I didn’t really want to get into it, but I couldn’t exactly ignore him. “We have guns,” I said. “Until we can find a rocket launcher that’ll have to be enough.”
“This is just one big joke.”
“What the hell is your problem anyway?” Graham asked.
Marc’s gaze shot over to Graham. “I have a real big problem with you, asshole. Do you think I don’t know?”
“That everyone hates you?”
“You kissed my wife, you little shit. I should kill you for that.”
“Why don’t you guys kill each other later,” I said. “We have work to do, and these little whine sessions aren’t helping any.”
“You know what?” Marc said. “You assholes deserve whatever happens. I guess we’ll just keep building up a nice homestead for Stems to come and take over whenever he wants.”
“I don’t think you’ve done much building here,” Graham said. “All you seem to want to do is whine like a little baby.”
Marc’s eyes widened as he glared at Graham, his face turning red. He stood up, dropping his mug, and started clambering towards the front of the cart, tugging on his rifle with one hand.
I put down the shotgun and jumped over the bench to stop him.
“Sit down, Marc,” I said as Graham slowed the cart.
“You sit down,” Marc said. “I don’t think you have any kind of clue, you know that? You’re just some big city asshole who knows nothing about security. It’s no wonder your stupid Cochrane Protection Committee was a complete failure. And your goddamn Supply Partnership, too. A string of pathetic failures from a pathetic old man.”
“Sit down or I’ll sit you down.”
“I’m not going to sit down. Fuck you, Baptiste.”
I sighed. “Why does everyone keep saying that?” I said, trying to cut down the tension.
“Get out of my way.”
“You need to calm down. Take a seat in the back and relax, okay?”
Marc placed his second hand on his rifle, lifting it upwards. “I’m not going to take a seat. Not while you and that idiot there are putting my family’s life at risk. So we’ll just sit back and hope no one shows up with bigger guns than us… great strategy. Maybe when they come we can offer up our wives and kids so they’ll leave us alone… oh, yeah, that’s right… you don’t have a family to worry about. You don’t have to worry about anyone but yourself, eh, Baptiste? I guess that’s why you don’t give two shits about keeping the rest of us safe.”
“Don’t piss me off—”
“So get out of my way, old man. You’re not in charge of anything. I’m going to go up there and crack your little groupie’s head open… and you’re just going to have to deal with that.”
He tried to push past me. I stopped him.
I don’t remember much about hitting Marc Tremblay; I can remember that I hit the butt of my shotgun against his temple at a bit of an angle, and that his body twisted as he fell, slamming against the cart, his rifle falling over the side and onto the gravel shoulder. And I remember seeing the blood, and staring into his frozen eyes, wondering if I’d really knocked him out or if he was just in some kind of shock.
I felt Graham nudge past me and I watched him kneel down beside Marc.
I kept looking into those eyes.
“Holy…” Graham said. “What did you do to him?”
“I think I fucked him up.” I didn’t really know what I’d done.
“This looks bad, Baptiste… I don’t think he’s going to make it. There’s a lot of blood here…”
I knelt down beside Graham to take a look. Marc’s chest was still rising and falling and I could see his breath in the cold air. “He’s still breathing,” I said. “That’s good.”
“There’s no way we can take him back home on this cart. The ride’ll kill him.”
“We don’t have a choice. We can’t just build a field hospital out of twigs and horse shit.”
“He’s going to die,” Graham said.
“Neither of us knows enough to make that call.”
“What do you think is going to happen here? What’s the best thing that can happen? One of us stays here in the middle of nowhere with him while the other goes home and turns the Porter’s little car into an ambulance? Then we drive him back to the cottage for treatment after he’s spent a couple of hours bleeding in the dirt?”
“We’ll just have to risk taking him back in the cart,” I said.
“He’s going to die.”
“Then we set up in one of those houses up the road. We can start some kind of fire to keep him warm.”
“Okay,” Graham said. “Let’s try that.”
I took some of the hay that was leftover from the hayride and tried to make a little bed. Graham and I moved Marc onto it and I knelt beside him as Graham regained the reins.
The horses didn’t know a slower gait, and in a way I was glad Marc wasn’t conscious as we bumped along the road. Graham stopped us in front of the nearest house and joined me alongside the bed of hay.
By then I had regained some of my senses and I knew what Graham had been trying to say. I reached down and placed my fingers against Marc’s neck. I waited for the pulse and it didn’t come.
“I think he’s dead,” I said. I buried my head in my hands and started to cry.
Graham and I arrived back at the cottage around lunchtime with our stories sorted out between us. We had Marc laid out on the hay, his eyes closed; we had nothing along with us to cover him, so it looked almost like he was just having a nap until you noticed the blood.
Sara came out to meet us.
“Marc’s family isn’t here, are they?” I asked.
“Lisa’s helping them put up some storm windows at their place,” she said. “What happened?”
“H-he had an accident,” Graham said, stuttering as he spoke.
“He’s dead,” I said. “Tripped and hit his head on the side of the cart.”
“O mon dieu,” Sara said. She climbed onto the cart and knelt beside the body. She lowered her head and whispered a prayer in French, her words quiet and quick.
“It was my fault,” I said, unable to keep silent.
She wrapped her arms around me. “It’s no one’s fault.”
I held her close to me and shut my eyes. I wanted to believe her, that I wasn’t to blame. I could try and think that he’d provoked me enough, that he’d truly threatened our lives, that somehow I was justified in taking a man’s life.
I wanted to believe that I hadn’t just taken away a woman’s husband, that I hadn’t just stolen the father from two teenage boys.
But I don’t believe any of that.
My dad died when I was fifteen. He wasn’t murdered and it wasn’t a tragic accident or some terrible run of bad luck; he had a bad heart and he didn’t listen to his doctor. They didn’t have emergency defibrillators back then, at least not at the supermarket, and when he collapsed he pulled an entire display of mandarin oranges down with him. He died long before the ambulance could reach him through the mess of evening rush hour along Dundas Street.
He left me that bad heart of his, along with his temper, and I’m not sure which one has cost me more.
Graham and Sara went together to see the Tremblays; I didn’t have the balls to go with them. I’m sure Sara gave a good reason for my absence, and I doubt me being there would have made it any easier.
I spent the rest of yesterday in my room, not reading, not sleeping… not really thinking that much about it, either.
I can’t change what’s happened.
I can’t change what I’ve just become.
Kayla came to see me after the sun had set. I guess Sara hadn’t gotten back from the Tremblays since she hadn’t come up to check on me; I wondered if Alain had arrived home yet to hear the news about his brother.