“Your father is coming over.”
“Did you tell him?”
“No. I just thought I should warn you.”
“Does that mean he's back for good?”
“I don't know yet,” she said. “We'll see.”
He sat on the opposite side of the couch from her and then she pulled him over and he laid his head in her lap. His head was against her belly. He let his eyes close and he stopped thinking about the Mexican, he could hear her breathing in her belly and everything was going to be fine and he fell asleep immediately.
He slept like that for half an hour and then they heard his father's truck in the driveway. Poe got up and his mother gave him a hurt look and he tried to smile at her but he didn't think he could stand taking any shit from Virgil right now. He went to his room.
He could hear Virgil and his mother talking. Soon they would either be yelling or screwing. He figured the yelling would come soon enough— he'd seen enough of his father to know where this would go. But the next sound Poe heard was the maul ringing against the wedges, the sound of Virgil splitting the wood that Poe himself was supposed to split. Shit he thought shit shit shit, it should have been him going out there and doing it but it was too late, he'd fucked it up and now the old man would get the credit.
He thought about Otto again, thought you should call Chief Harris, he got you out of the last scrape, only it was too late for that, too—now they would look guilty. It was not that simple anyway. Technically, the big Swede hadn't been doing anything. He was about to, that was for goddamn sure, but really all he'd done was toss a couple of punches. He thought about him there on the floor of the machine shop with his head all bashed in and he felt guilty. He was supposed to be in college right now, going to class, his coach at Buell High, Dick Cannedy old Dick had gotten Poe into three colleges, that one Colgate in upstate New York looked good but he wasn't ready. No, the truth was he'd been plenty ready, if they'd left him alone he would have gone. But when everyone is shouting at you to do something … He'd flipped them all off, given the entire town the middle finger, turned down college for a job at Turner's Ace Hardware. And he'd flip them off again when he disappeared suddenly and went away to college. The coach at Colgate had told him to call anytime, anytime you change your mind, Mr. Poe. Well, he thought, I have changed my mind. I am going to call him.
It seemed his head was getting clear, things would be alright. Then he thought: my coat. My letter jacket is sitting in that machine shop with my name and player number on it, right next to a dead man and probably covered in blood. They would find the body it was only a matter of time and it would not be Isaac English they'd come after. It would be him, Billy Poe, the one who had a reputation, he'd nearly killed that boy from Donora, it was self- defense but that was not how anyone else saw it.
They would get his jacket and the body as well. We will drag it to the river, he thought. How many deer had he dragged out of the woods—it would be no different. Only he knew it would be. But there was no choice about it. They would have to go back.
3. Isaac
Isaac didn't sleep and in the morning he could hear the old man moving around downstairs. When he'd come in the previous night, he and the old man had looked at each other and nodded and the old man hadn't said anything about the stolen money.
From the window of his second- floor room he could see that the snow had already melted on all the hills. He remembered looking out this same window in the dark when the mill still ran and the night sky was enormous with fire. It was a faint memory from youth. It was not the first dead bum that year. The other they found in that old house, January. Froze to death. Except this one didn't die—was killed. That was the difference. This is the one they won't let go.
It was a strange time of year, not quite spring and not quite winter— certain trees were already leafed in while others were still bare. It would be a warm day. All the hills and hollows and nooks—it felt comforting. There wasn't a flat piece of land for a hundred miles. Hidden away wherever you were. That will not help you with the Swede, he thought. They will find the Swede eventually and they will not be on your side—see a dead man, think mother father brother sister man. Think I am a man like him. Don't let dead men lie without asking why. Dog left to rot—man is different. Do dogs look at dead dogs and wonder? No, you've seen it, they walk by without looking. Nature of a dog to accept a dead dog.
