“No,” said Isaac.
“Whose car is that?”
“Lee’s. The new husband’s, maybe.”
“Oh,” said Poe. For a second he looked stunned. Then he said: “E320—goddamn.” He was looking at the house.
They made their way through the woods toward the road, kicking up last fall’s moldering leaves, the sweet smell from them.
“This is stupid,” Poe said. He looked at Isaac. “I mean, I don’t see a way around it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not stupid.”
Isaac didn’t say anything.
“Christ,” Poe said. “Thanks.”
They crossed the road and picked their way down to the stream through the alder. Except for a slight coolness there was no hint it had snowed the previous night and they walked along the gravel banks or over the dark mossy rocks, the sky blue and narrow above them, vegetation spilling into the gulch, honeysuckle and chokecherry an old rock maple tilted overhead, the ground eroding beneath it.
They passed an old flatbed truck, doorless and half- sunk in the sand. It occurred to Isaac that there might be blood on him, he hadn’t taken a shower or washed or anything. It wouldn’t spray that far, twenty or thirty feet. Still, he thought. That was extremely stupid.
They took the long way around town, through the woods where they wouldn’t be seen. It was late afternoon when they could just make out the shell of the Standard plant through the trees.
“Let’s just go in and get it over with.” Poe found his cigarettes but took a long time to fumble one out of the pack, and though it wasn’t hot, patches of sweat were showing through his shirt.
“We need to wait till it’s almost dark. It’ll probably take us half an hour to get him to the river.”
“This is insane,” said Poe.
“It was insane staying in there yesterday.”
“You know we’re half a mile from the nearest road. It’ll be months before anyone else stumbles in there, maybe years.”
“Your coat will still be there.”
“Guess I should have remembered to grab it on the way out. It was probably the guy with the knife to my neck that distracted me.”
“I know that.”
“It’s freakin me out goin in there again.”
“The great hunter. He shoots the guts out of a deer but when it comes to a guy who was actually trying to kill him—”
“It’s a lot fuckin different,” Poe said.
“Well, you should have maybe worried about that yesterday.”
“The only reason I was anywhere near this shithole was you,” Poe told him.
Isaac turned away and walked off into the trees along the river. He found a rock by the water and sat down. It was average for a river, a few hundred yards across and in most places only nine or ten feet deep. Nine feet under. Good as five fathoms. Good enough for your mother and the Swede both. Drained of heart and freed of flesh. Listen to you, he thought, just turn yourself in. Thought you’d be the one saving people.
Sometime later Poe came and found him and they watched the water in silence, there was the sound of leaves shushing, the squawk of a heron, a distant motorboat.
“You know he isn’t just gonna disappear. Some fuckin Jet Skier’ll run him over by lunchtime tomorrow, guaranteed. Shit doesn’t just magically evaporate because you stick it in a river.”
“It doesn’t take much to sink a body,” said Isaac.
“Jesus, Mental. Listen to us.”
“It’s already done,” said Isaac. “Pretending we can walk away is just going to make it worse.”
Poe shook his head and sat down a good distance away.
The sun was getting lower over the hills on the other side of the river, it was a pleasant quiet scene, sitting there looking over the water, but that was not how it felt. You’re just a visitor here, he thought. Look at the sun and feel like you own it but it’s been setting behind those hills for fifteen thousand years—since the last ice age. Glacial period, he corrected himself, not ice age. When those hills were formed. This area was the edge of the Wisconsin glaciation. Meanwhile here you are. Temporary visitor on the sun’s earth. Think your mother will be here forever and then she’s gone. Still sinking in five years later. Disappeared in a day. Same as you will. Nothing you can see that won’t outlast you—rocks sky sun. Watch a sunset and feel like you own it but it’s been rising without you for a thousand years. No, he thought, more like several billion. Can’t even get your head around the real number. You’re the only one who even knows you exist. Born and die between the earth’s heartbeats. Which is why people believe in God—you’re not alone. Used to, he thought. It was my mother that made me believe. And it was her that made you not believe. Stop it. You’re lucky to be here at all. Don’t be a weak thinker.
They’re simple facts is all. Your only power is choosing what to make of them. She stayed under two weeks with a few pounds of rocks in her pockets. There is your lesson from that. No different this time. They’ll find him at the lock, hook him out with a pole. Or he’ll slip by them— Old Man River, a long journey drifting. Catfish doing their work. Victim none the wiser. Roof of water, bones beneath. Judgment day he’ll rise. No such thing, he thought. And not possible even if there was. Once you lost your water, most of your weight was carbon. Your molecules scattered, were used again, became atoms and particles, quarks and leptons. You borrowed from the planet which borrowed it from the universe. A short- term loan at best. In the eyeblink of a planet you were born, died, and your bones disintegrated.
They waited until the sun went down before getting up from the rocks. Everywhere there was a bruised purple light. They heard the clicking of bats and looked up and the sky was full of them. They were several weeks early.
“Global warming,” said Isaac.
“You know I’m sorry, don’t you?” said Poe.
“Don’t worry about it.” He began to walk through the grass and Poe followed reluctantly behind. They crossed from the darkness of the river trees to the clearing along the train tracks and back into the trees again. In the meadow they stayed hidden behind the old boxcars and the long thicket of wild rose; they were well concealed but Isaac felt his legs getting shaky. One in front of the other. Close your mind for a while. He won’t smell yet. But don’t look at his face. Except you’ll have to—won’t be able to move him without looking at his face.
He checked back on Poe, who was grinning nervously, his skin pale and his hair flattened and damp with sweat, his hands shoved in his pockets as if trying to make himself smaller. When they came to the edge of the thicket and stopped to survey the open ground ahead, there was a smell like cat piss in the air. The smell didn’t change and Isaac realized it was him. Smell of your own fear. Adrenaline. Hope Poe doesn’t notice.
Around the machine shop everything looked different. The grass was crushed and beaten, the ground rutted with tire tracks. Leading up the hillside was an overgrown fireroad they hadn’t noticed the previous day, but had since been churned into mud by heavy traffic. At the top of the hill they saw Harris’s black- and- white Ford truck. Harris was inside, watching them.
4. Grace
The main road south of Buell angled away from the river to cut through a steep sunless valley, it was a narrow fast road with the trees tight along both sides. She passed vacant hamlets, abandoned service stations, an exhausted coal mine with a vast field of tailings that stretched on forever like sand dunes, gray and dry and not even the weeds would grow on them. Her old Plymouth wallowed and clattered over the potholes, she thought about Bud Harris but she didn’t know if calling him would make things better or worse for Billy. She wondered if Billy had killed someone.
In recent years she’d developed her grandmother’s arthritis and nearly any change in the weather hurt her hands; she could only manage five or six hours a day sewing before they fixed themselves shut into claws. Once, a
