The Runner (16 page)

A good shot too, he heard the cry and the muffled thud of a small body falling to ground in mid-movement. His hands worked the bolt to reload the barrel automatically as he went over to the bushes to see what he'd gotten.

OD—the stupid mutt—lay on her side with blood coming out every time she breathed. Her eyes were closed.

Bullet knew what he had to do next. He raised the gun to his shoulder and aimed just behind her left eye. At this range, even this gun wouldn't fail him. “I
told
you,” he said to her. He hooked his finger around the trigger. He wanted to do this in one clean shot. Why did she have to be so stupid?

At the sound of his voice she opened her eye and her tail wagged a couple of times. It barely rustled the leaves and branches she lay on.

“You stupid mutt,” Bullet said. “What am I supposed to do?”

The tail moved again, and she tried to lift her head to see him, but apparently she couldn't.

Bullet crouched down beside her and took a look at the wound. It was a kind of ragged hole in her rib cage. She tried to turn, tried to get up—her front legs kind of scrabbled and her chest heaved; her back legs didn't move at all. Blood came out of the hole, slow and steady.

“What did you think you were doing?” he demanded. But she hadn't been thinking, and now look what had happened. She'd just been following him around and got in the wrong place at the
wrong time. Stupid, just like Liza, and wagging her tail at him when he'd just pumped lead into her.

Bullet forced his rib cage outward with a breath.

Not his fault, he knew that.

His rib cage and the banded muscles of his diaphragm closed in again, putting pressure on his lungs.

She walked into it. Time and again, over and over, he'd sent her home. The stupid dog just wouldn't learn.

He forced breath into his lungs.

He felt like kicking her. It made him angry . . . what she'd done.

His muscles bunched together and moved with anger. He rose, bent to pick up the twenty-two, stared down at the dog making a puddle of dark blood on the dried pine needles.

She lay there uncomplaining, breathing, bleeding—dying.

It wasn't his fault, but he had fired the shot. And now what was he supposed to do. He felt boxed in, helpless—caught in somebody else's trap, like always. He needed to yell, he needed to move, before the sides of the box pushed in all around him and crushed him.

He felt himself explode into action, swinging his arms—and he cracked the twenty-two against the twisted trunk of a swamp oak. The shock of the impact ran along his bones, jarring the shoulder socket and moving on, like a lightning bolt, down through the muscles of his back. He slammed it again and again. The noise he was making with his voice had no meaning, it just exploded out of him.

At last, the gun broke, snapped apart where the barrel joined the stock. The barrel flew off into the dark woods, landing with a crash. He threw the stock after it, listening to it fly through branches and crash down somewhere in the dark circle beyond visibility.

He was breathing heavily. He turned to look down at OD before walking away.

Her ears were up, listening. She didn't even know what was going on.

Bullet sat down on the rough ground by her head. “All right,” he said aloud. “But hurry up.” He put one hand on her head, rubbing a little with his fingers. He could feel the shape of her skull under the smooth hair. Her skull fit into his hand. If he wanted to, he could take his two hands and crush that circle of bone—if she'd been in pain he would have. His fingers moved behind her floppy ears. Along the edge of the delicate layer of bone.

She was small, OD, smaller even than that kid in the picture Frank showed him. Liza's kid. He didn't believe Liza had gone and had a kid, with Frank for the father—and maybe two. How stupid could anyone be.

You're not looking too smart to me right now,
he told himself.

It wasn't my fault,
he answered.

Yeah, but it's your responsibility.

Well, I'm accepting that, so shut up.

He shut up.

OD breathed slowly, patiently, waiting. Bullet breathed beside her, waiting. Night settled slowly in around them, sifting in among the trees. She wasn't complaining, OD. She wasn't scared. Little night noises moved around them, scurryings and flutterings, the rustling of leaves and sometimes a distant motor, some boat moving back to harbor.

