Dad laughed and clapped. “Nice shooting, Mr. Boone! Now, try again. But this time, lean a bit more, like I showed you. And pull the stock tighter to your shoulder.”
The second day, Dad led him into the forest to show him how to stalk deer. He explained the difference between “up-wind” and “down-wind.” How to find a good spot and keep still. How to wait and let the animals come to you.
That night, a snowstorm blew in. When it cleared the next morning, Dad took him out to do some tracking. They crunched through the powdery drifts about a half mile from the cabin, picked up the tracks of three deer and followed them to a half-frozen pond. But the animals had already gone.
Dad pointed to a nearby grove of trees surrounded by tall bushes. “There’s a good place to set up. The wind is right, and we’ll watch the pond right through those bushes.”
The plastic-covered Pennsylvania hunting license pinned to Dad’s camo jacket flapped in an icy gust, and he shivered as a cold finger of the wind poked down the neck of his own jacket. His father seemed to notice.
“Problem, Matt?” he asked.
“Uh-no.”
Dad looked at him, his pale blue eyes twinkling.
“Too cold?”
“I’m fine.”
His father smiled that slight, crooked smile of his and nodded.
They took up a spot behind the bushes about thirty yards away, sitting on a fallen tree trunk after brushing off the snow.
And waited.
The wind swirled through the white-crusted bushes and drove tiny stinging crystals into his face. His eyes watered, his nose ran, and his breath raised a frosty fog. Even through thick woolen gloves and heavy boots, his toes and fingertips were going numb. Within fifteen minutes, his teeth were chattering. Ashamed, he clenched his jaw to try to make them stop.
After half an hour, he thought he was going to freeze to death.
But Dad didn’t seem to notice either him or the cold. He remained still and watchful, straddling the log with the left side of his body angled toward the pond; his Remington lay across his knees with its muzzle pointed in that direction. His big, bare hands were tucked into a fur hand-warmer on his lap. His eyes, squinting against the wind under the brim of his hunting cap, were the only things that moved, constantly scanning the area in front of him.
After forty-five minutes, he finally couldn’t take it anymore and turned to say something-but stopped when Dad suddenly raised his hand, demanding silence. Then he pointed.
Out of a line of pines on the opposite side of the pond a large buck emerged, moving one halting step at a time. It turned its head in brief jerks, its large rack of antlers tilting with each move, its nostrils testing the air.
He felt his heart begin to race. All awareness of the cold vanished.
Dad again motioned him to remain still. Moving with infinite patience and precision, he smoothly drew his bare left hand out of the fur, then, very deliberately, raised the rifle to his right shoulder. Suddenly it became apparent why he’d sat with his left side toward the pond: All he had to do now was lift and aim the weapon without turning or shifting his body, perhaps alerting the nervous animal.
Dad didn’t have a scope on his old Remington. He simply looked down the fixed sights on the barrel, slowly drew in a breath, then let out a little white cloud through his nostrils and held the rest.
He remembered turning to watch the deer when the unexpected blast in his ear caused him to flinch and slide right off the log into the snow. He saw the buck spasm, partly rear up, then fall. Its legs twitched twice and then it was still.
“Clean shot.” Dad said it to himself, quietly, simply.
“Wow!” Bounding to his feet, he caught the amusement in Dad’s eyes, and he charged over the powdery surface to where the deer lay. A crimson stain was spreading in the snow beneath its tawny shoulder. His father came up beside him, leaned over the antlers and moved his forefinger, counting.
“Twelve points. This old guy’s been around a while.” Dad straightened, towering over his son. “Now, we earn the privilege of taking his life.”
They muscled the carcass back to the cabin-or rather, his father did most of the muscling. Still, it was a long trek, and when they arrived, he was sweating despite the cold, his aching lungs gasping for breath. He watched in squeamish fascination as Dad strung up the buck from a tree branch and demonstrated how to gut and clean it.
“I could truck it up the highway and have somebody else do this first part,” he explained, wiping his long, sharp knife on a rag. “But I want you to see what’s involved. Meat doesn’t just come out of a grocery store in plastic wrap. Somebody has to kill an animal before we can eat it… When we’re done here, we’ll drive it down to Tionesta. A guy there will finish the job, and in a day or two we’ll pick up our venison.”
Dad paused and looked at him.
“Still cold?”
“Huh?” He had completely forgotten about the frigid temperature.
Big Mike grinned. “I know you were freezing your ass off out there. But you didn’t moan and groan about it, and you kept still. And you see? Patience was rewarded.” Dad punched him lightly on the shoulder. “I’m proud of you, son.”
His father went back to work, but continued to speak.
“Proud because you’re not a whiner. That’s important… First thing I watch for when I hire a guy is: Does he make things happen, or does he make excuses?”
He reached into the buck’s abdominal cavity, pulled out a bloody, lumpy mess and dropped it onto the plastic sheet he’d spread under the deer.
“See, Matt, there’s two kinds of people,” he went on. “And the difference is in how they see themselves. One guy says to himself, ‘I’m the boss of circumstances.’ The other guy says, ‘I’m the victim of circumstances.’”
He paused and straightened. Looked into his eyes. “And you know what?”
“What?”
“They’re both right.”
*
He sat in the rocker, eyes unfocused, twirling the wine in the glass. After a few more minutes, he drained what was left. Got up and limped inside.
He went to the kitchen, poured himself another glass. Grabbed a wooden chair and dragged it up the creaking stairs to the loft. Planted it in front of the dusty mirror on the vanity and sat down.
Raised his eyes to meet the stranger’s.
The guy in the mirror looked as if he’d been waiting.
So, he began to talk to him.
He spoke quietly, for a long time. Spoke about things he had never told anyone. Things he’d seen.
Things he’d done.
Told him why he was doing this crazy thing now.
His voice was growing hoarse and the white square of the skylight had gone gray when he stopped. He suddenly realized that it was no longer a stranger’s face in the mirror. Nor was it a stranger’s voice uttering his words.
He leaned forward in the dim light. Closer than he’d yet dared.
Beneath the beard stubble, the swelling on the guy’s face was down, now, and the bruising almost gone. He was surprised that he could barely notice any surgical scars.
Not such a bad face. Maybe even better than the one I had.
The guy smiled at that.
It’ll be okay. I can build a new life with that face. And it’s a good one to match the name on the Social Security card.
He stood, raising his almost-empty glass to his new friend.
“Hello, Brad Flynn.”
THIRTY-THREE
CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia
Friday, December 19, 1:29 p.m.
“So, nobody knows what he looks like, then,” Annie said.
“We certainly don’t,” Kessler replied.
“Didn’t you try to find him?”
The men looked at each other and chuckled.
“First, you don’t find Matthew Malone unless he wants to be found,” Kessler said. “Second, it seems that Matthew had been preparing to leave the Agency for some time.”