“And you’re the Indian?” He pulled his head back by the hair.
Vinnie didn’t flinch. “Yes.”
“Start talking.”
“About?”
“Why did you call Red?”
“We were looking for my brother,” Vinnie said. “Red hired him as a guide.”
“Yeah, I know that.”
“Then what do you want from us?”
Easy, Vinnie. I tried to catch his eye.
“What I want from you, you stupid fucking Indian, is the whole story.” He got a tighter hold on Vinnie’s hair, came closer to him, put his face right next to Vinnie’s. “What the fuck happened up there?”
“Did the police call you?”
“They called his wife. They said he was buried in the ground up there.”
“They all were. My brother, your brother. All of them.”
The man shook his head. “Who did this?”
“We don’t know,” Vinnie said. “We know a man named Gannon was involved. That’s all.”
“No. No, that’s not good enough. You hear me? That’s not fucking good enough. My brother is dead. And I want to know why.”
“So do I,” Vinnie said. His voice was even, his eyes clear. There was a supernatural calm all over him, and it was scaring the hell out of me.
“So talk,” the man said. “Tell me what you know about this. You gotta know something. You were up there, weren’t you? Were you involved in this? Was this something you and your Indian brother did?”
“No,” Vinnie said. “We didn’t. And you can stop talking like that. If you want to kill us, go ahead. After what we’ve been through, I don’t even care anymore. Go ahead and put a bullet in my head if you want, but stop talking about my brother that way.”
That threw him a little bit. His eyes got wider, and I was sure he was about to do something stupid. It was a good time to speak up.
“We found him,” I said. “We found your brother.”
He looked over the truck bed at me. “Where?”
“Out in the woods. Where Gannon had buried him, along with the others.”
He took a few hard breaths. Everything else was still, all around us. “You found Red?”
“That man you’re holding on to, you see the bandages on his face?”
“Yeah?”
“Gannon shot him. He blew part of his ear right off.”
He looked closer. “Okay. Then what?”
If I was gonna do this, I had to sell it all the way. It seemed like our only way out. “You wanna know what this man did to Gannon? You wanna hear what this man did to the man who killed your brother?”
“Yes, I wanna hear it.”
“He took a long, heavy stick,” I said, “and he sharpened it. I distracted Gannon, so Vinnie could sneak up behind him. We didn’t have any other weapons. You understand what I’m saying? All we had were sticks.”
“Go on.”
“While Gannon was shooting at me, Vinnie came up behind him and ran that stick right through his back. If he had gotten him in the heart, he would have died almost immediately, but that’s not the way it happened.”
“How did it go?” he said. “Tell me.”
“The stick must have gone through his lung. The blood was such a bright color. He was pumping that blood right out of his lungs, all over the ground.”
“How long did it take him to die?”
“A long time,” I said. “He was bleeding on that ground for a long, long time.”
“Were his eyes open? Did he say anything to you?”
“His eyes were open. He tried to say something, but he couldn’t. He was drowning in his own blood. He was choking on it.”
There were tears in the man’s eyes. “You’re telling me this man killed the man who killed my brother.”
“Yes,” I said. “He ran a stick through his chest and he died a horrible, painful death. That’s what this man did.”
“This man right here.” He pulled the gun away from his head.
“He did it for his brother,” I said. “And for your brother. And the other men. And me. He saved my life.”
The man let go of Vinnie. He bent over and put his hands on his knees, the gun pointing at the ground. He took a few wet breaths through his nose and shook his head. “Is that it?” he said. “Is that all there is? What was this guy’s name again?”
“Gannon. Hank Gannon.”
“He did all this by himself?”
“We don’t know that,” I said. I figured, what the hell, go ahead and push your luck. “Maybe you can help us figure it out.”
The man stood up straight and looked me in the eye. “What do you mean?”
“We’re just wondering. If somebody else was involved, maybe it was one of the other men in the hunting party. Or at least somebody else that you’d know about.”
He thought hard. He looked past me, at the big man standing behind me. “What do you think, Jay? Who could it be?”
I sneaked a look at him. He was standing there with both hands on his gun. He was looking at the ground. “I’m just thinking,” he said.
“What?”
“You know.”
“No, man. Are you serious?”
“What are we talking about?” I said.
The sudden look on his face told me I was pushing it a little too far.
“Never mind,” I said. “We just want some answers. As much as you do.”
“Well, don’t you worry about it,” he said. “If we find out there’s somebody else still walking around, we’ll make that person pay. Believe me, we’ll turn them fucking inside out.”
He stood there for a long time, breathing hard and shaking his head. The big guy crossed his arms and looked around at the trees. I wasn’t sure what to do. Ask them if we could go? Invite them down to the Glasgow for a drink?
“I was supposed to be up there,” he finally said. “Those guys never go hunting without me. Until this time.”
It made sense. That’s why there were five men instead of six.
“I should have been there,” he said. “I should be in the ground with Red.”
The big man looked at the sky and shook his head.
“I hope you guys understand why we’re here,” he said. He put the gun back in his coat. “I’ve been going a little crazy ever since I found out. I just have to do something about it, you know what I mean?”
“Yes,” I said. “I understand.”
“We drove all the way up there,” he said. “And then all the way home. And then when we heard… Fuck, we drove all the way here. We waited around for you. This is some kind of little shit town you got here.”
He looked down at Vinnie’s feet. “What’s with the slippers?”
“It’s a long story,” I said.
“Yeah, well, we got some things to do now. We gotta go talk to some people. Let’s get out of here, Jay…”
They went back to their car.
“Hey,” he said, standing in the glare of the headlights. His voice caught as he asked us his final questions. “Is it true what they said? Did my brother really get set on fire up there?”
“Yes,” I said. “They were burned.”
