"Two men and a woman were spotted in a canoe making their way downriver. We believe that one of the men is injured. They are armed and dangerous, but nobody does anythingwith- out my order." Amos's eyes glared like rubies into the night.
As if shot out of a gun, forty vehicles ranging from muddy pickups to shiny Hummers cranked their engines and followed Bryce and me toward his place. We wound up the drive, around the back of his property, and up to the entrance of a logging road I never knew existed. I stopped the van, and Bryce jumped out. Without a word, he began walking into the trees. I shouldered the shotgun and followed.
The moon was high, the temperature was somewhere in the nineties, and there was no breeze to speak of. Two miles into the swamp, I was wheezing, and Bryce was barely breathing hard. We came to the water's edge, and somewhere in the distance an owl hooted. Bryce motioned to Mr. Carter, who walked up alongside.
Mr. Carter took Amanda's sweater and some clothing taken from the duplex, rubbed them in Badger's and Gus's faces, and unhooked their leashes. Badger and Gus disappeared like two ghosts in the darkness while we waited. Five minutes passed as we caught our breath. Badger sloshed off into the darkness, sending out periodic barks, which were occasionally answered by Gus.
Ten minutes passed. The whispers behind us grew. Most of them were directed at Bryce and sounded something like, "Who does this guy think he is?"
Mr. Carter looked off into the swamp, raised his chin, and then raised his hand toward the men behind him. Silence fell across us, and the smile on Mr. Carter's face spread. About the time that his teeth shone through the darkness because of his smile, Badger broke out into a full-blown howl.
Amos didn't hesitate, and neither did anyone else.
Except Bryce. He listened and looked somewhat confused, and when the entire hunting party ran off into the darknesssay toward twelve o'clock on a watch-Bryce ran off the dial toward three o'clock.
I watched the lights scour the darkness ahead of me, then turned and ran as hard as I could after Bryce. I caught up just as he stepped into the water. I stepped down into the cold, swirling blackness, raised the shotgun above my head, and tried to keep up. We partly waded, partly swam through deep water, up onto mushy earth.
Bryce ran through the darkness as if he were following streetlights. The vines and limbs tore at me, and I stumbled and fell, smashing my head against a stump and planting my face in the mud. When I stood, Bryce was waiting on me. We ran what seemed like two more miles, while the sound of Badger's howl faded off into the distance. When I could, I grabbed Bryce by the sleeve and said, "Bryce, are you sure?"
He held a finger to his lips and motioned me to follow. A few hundred yards later, I was neck-deep in muck and paddling. Bryce lifted me onto a log, said, "Wait here," then reached up and grabbed a rope. I looked up and saw his "summer home" directly above.
He disappeared through the trapdoor and reappeared a second later. He slid back down, the sniper rifle strapped over his shoulder, and stepped off into the water. Waist-deep and walking against the current, we waded through the swamp where the mosquitoes sucked a pint of blood out of my neck and flew constantly into and out of my ears.
Thirty minutes later, listening to the sounds of my own breathing and my heart pounding outside my chest, I saw Bryce turn and hold his finger to his lips again. He pointed. Maybe two hundred yards through the trees ahead, a light flickered. I checked the safety on the shotgun. We lay on a mound of fern. The sound of Badger's moaning came out of the distance maybe a mile beyond the house and started a commotion in the structure ahead of us.
"Poacher's cabin," said Bryce softly.
In the distance, I heard one man screaming at another. Then a door slammed, someone splashed into the water, and footsteps started coming at us fast.
Bryce's face was a picture of focus. He turned quickly, jumped up, and swung the butt of his rifle into the running man's face with pinpoint precision. The man's head rocked back, his feet flew out in front of him, and he fell two feet from where I lay. Bryce grabbed him by the belt and started dragging him through the swamp.
The other man was still hollering, frantically trying to load himself into a canoe. The dim lantern light from the shack shone down on him. He wasn't wearing a shirt, and he seemed to be limping. He put his bad leg into the canoe and tried to shove the canoe off the bank.
