton thought. If there was any doubt before there could be none now. This was a blizzard with the feel of biblical retribution.
Shelton was headed for the highway and then the north hills. It was time to find Portis Dale and the baby. Little Jenna had been gone long enough. He hummed along with the radio and reached for the pint bottle. He drove through the quiet streets in the storm.
Chapter Thirteen
I do not remember leaving Portis at the truck. I do not remember anything after the moment he died but a sound like a jet engine rising from the base of my brain and growing louder and louder until I was drowned inside of myself by the roaring.
I suppose I picked up Jenna and walked away, because the first thing I remember is being back in the woods and the baby crying. I did not try to comfort her because she was hungry and I had left the water in Portis’s ruck. I hadn’t had the wherewithal to grab it, and who knows how much distance I’d already put between us and that hillside.
I realized too that I was on the wrong side of the river. I had thought I was east of the Three Fingers and had planned to walk south back to the shanty, but the woods were too thin around me and the snow was falling hard through the gaps. I was walking in the open and the clouds helped my cover some but there was no quarter from the cold.
After a time I came to a woodpile, stacked between two birch and covered with a tarp. Beyond the woodpile was a trailer where I could hear a screen door swing on its hinges. The snow in the yard was drifted and there were no lights in the trailer as I came closer.
The forest was thin but the trees around me reached high and I could hear the branches rattle as the wind pushed through. Jenna was awake and she was fussy—thrashing in the papoose and kicking.
“One minute, sweetness,” I said. “And we’re going to get you inside.”
The trailer was one of Shelton’s. I knew he had a couple stashed in the hills, single-wides he used for cooking, and we were going to have to take our chances and go inside. There were no cars or sleds parked out front, and though I believed we were near the farmhouse I didn’t think it likely Shelton would have walked through the storm. I thought the trailer was probably empty and it was the best chance we had to find some water and some warmth.