Ben saw there would be no end to the horrors here. The villagers had invested too much in their madness. Even they had no choice now but to see it through.
“We tried with you, Ben. Lord knows it,” the chief sighed. He pointed his gun at Ben.
“Chief—”
“You’ve chosen wrong, Ben. But maybe the Lord will forgive you.” Then he pulled the trigger.
56
Charlie brushed the snow off his face and shivered. The Drop was steeper here, and it was hard to find the right footing through the deep drifts. Both Mom and he had fallen more than once. Bub’s cries had quieted into whimpers. The baby was sick and very tired, and Charlie was afraid for him. He knew they could not go on like this for much longer, but it was the only thing they could do. There was no one left to save them.
His eyes welled with tears, but he did not want Mom to see him cry.
And he told himself it was still possible that Dad could get away from the men. Dad knew his words as well as JoJo knew the forest. If anyone could do it, then he could. Compared to the strange things in Dad’s stories, it was not hard to imagine a man talking to three other men on a cold night to convince them they were all friends. The world was filled with things far more amazing than this.
A gunshot broke his thoughts and made his heart jump in his chest. Mom looked at him, eyes wide.
“Another signal,” Charlie said. His voice cracked in his mouth. “We need to be careful.”
Mom nodded and turned forward again, searching the forest ahead for movement.
Charlie felt hollowed out, and it was a moment before the tears came. This time he let them flow. He tried to stay focused and not think about the gunshot, but he couldn’t help it. At least there had only been one, he thought, and felt ashamed of himself.
He tripped again but was able to catch himself this time. He tried to pay attention to the forest. He knew they couldn’t help Dad and JoJo up by the lake. They had to get to the road to find Uncle Ted. Dad and JoJo had gone out into the open to meet the men so that Mom, Bub, and he could get away. If they turned back now, it would have been for nothing.
Mom had called Uncle Ted after they left Dad and JoJo by the lake. He was close, and she’d told him to meet them by the road. But the road was long, and the Drop was wide, and Charlie was very cold.
“Is that it?” Mom asked him. She pointed ahead.
There was a band of open white beyond the trees. Though Charlie knew that the road hugged the mountains this far south, he still did not think they had gone far enough. When they got through the trees, they saw that it wasn’t the county road but the access road to the state preserve. They had reached the southern edge of their land.
The access road would take them to the county road, and it had a gentle slope and thin snow cover. Walking it would be easier than hiking through the forest. But Charlie was very tired.
“Maybe Uncle Ted can find us here,” he said.
Mom tucked Bub into the crook of her arm and made the call.
She was talking to Uncle Ted, and Charlie was thinking about the heat in his uncle’s car, when the second gunshot rang down the mountain. It was softer than the one before it. Much of its roar had been lost to the snow and forest that separated them. Mom had not heard it, but Charlie had.
His legs gave out and he sat down heavily in the snow while Mom finished talking to Uncle Ted.
“Ted thinks he saw the turnoff for it when he was looking for a place to pull over,” Mom told him once she shut the phone. “If it’s the right road, he’ll be here in a couple minutes.”
Charlie nodded. He could not stop his hands from shaking. He could not swallow the lump that had swollen in his throat.
“You’re cold, honey,” Caroline said. She sat next to him in the snow and hugged him. She rubbed his back to warm him. “Uncle Ted will be here soon, then we’ll head to the bookstore to wait for Dad. Then we’ll go back to the city. Won’t it be nice to be back there?”
Charlie buried his head in his mother’s side. He thought of the gunshots. He thought about Dad, alone in the cold and the dark.
Headlights painted the frosted trees, and Charlie shielded his eyes from the glare. The car stopped just ahead of them, and Charlie squinted to see who it was. For a moment Charlie thought it was Dad, and he jumped to his feet. But it was Uncle Ted. His face had the same angles as Dad’s. He had the same dark hair and light eyes. He looked just like Dad. So did Charlie.
Mom moved to the car, but Charlie did not. He stood on the side of the road, trembling in the cold.
“Wait,” he said, and Mom turned back to him. He wanted to say so many things to her, but he couldn’t just then. “Wait.”
He ran back through the trees before she could stop him.
57
You never hear the shot that kills you.
When Ben was a teenager, he’d gone through a noir phase. Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, Dashiell Hammett: He couldn’t get enough of them. He loved their ambience. How they could immediately conjure a place that was utterly foreign to a suburban teenager like himself.
He also loved the bon mots that peppered them. It had always appealed to him, how just a few well-chosen words could make a page sing. To say goodbye is to die a little. The past was filling the room like a tide of whispers. He felt like someone had taken the lid off life and let him see the works.
Ben would sometimes creep up behind Ted to whisper in his ear, “You never hear the shot that kills you.” It was a great line because it could mean so many things.
It was strange that these were the first words to come into Ben’s mind when he fell back into himself, but there they were.