— He was in a hurry.
They stepped over the creek where it narrowed between two rocks. It was hard work climbing the slope past the creek, and they would be long in reacting if anyone appeared above. At the crest they leaned on tree trunks, sucking wind. Fifty yards across open ground stood the back wall of the shed. Nothing was moving.
They looked at each other and then set out across the field, moving abreast through the snow. The feeling had gone out of Stan’s foot where he’d put it in the water. They stopped to study the tracks through the snow that Speedy had left as he fled. They watched the shed and the campers. They could see an import hatchback parked a little farther down the laneway. They came around the shed to the laneway and saw the van. There was an array of tracks in the snow. There were ejected 9mm casings, maybe six or seven of them, and three spent shotgun cartridges. They saw the buckshot holes in the side of the van.
— Airplane, said Dick.
— What?
Down past the store they could see the flat white surface of the bay. There was a small airplane, maybe a Cessna, sitting on the ice just below the drop-off, almost obscured from view by the spruce.
— None of this can be any good, said Dick.
Drops of blood lay in the snow, pink and oddly delicate, tracing a path around the van to the man-door in the shed.
Before there was opportunity to track the blood, they heard the Airstream door open up. A bearded man came out on the step. He had a detachable aviator’s headset around his neck and he was bent under the weight of a duffle bag. The man was holding Arlene by the wrist. She was lurking in the doorway just behind him, wearing a slip and a jacket and snow boots. Her face was vacuous and makeup was smeared down her cheeks.
— Oh, said the bearded man. Fuck.
Dick pointed the 12-gauge and told the man to drop the duffle bag and to come down off the stoop with his hands plainly visible. The girl too.
— How many other people are in that trailer? said Dick.
The pilot looked at Arlene. She just stared at the ground.
— There’s nobody, said the pilot. There’s just us. Can we talk about this?
— You’re goddamn right we can, said Dick. I’m very interested to know what you have to say.
Stan covered with his.410. Dick had a couple of plastic cable-ties tucked in his hat. He used these to bind Arlene’s wrists and the wrists of the pilot, who stiffened angrily. He told them how there was some crazy asshole with a shotgun sitting in the shed.
— What are you boys going to do about that, is what I want to know? said the pilot.
— Stanley, said Dick.
But Stan was already moving to the man-door, seating the.410 into his shoulder and laying his finger along the side of the trigger-guard. He passed through the door frame and blinked to get the brightness out of his eyes. He saw the blood spotted across the floor. Something was hunched against the locker in the corner.
He crossed half the distance and the thing moved and it was Leland King, sitting with his legs forked out in front of him. He had a sawed-off shotgun across his lap. As Stan came forward, Lee made some effort to move the shotgun. He appeared to be incapable of fully lifting it. He just braced the stock against the wall beside him and hefted the barrel up on one knee. He held it for a moment and then he lowered it and let it slide out of his hands altogether.
Stan moved up and shoved the shotgun away with his boot. He heard Dick call after him from outside and he turned his head and shouted that he was alright. Up above, the trusses were creaking quietly. Lee had not bled through the hole in his jacket but he’d bled down his jeans onto the hard-packed dirt around him. He was pale as candle wax.
— Lee, said Stan.
Lee’s eyes were fixed not on the old man but at a point in the middle distance. He spoke in a dry and cracked voice: One time I guessed I knew something.
— Tell me where the boy is.
— I guessed I knew something. But I wasn’t right at all.
— Where is he, Lee?
— I was wrong about it the whole time. Everything. Maybe you think you can understand that. But you can’t.
Lee lifted his hand and grasped the edge of the locker door. He was able to pull it open a few inches and then he dropped his hand back onto the ground.
Stan reached the.410 forward and hooked the foresight on the door and pulled it open. The door was heavier than it looked. He thought the boy was dead until he saw the eyes blinking on either side of the broken nose. The boy’s mouth moved.
— You can’t understand it, said Lee.
— I can understand it. All of it, pretty clear.
The man on the ground shook his head: No. There’s nothing clear.
— He’s alive, Lee.
Where he goes, I won’t see him.
But already the old man was turning away, calling to his friend outside. What remained for Lee was that which lingers through the smallest, loneliest hours. Rising, stirring, stepping out of the dark, calling his name.
It had always been there.
The new year came and there was a great deal of talk in town and there was talk through the months that followed and the talk was inflated and inaccurate and everybody claimed ownership of some stake in it, somebody they’d known. A vast number of persons claimed to have witnessed the robbery itself. Or at least to have heard it. Or at least to have known somebody who had witnessed it or had heard it. In the retellings, there were thousands of gallons of blood spilled out at the defunct marina on Indian Lake. There was a battle among the perpetrators and a war with the police that lasted half a day. Spring came and the snows receded and the leaves budded pale on the trees and the birds returned and the days grew long. The scope of what people talked about began to swell beyond the limits of the town, which itself had begun to fade back into the ordinary once again.
On the face of the headstone was her name, Edna Eunice Maitland, and the years she’d lived, and an engraved epitaph:
That bells should joyful ring to tell
A soul had gone to heaven,
Would seem to me the proper way
A good news should be given.
Beside the epitaph, there was a simple depiction of a stand of birch trees and a path winding among the trees and out of sight. Patterns of light and shadow shifted on the stone from the tree above, which was not birch but white ash, newly flowered. She was three years interred in the earth and beside her was the plot the old man had arranged for himself in times to come. In the fall, Mary had dug a small flower bed in front of the headstone and planted hyacinth bulbs in the soil and they’d bloomed well.
Now that the good weather had arrived, he could come to visit more often. There was much to tell her and only standing there could he say it. Not that words were necessary. Mary’s health, Frank’s health, the news from the last letter he’d received-two weeks ago-from her sister in Toronto. Emily would be there come September and she said how she would go to visit her great-aunt every few weeks. That was worth telling. Very much. And how today when he left the cemetery he was going to pick Louise up from school and go out to the stand on the west side of Indian Lake to see what birds they could name. In the cab of the truck he’d brought along the 10x42 field glasses. He did not think when they got there that he’d even cast a glance at Alec Reynolds’s property to the north.
There was more. He looked away from the words on the stone, the image of the birch trees and the winding path.
There was the house. Sold not three weeks after he’d had it listed. A young couple from the city with two kids, looking for a summer cottage. They’d spoken of the view and of the flower garden in the dooryard, despite the weeds that had grown in it. And they asked him if they could buy the piano in the front room. He told them no. The piano was not for sale. But they could have it free for the asking.