When he came out, he was ready for bed. She heard the siren at the fire station but barely gave it a thought. Then she reached up and turned off the lamp, and the two of them drifted off to sleep.
When Shooter woke and couldn’t find Captain in the house, he put on his barn coat and went out the back door to look for him.
The pole light in the barnyard was enough for him to spot the footprints in the snow. He recognized the corrugated tread of Captain’s Big Horn Wolverine boots, and the hoof prints the goats had left. Shooter followed the prints to the barn door. Inside, he found four of Della’s goats, bleating their dismay over whatever had happened to move them there. The lights were on in the feedway. Dust motes and chaff hovered around the bare bulbs.
“Wesley,” Shooter shouted, but there was no answer.
_________
In her bedroom, Della thought she heard voices, but she was so far down in sleep she convinced herself it was only the wind.
The baby was asleep. The twins were asleep, and Gracie, and Sarah, and Hannah, and Angel. They were snuggled down in their dreams. The furnace was working fine, and they were cozy in their beds on this cold winter night.
Shooter stepped out of the barn and heard the back door of the house go shut. He hurried inside, and there he found Captain at the bathroom sink, letting the water run over his hand. The only light in the room was a nightlight plugged into the wall below the mirror, that and the light from the snow cover coming in through the little window in the wall facing the road. It was enough light for Shooter to see Captain’s sock hat and his bloody glove on the vanity top.
“You’re cut.” Shooter grabbed the hand and looked at the slice across the hock of Captain’s thumb. “How’d that happen?”
“Knife slipped,” said Captain.
“Knife? Your pocketknife? What were you using it for?”
“To cut baling twine. I found a bale of straw. I didn’t want the goats to get hurt.”
“How were they going to get hurt, Wesley?”
Captain wouldn’t answer. He hung his head and wouldn’t look at his father. Shooter reached over and turned off the faucet. “Wesley, I asked you a question.”
“I meant to start over.” Captain’s voice was flat. “Just like you told me. Put a match to that fence.”
Shooter remembered then what he’d said in passing that afternoon when he and Captain had been mending the fence over at Della’s.
“Oh, good Christ,” he said. “That was just something to say. Something because I was mad. Why would you ever think I was serious?”
Captain shrugged his shoulders. “I just wanted to help Della.”
Shooter looked down at the sock hat and the glove on the vanity. The glove had blood on it.
“Where’s your jacket?” he asked him. “Did you have it on? Where’s your knife?”
“My jacket’s behind the trailer,” Captain said. “It fell off. I don’t know what happened to my knife. I must have dropped it.”
Shooter didn’t know that he was lying about the knife, that he still had it in his jeans pocket, the blade stained with his blood. Shooter was about to tell him to go get his coat and to look for that knife, but then — it was almost imperceptible — the light grew brighter in the room, just enough of a change for Shooter to register. He turned his head toward the window, and he saw light waver behind the curtains. He drew one of the panels back and looked out across the road.
He stood there longer than he should have because he thought Della and her kids weren’t home. He stood there, watching the flames licking through the roof of the trailer, thinking, if he had to be honest, that even though he was stunned to see the fire, a small part of him thought he’d found a convenient answer to his problem with the goats. If the trailer burned, Della and the kids would have to find somewhere else to live, and they’d take the goats with them or else sell them, and spring would come, and he wouldn’t have to worry about them getting loose and eating up his garden. He stood there watching until he saw the first girls, Angel and Hannah, come running from the flames and out into the cold night.
Then he caught a whiff of gasoline, and he knew it was coming from Captain. “My god.” He spun around to look at his son. “Surely you didn’t tote a can of gas over there.”
Captain bowed his head. He didn’t say a word, and Shooter’s mind raced ahead, convinced that his assumption was true.
“Oh, Wesley,” he said. “What in the world have you done?”
30
Biggs had just backed out of Shooter’s drive when he saw Pat Wade up the road at his place waving his arms in the air, motioning for him to come down there.
“There’s something you ought to know,” Pat said, when Biggs pulled his patrol car into the driveway and got out to see what Pat wanted. “He put that goat down,” Pat said. “Shooter. He killed that billy goat, one of Della’s goats. Shot it back there in his woods. Told Missy it had foot and mouth.”
“Foot and mouth?” Biggs said. “Hasn’t been foot and mouth in this country since before you and me.”
“That’s what I know.”
“Missy see him shoot that goat?”
Pat shook his head. “She saw him push it down into a gully. Come inside and she’ll tell you.”
Missy was waiting just inside the front door. She’d left Hannah and Angel to heat up some soup and make cheese sandwiches for her and her sisters and Brandi, and then she’d left the girls there to drive Lois home and then to come and talk to Pat.
“He killed that goat.” She started right in once Biggs and Pat were inside the house. “Then today he was back there with his Bobcat and his chainsaw. Filling in that gully, I expect. Burying what he put there.”
“Seems odd that he’d tell you it had foot and mouth,” Biggs said.
“He threatened me,” she said. “Today. He told me I had what I wanted and not to do anything to ruin my happy-ever-after.”
“Della’s girls,” Pat said.
“I want to know why Shooter killed that goat.” Missy crossed her arms over her chest and tipped her head back a little so her chin pointed out. “And I want to know what brought him to lie about why.”
“I’m going to find out,” said Biggs, and he told Pat and Missy goodnight.
Once he was gone, there wasn’t much for them to say. They stood awhile just inside the front door, though they didn’t speak until the patrol car left their drive and started back up the blacktop toward Shooter’s.
Then Pat said, “Missy?”
His voice was strained, and it was clear he wanted to say more — wanted to know what it meant that she’d left the girls with Brandi — but he didn’t know how.
“That’s done,” Missy said.
She’d unloaded the groceries from the van and put the perishables away. She still had canned goods to stack in the pantry. Then she had the rest of the night, and the ones after that, to get through.
Pat nodded. The quiet of the house and all the sadness it held choked him. “All right,” he managed to say, but by that time, Missy was gone.
Biggs drove back to Shooter’s and said he had more questions. He could tell that Shooter was surprised to see him again, but he let him into the house, and he answered his question about the goats.
Yes, he had Della’s goats, he said.
“I’ve been keeping them as a favor to Wayne Best.” He knew Wayne and Lois weren’t up to seeing to them, and he didn’t mind footing the feed bill for a while since the goats gave Captain so much pleasure. “My boy loves taking care of them,” he said.
Biggs said, “Where is your boy?”