And yet.
“I don’t know, Bob,” I said, being honest. “If you’re worried about what will happen if I do, then you’ll have to shoot me. Now.”
I could see he was thinking about it. Thinking about it pretty hard.
Bob’s line started to go out.
“What the…” he said, looking down at his reel, the spool of white filament spinning away.
Twenty feet off our port side, a fish broke the surface, briefly. A muskie, a big one at that. The fish disappeared, then came up again, its head poking out of the water, trying to shake the lure from its mouth. Its cold black eye caught a brief glimpse of us before it went back under.
“Oh no,” Bob said, staring at the ripples where the fish had gone back under.
“What?” I said.
“It’s Audrey,” he said. “I saw the scar.” The scar under the eye. The scar that marked the fish that had been toying with Bob for years.
He didn’t have a chance of reeling her in, however. Not with one hand holding a gun on me.
“You’re going to need both hands,” I said. “And me holding the net, if you can get her close enough to the boat.”
More and more line was being fed out. Audrey was getting farther and farther away.
It was a hell of a choice for Bob. Take a chance at finally getting the fish he’d been trying to catch for so many summers, and risk spending the rest of his life in jail. Or take care of me, make sure I never told my story to anyone, and lose any chance of landing Audrey.
“Take this,” Bob said, handing me the gun.
I took it from him carefully, then laid it on the bottom of the boat, ahead of the middle seat, where I was perched.
The moment he’d given up the gun, Bob went into action, reeling in, bending the pole back toward him, horsing it, then easing it forward and reeling in the slack.
I grabbed the net, got ready to scoop Audrey.
“The hook’s really into her,” I said. “Way more than when she hit my line.”
“Looks like it,” Bob said. “But she’s spit it out before when I was sure I had her.” He glanced at me, just for a second, and said, “I couldn’t have done it.”
“I know,” I said.
He reeled in Audrey a bit more. “Are you going to tell?” he asked, watching where the line vanished into the black.
I kept watching for the fish. “I don’t know.”
Bob nodded. “Maybe, if you tell, and they do convict me, they’d let me hang Audrey on the wall of my cell.”
I smiled at that. The metal handle of the net was cold in my hands. I could see a shape in the water, something moving under the surface, darting left and then right. I leaned over the edge of the boat, let the net slip into the water. My hands dipped below the surface.
“Are you ready?” Bob said.
“I think so. Just lead her this way.”
When the fish was almost into the net, Bob said, “I’m not a bad man, Zack.”
“I know, Bob,” I said. “I’ve met bad men, and you’re not one of them.”
40
IT WAS A LONG DRIVE HOME.
I got in the car after saying my farewells to Dad.
“Thanks,” he said, leaning up against my Virtue’s fender. The ankle was bugging him a bit, and he was using his crutches. “For a lot of things.”
“It’s okay.”
“Bob’s pretty excited, coming in with Audrey. I’m gonna take some pictures.”
“E-mail me one,” I said.
“He seemed kind of troubled,” Dad said.
I nodded. “He’s got a lot on his mind,” I said. “He’s been through a lot this week, like all of us.” I thought for a moment. “Tell him not to worry. Tell him I said not to worry.”
Dad nodded. “Listen, promise me you won’t think less of your mother.”
“I won’t.”
“People make mistakes, but they often have help. I helped her make hers. Remember that, with you and Sarah. You be good to her.”
I gave him a hug. “We’ll be talking,” I said.
Dad peeked into the back seat, saw something wrapped in a blanket. “What’s that?” It was a Smith & Wesson. I’d kept it, and when I got back to the city, intended to get rid of it. I hadn’t taken it so much for my own personal security, as to put my mind at ease over what Bob Spooner might do with it. I had a fear that he might find an expedient solution to his dilemma.
“So long, Dad,” I said.
“Bye, son,” he said.
I got in the car and as I headed up the drive back to the highway, I slowed and took one last look at the smoldering ruins of the Wickens farmhouse. There was nothing much left but a foundation and a few blackened timbers at what was once the back of the structure.
Something caught my eye. Something large, and black, and lumbering, moving amidst the debris that was once the farmhouse.
It was a bear.
I stopped the car, opened the door, and stood by the car, one foot on the rocker panel, a hand on the roof, ready to jump back in if I needed to.
The bear was rummaging around, hunting for food, I figured. Suddenly aware of my presence, he rose up on his haunches, sniffed the air, looked in my direction. He stared at me lazily for a moment, then, quickly losing interest, he dropped back down onto all fours, and wandered off into the woods.
There was a lot to think about on the ride back. About Dad, Dad and Lana. The revelations about my mother, and Lana’s husband. About Orville. About Bob, and what he’d done.
About evil.
Sarah met me at the door. After we kissed, and held each other for at least a minute, she said, “It’s all over the news. There was even something on CNN. But their details are really sketchy. And the office has called. Three times.”
“It’s already written,” I said. “In my head. They say how much they want?”
“They can go three thousand words, starting on front, turning inside. They hired a helicopter, took shots of the site from the air. And Lawrence called. He’s got May and Jeffrey settled in. Monday morning, they’re going to meet with some social service types, see what they can do for them. I’ve got some clothes, too, that we can drop off. And linens, stuff like that. I’ve got clothes I could give May, but I don’t know what size she is.”
“You’re pretty close,” I said. “Why not throw some stuff in, we’ll take it over. I’ve got some old Star Wars toys tucked away that I’m going to take as well.”
“You look tired.”
“Yeah.” I slipped my arms around her, and for a moment or so, I cried.
She made me a bacon sandwich. As I sat at the kitchen table eating, my seventeen-year-old son, Paul, breezed through long enough to grab a Coke from the fridge. “Hey, Dad,” he said, and disappeared. The phone rang while Sarah was out of the room, and I grabbed it. It was Angie, calling from the library at Mackenzie University, working on that second year of her psychology major.
“Oh, hi, Dad. I didn’t know you were back. Everything go okay up at your dad’s place? Mom didn’t say a lot.”
“Pretty much.”
“Is Mom there? I need to ask her something about what to get for a friend of mine who’s getting engaged.”
“Hang on.”
“Oh, and Dad? What do you think about us getting a dog? Paul and I were talking. We think it would be neat.”
I called Sarah to the phone and took my sandwich upstairs to my study, fired up my computer, and started writing. Ninety minutes later, I had it done. The broad strokes. The Wickenses, what they were planning, how it went wrong.
Nothing about Bob Spooner.
I phoned the city desk and said I was e-mailing them the story.
I recalled that this had all begun with a phone call while I was having lunch with my friend Trixie Snelling, and how it had seemed, up until the moment when I got word that there was a very good chance my father had been eaten by a bear, that she’d had something important on her mind. Something she was working up to telling me.