Smoke was our only enemy… our only natural enemy, at least. We backed away, pulled our shirts over our mouths, and waited while the earth smoldered, the fire behind us a searing heat that I truly believed was our protector. We scanned the northern horizon and tried to see beyond the flames. In the distance, cows bawled-dark specks on a plain of milky blue. Smoke spun itself into dust devils, mini-tornadoes that sometimes charged us before levitating toward the moon.
After a while, Belton asked to use my backpack as a seat. The man was exhausted yet felt the need to talk. Something was nagging at him-some lie he had told about my great-uncle’s journal, was my suspicion. But after he had circled the subject without getting to it, I told him, “Tomorrow, after you’ve slept and had a shower, we’ll talk. Or write it down, if your conscience is bothering you, and I’ll read it when you buy me dinner.” Then I made a joke, saying he had so much soot on his face, he was invisible, so he had nothing to worry about. Like a commando.
The man didn’t respond for a moment. Stared straight ahead, kept his eyes fixed, while he got to his feet and said, “There he is.”
The flashlight again: a white mushroom glow to the northeast. Much closer, although distance is hard to judge when distorted by heat. A football field away? No… closer. My hand found the gun in my back pocket, but only for reassurance. For the same reason, I turned to inspect the fire protecting us to the south. Only twenty strides separated us from boiling flames, heat so intense it stung my face.
Belton, voice low, said, “He’s coming.”
Oliver, he meant.
The mushroom glow had become a hard white eye. The light painted vertical brushstrokes as if carried by a man who was walking. The beam flattened, lifted, and suddenly loped toward us… or toward an opening in the flames-a corridor of smoke and seared grass cleared by the wind. It was the only safe entrance.
I stepped toward the opening and drew the pistol. For the hundredth time, I confirmed that my last bullet was chambered, then attempted a deep breath, but heat-or fear-was a constricting weight. When several shallow breaths hadn’t helped, I retreated into that quiet space in my head. Choral notes of wind and flame mimicked a woman’s weepy laughter, but a bass-chord mantra dominated: Weakness can wait. Weakness can wait…
I found a moment’s peace there. My long-dead aunts had survived this hard land. Irene Cadence, too, in her way, but with an end so empty of triumph that her loss and her loneliness hardened my resolve.
Half a mile away, the lone pine tree exploded in flames. A beat later, the sound of the explosion pushed by me in a wave and changed the wind’s own cadence into a sustained wail. For an instant, just an instant, the tree blazed like a candle. It illuminated every shape and living thing outside the circle of flames, but I took an extra moment to analyze the flashlight’s source. Only then did I realize we had been terribly wrong.
I wheeled around to warn Belton That’s not Oliver!
Too late. I didn’t speak because Oliver was there. He was breathing heavy, standing erect, thick-jawed, his fur smoking after an upwind passage through the flames. Stared with amber oyster eyes that saw me, only me, indifferent to the man he was suffocating and Belton’s attempts to pry one massive paw from his face.
I yelled, “Let him go!” and everything I saw after that was framed by the pistol’s gun sights.
Oliver put a fist on the ground and vaulted closer, dragging Belton with him.
A shield, I realized. First, a snare from a steering wheel. Now Oliver had devised a human shield.
I backed a step while the stench of burning hair and sulfur found me. My eyes followed the pistol to Oliver’s exposed knees… tracked upward to where his circus-sized pants smoldered on blistered thighs. Only the space of a few inches separated Belton’s head from Oliver’s face. And there, on his neck, instead of a collar or a rope, a snake had anchored its fangs and held fast. A ribbon of scales still dangled.
Tyrone’s carnival poster. The image appeared in my mind but was rejected. This was a man-ape, not Tyrone who had endured deformity since our school days.
I wondered, What is keeping him alive?
Loyalty… rage… hatred-none explained such relentless behavior. But what Oliver did next hinted at the truth and the truth was darker than any word I know. He grunted-ITCH!-and lunged at me with a sweeping arm. I dodged his hand and got the gun up while he opened his jaws wide, then posed for a microsecond over Belton’s exposed neck-a look that threatened Surrender or I’ll do it.
That’s when I shot him. Squared the sights on Oliver’s forehead and didn’t remember squeezing the trigger or even the sound of the gun blast. The only thought in my mind was, Shoot low, you’ll kill Belton. Shoot high, Oliver’s teeth will find you.
I shot to the right but low, which underlined a reality, not a threat: caged or uncaged, Oliver was a predator, a blood killer without soul or conscience. He would have feasted on me, feasted on all humanity, if I’d missed. So I had risked Belton’s life to save my own by lowering my aim.
I didn’t miss. The bullet hit Oliver beneath the cheek, severed one clamshell ear, and tumbled him backward toward the flames. He didn’t move when I helped Belton to his feet, a man who was too angry to go into shock.
“Is he dead? That son of a bitch!” Belton charged toward the creature-possibly to kick him-but collapsed after a step, groaning, “Damn… my leg.” Sat there and embraced his knee while I studied Oliver, who was on his belly and still breathing.
I looked back at the opening in the flames, hollered, “We need help!” then placed myself between Belton and Oliver. His pelt smoldered while his ribs expanded and contracted. I watched ten bare toes flex as if testing mobility. His right hand moved, then his left arm. “Crawl away,” I told Belton.
He did. I slid sideways, following.
Because the pistol was empty, the slide had locked back to show its empty chamber. I thought, He can count, but he can’t see through metal, and I slammed the slide closed as if I’d just shucked a bullet.
Oliver’s head tilted to focus his only ear. An amber eye opened. It fluttered as if fighting sleep, or death, and rotated toward me.
I walked at him with the pistol. “I’ll shoot you again if you move.”
Oliver exhaled a low growl and lay still, but his eye continued to track me.
From behind, Belton sounded a note of surprise. “Hey… Hey, someone’s coming. Is that a horse?”
I took a quick look: blurred by heat and flames, a man wearing a cowboy hat had dismounted. He hunkered low to summon his nerve, then charged through the smoke, calling, “Are you the idiots who started this fire? By damn, I’ll leave you here to burn if it was you.” He switched off his flashlight and pocketed the thing. A bandy-legged man in his sixties.
Mild disappointment. I had hoped it was Joey Egret I’d seen approaching on horseback. Worse, the man was not carrying a rifle as cow hunters often do.
Belton tried to stand. “Call the police-that thing’s a goddamn killer. I’ll explain, but not while it’s still alive. Do you have a gun? We need a gun if he’s not dead.” Talking too fast, Belton’s tone communicating fear.
Oliver’s brain processed the words, his eye absorbed details. He got a knee under him and was positioning a hand when I leaned with both arms extended. “This pistol is all we need-now lay still, damn you.”
The man said, “Hey, now!” and his boots clomped him closer. He removed his hat, slapped it clean of ashes while his eyes adjusted, looking from Belton to me, and then saw the heap of smoldering fur. “What the hell’s going on here? That one of my calves? Y’all going to jail if you kilt one of my-” He stopped a few steps from Oliver. “Good lord, this here’s a damn monkey. Why’d anybody want to hurt a monkey?”