Everyone. Infrastructure frayed then fell apart. Before the end it was. It was bad.
Reached for the cup of milk and drank as if it could cool.
It was a frenzy. Everyone clinging to some shred: that they might be the one who was immune. Because we had heard of that, too, the mysterious resistance that ran in families. Genetic.
They were staring at me. He opened a pocket knife, picked his teeth.
When my wife died I made my way to the country airport where I keep my plane. I hid out.
You defended it, he said, scanning my face.
I nodded.
With help.
He was reading my own capacity for hell, for death, for wreaking it.
We defended it. Me and Bangley. Who showed up one day with a trailer full of weapons.
Bangley? He grunted. He knew what he was about old Bangley. Didn’t he?
He put an elbow on the table, stretched out his long legs, picked his teeth.
He brought you along. Kinda trained you up. Set a perimeter didn’t he? He had no problem killing anything that crossed it. Young, old, men, women. But you did.
But you got over it.
Dad.
Ninety nine point whatever. What’s left? Point whatever. One out of two hundred? Three hundred? We’ve seen what that is. It’s not usually pretty is it? Is it Higs?
Hig.
Big Hig.
I stared at him.
Not pretty what’s left, is it?
I stared at him. His eyes were alight with equal parts cold knowledge and warm mischief.
He spat a fleck of food off his tongue. You’re a hunter. Deer, elk. Before.
Nodded. How—?
He waved it away.
The way you hold your rifle. Way you move down the creek. Looking at sign. Can’t help yourself.
My mouth opened. I saw myself stepping in the suncrackled needles studying the piles of scat. He was watching. He could have had me any time he wanted.
Never in the service though.
I stared at him.
Fact you don’t like killing anybody. Not even a bull elk I’d bet. If there was one to kill. Not even a trout. If there was one. Too bad. You love to fish too.
Who the fuck was this guy? How—?
I saw you studying the creek. You stood right where I would’ve stood so as not to spook the fish in the pool.
I stared.
But killing is something you can get used to. Isn’t it, Hig?
No.
So you say.
He leaned forward and his eyes bore into mine. He aimed his gray eyes into mine and they sparked like he had lit the fuses.
I suggest you shrug out of your pissant self-righteousness. Like a rattler out of old skin. You’d move easier, smoother. Turned and spat. Nobody at this table is an innocent. That shit with the pheasant? Had you been close enough I would’ve slit your throat. Not thinking. Glad you weren’t. That would’ve been a real dumbshit move.
The whole thing, the speech, the image, it shivered my insides like a cold and sudden night wind. Who the fuck was this guy? He could’ve slit my throat in the juniper. While I slept.
He stood up, stretched. He was in his sixties, I guessed, but he was long and lean and looked to be strung together with catgut. He moved easily in his skin. A life bent to work which he loved, was my guess if I were guessing. A rancher clearly, some sort of soldier along the way. I was tempted to play What’s My Line with him, too, but it felt gauche. I mean I didn’t need to get into a one-up deal with this dude, into any kind of pissing match. He’d just given me maybe the best meal of my life. Or she had.
He said, Thanks for lunch. Touched her shoulder. How’s the throat?
She smiled. Been better.
He nodded once, picked a bow saw from a peg on the outside wall of the hut and walked downstream. Opened a gate in the brush fence and went through. I poured another cup of milk from the pitcher. Must have been my fourth or fifth.
You’re not used to it. You’re going to make yourself sick. You’ll have wicked diarrhea at the least.
You a doctor as well as a chef?
Uh huh.
The cup stopped at my lips. I put it down.
What kind of doctor?
Internist. Public health.
Her mouth stretched into the form of a smile but her eyes weren’t smiling. Not even ironic.
Epidemiology to tell the truth.
Everybody around here seemed to be very into telling the truth, the whole truth.
Where?
New York City.
Oh.
Fuck.
What happened to your throat?
He was mean but he didn’t seem mean like that. But. He was the only other person around. Unless they had attack sheep.
It’s not what happened to. I mean it’s the result of damage to my blood vessels. I hemorrhage quite easily. My muscles get very sore as well. A type of fibromyalgia. You see I contracted the flu. I barely survived. One result of the prolonged fever was the systemic inflammation that resulted in these conditions. But I had some resistance which we understand to be inherited from my father.
Biological resistance or sheer orneriness.
That too. I’m sorry we scared you. You scared us.
Again she didn’t defend him, didn’t feel the need. She was squarely in his corner as it should be. Right?
We talked about it. Dad doesn’t pull punches as you see.
She poured herself her own cup of milk, leaned into the table. The breeze played with wisps of curly hair that strayed to her temple, her eyebrow.
You kinda triggered our Plan. He thought we should talk about what we would do when one day we were overrun. When, not if. Or when we were outwitted or outgunned. When you showed up with grenades we thought it might be that time.
Damn.
I thought, Maybe that wasn’t a smile I saw on her lips. Through the scope. Maybe that was the face you make when everything is over. Over over.
One of the cows lowed long and deep with a rising inflection the way cows do. Like a question. The cottonwood leaves overhead flitted and ticked.
You have a pact huh?
She nodded.
He shoots you.
The cow mooed again, this time one short note as if answering her own query. Simple country life. Question and answer.
How close were you?
Close. He had the .45 out. After you threw the grenade. But then he said, Let’s play this out another step. He
