He rolled his window down, picked the Glock off the seat, threw it out into the storm, into the howling wind, and felt a quick flush of relief.
“There it is,” he said, and turned up the radio.
Guns N’ Roses was on and Axl was singing about some girl named Michelle. It was a good song, but Shelton wondered if it was really a girl Axl was warbling about. It seemed a strange time for such a thought, but Shelton couldn’t help but wonder if old Axl Rose was a queer. Seemed like he might be, skinny boy like that in leather pants and sang like a girl to begin with.
Shelton couldn’t recall if there’d been reports about it or not. Seemed like every few years some rock star turned out homosexual, but Shelton couldn’t confirm or deny if that population included Axl Rose. Even if he wasn’t an outright queer, Shelton bet he’d tried it. Rock and roll was a life of excesses and experimentation, and it seemed to Shelton that at some point Axl Rose must have held another man’s cock in his hands. He probably gave it a few tugs too, just to see what would happen.
“Hollywood nights,” said Shelton.
He looked down at the speedometer and realized he was going forty miles an hour. That seemed pretty fast, but then again it didn’t.
“It’s all relative,” he said.
He pushed down on the gas and the truck surged forward. He drank some more of the whiskey down. Glug, glug, glug.
He was off Grain Road now but the driving wasn’t bad on the little two-track that led to the trailer. It was south of Jackson Lake and west of the river and even with the new snow coming hard through the trees the Silverado’s purchase on the trail was solid. His tires were shedding drifts like it was a Chevy Tough commercial.
He gave the gas another punch, a love tap really, then saw a flash of movement on the periphery. A shape hurtling through the blur of snow. It was difficult to see through the window, fogging now in the heat, but he swore it looked like Old Bo was out there running. The window was still down from before and he leaned over and called out for his dog.
The air came in cold and hard and somewhere within that roar of wind Shelton thought he heard Bo holler out for him in return. He squinted into the storm and the less he could see the more certain he became that his dog was out there with him, charging by his side through the blustery night.
He knew Old Bo was dead and gone, yet Shelton swore his spirit was roaming there in the hardwoods. He could feel him, and when he looked out he saw Old Bo restored to his youthful flesh. He saw Bo bound on all fours just like when he was a pup, when he was pure joy and sinewy muscle.
Shelton was just thinking he should slow the truck down, that he didn’t want to hit Bo on accident, when he saw the buck charge. He slammed the breaks and the Silverado swung wildly to the left and he gripped the wheel as the truck slid from his control and he watched the big buck pass through the headlights. He saw the high kick of front hooves and the great, cavernous rack. He saw the white of an eye and the wet, spongy nose. Shelton cried out, and he grieved for the animal in the forever that unfolded before impact.
Shelton’s front grille met the buck’s flank and then the massive body was rolled up into the windshield where Shelton watched the glass explode into a hundred glints of fractured light, shards rising above him as they spun.
Chapter Fifteen
I was still in the trailer, sitting in the room with Jenna, when I saw the headlights. They glared through the hardwoods outside the window. They were two long beams stretching through the dark like planks.
I ran out the back and hurried down the porch steps, thinking they belonged to somebody stuck in a drift. Jenna was asleep in Tanner’s blanket and Carletta was still passed out in the bathroom and I thought the driver was likely to have a cell phone and that we would be rescued—but about fifty yards out it occurred to me that whoever was driving was probably Shelton Potter. After all, it was his hellhole of a trailer we were squatting in.
I shut my flashlight off, stooped down, and walked slow and careful. I could hear music, the thump of bass and some screeching guitar, and I moved toward the sound until I saw Shelton’s Silverado angled across a two-track. There was nothing but a few pine trees between us and I dropped to my knees in the snow.
I could see his big, mountainside shoulders slumped over the wheel and the truck’s front fender hanging down. The windshield was gone and the cab light was on and snow was blowing in on his motionless body. Twenty yards behind, a buck flopped in the road and I could hear the god-awful wailing through the music and the wind.