The leash tethering his belly to the trees was getting uncomfortably tight. It was silly hiding here like a fugitive. Tony Hastings knew that. He didn’t intend to be a fugitive. If he had any guilt, he had reconciled himself to it. He had not forgotten his plans and his conversation with himself a few hours ago. It’s time, he said. Wake up, you can’t stay here forever.
Still, he waited. Preferring to let the others arrive, if Bobby Andes were among them. If Bobby Andes could find him first and give him the latest news on the death of Lou Bates before someone else should ask. It was not long now. The cars drove up, he heard their feet, their radios, voices, exclamations. He heard Bobby Andes, “Where the fuck did he go?”
Here is what happened. He wanted to get up and call, Hey Lieutenant, Bobby Andes, look up here. As he turned he rolled over the gun which he had cocked earlier. He groped for it with his hands, found it, and put it in his left hand so he could push down and raise himself with his right. He had just got one foot under his body and started to push up when the gun went off. The whip slammed into his gut, the sound he hated came later. Damn! he said, why did I do that? For a moment he thought he had shot himself.
What a recoil, he’d forgotten how hard it could kick, it knocked him flat. If it was a bullet through his gut, he’d be dead. He was on his back, face up to what should have been sky. The blow of it tightened the rope around his middle, worse than before. He tried to work it loose. He tried to move, but the rope was tightening, holding him down. If it was a bullet, it had missed his vital parts, it wasn’t as if he was dying, but it was pulling through him, it was dragging him on the ground. My God, he said. If that’s what it was. He thought, Why did I do a stupid thing like that? If I’m bleeding to death. The rope was tied through his middle, holding the broncos in the corral so they wouldn’t spill out, but they were bucking pretty hard. Field mice were slipping out under the lower bars.
If this was really the big news, he wondered why it didn’t seem more important. He thought, Would a bullet feel like a rope? It would feel like what it feels like. He groaned, recognizing. So, he said, here comes another life for Tony Hastings. This would be a lifetime of dying. It would stretch from past to future dominated by one fact, a bullet through his belly. Though you get used to everything, he had no interest in anything else.
A long time afterward he was aware he had long ago heard a voice saying, “Jesus, what was that?” You would expect the police to round up the cattle set loose by the rustlers pretty soon, wouldn’t you? Yet they did not come. It was a long time before they did not come.
If they did not come: a remnant of brain suggested he should be thinking about dying, he should be giving it his full attention. Tony Hastings dying, think of that. He ought to be more surprised. Vaguely he remembered things he had wanted to think about when he died, but he couldn’t remember what they were. At least he ought to figure out why he had died. The kind of question others would ask, how it could have been avoided, what he should have done differently. Must be he got his left and right hands mixed up. If he had meant to lift himself by the right hand against the ground, but had pushed down instead with the left, which was holding the gun in his gut. Pressure of finger against the trigger, in the confusion of groping for the hard ground through his soft belly. A neurological mistake, caused by the shock of being blind, though he should have been used to that, having been blind so long already.
It occurred to him if the police got up here in time they might save him. If having heard the shot they scrambled up through the brush, they could call an ambulance on their radio. It didn’t seem likely. He heard no signs of them.
It occurred to him they would find his body and think he had committed suicide. It seemed like a logical conclusion, they would not be surprised. He wondered what motives they would attribute to him. Probably (they would say) he did it because he could not tolerate being blinded on top of all he had lost. (They would not know he had reconciled himself to that.) Or perhaps he was so obsessed with the crime committed against him and the need for revenge that when Ray died he had no further need to live. (They did not know about Louise Germane waiting for him—if she would take him blind.) Or else (underestimating his cynicism and his cowardice, those all-important qualities) it was his idealism: his inability to endure the self-knowledge forced on him by Bobby Andes and Ray, whereby he too was revealed with no moral advantage over his enemies except what he retained from the fact that they started it. More likely (not knowing how cheerfully he had reconciled himself to waiting) they would simply attribute it to impatience with pain and dying: having realized not only that he was blind but that he had been shot by Ray and was bleeding to death, he couldn’t take it any longer. It was too much for him and he cracked. It was unlikely the cops would call his death an accident.
He really didn’t want to die, and he wished they would hurry up. Meanwhile the rope through his middle explored him, it mapped his territory. The organs in his middle included, though he did not know exactly which was which or where each one was, the liver, kidney, spleen, appendix, pancreas, gall bladder, and miles of intestines, large and small. He tried to think what else there was and regretted he had not been on more familiar terms with them while he lived.
The only definite thing he knew was this: he was free to continue his trip to Maine. After all this time, more than a year. The police told him this when they arrived at last, standing by the door congratulating him as he got into the driver’s seat and strapped himself in. The seat belt was tight around his middle. They shook his hand. Wished him well. Told him the route, estimates of how long it would take.
And so he had gone, and now he was driving fast with a little of the cowboy and the baseball player still in him, almost singing for the joy of it, and in no time at all he was there. He saw the summer house at the end of the road, down the slope. It was a big old-fashioned two-story house with gable windows and a porch. All the windows and the porch were screened, it was covered with screens. He drove down the drive and onto the grass, and saw them in the water waiting for him. He walked down the grass to the water’s edge.
“Come on in,” Laura said, “we’ve been waiting for you.”
“What took you so long?” Helen said.
He asked, “Is it cold?”
“Pretty cold,” Laura said, “but you can bear it.”
“It’s better after you’ve been in a while,” Helen said.
They were standing up to their necks so he could see only their heads. The water was flickering blue and white like sweet milk in the afternoon light, and the fuzzy pine islands out in the bay shimmered with summer joy.
He stepped into the water, icy around his feet. Laura and Helen laughed. “You’ve been away too long,” Laura said. “You’re all out of shape.”