Bryce dropped the man he was carrying, slid the rifle off his shoulder, aimed, and squeezed. The shot rang out, and the man flew back, clutching his left knee. He lay on the ground, grasping for the paddle with one hand while holding a shotgun in the other and screaming at the top of his lungs.
Bryce picked up the first man again and crept through the stagnant water. We slithered through the mud, and at sixty yards, Bryce stopped. He knelt, breathing slightly, and said, "We met in Saigon. 1970."
"What?"
Bryce watched the man writhe in pain on the far shore. The river, some twenty yards wide at this point, separated us from him.
"She was not American."
The man grabbed the oar and pulled himself up on it like a crutch. Bryce aimed a second time. The man limped toward the canoe, Bryce squeezed, and the shotgun in the man's left hand exploded in the middle. Something must have blown into the man's face, because he fell again, clutching his face and hand.
The man at my feet was bleeding profusely from a huge gash in his face, and his nose was badly twisted out of place. He had yet to move.
Bryce whispered, "There was a chaplain in my unit. Had been an Episcopal priest before we drafted him."
The sound of Badger's moaning grew louder, but not yet closer.
"We got married in a hut, and I kept her a secret until my third tour of duty when they saw me coming out of her village."
We walked to the edge of the water where the man on the other bank lay screaming and clutching his face, his left leg twisted.
Bryce stepped into the water and began swimming across, bringing the first man with him. I stepped into the current, and it pushed me along after Bryce. He kept the man's head above water while I struggled to do the same.
When we reached the other bank, the man on the ground began yelling obscenities. Slowly the first man came to. He, too, clutched his face as Bryce threw the first man down on top of the second. They lay there, tangled, unable to move and cussing both each other and us.
Bryce chambered another round, slid the rifle over his shoulder, and squatted. His eyes were focused out over the swamp. The sounds of Badger and Gus grew closer, as did the sound of sloshing feet and the sight of flashing lights.
Bryce spat in the water. "They burned the village. Lined everyone up and shot them while I watched from the trees. When they shot my son, I . . ." Bryce trailed off. "My unit thought I'd been taken, thought I'd been pinned down. So they came in to get me, but the enemy was good. There were too many. The last one they shot was the bugler."
Bryce shook his head and cracked half a smile. "We used to talk about home, about Scotland-and at night, he'd been trying to teach me to play the pipes."
Badger cleared the trees, took three steps, and pounced on the first man. He opened his jaw, placed it over the man's throat, and stood there waiting. Like a ghost in the darkness, Gus bounded alongside him, clutched the other man's throat, and waited.
Bryce smelled the air and looked southward. "It took me nearly a month to find them all."
The memory of Bryce in my cornfield came flooding back. I pointed in the direction I thought my house sat. "The cornfield?"
Bryce nodded.
AMOS CHARGED OUT OF THE TREES. His SIG WAS UP, IN HIS hands, along with his SureFire light, and his eyes were scanning the dilapidated cabin. He saw us and the men at our feet, then jumped up onto the porch and kicked in the door. He shone his light inside, saw nothing, and then walked to the bank. He was breathing hard, but he was hardly out of breath.
He knelt next to the first man. "Antonio, where is she?"
Several of Antonio's teeth were mi
ssing, and he couldn't breathe through his nose. He cussed Amos while the remainder of the hunting brigade emerged from the swamp. Their lights lit the area around us like daylight.
Amos holstered his pistol and turned to the other man. "Felix-my wife."
Felix clutched his knee, laughed a sickly laugh, and said, "Yeah, that sweet young thing was so sweet, we just thought we'd come back for more."
Amos cocked his fist and was throwing it forward when Bryce caught it in midair. He shook his head and stooped over Felix. He pulled a knife out of a sheath that ran along the belt at his back, grabbed Felix's right hand, turned it backward in a direction it was not meant to go, placed the blade to the first digit on the man's finger, and pressed.
Felix writhed and screamed, and even the SWAT guys stood back.
Bryce looked at Antonio, but he was of little use because he was fading in and out of consciousness. Bryce leaned closer to Felix's face, raised his eyebrows, and waited.
Felix spat in his face and kicked the ground.
Bryce pressed harder.
Felix pointed his face downriver. "She ran that way!"