He could feel things were changing. This is your room but soon it won't be. A picture of his mother over his desk, smiling, young and pretty and bashful. A few awards from the science fair, first prize in seventh, eighth, ninth grade. No more after that—they didn't understand your projects. You knew they wouldn't but you went ahead anyway. Quarks and leptons, string theory, and then you learned your lesson. Half of them think the earth is four thousand years old. The others aren't much better—Colonel Boyd telling the class that humans had once had gills but the gills disappeared when we stopped using them. Actually, you tried to suggest, that's classic Lamarck. I'm not sure people believe that anymore. Gave you a C for making him look stupid. Only C you ever got. Naturally Colonel Boyd loved your sister. Why? Because she tells people what they want to hear. Didn't care if all her classmates were being taught things that weren't true.
He went back to looking out the window. He had always admired his sister for her easy way with people, tried to learn from her. Only now you see the cost—she lies more easily than you do. Same as the old man. No, he thought, the old man is different. Doesn't understand or have interest in anyone but himself. Meanwhile ask yourself if you'd act any better in his shoes—spine broken at L1, progressive neuropathy. Or take Stephen Hawking—your favorite crippled genius abandons his wife. Twenty- six years of changing his bedpan and then—sorry, honey, I think it's time for a newer model. He and the old man would understand each other well.
He looked at the clock and tried to remember when Poe was coming. Did we set a time? He couldn't remember. That was unusual. He made a note of it.
There was the sound of a car turning up the driveway and he jumped up and ran to the window to see a white sedan—cop? No. A Mercedes. Lee's car. She must have left Connecticut in the middle of the night to be getting in now. He watched her park next to the house. Knows you stole the money, is why. Christ. He began to feel even worse. I don't care, he said out loud. She's done a lot worse herself. But had she? It was hard to explain exactly what she'd done. Left you here, he thought. Promised she'd come back for you but she didn't. Meanwhile that car she's driving is worth more than this house.
He heard her come into the house and greet their father downstairs and a few minutes later he heard her on the stairs, coming up to see him. He slipped quietly under the covers and pretended to be asleep.
She hesitated outside the door, listening for a long time before opening it silently, just slightly. He felt the air coming in. She stood there, she must have been looking at him, he didn't open his eyes. He felt himself choke up but he kept his breathing even. He could imagine her face, nearly the same as their mother's, the same dark skin and short hair and high cheekbones. She was a very pretty girl.
“Isaac?” she whispered, but he didn't answer her.
She stood a minute or two longer and then finally she closed the door and went downstairs.
Was that right? he thought. I don't know. How many promises can someone break before you stop forgiving them? There had been a time, most of his life, really, when it had been very different. When he and his sister could finish each other's thoughts, when at any given time each would know exactly what the other was doing, whether at school or just in a different part of the sprawling brick house. If he had a bad day, he would go to his sister's room and sit on the foot of her bed while she read or did homework. He went to her before he went to his mother. The three of them, Isaac, Lee, and their mother, had been like a family within the family. Then their mother had killed herself. Then Lee went off to Yale. His one visit, she'd taken him around the campus, all
the tall stone ivy- covered buildings, and he knew it was where she belonged, and where he would someday follow her, but here he was, twenty years old and still living in Buell. And now, he thought.
None of it was permanent. The Swede will go back to the soil, blood goes from sticky thick to dust, animals eat you back to the earth. Nice black dirt means something died here. The things you could trace— blood, hair, fingerprints, bootprints—he didn't see how they would get away with it and there was a picture fixed in his mind of the Swede with his face shining and the bloody color of the light on him. He had never stopped looking at the spot between the Swede's eyes, even after the shot was gone from his hand. Made it go into him. With my mind I made it hit him there. He tried to call back the Swede's hands to see a weapon but he couldn't. His hands had been empty. Unarmed man, worst words there are. Why did you throw that thing at him? Because he had a look on his face. Because I couldn't get at the Mexican—might have hit Poe. The Mexican had a knife to Poe's neck but that was not the one you killed. The dead man was the one standing there doing nothing.
