Sure enough, there it was, twenty yards ahead of us. Bonasa umbellus. The ruffed grouse.
A fat one, too. They don’t spook as easily. The young, lean grouses tend to flush at the sound of a leaf falling, not to mention the snap of a twig. The bird was perched on a low branch of one of the few sugar maples that were mixed in with all the aspens. Dinner, here we come.
On my father’s nod I raised my rifle, lining up the shot. It was mostly clean, only the hang of another small branch in the way. Quickly I looped my index finger around the trigger.
When I was a boy and my father first taught me how to shoot, he repeated the same words over and over. “Ready and steady, son…ready and steady.”
I could hear him now in my head. I could see him, too, out of the corner of my eye.
Then I watched in horror as he fell to the ground.
Chapter 46
THE SHOT wasn’t mine.
It came from the other side of the sugar maple, the laughter that followed it removing any doubt. Laughter?
I was sure that’s what it was as I dropped my rifle, running over to my father. He’d rolled onto his side next to a low stretch of bramble and was reaching for his left leg, directly above the knee. Blood was oozing from two small holes in his briar pants—holes caused by pellet spray from a 3.5-inch magnum shell, if I had to guess. That’s as large as they come for a 12-gauge. Too large if you value skill.
Hunters hunt. Others simply fill the air with lead.
Whipping off my belt, I tied it around my father’s thigh above the wound. “Are you—”
“Yeah, I’m okay,” he said.
“Well, hell, that’s good news,” came a voice from behind me.
“Shit, yeah,” said another.
I turned to look at the two guys, probably in their late twenties. One was big, the other even bigger. Together, it was as if John Steinbeck had replaced George with another Lennie in Of Mice and Men.
The only difference? Steinbeck’s Lennie seemed to be a hell of a lot smarter than these two.
You just shot someone, you idiots. You might want to put the beers down…
Idiot number 1 shook his head and laughed, the same laugh I’d first heard. Only now it was the most annoying sound on the planet. “You picked one hell of a place to be standing, old man,” he said.
Is that supposed to be an apology?
I really didn’t know where to begin. My father did, though.
“You picked an even worse place to be shooting from,” he said.
“This is private property,” I added, although I immediately regretted it. It made me sound like a city boy, not the tone I was going for. Not with these two. Idiot number 1 was actually wearing overalls.
“Private, huh? Do you two own it?” asked Idiot number 2, convinced that we didn’t.
That got the first one laughing again, his large gut sloshing around underneath those overalls. He clearly hadn’t missed a meal in his life. “Yeah,” he said. “Show us some paperwork.”
“They can’t because they ain’t got any. They’re not even from around here. You can tell.”
“Yeah. Where you from, old man?”
Go ahead, call him old man one more time…
My father was a lot of things. Conversationalist wasn’t one of them. “You two are poaching, and you know it,” he said calmly. Then the switch flipped. “Now stop fucking around.”
The way he punched each word, raising his voice, immediately set off Diamond. There’s no breed more loyal than a vizsla.
Diamond began barking more loudly than I’d ever heard him before, showing his teeth while edging toward the two idiots. Things were beginning to spiral out of control.
“If you don’t shut that dog up, I’ll shut it up for you,” said Idiot number 1.
I called to Diamond, but he kept barking. He answered to my father, not me, and my father wasn’t about to call him off. He’d been shot, and he was pissed. He was also something else. Ready.
It was as if he knew what was about to happen next. An asshole with a beer in one hand and a pump-action shotgun in the other was about to make the sort of mistake he’d been building toward his entire misbegotten life.
The second that can of beer dropped from his hand, I knew it, too.
His gun was raised. He was aiming at Diamond.
Chapter 47
MY FATHER immediately sat up, lunging for the old-school Winchester 101 lying by his side. He pulled it toward him so fast it could’ve been on a string. Every muscle in his neck went taut. His voiced dropped, and the terms couldn’t have been clearer.
“You shoot that dog, and I shoot you,” he announced. Just like that, neither idiot was laughing anymore.
But they weren’t backing down, either.
“You ain’t gonna shoot me,” said Idiot number 1. “Not a chance.”
My father whistled. “Down, Diamond!” he said.
Diamond immediately stopped barking, backing off. Now there was no reason for anyone to shoot anyone. Simple as that.
If only.
“I don’t fuckin’ like nobody pointing a gun at me, old man,” said Idiot number 1.
The second he pivoted, his double-barrel lined right up with my father’s chest, was the second I was doing the math. Two of us, two of them. Except my gun was ten yards away from me. As dumb as these two guys were, they still knew that two is greater than one.
“Easy there,” said Idiot number 2, raising his gun as I glanced over at mine. Somewhere in between he tossed his beer to free up his trigger finger.
All I could do was stare at my father. Now what?
In return, all he could do was stare back at me. And laugh?
His was louder than that of either of the two idiots. Hell, it was louder than the two of them put together. A real deep, guttural laugh that echoed throughout the entire woods.
Josiah Maxwell Reinhart had gone batshit crazy.
Or so it seemed to the two idiots now looking at one another. Make that three idiots, because I couldn’t figure out what the hell my father was doing…until he finally stopped and asked me a question.
“So you’re telling me she knows, huh?”
I blinked. “What?”
“The detective back in New York,” said my father. “Are you sure she knows?”
Seriously? You’re bringing that up now?
Yes, it was exactly what he was doing, as sure as he’d incited Diamond to start barking in the first place. He never intended to defuse the situation. Instead he was expediting it.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m sure she knows.”
“In that case, why don’t you let these guys know, too?” he said. “For the both of us.”
Chapter 48
I STOOD up from my father’s side, my palms raised. “Guys,” I began, “I don’t how this got out of hand so quickly. On behalf of my dad here, I apologize. He’s been shot. It was clearly an accident, but you can understand his being a little bent out of shape. There’s no need to make a bad situation worse, though.”
I turned to my father, motioning for him to hand over his gun.
“Hell, no,” he said.