Amos leaned in closer and spoke through gritted teeth. "Define `that way."'
Felix tried to point with his other hand that had been shot while holding the gun. He began to cry. "She ran that way." He pointed downriver. "Two days ago. Little witch stabbed me in the leg and took off."
Amos looked downriver, then at his dad. Mr. Carter rubbed the sweater against the dogs' faces and pointed them that direction.
Amos looked to one of his men, then pointed at Felix and Antonio. "Handle this." Without hesitation, he ran into the darkness, followed by his team of men and their lights.
Bryce stood up, eyed the river, stepped in, and began swimming-upstream.
I watched Amos disappear, turned toward Bryce's wake in the water, and dove in. We swam against the current a couple of hundred yards until we came to a sandy bank.
Bryce climbed out by the roots of a pine tree that were exposed because of erosion. I extended my hand, and he lifted me up. He smelled the air and spoke without looking at me. "I don't like it when men lie to me."
He walked along the edge of the water. Behind us, Badger's bark faded into the night, and I followed the dark frame in front of me. Bryce studied the waterline, following God only knew what. We weaved for a mile through the brush until we came to a huge canopy of trees that must have been at least two hundred years old. If there was a heart to the Salk, we'd just found it. The ground was soft with moss and smelled of mint.
Bryce turned hard right, away from the water. He smelled the air repeatedly, weaving among the trees. We circled a huge oak tree, the top of which had been twisted off in a tornado, and he paused. He walked again in a circle around the tree, listened, then quietly thumped the side of the tree with the butt of his pistol.
From within the tree, I heard a woman's voice whimper.
I hit my knees and dug with both hands at the soft dirt mounded against the tree. Bryce dug too. We cleared roots, dirt, and sand, and soon I could hear her crying inside. When my hands broke through into the cavity inside the tree, she began kicking at me.
"Amanda! It's me. It's Dylan."
She kicked harder, screaming frantically.
I climbed through the hole while she backed up against the far side of the trunk. She was looking at me, but she had yet to see me. The inside of the tree was hollowed out and as big around as the interior space of our van-maybe five feet across. Moonlight shone directly above and threw a shadow on the ground.
"Amanda, honey." I crawled closer. "It's just me."
Despite the visible rounding of her stomach, she had tucked herself into a ball and shook her head. I sat up alongside her and gently took her hand. "Amanda, it's me, Dylan."
She blinked, looked at me, and could not speak. Her face was swollen from ten thousand mosquito bites, and one eye was shut, but she was breathing. I reached out, and she took my hands.
I carried her through the trees to the river, while Bryce followed. It was dark, the ground was uneven, and she was pregnant, but for some reason none of that really mattered. We reached the bank, and I set her gently down in the water. She drank like a man in the desert.
Bryce unholstered his .45 and pointed it into the air. Just before he squeezed the trigger, I held up a hand, and he waited. I wrapped my arms around Amanda's shoulders, pressed her head to my chest, and covered her other ear with my hand. She clutched me tightly.
I nodded, and Bryce fired three times; his shots were answered immediately by two shots downriver. Bryce fired three more, and I watched as the brass shell casings arced out across the river and disappeared into the water.
Ten minutes later I heard Amos screaming in the distance, "Amanda! Amanda!"
Amanda looked up, her hands shaking. "Take me to my husband, please."
I picked her up, and we walked along the bank through the shallow water. A hundred yards down the river, Badger and Gus emerged from the trees, followed quickly by Amos. He ran into the water, reached me, and looped his arms under mine.
Amanda let go of my neck, wrapped her arms around his, and said, "I want to go home now."
He heard her speak, and the cries of a man in anguish exited his chest. I knew what they sounded like because I'd heard them before. Amos fell to his knees, the water lapping up around his waist, and held Amanda. Finally he placed his hands on her tummy and whispered, "The baby?"
Amanda tried to smile. "Playing soccer right now."
Amos lifted her off the sandy bank and sloshed toward the trees, the sound of feet, and the sight of lights. When I turned around, Bryce was gone.
