She wanted to ride in the ambulance with Brandi, but Missy said, “You wouldn’t want to be in the way of the EMTs, would you?”
“But who’ll be there for her?” Angel said. “She shouldn’t have to be alone.”
“Honey,” said Missy. “I’m sure she’ll be all right.”
Missy tried to pet Angel’s hair, but Angel pulled away from her.
“You said my dad should be in prison.”
“I shouldn’t have said that. It was wrong of me. I just get mad sometimes.”
Angel could understand that. It was how she’d felt for a good while on both sides of the night of the fire. Before and after. Just mad, mad, mad. Hearing Missy admit that she sometimes felt the same caused something to let go inside her; that anger came unknotted. She let her hands drop to her sides, and she felt a great calm pass through her, the first time she could remember not being on edge, as if strands of barbed wire were tangled up inside her since the night of the fire. Ever since her father had walked out and taken up with Brandi she’d been mad. Just mad at everyone, even herself. Mad at her mother sometimes for not being able to keep her father there. Mad at him for leaving. Mad at Brandi for taking him away. Mad at herself for not being a better person the night of the fire.
Now Brandi was in trouble — and what about her baby? — and Angel was tired of being mad, tired of people’s messed-up lives.
“I want to go to the hospital,” she said. “I want to be there for Brandi. She’s been trying her best with me.”
It was then that Missy realized she was holding Brandi’s purse. It had slipped from her arm when she’d fainted, and somewhere in the bustle of the EMTs, Missy had seen it on the ground and picked it up so it wouldn’t be in the way. She’d been clutching it to her chest.
“Get in the van,” Missy said, and in an instant, though she didn’t yet know this would be true, she got a picture of Pat and her going on into old age alone. As much as that thought saddened her, she felt a light and airy space somewhere deep inside. Something was opening in her heart — some little part of her she’d kept locked ever since her missed chances to have a child of her own. Angel and her sisters — they’d be all their children now. Brandi’s and Laverne Ott’s and Lois and Wayne’s, and every person in Goldengate and on out the blacktop who loved them and wanted them to have a good and happy life. Missy knew that was what she wanted most of all. “Come on,” she said to Angel. “We’ll go to the hospital.”
Biggs told Shooter to go home. “I’ll come by this evening,” he said. “I’ll have a talk with your boy.”
“He’ll tell you,” Shooter said. “Count on it. He’ll tell you exactly what I did.”
Then he left the courthouse and drove straight home. Captain was in the barn with the goats.
“Come on,” Shooter said to him. “Let’s go for a ride.”
“What for?”
“No reason. Let’s just go.”
In the emergency room, Missy went to the front desk to ask about Brandi.
“Are you family?” the woman at the desk asked.
Missy put her hands on Angel’s shoulders and nudged her forward a bit. “This is her daughter,” she said.
Angel reached up and laid her right hand on top of Missy’s left, and then Missy let her go. Angel followed the woman to a set of double doors, and as the doors opened Missy got a glimpse of nurses bustling past in scrubs. She saw an empty gurney against the wall, a row of cubicles with curtains drawn closed. For a moment Angel hesitated, looking back at Missy, who smiled at her and motioned with her hand for her to go on. Angel mouthed the words Thank you, and then she was gone.
Shooter just drove. He had Captain in the truck, and he didn’t know where he was going. He only knew that for the time he didn’t want to be at home, didn’t want to think about that evening when Biggs, if he were true to his word, would come to talk to Captain.
For now, Shooter only knew he wanted to keep moving. He didn’t want to sit still and have time to think. So he drove into Phillipsport and then out of it, letting State Street become Route 50. Soon he was driving past Wabash Sand and Gravel and WPLP, and then he was crossing the river, driving over the bridge that would take him into Indiana.
He slowed down and took a look at the river. The swirls of gray and white and blue in the ice made him think of clouds, puffy white against a blue sky, and it was easy from the height of the bridge to imagine a heaven. There were times like this when he could believe in an afterlife, when he could convince himself that someday he’d see Merlene again.
What would he tell her about Captain? Would he be able to say he’d done his best by him?
“Where we going?” Captain asked.
Shooter glanced at him. “Nowhere in particular. We’re just driving. You in a hurry?”
Captain looked down at his hands. He rubbed at some brown streaks of oak stain on his fingers. “I’m making a gun cabinet in shop.”
“Looks like you made a mess.” Shooter tried a little laugh, as if he’d been cracking a joke, but he could tell that Captain was hurt. He pulled his coat sleeves down over his hands. “I thought I got rid of that coat.” Shooter had buried it down deep in a cedar chest that had been Merlene’s. The chest was in the basement now, full of the clothes of hers that Shooter hadn’t been able to bring himself to get rid of. Apparently Captain had found the coat and dug it out sometime that morning when Shooter was out to the barn getting the Bobcat tractor ready to go. He hadn’t even seen Captain get on the bus wearing that coat.
“I like it,” Captain said.
“It’s ratty.” Shooter reached over and pinched the coat sleeve in his fingers. “You didn’t have any business snooping around and snatching this up.”
The coat was a fake leather bomber jacket that Captain had always favored since Merlene bought it for him from Walmart. The sort with vinyl made to look like leather. Shooter raised Captain’s arm and made him look at the patch as big as a pancake where the vinyl was missing. The quilted lining beneath was dappled, light brown in some places and black in others.
“Mom bought it for me.” Captain yanked his arm away from Shooter’s grip. “She said it was a bomber jacket fit for a Captain.”
They were over the bridge now, coasting down onto the flat plain of the river bottoms. Shooter pulled off onto the shoulder and they sat there while the wind swept across the barren fields, not enough of a treeline anywhere to stop it. The truck shook a little when a gust came up, and out across the fields a fine powder of snow swirled.
“Stay here,” Shooter said.
Then he got out of the truck and tromped through the snow and the corn stubble, fifty feet or so, until he was confident that he was far enough away so Captain wouldn’t be able to see him very well. He listened to the wind howling around him, felt its sting on his face, let it bring tears to his eyes. He forced himself not to look back, not wanting to see Captain’s face looking out the window of the truck.
He reached into the pocket of his barn coat and closed his hand around Captain’s Case Hammerhead lockback knife. He dug out a spot in the snow with the toe of his boot until he could see the frozen ground of the furrow. Then he dropped the knife into that hole and covered it with snow. If luck would have it, he thought, no one would find that knife and spring would come, and the farmer who worked this field would plow the knife under.
It took everything he had to turn around and walk back across the field to the truck where Captain was waiting. He wanted to lie down in the snow and let the cold have him. He wanted to close his eyes and think of Merlene. He wanted to just slip away from the living and not have to answer for anything.