In one fluid motion, a step and thrust, Fish launched his spear at the chickadee. The spear shot toward the bird and ricocheted from the stone ledge behind it. As the bird sprung into the air, another spear shot toward it, diverting its flight path. The spear buried itself on top of the ledge.
“Dang!” yelled Bread. He was grinning despite his disappointment. “Almost got that one!”
Fish frowned. Bread’s playfulness seemed out of place. “No,” Fish whispered to himself. “We did not.”
The two boys walked out from their hiding places and retrieved their spears. Bread pulled himself up the ledge a bit to reach his. Fish stooped to inspect the tip. He’d make a better spear tomorrow, use the barlow to whittle a barbed point. He inhaled and smelled the earth beneath him, the river around him. He frowned at the spear tip. It was dirt-covered and blunted. This wasn’t just about food. There was still a half can of tuna and a sausage stick across the river. They would eat tonight. But Fish felt dogged by something darker, some menacing doubt. He felt a pang of fear and loneliness. There was something very grave about missing throws at chickadees on islands in rivers. He wondered what Adam must have felt like that first night outside the garden.
“Fish!” Bread hissed, dropping to the ground beside the stone ledge, waving frantically for Fish to join him in hiding.
Fish crouched. Even in the fading light, Bread’s muddied face had turned noticeably pale. Bread was not playing a game. Fish ducked closer to his friend.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“There’s something up there.”
“Where?”
“Shhh.” Bread’s eyes motioned upward. “Up the ledge. Someone’s up there. Or something. It was staring straight at me. He has horns.”
Fish clutched his spear in both hands. Bread started to shake like he did around his dad. Fish got his feet beneath him and then peeked, ever so slightly, over the rise into the thicket of spruce. He came back down.
“Bread, I don’t see anything up there.”
Bread shook.
Fish breathed. “Do we run for it?” he asked. He didn’t like the look of Bread balled up and trembling like this. He wanted the bold Bread back, shimmering and smiling on the riverbank. It bothered him like Adam bothered him, like missing throws at chickadees did. It just wasn’t right.
“He’ll get us if we run,” said Bread. “He saw me.”
Fish took a few more breaths, and then he got mad. “Then we fight him,” he said.
Bread shook and breathed through his pursed lips.
“Bread, let’s fight him.” Fish nodded at him. “Okay?”
Bread nodded.
“On three.”
Bread pulled himself up into a crouch, his head held low. Fish whispered—one, two—and the boys charged up the rise, screaming as loudly as they could, brandishing their spears. The spruce branches were thick atop the slope, and Fish yelled and thrashed as he pushed through their spiny grasp. He hacked the limbs with one hand and stabbed his spear blindly into the trees with the other. He pushed his shoulder through a tangle of branches and roared at the sky and the ground. His heart beat sloppily in his chest and ears. He found some good footing, drove his spear into a particularly thick bunch of pine, bellowed his battle cry, and ran smack into the immovable torso of a man, a thing, with a skull for a face. The thing wore ragged coveralls on its bony body and deer antlers on its head.
Fish’s cry caught in his throat, and the last thing he remembered seeing was the intricate, lace-like hole of the beast’s fleshless nasal socket, and then trees—pine branches spiraling upward as he fell beneath them into deep and lasting darkness.
SHERIFF CAL HOBBLED BENEATH A MOONLIT PINE BRANCH AND pulled the horse behind him. It was dark now, and he walked through the brush of the riverbank with his flashlight in hand. He knew his flashlight had a run time of about two hours, and he had about nine miles to get back to his truck—four to the crossing and five to the farm. He could do it in two hours if he walked at a fast pace, but there was no way to walk quickly in the waist-high ferns hiding stumps and rocks, the tangles of saplings. He never did find his other boot. He limped by moonlight whenever the terrain allowed it. His tailbone ached. He cursed the horse. The mare grumbled back if Cal pulled it after him between spruce trees.
“How do you like it?” he said to the horse. “It’s called payback. Not that you would understand that.” Cal found himself talking to the horse more often now that the sun had set. The woods were downright frightening at night, and Cal felt shamed enough to admit it. Every unseen noise, every snapped twig, every creak of a tree trunk put Cal on edge. Man was meant to sit by a fire at night, or inside a house with a TV on, not wander around a black forest filled with black bears, and coyotes, and marshy shorelines that filled his only boot with water when he got too close to the river.
Cal stood still a moment with the reins in his hand and took a drink from the small bottle of whiskey he’d tucked into his saddlebag. The moon, round and clear, watched him drink it. Cal saluted the moon’s accusation, took another pull, capped the bottle, and tucked it back into his chest pocket. No sense trying to fake it, he thought.
“You couldn’t understand payback, Mr. Horse, because you are a stupid animal, and I am a man. And when we get back I am going to hook you to a plow and make you drag a field.” It was difficult walking. To the best of Cal’s knowledge, he’d covered about three miles. The walking was even slower going now, because every hundred yards or so, Cal stepped as