AT 3:00 AM MAGGIE AND I DROVE HOME. SHE HAD BABYSAT L.D. for the better part of three days. As we drove, a smell that I couldn't place filled the car. I wrinkled my nose and was sniffing the air like Bryce when Maggie noticed. She held her hand to my nose. "It's Desitin."
I nodded. A few minutes passed while I tried to figure out what that was. The look on my face betrayed me.
Maggie placed her heels on the dashboard and leaned back. "It's a cream for diaper rash."
"Oh." The adoption committee can say what they want, but my wife will make a great mom one day.
Emotionally we were about as strung out as two people could get. Physically we weren't much better. The events of the night, and of the last six weeks, had taken their toll. I knew that I was breathing and that sleep was only moments away. All I wanted to do, all we wanted to do, was lay our heads on a pillow, close our eyes, and wake up next week. We'd worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.
I parked, cut the ignition, and opened the door. Blue hopped out and began sniffing around the house. Maggie and I were inside the barn when a light in the kitchen caught my eye. I tried to ignore it, but I heard Papa whispering over my shoulder, `Money, doesn't grow on trees. "I turned to Maggie. "I'll be up in a minute."
I whistled for Blue, but he had disappeared. Probably down by the river or running down a corn row. I climbed up the porch steps, pushed open the door, and walked through the kitchen to the hall to flick off the light. That's when I saw the blood. Three spots of fresh blood led from the kitchen into the den.
"Blue?" I waited, followed the trail, and saw several more spots. Darker red. I called again, "Blue?"
The only noise was the sound of Maggie tossing corn out of a pail and into Pinky's stall. I turned the corner into the den, and there lay Blue. His eyes were half-open, and I couldn't tell if he was breathing. I knelt and reached out, but a huge hand flashed out of the darkness, grabbed me by the throat, and choked off any thought of screaming or breathing. The hand lifted me off my toes, pulled me toward a tormented face, and threw me into the fireplace, where my head hit soundly on the brick hearth.
The room spun. I heard a laugh and the muffled thud of someone kicking Blue's body. The sound told my ears what my heart already knew.
I pulled myself onto my hands and knees, felt a boot in my rib cage, then somet
hing hard came down over my head and everything went black. Somewhere between awake and not, I heard heavy footsteps fading down the hall and heard the screen door squeak. I stumbled to my feet, fell, and pulled myself up on the sofa as the blood blurred my vision. A few seconds later I heard the gunshot.
I pulled myself down the hallway, trying to get up but unable to steady my knees. The pressure in my head was growing, my eyes were blurry, and the sides of my vision were narrowing, like a tunnel. The floor felt as if it were moving, like the first step onto an escalator. I reached the kitchen, then the screen door, and finally I rolled down the porch steps, spilling blood all around me. I got to one knee, where the ground felt like a spinning merry-go-round, tried to yell for Maggie but muttered something inaudible instead. I fell again, then elbowed my way past the van.
Maggie stood in the barn doorway, holding Papa's Model 12 and pointing it in the face of Whittaker, who lay unmoving on the ground. She wasn't trembling, but her forehead was wrinkled, her finger was wrapped around the trigger, and her knuckles were white. It struck me that the barrel wasn't smoking. I steadied myself on one knee and saw a flash of gunmetal out of the corner of my left eye. I jerked, the blood spraying off my face, just in time to see Bryce stride out of the cornfield. He was carrying his rifle, and a thin line of smoke was trailing out of the barrel.
Pinky started kicking her stall, snorting and squealing.
Barefooted, Bryce approached slowly, his toes digging into the mud like fingers. He reached across Whittaker's body and gently placed his hand on the Model 12's barrel. He lifted it, and Maggie's eyes followed. When they made eye contact, Bryce hesitated, then shook his head. Maggie looked down, then at me, and finally let go. When she did, the darkness returned.
THE HEADACHE WOKE ME. I OPENED MY EYES, A WAVE OF nausea hit, and I arched over the side of the bed where two hands sat holding a bucket. I must have been doing this awhile, because I opened my mouth and nothing came. The sheets were white, the bed was hard, the air was smoke-blowing cold, and my left eye was completely swollen shut. I studied the room and knew that while it felt familiar, it wasn't mine.