What I mean by all of this is that shooting did not come easy to me. I dreaded the kick and smell, the dead thing at the other end, torn.
36
STANDING UNDER THE STRONG BULBS OF THE diner, Claire stared at me as if delivering that word, Body—what they found—with her eyes as well as mouth.
Sometimes your eyes get full quickly like a pint of water poured into a thimble and you can’t see everything at once, you have to choose what to look at. A patrol car drew up outside as she mentioned the body, but I kept my eyes focused on Claire, which was hard to do, as I kept seeing the months I spent with her, thinking what her eyes must have seen in me, wondering how whatever she saw was ever enough at all, even for that amount of time, how her lips felt on mine, the touch of her hands on my shoulders.
The door of the patrol car opened. I thought of Hobbes, that it had been worth it if the person who took his life was gone himself, worth it even if now my wrists were chained and I was led away while Claire watched, and if she had given me away. Only someone close can betray you in the end.
She sighed and shook her head, looked down and away from me, to my relief.
They’ve drawn a box from Fort Kent to Allagash, and inside it another box up around McLean Mountain. That’s where you live, Julius.
I said, Indeed it is.
I watched a pair of police boots walk up to the window and stop even at the glass, angled the way men stand who are authorities.
She said, Please be careful, Julius. Are you sure that everything is okay up there?
Why wouldn’t it be okay? I am not a hunter.
I divided my sight between her and the boots.
Troy says they’re looking up your way, I heard him mention it today. I haven’t said anything, I never would, not to him or anyone.
I took my eyes off the boots. What would you say, Claire?
Nothing. I mean, nothing.
The police boots stood there in the bottom of my eyesight, tips pointed toward the diner in a gathering light afternoon fog. Claire looked up and nodded at the window, stood and put her hand on my shoulder: Take care, Julius.
I did not look up when Claire left the table, and the boots shifted and went back to the police car. A very intense man, this Troy. I hoped his intensity would keep him looking too hard for me and miss what was in front of him, as had just happened to me not five minutes ago.
Then I wondered if it was all over; with the body found, they must have discovered more than just the one, surely, in the woods and close to the cabin, and now Troy was waiting outside to make the arrest of Julius Winsome, late companion to a dog. No more looking, looking is done for today—we found you. I wondered if I shouldn’t go out and make conversation with him, close the distance to him, he wouldn’t expect that, and be cheerful on top of it, catch him doubly unawares with something like, How now, Troy, and what cheer?
Someone in the diner said for everyone to be quiet as the waitress leaned up on her toes to turn the knob on the television, and out poured a reporter’s voice, a microphone and some woods, a moving camera at a treeline, some yellow tape and flashing lights. You can’t go anywhere without the televisions. The café filled with the loud wind in the reporter’s microphone, the volume way up, and no one said a word or made a sound among the tables, everyone froze. I saw snow on the ground, so it was today, it was live. I thought I remembered the run of the same trees across the skyline when I took the long shot, so that would have to mean this morning.
Friends, the reporter said, had found the body, the long-distance body, the new one, but those last ones were my words, and thankfully I said them low and no one heard me. They had gone out hunting with him late this morning, the reporter said, and heard a shot and thought it his, but when they had not seen him for a while they back-tracked and eventually found him in the brush.
That detail told me the news item must be dealing with this morning’s event, if only they would pull back on the camera shot so I could see the bigger picture, recognize the woods. That was a relief, my cabin was still safe at least.
The mouth on the microphone continued, The friends stumbled on to a terrible sight, the body of their friend buried under leaves and branches, as if stored, shot only minutes before, according to police sources at the scene.
Yes, but did they see anything, a person walking away with a rifle? And where was Troy now? I had to keep an eye everywhere it seemed to me.
The camera pulled back. Then a banner appeared at the bottom of the screen, Long Lake, St. Agatha. The relief in me when I saw that it was this day’s man and not the previous men who were lying not one mile from where I lived and who would have pointed the way to my cabin even in death. The television showed my footprints in the snow but blurred from the wind and too deep for detail, and the reporter said that the victim, whom police described as a local hunter, was shot from a half mile away, shot through the teeth, killed instantly, an expert shot. That seemed insensitive, I thought, that kind of detail. What if the family were watching? What was she thinking? Then the reporter held her hand to her ear as if listening and went pale and flustered, and the camera moved to an officer of the law standing beside her.
Particularly savage, said a police captain to the camera. Appalling, he said.
A fast world I lived in. An hour at most, and the reports already widespread.
Then more news flashed across the screen, breaking news, a gravelly voice, police now saying that a serial killer, a sniper, could be loose in and around Fort Kent and the western St. John Valley.
I checked outside: that swirling vague fog, but no Troy, no police. They were waiting out of sight or they weren’t waiting at all. No point in thinking like a victim, and if they were there, fine. Time to go home.
I slipped the sight into its case and went outside, went right for the supermarket and my truck; along the way I passed a boy and his mother, tipped my hat and smiled at the young fellow, and he smiled back. I sensed they were without, and if I had some money I would have bought the child a toy, or something at least. The festival tree grew brighter as I approached, lit the pavement and my boots, but I sensed no heat in the light, they were just the decorations.
Already the locals had gathered outside the supermarket, a constable there too in the middle, nodding and holding up his arms and then shaking his head and criss-crossing his arms in a big no.
What about the law, why can’t you catch him, one man said. Two men walked out of a side street, large men, heavy with big coats and guns. One waved his in the air and said, We’re being shot at and no one is doing anything.
The policeman said, We’re trying, it’s all woods up here and you know that very well, Pascal, and we don’t know for sure that anyone else has even been shot. This is early on.
What do you think, the gun waver shouted back at the policeman.
I think you need to calm down, the policeman said. I think you all need to move on and stop blocking the thoroughfare.
I stood beside the crowd and tried to read the poster through all the shoving and the consternation in the cold mist. People get upset very quickly, the citizenry teems along, never more than an inch from their passions. One dead body half an hour away and everyone is up in arms.
There you have it, I could not read the poster, but I could see some new writing on it, that man had penned something for sure: a black spider of words. Just too many bodies in the way. Didn’t want to be obvious, peering at it up close. I decided to go back to the diner and wait, let them disperse like snow in a bluster. First I put the sight back in the truck, no point in carrying that around and asking for trouble.