LOOKING AFTER FAMILY
The funeral was closed casket. With a body that mangled, the mortician couldn’t do much to make it presentable. Douglas Bennett was forty-eight years old when he died.
His son shot dead the man who killed him. Not that anyone believed a man could do what had been done to Douglas. The police assumed it was an animal—a bear, or maybe even a wolf—so when they saw the second body with a bullet wound through the head and sixteen-year-old Cormac Bennett holding the rifle, they thought they had a delinquent on their hands. Maybe the kid just snapped out of grief and rage at losing his father.
Then the coroner found Douglas Bennett’s blood and skin under the victim’s fingernails and human flesh between his teeth. The kid pleaded self-defense through his court-appointed attorney. The DA dropped the charges.
Douglas Bennett’s sister, Ellen O’Farrell, took the boy in.
Ellen, her husband David, and their son Ben walked on eggshells around him. He had killed a man, whatever the circumstances might have been, and at his age he could go either way: recover and move on, or spiral down into psychosis. They didn’t talk about Douglas and what had happened; they tried to pretend everything was normal. They kept Cormac busy.
Ben didn’t want to keep quiet. He was crazy to ask his cousin what it had been like, how it had felt, did he want to do it again, and what had
Ben was doing homework at the chrome and Formica kitchen table after supper. His mother was washing dishes in the kitchen. Cormac helped her, drying plates and stacking them on the counter for her to put away. Tall, lanky, he slouched and had a lazy way of moving. His limbs seemed to hang loosely.
David came in from the mudroom attached to the kitchen, wearing his heavy work coat and putting on his cowboy hat. “Cormac? You want to help me put out hay?”
Cormac set the towel on the counter. “Yes, sir.”
Ben stood, jostling the table. “I’ll help, too.”
“No, Ben, you stay and do your homework,” his father said.
“But—”
“It’s cold, and I don’t want you out in it.”
He disappeared through the door. Cormac followed, pausing a moment to look back at Ben, who sat and ducked his gaze, blushing, not wanting to get caught staring. His father didn’t have to tell him off like a little kid in front of Cormac. But Ben supposed he’d asked for it. He’d known what his father would say.
The numbers on his algebra worksheet seemed to fade and jumble together.
A moment later his mother stood beside him, drying her hands.
“He’s right, Ben. It’s too cold out. You know he really wants you to stay in and study hard.”
“Yeah. I know.” He didn’t care about the cold. He wasn’t sick anymore.
“You’re going to be the first one in the family to go to college. It means the world to him. And me, too.” She squeezed his shoulder and went back to the counter to put dishes away.
He knew, but college was such a long way off, and it wouldn’t get him the respect of someone like Cormac.
Ben told his mother he was reading for school, but he turned the light out, sat up by the window in his bedroom, and stared over the nighttime ranch. The moon was almost full and made the patches of snow scattered across the prairie glow silver. The posts and rails of the corral fences were shadows, streaks of dark in the moonlight.
The pickup, its bed empty of hay now, drove around the corner and parked by the barn on the other side of the corrals. His father and Cormac jumped out of the cab and came toward the house. They looked good together. Right. The burly rancher and the tall kid walking beside him. They weren’t even related by blood and they looked more like father and son than David and Ben did. Ben was scrawny, not strong enough for ranch work. Not that he’d had a chance to prove himself or grow into the work. Better suited for books, they’d all decided.
He turned on the light, sat on his bed leaning against a pillow, held his book, and tried to look like he’d been that way for the last couple hours. When Cormac came to live with them, they’d squeezed a spare bed into the room. Ben had lost his only private place on the ranch.
Cormac opened the door.
Ben glanced up, he hoped casually. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Cormac said.
Ben couldn’t think of anything to say after that.
He couldn’t remember what they’d talked about when they were kids. Movies and TV, probably. They’d seen each other every spring—Cormac’s family had always come to help with branding the calves—and at Thanksgiving. They were about the same age and hung out with each other then. Ben could remember playing king of the hill, riding ponies, and taking family trips to Grand Lake. But those times were a while ago, and the person sleeping in the next bed seemed like someone different.
He put down his book and turned out the light. Moonlight bled into the room around the edges of the curtain.
Cormac went through the motions. Wake up, wash and dress, function for the day. Sleep at night. The rest was numb. If he didn’t think, he didn’t have to react.
His aunt and her family were good to take him in, house him and feed him and all. He paid them back by doing chores. It was how he’d been taught. You got more out of life being polite than not. He couldn’t forget what he’d been taught. Especially now.
Full-moon night, he went hunting, like he’d been taught. Full moon was when they came out, and there was no one left to do it but Cormac.
The cops told him he shouldn’t handle guns anymore, even though he’d been hunting for years, helping with Dad’s outfitting business. Too many questions about him and guns. They wanted him to keep his nose clean, they said.
Cormac didn’t care.
Uncle David, a little more practical and a lot more knowledgeable about how they led their lives, had let him keep his rifle. For keeping coyotes off the property, he said. Didn’t matter, as long as Cormac had access to it. He had the bullets, too. His dad’s bullets. The cops hadn’t known about those.
Aunt Ellen and Uncle David hadn’t asked him about the man he shot. They must have known what it was he’d shot, even if none of them could tell the cops about it. They’d understand about him going out now.
He wrapped up a slice of beef from the fridge and carried it with him in a paper bag.
With all the sense of righteousness in the world, he quietly made his way to the mudroom and loaded the silver bullets into his rifle.
“Hey.”
Cormac looked up, too distracted to be startled by Ben’s appearance. He stood there, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, a stripe of moonlight from the window slicing across him, his thin frame, shaggy hair.
“What’re you doing?” Ben asked.
“Nothing,” Cormac said automatically. He snapped the chamber closed.
“Can I go with you?”
Ben stood with his hands clenched, almost trembling, looking a lot younger than he was. He wanted outside so badly. Folks kept him on a chain, and Cormac wondered why. Ranch kid oughta be tough as nails. He’d slow Cormac down, if he came along. Couldn’t be sure he knew anything.
