have acted differently. But no other response was possible. They’d already cashed in their chips by saying no to the rifle.
‘Any of you fish?’ Sheldon asks.
The other hunter sitting next to him raises his hand. He is, however, reluctant. He is very fond of his fishing rod.
‘Give me the fishing line. And hurry up. Now, who’s got a knife?’
There is no response.
‘Each and every one of you weenies has a knife, and I know it. Now give me one.’
Tormod, his lower lip visibly extended, reaches so deeply into his pocket it looks as though he might extract an organ. He emerges with a small lock blade with brass bolsters and a clip blade. Sheldon takes it, feels its weight, and then opens it. He rubs his thumb across the edge, and then looks up at Tormod and frowns.
‘You should be ashamed of yourself for even owning this, let alone trying to pass it off on an old man. Now give me the real one. Come on, now.’
What arrives is a beautiful Hattori knife from Seki Japan with a mahogany handle, brass furniture, and a sharp AUS-8 fixed four-inch blade with full tang.
Sheldon nods. ‘That’s right,’ he says.
Standing in the soft earth, he finishes up by taking the largest green duffle bag and emptying its entire contents into the truck.
‘Oh, come on, man. Please? All we did was give you a ride.’
Sheldon takes the bag and a large fishing net he finds inside. He ignores their complaints.
‘I need a needle and thread. Who has a needle? You’re not leaving until I get one.’
With his newly acquired stash of items, which seem quite random to the hunters, Sheldon makes the men promise, one more time, that they will take Paul and the licence-plate number and his own ID to the police.
He looks at Paul, who is still sitting on the flatbed between Mads and Tormod.
Sheldon raises his hand to say goodbye.
Paul does not understand, and begins to cry.
Sheldon tries not to do the same.
Sheldon doesn’t have the heart to watch the truck drive off. If Paul is looking out the back window at him, if they can see each other grow smaller, and if Paul is crying, Sheldon will not be able to concentrate.
Not looking is no different, really, than not scratching. The consequences are the same, either way.
In a few moments, the sound of the diesel engine fades, and Sheldon is standing alone at the intersection where the main dirt road continues on and around the bend to the right, past the parked cars. The approach to the summer house is to his immediate right, and leads like a darkened medieval trail to the lair of a dragon.
‘What do we do now, Donny?’ asks Bill.
‘You’re still here?’
Bill shrugs. ‘I’m always here.’
‘That only condemns your inaction even more.’
‘The police are going to come eventually. Are you sure you want to go up there? I mean, really, what’s the point? You’re an old man. What can you possibly do?’
Sheldon sighs and does not argue the point. He knows it is true. He is hungry and weary. His head hurts. His arthritis is getting worse, and the only remedy he’s found that helps — raisins soaked in gin — isn’t available.
Sheldon leaves Bill standing at the intersection, and walks to the side of the road opposite the Mercedes and the Toyota. He crouches down and looks at the cars more intently.
‘What are you doing?’ Bill asks, more loudly this time.
‘Shut up, Bill.’
Sheldon crouches lower and — still unsatisfied with his view — finally succumbs to getting down on his hands and knees, hoping that eventually he’ll find a way to get back up.
‘Sheldon, seriously…’
‘Shut up, Bill.’
Sheldon crawls slowly to the car and stops when he finds his first footprint. It looks like a sneaker, and has a strange symbol of a check mark above what appears to be a small apple. It is located in the centre of the shoe, and is helpfully distinct from the other footprints he finds.
The other, on the passenger side of the Toyota, is a workman’s boot with its typical diamond-cloved imprint and raised heel. Sheldon names him Logger Boy.
Apple and Logger Boy came from the Toyota, and clearly milled around for a while. The footprints are all around the vehicle and facing every direction. Maybe they were waiting for something. Both are too big to be a woman’s foot. Each looks a little too small to be Lars’s.
From the Mercedes’ driver’s side there is one clear set of footprints as well. They are unmistakably military. They have the ubiquitous rectangular tracks edging the front of the boot around five clovers and a thick, elevated heel in the back. They could be from almost any army, or they could have been easily bought at surplus shops. But Sheldon suspects they weren’t.
‘Sheldon, what are you doing?’
‘I’m learning. I’m an old dog on my hands and knees, and I may very well be nuts, but I’m learning.’ He rotates, slowly, to a sitting position in the middle of the road, and wipes his hands.
‘Three men: Mr Apple, Logger Boy, and Lucifer. Lucifer got here first. Got out of the car and walked into the woods. At some point, he came back and connected with the other two. Then they all went into the woods.’
‘How do you know they connected?’
‘Here.’ Sheldon points vaguely towards the rear of the Toyota. ‘Lucifer’s footprint is superimposed on Logger Boy’s. The form of his boot is clear, but the edge of Logger Boy’s is deformed. That means he stepped there afterwards.’
‘You came a long way with that boy to say goodbye so easily.’
‘It wasn’t easy. It was necessary. Now help me up.’
‘Can’t.’
‘Why not? You busy?’
‘You know why.’
‘Oh, I see.’
Before the big push to get back to his feet, Sheldon takes the knife from its sheath and proceeds to puncture the two tyres on his side of the car.
Sheldon then uses the door of the Mercedes to right himself. Once up, and on a whim, he tries the handle, but it’s locked. Inside, he sees old blue-vinyl seats and a gear shift with the numbers worn from overuse.
With care, he walks over to the Toyota and punctures its tyres, too.
When satisfied with his handiwork, he sheaths the knife and puts it back in the satchel. He walks back to the centre of the road and collects the other items he’d taken from the hunters, and slips into the woods like an old sniper.
The forest is dense here, and the ground is uneven. There are short mounds and small drops where glacial outcrops have been worn smooth by silent centuries of rain and wind. A blessed cool breeze that once started on the Siberian tundra rolls in low and crisply under the thick canopy of the poplars and majestic oaks.
Sheldon proceeds as silently as possible to a rocky enclave invisible to the two roads, and sets to work as quickly as his poor hands and eyes will allow.
He takes out the knife again and jabs it through the duffle bag near its bottom, and slits it open the way an experienced hand disembowels prey. He lays it open on the ground, with the bottom of the bag facing away from him. Laying the blade down, he takes the large fishing net and lays it over the duffle bag. Donny makes allowances for movement and stretch, and then cuts away the remaining net that hangs beyond the bag.
He inhales the cool breeze, and holds it in his lungs until the pain starts. Then he releases.
At New River, in 1950, he’d spent hours on the firing range. The firing point wasn’t covered by the sort of long lean-tos that shelter golfers as they pitch their shots deep into narrow fairways. At the Marine shooting range, the men fired from a small mound and lay in the dirt, or the dust or the mud or the grime, all depending on Mother