Bullet felt the hard ground under his backside and his legs. His shoulders rested back against a fallen tree. His one hand rested on OD's skull, the little finger going down along her neck to register the shallow rise and fall of her breathing.

He sat between anger and sad. They felt the same, the sad and the anger. He could see the shapes of trees and the massy
shape of undergrowth, but nothing more. He could see, turning his head slightly, the whitish shape of OD.

“I'm sorry, OD,” he finally spoke aloud. He barely recognized his own voice. He heard a rustle of dried pine needles where her tail was. “I dunno, I wish you hadn't walked into it. I wish I hadn't taken that shot—I didn't mean to.”

If she knew anything, which he doubted, she'd know that was true. Which didn't make any difference. “You're such a stupid mutt, OD,” his voice said, trying to tell her, “but you've been okay.” And she couldn't possibly understand, he knew that. “You've been an okay dog, all things considered.”

Shut up,
he told himself.

Well, she was.

Night folded in over them. The wind picked up, and he could no longer hear OD's breathing. He could only feel it through his fingers. The moon must have risen, because the woods were infiltrated with silver clouds of light that made patches of dark shadows. The shadows moved, where they ran through trees. The wind washed cold over Bullet. He didn't move. He stayed and waited. He had no idea how much time passed and he didn't care. And then, quietly, OD was no longer breathing. Because he had killed her.

He got up, stiff and angry. But he was angry at himself. He didn't know what to do about that.

Johnny was right, you're a breaker,
he told himself.
She had courage. She was nothing but a stupid mutt, and she did it right. Good for you, OD.

I
n the shadowy woods, there wasn't anything he could dig a grave with. He started digging with his fingers where he'd been sitting, but after the layer of dead needles and dried leaves scraped off, and the top dusty layer of soil, all he could do was scratch uselessly. He felt around until he found a stick, strong enough. He used that to scrape and pry and dig into the soil. With his hands, he scooped out the handfuls of soil he loosened that way and piled it by his knees. Then he scraped and pried again.

After a long time, he had made a shallow grave. He picked up the body of the dog—just a body now, empty—and put her into it. Scraping with his hands, he covered her over with dirt. After the dirt, he piled on armloads of leaves, and finally, with the heaviest branches he could find, he made a covering. He set the branches side by side in a straight row over the grave.

He stood up, cold and stiff, but not tired.
That was such a stupid thing to do. A stupid mistake. Mine.

Bullet made his way down to the water and went north toward the farm. Along by the water the sky showed stars and moon overhead. Liza should have taken OD with her. Liza knew what it was like. Leaving OD there was like— Bullet splashed up through the cold shallows. It was like lions, the way the old man—and he did it too—devoured things. Like lions attacking and chasing down, teeth and claws and the powerful relentless
bodies. Then ripping her apart, ripping the flesh and bones apart, and the blood, guts, everything lying on the ground. . . . Poor OD didn't have a chance, nobody could have stopped them.

Come off it,
he said to himself.
What kind of an idea is that?

It's just an idea,
he answered,
but it's my own, and maybe even the first one all my own. So get lost.

Get lost
(scornfully),
how can I get lost? Jerk.

Bullet agreed.

He turned at the dock, to go inland. Over the marsh grasses the sky lightened to silver, and a streak of orangy pink heralded the sunrise. Bullet stopped to watch. He wasn't in any hurry.

As the light rose above a line of trees, it flowed like water over the grasses, turning them warm brown, almost gold. They swayed, as if the light were a hand passing over them. The distant trees assumed color.

Bullet headed up the path. He came through the pines into his mother's vegetable garden. There the brown harrowed earth shone under early sunlight, and the few dark leaves hanging on the tomato plants glowed. A couple of pumpkins were hidden away under broad flat leaves, their vines twisting along the rough earth. Tiny tentacles went out from the vines to hold the soil. He bent down and took a handful of dirt, rubbing it with his fingers against his palm, letting it shower down. You grew things out of this, and his fingers could feel its richness.

