In the men’s room of the hospital he knelt and wept, holding the sink for balance. Bent over a water fountain, he drank hungrily for more than a minute, the water too cold over his throat. He could see the snow melting pink beneath his boots, ice pellets of blood crammed in the soles.
Through a clutch of nurses, of doctors, he saw her auburn hair on a bench. When the clutch dispersed he saw her sitting, not blinking at the wall opposite, her face licked by grief, faint mascara trails over her cheekbones. It was only the two of them at that end of the hallway now. She seemed to sense him standing there because she turned. And what came from her then was a quick snort and a smile, almost a laugh, a quick shake of her head before she turned away again and sobbed.
He sat beside her and held her. She didn’t say anything. He buried his face into her hair while she pounded his chest and shoulders. And she kept pounding as they sat there.
“I tried calling. I couldn’t get you.”
“Goddamn it, we need you, goddamn it.”
He knew then the we she meant, and he held her again and said, “I’m here.”
Later that night as she lay sleeping, he sat in his chair and smoked by the cracked window, watched her in the quarter light. He could not know if she was dreaming or how she felt to have such life inside her. But it seemed also the only possible cure for what had happened this day. He’d heard others talk of the numbness after such things, but he felt no numbness now. What he felt was tired through to the marrow, thick through the head as if a cold were coming on. But not numb. Numb would have let him sleep, but sleep just then seemed a peace he’d not soon have again. It was a rare kind of torture, he knew, to be so tired and unable to sleep. He smoked for an hour, waiting for yawns that never came.
That old woman in the village, upright in her rocking chair: Slone had cut her throat straight through to the spine. And that was Marium’s dread as he looked at his sleeping wife and the child inside her. The dread that there are forces in this world you cannot digest or ever hope to have hints of.
There was somebody’s whispered voice in his head, in the quiet of their bedroom, keeping him awake. He thought it was Cheeon’s voice. He had not wanted to do what Cheeon made him do. Killing a man can mean more for the killer than it does for the man killed. Cheeon had let his pistol dangle there in his hand, in the attic of the cabin he’d built with that hand. He let Marium see it, didn’t even have to raise it at him—he just knew. He’d prepared, waited for this, with that machine gun, the tripod bolted to the floor. And it all played out as he had wished. Marium gave him what he’d wanted. And for that he felt shame.
VIII
A strong late summer rain seemed to signal the end of morning. Slone and Bailey were barefoot, shirtless in the cooling shower, single file on narrow hill paths, side by side on wider ones. They wound up and down the trail to stand on shaded boulders at the banks of the storm-gorged creek. The risen current rushed, its surface in full boil. Mosquitoes chased away by storm. They sat on the rock overhang, dangled their legs knee-deep in the creek. In minutes the downpour softened through the sheaved tops of trees and the dripping world grew silent again.
“Mama said you’re going away,” the boy said.
“In a few months. Not so soon.”
“Mama said a long time.”
“A year, maybe a little less. Deployment is that long. You remember deployment?”
“No.”
“It means work. It means money for us.”
“We need money?”
“Yes.”
“Mama said money doesn’t matter.”
“We don’t need much. But we need it.”
“She said you can get money here.”
“Not lately I can’t. No one can. It’s my duty to go there.”
“What’s duty?”
“It means when you’re good at something, and something needs to be done, you have to go do it.”
“For my birthday I’ll be seven.”
“I know. It seems a long time. It’s not so long. I’ll be back when you’re seven and a half.”
Normally clear to its sand bottom, this water had turned dark, dense in its quick swell downstream. A tree limb bobbed closely by like an arm reaching out for rescue. Bailey reached forth his own arm to touch it and Slone held the boy’s belt loop.
“I can swim.”
“I know you can swim. It’s moving fast today.”
“Mama said men kill people in war.”
“You have to, yes.”
“You killed a person before. When I was in mama’s belly.”
“Who told you that?”
“Somebody.”
“Okay, somebody. Somebody who?”
“Somebody.”
Clamor of thunder and then the shuffling of it behind them, so muted it might be above the Yukon or else far into the core of Canada.
“It’s bad to kill people but not bad to kill the caribou.”
“Yes. The caribou keep us alive. Sometimes it’s necessary to kill a person too, if you have to keep alive.”
“What’s necessary?”
“If you have no other choice.”
“You had no other choice.”
“No.”
“You did it to keep us alive?”
“To keep us safe, yes.”
“Who did you kill?”
“A man who would hurt Mama and you.”
“But he didn’t hurt us?”
“No. I hurt him first.”
“And no one missed him?”
“I don’t know that. It wasn’t my job to ask that. Only to protect you and Mama.”
“No one told on you?”
“No one told on me. No one would dare. The village is our family. Do you understand what that means?”
“Yes.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“It means you can count on them. If something’s wrong, or if you have a secret to keep, you count on them to help. That’s what it means.”
“Who?”
“Who what?”
“Who did you hurt?”
“A man who came into our village. He was a drifter.”
“What’s drifter?”
“Like driftwood. See there? That driftwood? It means a wanderer without a home.”
The current’s cool swiftness on their calves came close to massage. The whey sky seemed to sharpen all the green around them.
“How?”
“How did I hurt him, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“With a knife.”
“You like your knife,” and he turned to smile up at his father. He then smacked the water with a stick and Slone held tight to the boy’s belt loop.
“Mama said Cheeon helped you.”
“Cheeon helped me.”
“He’s my family?”
“Yes.”
“He’s my friend?”
“Always. You’re full of questions today.”
Across the creek a buck and its doe moved through alders dripping in the storm’s stay. Slone pointed for the boy to look and, not speaking, they looked until the deer ducked from view.
“It felt good to kill my first deer,” the boy said.
“You’re a good shot with the Remington.”
“It felt good and bad at the same time.”
“Don’t feel bad. You fed two whole families that night.”
“My teacher said people aren’t deer because people are equal. She said to kill any people is bad.”
“You’ll hear that a lot.”
“My teacher said that.”
“I know. It’s what they say. It’s a lie.”
“It’s not a lie.”
“There are good people who won’t hurt you and there are bad people who will. Ask your teacher if those are equal, if good equals bad.”