The truth was that I had lost track of the clock. I felt suspended in time not my own, not my choosing, a place I fell into by some omission or error, and grew. I might have risen then in my chair and be blown to the right time, backwards to an age I could breathe in, where my all waiting was right, a living place and pace, wine and hot meadows spread out under steeple bells.
Sitting in the chair, I watched the moon go a damp orange, then some blood seeped into it: and there it stayed, the true face of the moon, its true art, that cold, red flesh, a gunshot wound hung up in the night.
I watched it till I was so tired I had to close my eyes for a bit.
I had no logic, no excuse, no dreams that drove me to act or conjured a different man in me: every part of the last few days, everything I had done and not done, was my doing and mine alone. He was my friend, and I loved him. That is all of it.
When I woke, the cup had fallen, the book too, but the pipe still lay in my fingers. My ears were stones rubber-banded in skin, my lips and nose sore and numb at the same time. The moon had moved to the right and found its light, and the sky had collapsed, a good few inches of more snow fallen already, snow white-hot with light, snow on my coat, snow down one boot where the pants went inside, my sock drenched. Still I wanted to stay, to wait for morning, to cover myself and sleep the night out, but the fire was out for sure, and I wondered idly about the time.
I carried everything inside, the chair last, and resuscitated the flames. I watered the plants, stood briefly in my bedroom, bending over the mattress on the box springs, so much of my life spent unconscious there. The clothes in the closet were few, a couple of summer shirts. They could stay. An extra pair of summer shoes. Best leave them here. I turned the gramophone off and stored the record.
Since the cut in my shoulder was seeping red, I looked for some calendula in the bathroom cupboard. I opened the window, peered out then, and heard the hiss of dead brittle leaves. I heard the sound as if a name was being spoken, but the forest did not have a word for itself that I knew. And what was I to call myself now in any case? To the woods, I was doubtless a wound living in a clearing, a patch of infection.
I passed the books, so many books, and wondered how they would fare without a fire. Now they would all be cold books, if they stayed together. I stood by the chair and placed my grandfather’s pipe on one armrest, The Winter’s Tale on the other, then stepped out past the porch and glanced again at the grave, wondered if another Hobbes would grow in the spring, and who would be there to see it if one did. I did not care to be there: I should be wiped away, erased like pencil, cleaned like wood dust from the grate. They’ll have plenty to say now. What I wanted to say to that man as he walked ahead of me in the woods was that I didn’t have feeling where I should and too much where I shouldn’t. You keep away from men like me and you’ll be alright in life.
I meant to say that to him, but it never came up.
Five young deer ran in the moonlight between the trees. I saw their eyes shine as they passed the cabin, bunching briefly before loosening into a quick trot, an accordion of hooves bounding through the downy white.
I don’t know why but I waited a while watching the woods from the flowerbeds, as if Claire was going to come again out of the snow, for I had never figured how a woman who lived all those miles away in St. Agatha had ever walked out of these woods by accident.
But I did not have the time. I hoisted the rifle and began walking, leaving the two bullets remaining in the clip on the off chance I met Troy in the woods and he looked at me or had anything to say. He was wandering somewhere still, I guessed. I looked back from the edge of the clearing, remembering again, knowing again, and leaving for the first time everything my father knew. Although it was dark, I was familiar with the way and the light was good above me; once I reached the paved road it was only those twelve miles to Fort Kent. I would stay off the road and be there by dawn.
It being early morning on a Sunday, the police station would have one man on duty, it would be brightly lit and most likely warm, and somewhere in that building a hot cup of tea might be found, and we could talk for a while until some others came to take the details, driving straight from their beds maybe, running to their gates in long coats, from late fireplaces, from bottles. All this was clear in my mind as I took the dirt road with the Enfield. I saw the living flowers, my living father and Hobbes, and kept them firmly before me, but when I glanced again after only a minute the trees had closed in around and the cabin was lost to view.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to thank my agent Tracy Bohan, and my editor Angus Cargill for their support; my friend and neighbor Doug Swanson, whose farm and dog inspired the story; and the following, who read the manuscript and told me what they thought of it: Richard Donovan, Sara Kallenbach, Graham Lewis, Tim McCarthy, Christina Nalty, and Jay Prefontaine. Martin Pegler’s Out of Nowhere provided an excellent history of sniping. I found most of my lead character’s Elizabethan vocabulary in David Crystal and Ben Crystal’s Shakespeare’s Words: A Glossary and Language Companion.
About the Author
Gerard Donovan is the author of the novels Schopenhauer’s Telescope, which won the 2004 Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award and was longlisted for the 2003 Booker Prize, Doctor Salt and Julius Winsome, described in the Irish Times as ‘a timeless fable of loss, isolation and violence’. In 2008 he published the acclaimed story collection, Country of the Grand.
By the Same Author
Schopenhauer’s Telescope
Doctor Salt
Country of the Grand
Copyright
First published in the United States in 2006
by The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.
Woodstock & New York
First published in the United Kingdom in 2007
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
This ebook edition first published in 2013
All rights reserved
© Gerard Donovan, 2007
The right of Gerard Donovan to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
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