I took off the cap, put down the paint can and brush, and stepped through the door.
He was standing by the window, looking down toward the street below.
Put it on my desk, he said.
Whatever it is, I don’t have it, I replied.
He turned around faster than I had expected. But whatever he had in mind left him when I pulled my right hand out of my shirt and showed him the bone-handled skinning knife I’d just pulled from the sheath under my left arm. He froze.
You? he said.
Only one word, but it was as good as an entire book. No doubt about it now. My Helper felt like a burning coal.
Me, I agreed.
Where? he asked. I had to hand it to him. He was really good at one-word questions that spoke volumes.
You mean Mutt and Jeff? They’re not coming. They got tied up elsewhere.
You should be dead.
Disappointing. Now that he was speaking in longer sentences he was telling me things I already knew, though he was still talking about himself when I gave his words a second thought.
You’d think with the current state of the market, I observed, that you would have left the Bull at the start of your name, Mr. Weathers. Then you might have given your investors some confidence.
My second attempt at humorous banter fell as flat as the first. No response other than opening his mouth a little wider. Time to get serious
I’m not going to kill you here, I said. Even though you deserve it for what you and your family did back then. How old were you? Eighteen, right? But you took part just as much as they did. A coward too. You just watched without trying to save them from me? Where were you?
Up on the hill, he said. His lips tight. There was sweat on his forehead now.
So, aside from investments, what have you been doing since then? Keeping up the family hobbies?
I looked over at the safe against the wall. You have a souvenir or two in there? No, don’t open it to show me. People keep guns in safes. Sit. Not at the desk. Right there on the windowsill.
What are you going to do?
Deliver you to the police. I took a pad and a pen off the desk. Along with a confession. Write it now, starting with what you and your family did at your farm and including anyone else you’ve hurt since then.
There was an almost eager look on his weaselly face as he took the paper and pen from my hands. That look grew calmer and more superior as he wrote. Clearly, he knew he was a being of a different order than common humans. As far above us as those self-centered scientists say modern men are above the chimpanzees. Like the politicians who sent in the federal troops against the army of veterans who’d camped in Washington, D.C. this past summer asking that the bonuses they’d been promised for their service be paid to them. Men I knew who’d survived the trenches of Belgium and France dying on American soil at the hands of General MacArthur’s troops.
The light outside faded as the sun went down while he wrote. By the time he was done he’d filled twenty pages, each one numbered at the bottom, several of them with intricate explicatory drawings.
I took his confession and the pen. I placed the pad on the desk, kept one eye on him as I flipped the pages with the tip of the pen. He’d been busy. Though he’d moved on beyond Indian kids, his tastes were still for the young, the weak, those powerless enough to not be missed or mourned by the powers that be. Not like the Lindbergh baby whose abduction and death had made world news this past spring. No children of the famous or even the moderately well off. Just those no one writes about. Indians, migrant workers, Negro children, immigrants...
He tried not to smirk as I looked up from the words that made me sick to my stomach.
Ready to take me in now?
I knew what he was thinking. A confession like this, forced at the point of a knife by a... person... who was nothing more than an insane, ignorant Indian. Him a man of money and standing, afraid for his life, ready to write anything no matter how ridiculous. When we went to any police station, all he had to do was shout for help and I’d be the one who’d end up in custody.
One more thing, I said.
You have the knife. His voice rational, agreeable.
I handed him back the pad and pen.
On the last page, print I’m sorry in big letters and then sign it.
Of course he wasn’t and of course he did.
Thank you, I said, taking the pad. I glanced over his shoulder out the window at the empty sidewalk far below.
There, I said, pointing into the darkness.
He turned his head to look. Then I pushed him.
I didn’t lie, I said, even though I doubt he could hear me with the wind whistling past his face as he hurtled down past floor after floor. I didn’t kill you. The ground did.
And I’d delivered him to the police, who would be scraping him up off the sidewalk.
Cap back on my head, brush and paint can in hand, I descended all the way to the basement, then walked up the back stairs to leave the building from the side away from where the first police cars would soon arrive.
I slept that night in the park and caught the first trolley north in the morning. It was mid-afternoon by the time I reached the top of the trail.
Only one rock and its human companion stood at the edge of the cliff. Luth had stayed hard, I guessed. Too hard to have the common sense to sit still. But not as hard as those rocks he’d gotten acquainted with two hundred feet below. I’d decide in the morning whether to climb down there, so far off any trail, and bury him. Or just leave the remains for the crows.
I rested my hand on the rock to which the fat man’s inert body was still fastened. I let my gaze wander out over the forested slope below, the open fields, the meandering S of the river, the town where the few streetlights would soon be coming on. There was a cloud floating in the western sky, almost the shape of an arrowhead. The setting sun was turning its lower edge crimson. I took a deep breath.
Then I untied Braddie. Even though he was limp and smelled bad, he was still breathing. Spilled some water on his cracked lips. Then let him drink a little.
Don’t kill me, he croaked. Please. I didn’t want to. I never hurt no one. Never. Luth made me help him. I hated him.
I saw how young he was then.
Okay, I said. We’re going back downhill. Your truck is there. You get in it. Far as I know it’s yours to keep. You just drive south and don’t look back.
I will. I won’t never look back. I swear to God.
I took him at his word. There’s a time for that, just as there’s a time when words end.
Osprey Lake
by Jean Rae Baxter
Eastern Woodlands, Canada
A frosty halo circled the moon. It was going to snow. Eight inches by morning, the 6 o’clock forecast had predicted. Heather hoped it would hold off until they got wherever they were going. So far, the roads were bare.
“Turn right at the crossroads,” Don said.
She touched the brake. Signs nailed to a tall post pointed to cottages east, west, and straight ahead. Some signs were too faded to read, but on others Heather could make out the lettering: Brad & Judy Smith, The MacTeers, Bide-a-wee, The Pitts.
“Are we going to one of those?”
“No. Our sign fell off years ago. I know the way.”
The ruts were four inches deep. Frozen mud as hard as granite. Wilderness crowded the road. The bare twig ends of birch and maple trees and the swishing boughs of spruce, fir, and balsam brushed the Mustang’s sides.
The track was getting worse. Heather leaned forward, high beams on, studying the ruts. “Are we nearly there?”
Don’s lighter flared. “Ten minutes.”