You’re not gonna shoot me?
No, he said.
He waited then, the dart gun remaining in his lap. He could see almost nothing beyond the fire, only a blur of snow that ended in absolute darkness, and out of that darkness Rick materialized like a ghost, a wet snowman shaking with cold, his face a pale mask. If he still had the pistol, it could not be seen. Instead, there was only the figure of the man, tattered and freezing, his eyes sunken in his head.
Bill lifted the dart gun to his shoulder and fired.
Rick said a single word, No, and raised his hand. The dart hit him mid-thigh, the red feathers like a strange flower that had sprouted there. Rick looked down and tried to pull it away but his hands did not seem to work and the dart wobbled and finally fell loose.
What the fuck was that? Rick stuttered.
Just a warning, he said.
Fuck you, Rick said, but he kept moving forward, his steps stumbling. What the fuck was that, man? A fucking dart? His words seemed to slur through his frozen face.
That’s exactly what it was.
What the fuck? Rick said. He staggered forward and then
crumbled — half sitting, half falling — to the snow by the fire. His teeth were chattering so loud that they sounded like a child’s wind-up toy. You said you weren’t gonna shoot me.
I’m not anymore, he said. He set the dart gun beside him in the snow.
Fuck, Rick said.
Stop talking.
Snowflakes continued to fall beyond the light of the fire. He watched them come. His name was in the air, although he did not think Rick had said anything at all. It moved as if vaporized, as if it had become the snowflakes that fell above the flames, breaking back into water, then vapor, then disappearing entirely as if they had been pressed by heat alone to return to the ether from which they had come.
I’m so tired, Rick said.
Yeah?
Aren’t you?
No.
What was in that dart?
Ketamine.
What did you do, man? Rick said. What the fuck did you do?
I’m taking care of my people.
And now Rick laughed, a long weird braying that seemed, midway through its run, to slow down, to shift lower, as if the world was spinning apart.
You need to know something, Bill said. My uncle took that safe to a guy he knew in Spokane the day after I got here. He figured out the combination.
Rick did not answer for a long time, only staring at him. Then he said, slowly, I fucking knew it. His voice slurred out like a drunkard. His eyes slipped closed and then opened again. How much?
About three grand is all.
Where is it?
The guy who cracked it took a cut and I paid off Johnny Aguirre and there just wasn’t much left after that. Couple hundred.
You still should’ve sent it to my mom.
I wanted to.
So why didn’t you?
He exhaled. Then he said, When I paid off Johnny, that guy Mike asked me if I wanted to make another bet for old time’s sake.
Rick just looked at him, eyes sunken, face still coated in snow.
I thought about your mom all the time. I got a little money when my uncle died but by then she was already gone.
You should have just told me, Rick said, his voice a mess of slurring syllables.
Bill looked at him for a moment, at his glassy, unfocused eyes. I made something for myself here, he said. And you were gonna fuck it up. I just wanted you to go away. I thought you’d just give up and go home if I gave you the safe.
Ha, Rick said, deadpan. Bad bet.
Turned out that way.
Rick was silent, staring now into the flames, and when he spoke again his voice was like a long single word mashed to pieces: Man, he said, you’ve always been the survivor. Even when we were kids.
Bill sat forward now. That’s not true at all, he said. His voice sounded loud in the little cave. You were. Not me. You.
Oh yeah? Well, look at us now, my friend. Look at us now. His voice trailed off and after a moment his body slumped to the side in the firelight.
Bill sat for a long time, staring at the thin, soggy shape before him, at the steam rising from the wet coat and pants. His hands were trembling, although they were no longer cold. Rick lay at his feet, eyes closed. Bill thought he was unconscious but when he leaned in and grabbed his coat collar and pulled, Rick’s eyes rolled open. What are you doing? he whispered. Then the eyes closed again, slowly, like the eyes of a doll.
Bill stood and staggered backward out of the tiny cave, back into the blowing storm, Rick’s body a low heavy weight that he dragged behind him like a sled dog pulling his load, and when he was done, when he had come out beyond the glow of the fire and into the dark curl of the snow, he stopped and released his grip and stumbled back to the cave again.
When he reached its warmth, he sat and closed his eyes and prayed sleep would come to claim him. After a time even the fire disappeared. The darkness complete. He could feel his body floating in that black emptiness. Desert all around. His mother. And the brother he had lost. Other things too. The blue Datsun. The trailer he had grown up in, its metal siding sheeting off to wobble in the empty air. Impossible shapes in the snow. And Grace. And Jude. And himself. And Majer. He could feel the animals as they unscrolled themselves in that single loop of endless time and he wondered if there had been any meaning or purpose in it at all but then he knew that such questions held no meaning or purpose. And Rick. Of course. And Rick.
The forest was only wind.
WHEN MORNING came at last, the fire was only a heap of smoldering coals. It was freezing and he was shaking again and could not stop. His feet and his fingers had gone completely numb but as he lay there the sun appeared from behind the clouds and shone into the mouth of the little alcove and for a few moments he could feel a faint warmth against his face. Beside him in the frozen slush lay the dart gun and what was left of the book, its pages gutted but the cover remaining, and from that the pronghorn antelope stared back at him with the same guileless and implacable expression it had held for all his life.
He tried three times to stand, each time careening back to earth again. His feet like stumps tied to unbending knees. Clothes still wet next to his skin. On the third attempt he rolled over onto his back and scooted forward on his elbows. The snow was deep and heavy and his body plowed into it but he was able to push his way from the cliffs and up over the slight rise.
The trees were scattered down the length of the slope. Beyond them, beginning at the base of the ridge and stretching out across a broad flat plain, lay a pale and thickly packed forest coated in a clotted layer of wet snow and through which ran a black river that coiled through those bleached and albescent conifers in loops and turns and which encircled, at its center, a vast field as empty and clear as a blank page. The wilderness seemingly without end, the ridges folding into an accordioned distance. Above them rode a series of towering clouds in blue sky, their shadows cutting the lit surface of the forest below into scraps and tatters and rags. The span between here and there as impenetrable as the forest all around him. Some impossible distance. And no sign of motion anywhere.
He slid forward on his back and elbows again and managed to get himself partially down the slope before he came to Rick. He lay encrusted with snow, his skin blue and white as if the blood had been drained from his body and what remained was only a shell curled into the position that is, for all our race, the first and last on earth. He leaned in close and peered for a long time at that frozen face. A gaunt visage of sharp angles topped with eyebrows now weighted with ice. Once upon a time: your best friend.