assume that if I had moved out of the house I would have taken them with me. All this he would have thought of, sitting by himself in the house day after day, and of something else as well. And that was, if I had a place reasonably comfortable and well set up (not just living in the woods), I was not so likely to give up after a few days and move back to the house—to stop the “stupidity”, as he called it, unless he did something to force me to do it.
The sun was getting ready to set when I saw him again. He came round from behind the building; he must have gone out of the back door again; and he carried something in his hand. In the waning light, without the binoculars, I could not see what it was; only that it was small; it was not the gun.
He walked to the front door and stood before it. Because he was under the porch roof, in the shadow, it was hard to see just what he was doing. But he seemed to be examining the door itself, and even reached out and touched the frame with his hand. He put down whatever it was he was holding, went inside, and came out again almost immediately, now carrying something else. For the next fifteen minutes he stood there working busily, at what I could not see but only guess.
At the end of that time he made one more brief trip into the store and emerged with the gun; he started the tractor and drove off towards the house. When I heard the motor fade in the distance and finally sputter and die, I stood up and came out from behind my bush, not forgetting my milk and fish. It was getting dark.
I considered going on to the cave, but I was too curious. I wanted to see if what I guessed and feared was right. I walked down to the store to look, and it was. He had put padlocks on both front and back doors, and both were locked.
That night, back at my fireplace, I changed my plans and cooked the fish. I wrapped the chicken in a piece of paper and put it in a cool place in the cave. I was thinking about the padlocks without any keys and the tractor without any key. At first I thought: to go into the store, and to use the tractor, from now on I will have to ask permission each time. But then I had a worse thought:
He was not going to give me any of the keys at all, to anything.
So I ate the fish, which would not keep, and saved the chicken, which would, for a few days at least.
Chapter Twenty-three
It was the next morning he shot me.
I woke at dawn as usual, moved my blanket and sleeping bag to the cave, and ate the rest of the fish for breakfast—cold, but cooked, not so bad. As I ate I cheered up a little, and thought possibly, just possibly, I had been too pessimistic about the padlocks. I knew that he had a compulsion for taking charge of things, for saving things, for rationing them out in an orderly manner so they would last—like the V-belt, the petrol, the fertilizer, and so on. A long-term view. And he did not trust me to do that (perhaps rightly)—hence the locks. I thought: maybe that was all it meant.
In any case I had to find out, fearful though I was of the answer, because the other alternative was that he had thought of a simple way to force me to come back. Starvation. I could, not help considering that, too. If it was his plan—what would I do? I had food enough in the cave for a couple of weeks, maybe longer if I did not eat much. I could fish. I knew where berries grew. I could possibly shoot a rabbit. But it was obvious that in the long run I could not live.
And what about the chickens, the eggs, the milk, the garden? Would he somehow lock them up, too?
There was little point in wondering. I had to find out.
So, feeling worried and quite depressed, I took my milk can and my sack and walked to the house, going the long way round. It seemed especially important now to keep him from finding where I stayed.
As I walked, I had another thought: perhaps, in a way, these new things he had done were my own fault. It seemed that the more I stayed away from him the more determined he was that I come back. Perhaps I could yield a little. There are people who cannot stand being alone; perhaps he was acting from despair. Why should I not, then, offer to talk to him, if he wanted me to, say for an hour or so in the evenings—he on the porch, I on the road? It could do no harm. There was no reason I should not be as friendly as safety permitted. It was a sensible plan, and made me feel better.
When I came in sight of the house I thought: should I just go about my work as usual, or should I let him know straight away that I had seen the padlocks, and ask for the key? I decided to ask, and get it settled. It was, in fact, time to bring him some more stores anyway. And at the same time I could suggest my new idea.
I know now that he was watching as I came up the road and was expecting me to come to the house. Not that it made any great difference to his plans. I would have had to ask eventually.
I remember now that my father once said that great events have a way of happening uneventfully. They slip up on you and are over before you know they have happened. This could hardly be called a great event, I suppose, but it was for me an important and terrible one, and it happened almost without my knowing it.
I stood there in front of the house as I had before, watching the front door, thinking I would go and knock if he did not appear. There was a sharp snapping noise. I was wondering what and where it could be when I felt a hard tug on the leg of my blue jeans and a stinging pain in my right ankle. The noise came again. Not until then did I look up and see the shiny blue rifle barrel, very thin, the upstairs window six inches open and his face behind it, hidden by the curtain.
The second shot missed, hit the tarmac a foot behind me and flew away humming like a bee.
I dropped my milk can and ran for my life; the can hit the road with a clang and rolled away; Faro, in the house, hearing the shots and the clanging, barked in a frenzy. I dashed for the trees beside Burden Creek, expecting each second another bullet to come crashing into me—because for the next thirty yards my back was still a clear target. But he fired no more. I even thought I heard the window shut, but did not pause to look.
In the trees I felt reasonably safe; I made my way, dodging from tree to tree on the far side of the road. At the bend, where I could look back and see that he was not following, I sat down to examine my ankle. The bullet had gone through the leg of my blue jeans, leaving two small round holes, and the sock underneath showed a narrow, straight tear through which blood was slowly oozing. I removed my sneaker and sock. It was a small, shallow cut, barely through the skin, bordered on both sides by a white area, very sore to touch, which was going to be a bruise.
As wounds go, it was not serious; in fact while I sat there looking, the bleeding virtually stopped. Still it brought to mind a lack in my supplies: I had no bandage, no disinfectant of any kind. There was some in the house, some in the store, both now out of reach. Then I remembered. I did have soap at the cave. I could wash the cut, at least, and put on a clean sock. I tied my shoe on loosely and walked on.
As I washed my ankle I thought, it was a most peculiar wound, and puzzling. He had fired two shots; if he was trying to hit me, both had been aimed much too low. He might just be a very bad shot. But more likely, he was not trying to hit me, but scare me away. With me standing stock still (for the first shot, at least), and him in a prepared position, waiting, with the windowsill for support—nobody could be that bad a shot.
And yet, in a way, that made him an even worse shot than before. Anyone, shooting, can miss when trying to hit something. But to hit when trying to miss it—
And then, sickeningly, the truth came to me.
The idea, the scene, the things that happened in the next minutes, the next hour, were so bad that I do not like to think about them because they come back to me like a nightmare and I am living them over again.
I am sitting beside the pond with my sock in my hand and my shoe beside me, waiting for my foot to dry. The piece of soap is on a stone at the edge of the water.
And I think: he was not trying to miss. He wants to shoot me in the leg so I cannot walk. He wants to maim, not to kill me. So that he can catch me. It is a simple plan, a terrible one. Starvation will force me to come to the house or the store. And the gun will keep me from going away again. He will try again and again.
And I think: why must he do it?
As I sit there by the pond I hear the tractor start. I know by some instinct before I see it what is going to happen next. I put on my sock and my shoe as fast as I can and run up the hill to the bushes where I hid