Basis of everything, he thought. Pick your own over a stranger. Dead Swede for living Poe. Ten dead Swedes or a hundred. Long as it's the enemy. Ask any general. Ask any priest—millions die in the Bible, no problem if God says thumbs- up. Babies, even—dash em on the rocks say Jesus made me do it. The Word of God and the hand of man. Done the deed now wash your hands.
— — —
In the early afternoon he saw Poe come up to the edge of the field, two hundred yards away, and he dressed quickly and put on his shoes and coat and went out the window, hanging by his fingertips before dropping the rest of the way to the ground. His sister had come up to check on him but he'd locked the door.
As he looked back at the house, a big Georgian Revival originally built for one of the steelmill's managers, he saw the old man sitting on the back porch in his wheelchair, his broad back and thin arms and white hair, looking out over the rolling hills, forest interspersed with pastures, the deep brown of the just- tilled fields, the wandering treelines marking distant streams. It was a peaceful scene and he wasn't sure if the old man was sleeping or awake. Like an old planter looking over his plantation— how much overtime he worked to buy this house. How proud he was of the house, and look at it now. No wonder you're always feeling guilty.
High- stepping through the tall grass he made for the stand of trees at the bottom of the property where the spring came out, he knew them all—silver maple and white oak and shellbark hickory, ash and larch. There was the redbud he and his father had planted, in full bloom now, pink against the green of the other trees. Judas tree. Fitting name. Poe was sitting there, waiting for him in the shadows.
“You get any strange knocks on the door?” he said.
“No,” said Isaac.
“Whose car is that?”
“Lee's. The new husband's, maybe.”
“Oh,” said Poe. For a second he looked stunned. Then he said: “E320—goddamn.” He was looking at the house.
They made their way through the woods toward the road, kicking up last fall's moldering leaves, the sweet smell from them.
“This is stupid,” Poe said. He looked at Isaac. “I mean, I don't see a way around it, but that doesn't mean it's not stupid.”
Isaac didn't say anything.
“Christ,” Poe said. “Thanks.”
They crossed the road and picked their way down to the stream through the alder. Except for a slight coolness there was no hint it had snowed the previous night and they walked along the gravel banks or over the dark mossy rocks, the sky blue and narrow above them, vegetation spilling into the gulch, honeysuckle and chokecherry an old rock maple tilted overhead, the ground eroding beneath it.
They passed an old flatbed truck, doorless and half- sunk in the sand. It occurred to Isaac that there might be blood on him, he hadn't taken a shower or washed or anything. It wouldn't spray that far, twenty or thirty feet. Still, he thought. That was extremely stupid.
They took the long way around town, through the woods where they wouldn't be seen. It was late afternoon when they could just make out the shell of the Standard plant through the trees.
“Let's just go in and get it over with.” Poe found his cigarettes but took a long time to fumble one out of the pack, and though it wasn't hot, patches of sweat were showing through his shirt.
“We need to wait till it's almost dark. It'll probably take us half an hour to get him to the river.”
“This is insane,” said Poe.
“It was insane staying in there yesterday.”
“You know we're half a mile from the nearest road. It'll be months before anyone else stumbles in there, maybe years.”
“Your coat will still be there.”
“Guess I should have remembered to grab it on the way out. It was probably the guy with the knife to my neck that distracted me.”
“I know that.”
“It's freakin me out goin in there again.”
“The great hunter. He shoots the guts out of a deer but when it comes to a guy who was actually trying to kill him—”
“It's a lot fuckin different,” Poe said.
“Well, you should have maybe worried about that yesterday.”
“The only reason I was anywhere near this shithole was you,” Poe told him.
Isaac turned away and walked off into the trees along the river. He found a rock by the water and sat down. It was average for a river, a few hundred yards across and in most places only nine or ten feet deep. Nine feet under. Good as five fathoms. Good enough for your mother and the Swede both. Drained of heart and freed of flesh. Listen to you, he thought, just turn yourself in. Thought you'd be the one saving people.
Sometime later Poe came and found him and they watched the water in silence, there was the sound of leaves shushing, the squawk of a heron, a distant motorboat.
