He’d been shot. Ben knew this because he felt wetness under his coat. He didn’t know if he’d lost consciousness or if his mind had just wandered. He didn’t think he’d been on the ice for long, because he heard Simms and Harp talking to each other about where to look for his family.
When Ben opened his eyes, the chief was leaning over him. He had his gloves off, and his fingers glistened in crimson. His lips glistened, too. His mouth was stretched into something like a smile.
Ben felt the wetness spread across his chest. He thought it would be warm, but it was cold, and he did not think that was good. He expected pain but felt only heaviness. But when he tried lifting his head, it was not as hard to do as he thought it would be. He looked down at his chest and saw the blackness of his blood and the scruff of white where the insides of his coat had been blown away. There wasn’t as much blood as he’d expected, but he figured there was more under his coat.
Then he realized that the wetness he’d felt wasn’t all blood. The bullet had gone through him and into the ice. It had chipped a hole through the lake’s frozen surface. When he shifted his legs, he heard the ice underneath him creak.
Walter Harp saw him moving and nudged Simms.
“Let the cold finish him,” Simms said.
The chief turned his glassy-eyed stare away from Ben. “Hafta make it look enough like an accident that the FBI won’t think anything of it,” he said. “Bad luck that they’re here on account of the baby going missing. An animal attack, maybe. Something messy like that could slow down the ID.” He walked over to the others, then he turned back to Ben. He again made that face that looked like a smile.
“Not a crier, though,” Simms said. “Didn’t expect that from him.”
Ben rested his head. His ear was pressed against the ice, but it did not hurt. He could hear the beat of his heart against the frozen lake and hear the bending of the ice underneath it.
He forced himself to sit up. There was a black smear against the ice he’d been lying on. He took the rock out of his pocket and hit it against the hole the bullet had made.
“Trying to swim himself out now,” Simms said.
Walter Harp laughed. “Must be half a foot of ice, if it’s an inch.”
Ben timed the impact of the stone to the beat of his heart and the movement of the trees and the rhythm of the wind. He put everything he had into striking the ice. The rock was well suited for this. Perhaps Lisbeth had been right about this, too. Maybe there really was an answer provided for every problem.
When he slammed the stone down a third time, the crack split a little farther in both directions. The men from the village stopped grinning.
“Enough of that,” the chief said. He walked toward Ben to take the stone from him, but a massive black weight crushed him down onto the frozen lake. JoJo howled as he mashed the chief’s head into the ice. To Ben’s ears, it sounded like the wind.
Simms and Harp pulled at JoJo to get him off the chief, but he was too big and it was hard for them to keep their footing on the ice. They tumbled over each other as they grappled with him. The chief threw his head back and sank his teeth into JoJo’s neck.
Ben continued to slam the stone into the ice. The crack widened and spread. Soon the sound of breaking ice was as loud as the cries of the men who fought in front of him. Soon the crack had taken on a life of its own and Ben stopped hammering at it. The piece of ice he lay on became dislodged. He flattened himself against it.
He watched the men tumble as he lay there. Deputy Simms tried and failed to regain his footing after his boot broke through into the freezing water. His head made a wet sound as it connected with the lake’s frozen surface, then his body slowly slid into the dark maw beneath the ice.
A geyser of blood exploded from JoJo’s neck where the chief had found his carotid artery. But JoJo did not stop mashing the other man’s head into the ice. Harp was on top of JoJo, trying hopelessly to wrest the big man from the chief. Their combined weight was too much for the lake’s fractured surface. They plunged through the skin of ice with enough force to send a surge of water into the air. For a moment, there was nothing but ice shifting, where a second before there had been four men. Dark arcs of blood stark against the broken surface were the only evidence of any of them having been there.
A gloved hand burst from between two sheets of floating ice, but then it was yanked under again. If Ben closed his eyes, he could imagine JoJo, with his hair and fur pelts floating, pulling the villagers down to the lake’s cold bottom.
Then it was quiet except for the noise from the trees. The world began to slow.
Ben rolled onto his back so that he could see the stars. The sky was beautiful. He could see the jeweled haze of the Milky Way so clearly up here, far from the city. He should have spent more nights appreciating it. His chest began to hurt. He started to feel very small in front of a universe that was so unimaginably vast. Up against the full sight of it, he dwindled and diminished, until at last there was nothing left.
58
You think: This is it.
The end of not just a page or a chapter but of your entire book.
This isn’t the way you thought it would go. But, unlike a novel, a life has no useful sheaf of unturned pages with which to estimate its remaining length. Instead, you amble onward cluelessly until the words of your world run out.
It’s a shame, because the narrative doesn’t conclude with you. Charlie’s tale continues, and Bub’s, and Caroline’s, too. You hate to leave a story only half read, and, besides, you’ve become invested in these characters.
A boy like Charlie could grow up to be almost anything or anyone. But he’s had setbacks, too. What if other people can’t keep him safe, the way you’ve tried to? If you’ve learned one thing from this life, it’s that it has so many twists that just about anything could happen to him. Without your help, who knows what kind of man he’ll become.