Late One Night

25

Inside Shooter’s house, as dark settled around the open countryside, he was explaining to Captain, as gently as he could, why he’d had to put down Methuselah.

“That goat was sick,” he said. “We’ll be lucky if he hasn’t made the others sick too.”

Captain had his pocketknife open, that Case Hammerhead, the one he’d said he’d lost. Now he was using the point of the blade to dig at the soles of his Big Horn Wolverine boots. Size elevens, just like the ones that Ronnie wore. Captain had come in from feeding the other goats, and he was sitting at the kitchen table, head down, as if he weren’t listening to Shooter at all. He just kept digging at those boots, gouging out pieces of the rubber soles until finally Shooter noticed the blood stains on the blade.

He was drying a pot with a dishtowel now, and he dropped the pot into the sink. The clanking sound caused Captain to jerk up his head. Shooter was standing over him with his hand out, palm up, and he was saying, “I thought you lost that knife.” Captain didn’t answer. He just kept digging at his boot soles. “Give it to me.” Shooter’s voice was harsher now. “Wesley, I mean it. I won’t stand for you lying to me.”

Captain closed the blade and started to stuff the knife back into his jeans pocket, but Shooter wasn’t about to let him off easy. He grabbed his arm and narrowed his eyes at Captain. “I’m not playing,” he said. “I want that knife.”

Finally, Captain let him have it.

Shooter snapped it closed and slipped the knife into his own pocket.

“That goat was sick,” he said. “We didn’t have any choice but to put him down. Right?”

After a time, Captain nodded. Shooter put his hand on his back, rubbing a slow circle.

“That’s right,” Shooter said. “That’s one thing we know for sure.”

Ronnie, at that very moment, was on the river. He’d parked his Firebird at the fishing camp, three miles out of Phillipsport, where one of his foster fathers had kept an old Airstream trailer. Ronnie had gotten out of the Firebird and walked a hundred yards or so down to the water.

The river was iced over, frozen thick enough for him to walk out onto it, all the way to the center — the deepest part — where for a moment, he tipped back his head and looked up at the sky. The stars were out and a crescent moon, just enough light to let him see the snow-dusted ice. Wind moved through the bare limbs of the sycamores and red oaks and hackberry trees that lined each bank. The smaller branches clicked together.

He liked being out there in the cold night, gazing up at the sky, imagining a heaven where Della knew the truth of what he’d done. Maybe in that heaven she’d even forgive him.

At any rate, she’d be the only one — at least it was so in Ronnie’s mind — who’d bear witness to what he was about to do, and she’d be the only one he’d feel inclined to tell why he had to do it.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to the sky. He got down on his knees. “I’m so sorry.”

Then he took his pocketknife, the one Angel had found in the snow behind the trailer, and he opened the blade.