fishing line when he bobs up in Garrisontown.”
Another kick to the guts. Did Corrigan get to the old man too? It’s possible. So too was the likelihood that Gallagher passed out in a ditch somewhere and simply hasn’t been found yet.
“So who does that leave?” McGrath said. “Who else can back up your story? Brian Puddycombe is dead. As is Doug Hitchens and Bill Berryhill and that little punk Kyle what’s-his-name.” He leaned in again, whispering a little sidebar. “I don’t mean to speak poorly about someone who’s deceased but there was something seriously wrong with that kid.”
Jim felt his skin crawl. He desperately needed a shower.
McGrath wheezed on. “The point is, Jim, there’s more here than just you. Do you want to leave these men a legacy like this? Leave their families with this awful story about how they died? They deserve better than that.”
The floor was see-sawing again and Jim gripped the table for balance.
“And what about your family?” McGrath went on. “What’s Emma gonna do now? Your boy? They gonna run that farm by themselves? They need you, Jim. What they don’t need is a martyr.”
Jim tasted the sick in his throat, eyes darting around for a bucket to hurl into but there wasn’t one. He put his head between his knees.
McGrath stood and lumbered for the door. “Your family’s on their way to pick you up. Go home.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Looking out for my own. It’s what a mayor does.”
The reunion was awkward. Jim came out of the police station and bear-hugged his wife and son but they were stiff in his arms and no one quite knew what to say. Travis was aloof, Emma stilted and distracted. He quickly smeared his wet eyes, self-conscious and clumsy out here on the sidewalk. Emma fussed over his appearance but shied away when he tried to catch her eyes. They’d been through a lot, he told himself. Still in shock.
Emma smoothed his hair and asked if he had slept at all. Was he hungry?
He just wanted to go home.
“My God…”
Jim swung out of the cab but left his guts back in the truck. The last time he had seen the house it was still burning, still upright. He hadn’t thought about what it would look like now. It was all gone. His eyes stung and everything went liquid and soft.
Emma saw the tears in his eyes and told him it was okay. Speaking softly, the way she did to her horses. A dumb animal. He smeared away these new tears, quick and with shame. The way men do.
He squeezed her hand, a little pump to tell her he was okay but felt her bristle at his touch. Her eyes dropped to his hand, the one squeezing hers, and he saw something ripple across her face. The same revulsion he had seen that night when his hands were covered in blood. Is that what she was seeing now?
Watching her eyes dart around like a bird, he could read the thoughts behind them, the admonishments she was telling herself.
“It’s just a house,” she said. “Wood and bricks. That’s all.”
When she slid out from under his arm he felt lost. Unmoored like a rowboat slipped from the dock, left to bob away on the current.
“We can rebuild.” He looked over his shoulder to where Travis sat on the picnic table. Clutching what looked like a black stick in his hand. Jim beckoned for his son to join them. “Right Travis?”
Travis didn’t move, watching them from his perch with dark mouse eyes. Observing from a safe distance and no further.
“Travis.” Emma’s voice was sharp. “You’re dad asked you a question.”
“Sure,” Travis said in a timbre flat and bloodless. “I guess.”
“What do you got there, son?”
The boy watched his father with cold eyes, like the man was an acquaintance he couldn’t quite remember and then looked at the thing in his had. “Nothing.” Travis spun off the picnic table and ambled away towards the barn.
Jim took a step, about to call the boy back when Emma spoke. “Let him go.” Her arms folded tight like she was cold. “He’s had a rough time of it.”
“He’s scared of me.”
She looked at her feet. “He’s still in shock.”
“You are too.”
“No. God, no. It’s just—” Her hand swept over the ruins of their house. “It’s this. It’s like a death in the family.”
The wariness in her eyes, the tensed shoulders. Like someone waiting for a bomb to go off. I’ve lost them, he thought. They’re here but they’re long gone.
Emma chinned the trailer. “What do you think? Pretty sweet, huh? Harvey and Anna said it was ours for as long as we needed.”
“It’s nice.” He hated it but felt grateful. Anything will fit a naked man. His eyes drifted back to the ruins.
“What happened?” Emma blew the hair out of her eyes, deflating like she’d been holding her breath the whole time. “At the police station?”
“I told them what happened.”
“And that’s it? They just let you go?”
“They didn’t believe me.”
“The police think you’re lying?”
“No. They just have their own version of events and they’re sticking to it.” He kicked at the dirt. “Ray and McGrath and, I dunno, everyone else in town.”
Emma parted her mouth to say something but nothing came out. The crickets sounded louder than ever.
“I’m sorry, Emm,” he said, eyes still on the ground. “I couldn’t fight them anymore. So I told them what they wanted to hear.”
He watched his wife to see how she would react. She kept her gaze levelled on the ash pile and didn’t move. No reaction at all.
“You’re home now. That’s all that matters.”
Every muscle burned to touch her. To reach out, hold her. Anything. But he couldn’t. Spook her now and she’ll be gone for good.
“You must be starving,” she said, turning for the trailer. “I’ll start dinner. Can you fire up the barbecue?”
He watched her disappear inside and listened to the water gurgle and spurt as she ran the taps. He looked for Travis but the boy was nowhere in sight and he didn’t know where to go so he stood in the hot sun, in some halfway mark between the ashes and the double-wide trailer home.
It was almost funny. He had dug that second grave after all.
The way Emma and Travis looked at him now. He was down deep at the bottom of it and it would be a slow, thorny climb back out of this coffin hole if he was going to win them back.
A screech hooked his ear, shattering his thoughts. A turkey vulture squatted on the roof of the barn, spreading its wings in the sun and lifting one foot then the other. Its boiled-looking head turned and watched him.
He scrounged up a good sized rock and hurled it full bore at the obscene bird. It clattered short against the pitched roof and the vulture continued to dance its little dance as if the peak of the barn was too hot. He pitched another and the foul thing flapped up and flew away.
His shotgun was gone, lost in the fire but he would get another and when those ugly birds came back, he’d just start shooting. Blast them out of the sky and leave them to rot on the ground until his plough blades churned their carcasses into worm meal.