He looked toward the house and met his mother's eyes. She was sitting on the back steps, still in the clothes she'd worn for dinner, red shoes with heels, blue skirt, the white blouse. He walked toward her. Her hands held a blanket around her shoulders. Her eyes were fixed on his face. She had been waiting for him.

“Maw,” he said.

She didn't answer. Her face stayed expressionless.

“What are you
doing
?” he demanded.

“You took your gun,” she snapped.

He turned, looked where she was looking, over the garden to the marsh. He sat down beside her, so his shoulder almost touched hers. He could feel how she was feeling, and he didn't like feeling that; he didn't like her feeling it either; it made him angry that she should have to.

With his shoulder touching hers, he tried to tell her. “I shot OD.” He waited, and she didn't say anything. “It was an accident. Anyway, I waited with her—and then I had to bury her.”

The two of them sat looking out. He waited for what she would answer. He wouldn't blame her if she let fly at him.

“People like us,” she finally said, “I dunno, boy. Innocent, weak things come into our hands, and we do such a bad job by them. We destroy them.”

“It wasn't like that; it was an accident,” he told her.

She turned her head to face him, her eyes burning. “Don't pretend, boy. Are you pretending to yourself you didn't do it? Because if you are, you're lying to yourself. Are you doing that? Are you going to do that to yourself?”

Her anger drove the breath out of him, and he pulled his body back from hers. “But,” he started to say, and her mouth moved without saying anything. She wasn't talking to him, he understood that; he understood her anger.

“No, I'm not,” he promised her. Her head nodded once, sharply.
What a life for her,
he suddenly thought, angry and sad again.
Why didn't she get out, why doesn't she?

“You don't know,” she said.

“No, I don't think I do,” he told her. Then a sudden question drove everything else out of his head.

“Do you think I should have carried her home? Do you think a vet could have done anything? Momma?”

She asked him to describe the wound, so he did, his answers as quiet as her questions. He didn't try to explain how it happened, just talked about what OD looked like. His mother thought about it, then shook her head. “No, bringing her home wouldn't have been any good.”

Bullet believed her, but he couldn't be sure.

“Besides, we'd have had to sail into town to find a vet,” his mother said.

“And I wouldn't have liked to bury her in the water,” Bullet said.

“Agreed.”

They sat in silence. Bullet was cold, he realized. “You should go inside,” he said.

“I am tired, I am that.” But she didn't get up. “And my feet hurt.”

“Take off your shoes. Why didn't you take off your shoes?”

“And ruin a pair of perfectly good stockings?”

“Take off your stockings too.”

“Bare feet are common,” she reminded him.

“You don't think that,” he told her.
Talk about boxes.

She didn't answer. He guessed he knew why.

“Maw?” he said. “You're the stubbornest old woman in the world.”

A smile moved across her face and was gone. Watching that, Bullet thought:
How long has it been? What a life for her,
and then, loud inside his own head,
I won't let him do this to her.

And what are you going to do?
he asked himself.
What can you do?

Something.

You're the breaker. You destroy. You forgotten already?

No. No, I haven't.

He thought maybe he could tell her about Frank's visit, just
about the picture of the kid. But then he recognized that that wouldn't be much joy to her, finding out she had a grandchild, and maybe two, that she didn't even know where they were and wouldn't be able to get off the farm to go find them even if she wanted to. That would just be adding more boards to the side of her box, making her box squeeze tighter on her. It would be like turning her into prey, sticking his lion's claws and teeth into her. He couldn't get her out of her box any more than he could unshoot the shot that got OD. There was nothing he could do.

Everybody was in the same box, helpless. She was and he was—and maybe even the old man, although Bullet couldn't see that, but maybe she could—and everybody.
What a world.

“I don't recall any orders about me cooking for you, do you?” Bullet asked his mother. He stood up. She looked at him.