Ask the Parrot

The sound of the shot was a dead flat crack in the open air, like two blocks of wood slapped together, without echo.

“Fred, don’t!”

Too late; there was one hoarse scream, and then a great turbulence on the forest floor. Parker moved forward toward that thrashing. To his left, Thiemann moved more cautiously, bent low.

Whatever had been hit was now lunging around out there, agitating the shrubbery, making a racket. Parker got to him in time to see the blood still bubble from the hole in the man’s back, the color of wine, the thickness of motor oil. The man, facedown on the leaves and branches, jerked his arms and legs as though swimming through the woods.

And then he stopped. The blood from the hole in his back bubbled less, and pulsed to an end as Thiemann arrived, panting as though he’d run a mile. He stared at the man on the ground as intently as if he’d just given him birth. His voice hoarse, he said, “Which one is he?”

“Neither,” Parker said.

Lindahl came to join them, from farther to the left. “How is he?”

“Dead,” Parker said.

Thiemann was trying to get the artist’s drawings out of his pocket without letting go of his rifle. “Damn,” he said. “Damn! Tom, hold this a sec.”

Lindahl took Thiemann’s rifle, and Thiemann got out the two papers, unfolded them, and went down on one knee beside the dead man. He was clearly reluctant to touch the body, but had to turn the head in order to see the face.

“He’s not one of them,” Parker said.

Thiemann wasn’t ready for that, not yet. This man on the ground in front of them was small, scrawny, old, with thin gray filthy hair and a thick gray untended beard. He wore tattered gray work pants and a moth-eaten old blue sweater, stained everywhere. Lace up black shoes too big for him were on his feet, without socks, the ankles dirty and scabbed from old cuts.

The face, when Thiemann used both hands to turn the dead man’s head, was bone thin, deeply lined, with scabs around the mouth and under the eyes. The eyes stared in horror at something a long way off.

Thiemann squirmed backward, rubbing his fingers on grass and leaves. “He’s some old bum,” he said. His voice sounded the way the dead man’s staring eyes looked.

Lindahl said, “Fred? You didn’t get a good look at him?”

“He was . . . running. What the hell was he running for?”

Parker said, “Men with guns chased him.”

“Shit.” Thiemann was trying to find some rope to grasp, something, some way to get his balance back. “Doesn’t he know? The whole countryside knows. Everybody’s out looking for the bank robbers. Nobody wants him, what the hell’s he running for?” He stood leaning, looking at nothing, arms at his sides.

Lindahl said gently, “Fred, that guy wasn’t up on the news. He’s up in here, he’s some old wino, he goes down sometimes and cadges or steals, but he doesn’t keep up with current events, Fred.”

Thiemann said, “I’m feeling, I can’t, I gotta . . .”

Parker and Lindahl grabbed him, one on each side, and eased him down until he was seated on the ground, the dead man just to his left. Not looking in that direction, he pushed himself around in a quarter circle until he was faced away from the body. “Do you think,” he said, much more humbly than before, “do you think we should bring— it—him, bring him out? Or should we just tell the troopers where he is?”

“No,” Parker said.

Thiemann looked up. “What?”

“We don’t tell the troopers,” Parker said. “We don’t tell anybody.”

Lindahl was holding his own rifle in his right hand, Thiemann’s in his left. Looking warily toward Parker, moving as though he wished that left hand were free, he said, “What do you mean, Ed?”

“They told us,” Parker said, “don’t exchange gunfire. Even if this was one of them, we weren’t supposed to shoot. He isn’t one of them, he isn’t armed, he was shot in the back.” Parker looked at Thiemann. “If you go to the troopers with this, you’ll do time.”

“But—” Thiemann stared left and right, looking for exits. “That isn’t right. We’re like deputies.”

“Search,” Parker said. “Observe. Don’t engage. If you go to the law, Fred, it’s bad for you, and it’s bad for us.”

That snagged Thiemann’s attention. “Bad for you? Jesus, how is this bad for you?”

Parker could not have the law interested in this trio of hunters. He wouldn’t survive five minutes of being looked at by the law in a serious way. But what Thiemann needed was a different reason. “You shot an unarmed man in the back,” he said, to twist that knife a little. “A man who isn’t one of the ones we’re looking for. Tom and I were right here with you, and we didn’t stop you. That means we’re part of it.” Looking at Lindahl, Parker said, without moving his rifle, “You know what I’m saying, Tom. It’s just as important for us. This thing didn’t happen.”

Lindahl, face paler than before, understood both what Parker was telling him and what Parker was telling Thiemann. He said, “My God, Ed, you mean, just leave him here? You can’t do that to a human being.”

“Tom,” Parker said, “what that guy was doing to himself was just as bad, only slower. He didn’t have much of a life, and there wasn’t a lot of it left. What difference does it make if he dies back there in that ruin from exposure or starvation or DTs or liver poisoning, or if he dies out here from Fred’s bullet? He’s dead, and the animals around here’ll take care of the body.”