focus well enough to locate him. His whispers faded and then disappeared altogether.
With my completely fucked-up sense of time, I can’t say how long I just stood there, deciding what to do and how to do it. Eventually I forced myself to move, taking small, measured steps to test the ground beneath my feet. I needed to find a place to wait the fox hunt out, to rest, but I had to choose wisely. These woods were dark under the best of circumstances and with the fog, it was impossible to see more than fifteen or twenty feet ahead of me. Bullets would be flying and there was always a chance of ricochet. The fox was actually in the least danger of any of us.
Walking did me no good, so I got on hands and knees and felt my way. I found a spot where some trees had fallen over each other to create a kind of barrier with a hollow just large enough to accommodate me. With a wall of big pines in front of the hollow, I felt I’d be pretty safe there until the sun came up. I lay down on my left side, the wet pine straw making a less than comfortable mattress. It didn’t take long for me to stop noticing the discomfort or the dampness or anything else.
I didn’t sleep, exactly, because I was conscious of occasional gunshots echoing through the trees, twigs snapping under foot. I also heard voices, passing footsteps. How close by, I could not say. And though I wasn’t asleep, I wasn’t awake either. Each sound seemed to set my mind off in another direction. Mostly I confused myself with Terry McGuinn, envisioning him, us, in the hyper-reality I’d created in the pages of the book.
McGuinn’s prayers were answered with the Almighty’s usual mix of mercy and malevolence. There were no lurking branches beneath the waterline on which he might be skewered, but the current did conspire to twist his body in such a manner as to ensure his wrecked left shoulder would absorb the full brunt of the impact against the felled tree that lay across the river, pushing him to the falls. When his shoulder smacked into the tree, the explosion of pain stiffened him so fierce it near snapped him in half. He’d never experienced the likes of it before and when the agony subsided enough for him to snatch a breath, he realized his bladder had let go. He laughed through chattering teeth.
“That’s right,” he said, looking skyward, “why impale me, for fook’s sake, when you can favor me with small indignities? This can’t be the extent of me punishment for the trail of bodies I’ve left in me wake, can it?” The Lord, he thought, may have chosen the Hebrews, but his sense of irony was purely Irish.
Now that his little moment with God had passed, he had to get himself out of the water. As the pain of the impact with the tree lessened, he realized he could not feel his legs and that his good arm was leaden and stinging like a basket of bees. But this wasn’t about pain any longer. Another few moments in the water would be his undoing, so he willed his right arm onto the tree. It was no good. Most of the bark had been stripped away by the pounding of the water and the exposed wood was as slippery as ice. Finally, his groping hand fell upon the jagged knob of a branch that had been torn away by the current. His hand anchored to the knob, he talked his near-frozen legs into feeling for a rock or some refuse he might use to propel himself up out of the water and onto the tree.
Bang! Something heavy-a smaller tree or orphaned canoe, perhaps-slammed into him, pressing the wind out of his lungs and nearly sending him back under. But Terry McGuinn, calling on whatever strength he held in reserve, kept himself up and eyed the flotsam that had almost cast him to his fate. He had been wrong, as wrong as he had ever been, for the thing that had hit him with such fury was neither a tree nor a canoe. It was the body of the poor footballer Zoe had lured out of the bar less than two hours ago. The bullet wound had destroyed the lad’s once- handsome face, but the shine of his wet, rich black skin under the moonlight showed his beautifully sculpted muscles, muscles now as useless as the prayers of the Brit soldiers who had kneeled before McGuinn and begged for mercy.
McGuinn bowed his head over the body, not in prayer, but in frustration. It was his attempt to save the lad that had gotten his own self shot in the shoulder and caused him to go tumbling into the river. With a gentle pat goodbye, Terry maneuvered the lad under the tree and sent the body on its way. As he did so, a bullet bit into the pulp of the tree not a few centimeters from his hand. He had no more time to mourn the boy. It was his life at stake now and he was determined not to die on someone else’s terms.
I’m not sure what roused me finally. It might have been the snapping of a twig, the echo of another gunshot, or the sound of soft steps on the forest floor. My headache was better, if not fully gone, and the fog had lifted both inside and outside my skull. The sky was lightening in preparation for dawn, but I was still a little disoriented and stiff from the awkward position I’d had to keep myself in. Then things got very real all at once.
I heard footsteps, rapid footsteps coming my way. I forced myself up out of the little hollow to peek over the fallen trees that had sheltered me. And there, two hundred or so feet away, running right at me was the fox. It was impossible to mistake that bulky suit. Bulky suit or not, the fox ran gracefully through the woods. One big problem with that suit was the eye slit in the face mask. It didn’t allow for much peripheral vision and when running, it wouldn’t allow for very good vision straight ahead either. The fox hadn’t seen me.
I tucked my head back behind the trees, pulled the.38 out of my waistband, and checked that my one round was in the right chamber. I had to act quickly now as dawn couldn’t be more than a minute or two away and the fox would soon be on me. Figuring the fox might try to take cover where I had passed the last few hours and that he wouldn’t be able to leap over the top, especially not in that suit, I crawled around to the side of the felled trees that followed the downhill slope. That was the path of least resistance and even if the fox turned in the other direction, I would have a pretty clear shot at his back.
I did what I had done during Cutthroat and made a bipod of my arms, but as I took square aim at the fox, something struck me. There was a familiarity in the fox’s gait, things about the way it moved that I recognized.
I yanked the straps and pulled off her face mask. I’d been right. She was breathing hard, her face wet with perspiration and twisted in frustration. Still, her mouth smiled a little bit up at me. But before I could say a word, another figure appeared, standing above us. Jim.
Twenty-Three
Meg called on Thanksgiving Eve, two weeks after the Fox Hunt. I had finally gotten past all of my concussion-related symptoms. In spite of the pain of playing Cutthroat and the disorientation of Fox Hunt, it was worth it. Both had opened my eyes to new possibilities for the book and the cursor no longer mocked me. I’d incorporated both experiences into the book and riffed on that scene of McGuinn in the river. I don’t know if I dreamed it or hallucinated it, but whatever state I was in when I conceived it, I loved the idea of McGuinn caught in a deadly cycle of violence where he tries to stop the killing. The outline and synopsis seemed to write themselves and new pages poured out of me. The world I had created for McGuinn was paradise, a redemption of bullets.
The most difficult thing I had to do during those days was to call Meg and beg for an extension to her arbitrary deadline. I repeated the lies Renee and I told the ER doctor about my falling off a ladder and sustaining a concussion. Meg gladly gave me a week. Although I’d met the new deadline, I hadn’t heard back from her since. I just assumed all my maneuvering to get a new book deal had fucked everything up. Surprisingly, I was okay with that. I kept on teaching my classes, writing the book, shooting with Jim, and playing house with Renee. I didn’t start drinking again or looking for coke or someone new to fuck. I almost qualified for Zen mastership.
I’d missed one turn in the chapel, but had shot once last week. Though the thrill wasn’t gone, it was going. After playing Cutthroat and Fox Hunt, the chapel seemed tame and my rush was a bit less intense. The junkie’s dilemma: I’d hit that wall junkies always hit. No matter what anyone tells you, all addictions are the same. You’ve got to keep upping the dose. Jim seemed to know it without being told.
“Another couple of weeks, Kip, and maybe you can try the real thing.”
“The real thing?” I said, getting hard at the thought of it.
“Vests only.”
