Cut the shit.
Peter’s shoulders hunch and square, his chest expands, his neck swells, his heavy hands itch to grab that red bandanna and twist to choke the words off. This guy is slime. This guy is doing violence here. At the same time, this is something Peter can’t help coming to know. It will be there whether he hears it now or walks away. It will exist behind the sorry-to-tell-you mini-frown with the smugness boiling up behind Romeo’s unctuous manner.
It’s not shit, says Romeo, calm. He expected this resistance from Peter, so he goes in more slowly. Poor Landreaux. Romeo sighs. Sometimes he tries to self-medicate, you know? Looks like he tried to that day. I heard the guys who were on the ambulance crew that day. I obtained access to the coroner’s report.
Coroner?
Yes, nobody told you? Nobody gave you that report? You were perhaps unaware?
Peter’s legs go weak. No. Maybe it was filed away or burned. It had not occurred to him. The unthinkable had been, at least, straightforward. Peter had seen the tree where it happened. It had all made unbearable sense. He hadn’t wanted to know any details. He’d had his hands full, back then, with Nola spinning off in space and Maggie clutching him like she was drowning. Then fighting him off. Then clutching him. There was no sense in looking at the paperwork of death. It would not have brought his son back. Reports were the cold logistics of death and he’d been dealing with the hot truth of grief.
So, no.
I do have it here, said Romeo in a hushed voice, then repeating the TV phrase. I was able to obtain the file. I can tell you what it says, basically. Romeo’s voice is dry and competent. He marvels at how intelligent he makes himself sound—his brain though wormholed is a smart brain, after all.
It says that Landreaux’s shot missed Dusty’s head, heart, lungs, liver, aortic artery, femoral artery, and stomach. It says that Dusty was not killed by the shot but by the tearing shrapnel of the branch he was sitting on. Shallow wounds, sir. He bled to death while Landreaux was restraining your wife in the house. It doesn’t say this in the report, but the guys speculate Landreaux’s judgment—tragically!—impaired. If Landreaux had not run or panicked, but stopped to treat the boy’s bleeding, which as a personal care assistant he certainly knew how to do, he would probably have saved Dusty’s life.
And . . . here Romeo embroiders for further effect . . . and, if your wife had been allowed to run back there, even she might have saved the boy.
Peter feels the paper in his hands. He opens the thing, filled out in squirrelly handwriting. His brain will not read the phrases in sequence, though the words Romeo just used pop out here and there. The paper falls. Romeo picks it up and tries gingerly to press it back into Peter’s hand, but there is no response, so he steps back. Peter’s arm is long and now is the time Romeo might get slugged.
As Peter stares through Romeo his face goes fragile. Peter’s skin crinkles and lines form, flushed brown as old parchment, and he is suddenly very, very old. Romeo takes another step back from this amazing special effect. Then Peter’s daughter calls.
Daddy! It’s our turn.
Peter closes his mouth. His eyes focus. He walks past Romeo and goes to stand before the photographer.
At the end of his driveway, Peter. Motionless, balanced, hands dangling at his sides. He does not wave at or even see the few cars that pass, the ones that are not Landreaux. Behind him, the pickup, his hunting rifle in the gun rack across the back window. He’s wearing blue jeans, a shirt, his old red and black checked jacket. Head buzzing. Hollow roar of blood in his ears. Had he remembered to relock the gun case? He’d grabbed the gun so quickly. Yes he had, yes. He asks himself this question every three minutes. Part of him already knew what Romeo would say and had been waiting for this. It didn’t feel like news. It felt like corroboration. Every noise is magnified. The dog shuffling in the undergrowth. He watches the birch and popple trees. The leaves shiver with light. He cannot remember his son’s voice. He cannot call a happy image to his mind that is not a photograph. But he can see his son in the leaves, and where before Dusty was at peace, gone instantly in one shock, now his eyes are open, he is calling. He is afraid. Peter bangs the side of his head, trying for another image. The good times. Not a photograph. The real times. Why had he not memorized the moments?
This moment, anyway, he has stone cold.
He lifts his arm, waves Landreaux down. Does not move. It is apparent to Landreaux that Peter has something to say so he pulls over and gets out, worried.
What is it?
Peter turns, opens the passenger-side door of the pickup.
Get in, he says.
Landreaux does.
Peter slides into the driver’s side, starts the vehicle, pulls out.
Where are we going?
Hunting.
It isn’t hunting season, says Landreaux.