I kept my face in the snow. The chill petrified my bones and lips. Not to show my face, this took some restraint as my mind kept imagining him sneaking up on me and all I had to do to save my life was look up and see him stalking. Now he stands over the blanket and aims down on me. Look up, Julius. Look up! But I knew that if I looked up I would distinguish myself from the snow with my pink face and die. I felt my heart palpitate, a tremor cordis in me.
I had time to kill, so I whispered to the snow the two words under F that I had read before leaving for the woods. I could not bring to mind a third, something of no use, it must have been.
Then I slid back the first inch and waited.
No shot came.
Then I moved another inch, this time to my right, toward the truck. No shot. At two hundred yards, the eye cannot catch an inch of movement at a time, a foot, definitely, but not the tiny inch. For thirty minutes after that I moved but one inch at a time, with ten seconds’ rest between each inch, a World War One battle maneuver against an active sniper, a story told by my grandfather to my father and so to me. It still worked. Not long now. I knew I was safe when I felt the truck’s tires spin at my ear. I held up a pinch of the blanket and glanced sideways. Yes. The truck was now between me and the rifleman: I had covered fifteen feet. He was cautious, too cautious for a hunter. I rolled to one side and brought the rifle to my chest, moved the bolt and chambered a new round. He heard it somehow through that damned engine, and a bullet ripped the snow where my head had lain thirty minutes before.
For him to shoot now was surely foolish: he had given away his position for no reason. Better to have remained silent and alert. Sooner or later I would have had to rise and he would see me, or night would fall and we could both have gone home.
I rolled a yard to the right and held the blanket out before me, waited, then moved my head under it, nudging at the flap with a finger one quarter inch and inserted my eye into that space.
I found him where I saw him first, and clear as daylight. He had made a crucial mistake: he forgot about his boots. He had worn a white top and scarf for his head, good camouflage, but when a man lies prone in the snow, the heels of his boots are at a higher elevation than his head, about two inches, and his boots were black. You have to paint the heels of your boots the color of the landscape if you want to lie down with your rifle. And there they waved like two black flags. By aiming right between the boots and down a fraction, I had a headshot.
Three bullets. How confident was I? The truth was my hands and face were numb from lying in the snow. I could not trust the aim and had to go around him. I don’t know how much time I spent closing the distance, though it was easier with the trees as cover. I can say that about one hour after he fired upon me, I brought my rifle to my shoulder at a distance of ten yards from him, off to his side.
Something told him. He looked and saw me.
This man’s face in front of me now was cleaned away with fear, but the traces left on it told me all I needed to know.
45
I RECOGNIZED HIM, WHICH IS TO SAY THAT I DID NOT shoot him dead on the spot, this man who had sent three or four cartridges my way, any one of which would have crumpled my frame like a wet egg under my blanket and coat. He turned on his side and arched his rifle over his head, but I had the barrel centered between his eyes and he looked at me straight down along the sights and let it fall, still holding it, into a depression at his side, a place he should have put himself in to begin with, his body lower than his rifle.
It’s you, he said. I knew it was you.
I said, If you knew it, you didn’t take advantage.
I brought the aim to his chest so I wouldn’t miss if he moved. So we’re on speaking terms after all, I said.
Shooting me will be different.
Really, I said. I don’t think so. I shoot you, you die. It’ll be the same, I think, that’s the truth of it.
I mean shooting a police officer.
No, It’ll still be the same for you, I said. And as for what happens to me, you needn’t worry about that. You won’t worry.
He seemed to have exhausted his store of words, so I spoke again for him.
And I’m surprised to hear you say anything to me, I said.
He eyed his rifle, brazen as could be. As if I was just going to stand there.
I have a question, I said, using my shoulder to wedge the rifle while I fished the drawing out of my pocket half way before stuffing it back suddenly. Didn’t want to be fiddling with paper now. He’d have that thing up in a flash.
Did you shoot my dog, I said. It was around here, as a matter of fact, that he was shot, this close to my home.
I did not, he said. Is this what this is all about, a dog?
I brought the rifle up. Your final words on the matter?
Then he broke all at once like a china cup on a concrete floor, his hands covering his face, as if they’d stop a .303 shell. A loud shriek. Jesus, please don’t kill me. Please. I don’t want to die.
Troy, I said, keeping the rifle at eye level while risking the familiar first name, I’m far from being Jesus these days.
I won’t tell anyone. No, no dog shooting, it wasn’t me.
He grabbed for his weapon and I kicked it away, shot at the ground in front of him as he lunged after it and re-chambered while he jerked from the shock, scrabbling around in the snow and around himself for bullets, grabbing away at nothing in his clothes, no holes, no blood. He looked up at the rifle and flinched as it went back to him. He covered his head and waited for it.
What line of business are you in, I said, aiming.
He screamed, then realized I had spoken and not shot.
He said, You know. His voice shook like a pond under a breeze.
I don’t mean your job. I heard once you have a business on the side, evenings possibly.
Security, he said. I own a security firm.
Security, I said.
He nodded.
Is it a success?
He nodded.
I said nothing then. The truck engine was tiresome and I wanted to switch it off, was tired of speaking loudly over it, this dead man over there riding his truck.
It is true that frightened men urinate. The body ditches everything for flight. Troy’s pants ran.
I said, Take off your jacket.
He pulled off the white jacket. I told him to empty the pockets and saw a phone and keys and such fall out. He stood in a flannel shirt, black, with beige at the collar.
What time is it? I said.
He looked at his wrist. After four.
Now we’ll go home, I said. Put it back on, and turn your friend’s key for him.
Wondering what the trick was, when and where the bullet would tear into him, he scrambled up and got into the jacket before pulling the white scarf off his whiter neck. After he turned his confederate’s truck off, he had another question for me.
Where’s home? he said.
Second star to the right, I said.
What?
Follow me but by being in front. Home is ahead, and no more banter from you.
We walked back to the cabin under the rising moon and the faint glow of snow, two men and their footsteps, one holding a rifle to the other’s back, the oldest arrangement of power.
46
I WAS IN NO HURRY TO SAY ANYTHING, ONLY TO REACH the house before complete darkness. That was some garboil in the woods, I said.
I don’t understand, he said.
I meant disorder in the woods. You and your distraction of gallowglass.