“You know he isn't just gonna disappear. Some fuckin Jet Skier'll run him over by lunchtime tomorrow, guaranteed. Shit doesn't just magically evaporate because you stick it in a river.”
“It doesn't take much to sink a body,” said Isaac.
“Jesus, Mental. Listen to us.”
“It's already done,” said Isaac. “Pretending we can walk away is just going to make it worse.”
Poe shook his head and sat down a good distance away.
The sun was getting lower over the hills on the other side of the river, it was a pleasant quiet scene, sitting there looking over the water, but that was not how it felt. You're just a visitor here, he thought. Look at the sun and feel like you own it but it's been setting behind those hills for fifteen thousand years—since the last ice age. Glacial period, he corrected himself, not ice age. When those hills were formed. This area was the edge of the Wisconsin glaciation. Meanwhile here you are. Temporary visitor on the sun's earth. Think your mother will be here forever and then she's gone. Still sinking in five years later. Disappeared in a day. Same as you will. Nothing you can see that won't outlast you—rocks sky sun. Watch a sunset and feel like you own it but it's been rising without you for a thousand years. No, he thought, more like several billion. Can't even get your head around the real number. You're the only one who even knows you exist. Born and die between the earth's heartbeats. Which is why people believe in God—you're not alone. Used to, he thought. It was my mother that made me believe. And it was her that made you not believe. Stop it. You're lucky to be here at all. Don't be a weak thinker.
They're simple facts is all. Your only power is choosing what to make of them. She stayed under two weeks with a few pounds of rocks in her pockets. There is your lesson from that. No different this time. They'll find him at the lock, hook him out with a pole. Or he'll slip by them— Old Man River, a long journey drifting. Catfish doing their work. Victim none the wiser. Roof of water, bones beneath. Judgment day he'll rise. No such thing, he thought. And not possible even if there was. Once you lost your water, most of your weight was carbon. Your mole
cules scattered, were used again, became atoms and particles, quarks and leptons. You borrowed from the planet which borrowed it from the universe. A short- term loan at best. In the eyeblink of a planet you were born, died, and your bones disintegrated.
They waited until the sun went down before getting up from the rocks. Everywhere there was a bruised purple light. They heard the clicking of bats and looked up and the sky was full of them. They were several weeks early.
“Global warming,” said Isaac.
“You know I'm sorry, don't you?” said Poe.
“Don't worry about it.” He began to walk through the grass and Poe followed reluctantly behind. They crossed from the darkness of the river trees to the clearing along the train tracks and back into the trees again. In the meadow they stayed hidden behind the old boxcars and the long thicket of wild rose; they were well concealed but Isaac felt his legs getting shaky. One in front of the other. Close your mind for a while. He won't smell yet. But don't look at his face. Except you'll have to—won't be able to move him without looking at his face.
He checked back on Poe, who was grinning nervously, his skin pale and his hair flattened and damp with sweat, his hands shoved in his pockets as if trying to make himself smaller. When they came to the edge of the thicket and stopped to survey the open ground ahead, there was a smell like cat piss in the air. The smell didn't change and Isaac realized it was him. Smell of your own fear. Adrenaline. Hope Poe doesn't notice.
Around the machine shop everything looked different. The grass was crushed and beaten, the ground rutted with tire tracks. Leading up the hillside was an overgrown fireroad they hadn't noticed the previous day, but had since been churned into mud by heavy traffic. At the top of the hill they saw Harris's black- and- white Ford truck. Harris was inside, watching them.
4. Grace
The main road south of Buell angled away from the river to cut through a steep sunless valley, it was a narrow fast road with the trees tight along both sides. She passed vacant hamlets, abandoned service stations, an exhausted coal mine with a vast field of tailings that stretched on forever like sand dunes, gray and dry and not even the weeds would grow on them. Her old Plymouth wallowed and clattered over the potholes, she thought about Bud Harris but she didn't know if calling him would make things better or worse for Billy. She wondered if Billy had killed someone.