THREE

Temperatures were dropping as fall came on, and by the middle of next week the weatherman expected the mountains would see heavy frosts. Calvin Hooper thought it was about damn time. He hated summer as much as anybody with half a brain who worked outside for a living. The den where he sat flashed bright as the nightly newscast cut to commercial, only the television for light, and Calvin reached for what was left of a Jack and ice, the whiskey watered down but cold.

He swirled his drink around the bottom of a faceted jelly jar, threw what was left down the back of his throat, and walked into the kitchen to pour another. It was almost midnight, but he wasn’t tired. Truth was, he never slept worth a shit anymore. About ten o’clock every night he reached a point where he was more awake than any other time of the day. If he lay down when his girlfriend, Angie, went to bed, he’d toss and turn four or five hours before he finally dozed off. Most nights his feet would get to killing him and he’d have to get up and take a couple Advil to find any rest at all. His mama told him to rub witch hazel on his legs and believe it or not that helped, but when his feet quit hurting his brain ran wide open and either way he didn’t sleep a wink.

The little light in the freezer shone white against his bare chest while he filled the jar to the brim with ice. The whiskey bottle sat nearly full on a Formica countertop and he poured himself another drink in the half-light offered from the other room. When he’d capped the bottle, he rattled his glass, the ice tinkling against the sides. Aside from tying one on maybe once a month, he never drank to get drunk. Most nights he didn’t even catch a good buzz. The two glasses he drank those last two hours of a night brought a dreamless sleep so that he could catch enough shut-eye to get up and do it again.

The phone rang in the living room and Calvin walked back toward the couch with one hand down his sweatpants, the other holding his drink against the center of his chest. No one ever called this late. The cell phone lay faceup on the side table by the couch and he glanced down to check the caller ID. The screen read DARL , and Calvin considered letting it go to voicemail, figuring Darl was probably drunk and would talk his ear off about God knows what with Calvin having to be up at six to work another Saturday. In the end, guilt got the better of him. Darl was Calvin’s best friend, always had been, so the thought that he might actually need something outweighed anything else.

Calvin pulled the power cord from the cell phone so as not to be tethered to the wall when he answered. “Hello.”

“You asleep?” Darl asked. There was something strange in his voice, his breath heavy in the phone as if he was winded.

“I’m sitting here watching the news.” Calvin sat down on the couch and dug a pack of cigarettes from between the dark vinyl cushions. He lit a smoke and moved a small glass ashtray from the coffee table to the arm of the couch, tapped the first bits of ash over a pile of stubbed-out butts. “What you doing?”

“Your trackhoe at the house?”

“That old eighties model’s down there in the back pasture. All the big machines are up at a jobsite, why?”

“I was going to see if you might ride over to the house and dig me a horse grave in that back pasture.”

“‘A horse grave’?” Calvin chuckled. It was just like Darl Moody to call somebody at midnight wanting help to dig a hole for a dead horse. “What the hell’s wrong with the bucket on your tractor?”

“Boom’s busted.”

“Well, yeah, I can help you. I got to meet with some folks down there at the Coffee Shop tomorrow morning about eight, but I can swing by on my way back through.”

“No, I need it done now.”

“Now? It’s almost midnight you son of a bitch. I ain’t digging no horse grave in the middle of the night.” Calvin laughed and took a long drag off his cigarette. He blew the smoke toward the popcorn ceiling above. “I’ll be by there in the morning.”

“It can’t wait till morning.”

“What the hell you worried about? Coyotes? Hell, Darl, if the damned coyotes get after that horse it’ll be less to bury.” He took a sip of whiskey and brushed the thigh of his sweatpants where the condensation on the outside of the jar had left a ring.

“Look, I ain’t worried about no damn coyotes, okay? But this can’t wait till morning. So can you go over there and do that for me or not?”

“No, Darl. It’s midnight. Angie’s in there asleep and I got to be up at six. I’m going to finish this drink and hit the hay.”

“It won’t take you an hour.”

“An hour my ass. It’ll take me an hour to get loaded up. I ain’t piling up and going to dig a hole in a field for a goddamn horse. What’s wrong with you?”

“Then let me come over there and borrow your trackhoe. I’ll have it back before you wake up.” Darl’s voice was frantic. Calvin knew something was wrong by the tone, the way you recognize those things in the voices of the people closest to you.

“This ain’t about no horse.”

“Don’t worry about what this is about. All I need to know right now is whether you can come dig me a hole in that back pasture?”

“I ain’t doing anything unless you tell me what’s going on.”

“I can’t do that, Cal.”

“Then I’m not coming.” Calvin took a final drag off his cigarette, the last of the tobacco burning down into the filter, and mashed the cherry out into the glass.

“Goddamn it,” Darl said. “Goddamn it.”

“What the hell’s going on?”

“Can you get over to Coon Coward’s place?”

“Coon Coward’s?”

“Can you get over here or not?”

Calvin thought about Angie asleep in the back. He hated to wake her up and try to explain where he was going, hated even more for her to open her eyes and him be gone, but she slept like a rock. Probably won’t even wake up, he thought. He didn’t know what was going on, but he knew Darl needed him, that he wouldn’t ask if he didn’t, and he knew Darl would do the same for him if the time ever came.

Family didn’t ask questions. Family offered hands. And that’s how their friendship had always been, like family.

“Yeah,” Calvin finally said.

“How long?”

“Just let me put some clothes on. Twenty minutes.”

“All right, then,” Darl said.

“All right,” Calvin said.

When Darl was gone, Calvin reached for his pack of cigarettes and lit another smoke before he stood. He stared at the television, though he didn’t see or hear what was being said, his head full of questions as he reached for his whiskey and drained it to ice.

• • •

THE PICKUP RATTLED over a washed-out section of Coon Coward’s driveway, and as the truck crept up a small incline, the headlights climbed from Darl’s feet to his chest, on up to the top of his hat. His head was bowed and, as he looked up, the light made a moon out of his face, his eyes aglow like an animal’s.

Calvin cut the headlights, killed the engine, and stepped out into the night. There was a chill to the air and he flipped the hood of his black sweatshirt over his head and fit his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans. The last cries of summer crickets chimed from dew-covered grass, but their calls were overshadowed by the crunch of gravel underfoot.

“Where the hell’s Coon?” Calvin asked as he came to the back of Darl’s truck where Darl sat on the tailgate, his feet swinging free of the ground.

Darl grabbed a plastic soda bottle from beside him, unscrewed the cap, and spit a line of tobacco inside. “He’s out of town,” Darl said. “His sister died.”

“Oh,” Calvin mumbled. “Well, what in the world you doing out here?”

Darl rested his hand on the walnut stock of a Savage 110 that lay across the truck bed. A climbing stand was loaded under the truck box. Camouflage pants rose on the necks of his logging boots, his T-shirt a different brush pattern from his trousers. “Hunting,” he said.

“Poaching,” Calvin corrected him.

Darl nodded and scratched at the corner of his eye with the side of his hand. He had a steep brow that cast his eyes in shadow, an underbite that jutted his chin, pushing the thick wave of his beard even with his nose.

“Well, what’s going on?”

“I don’t want to get you involved with this,” Darl said.

“I’m here, ain’t I?”

“Yeah, but you ain’t got to be.”

“You know, in all these years, every time I needed something, you was right there, now wasn’t you?”

“I guess so.”

“And every time you’ve ever needed me, right there I’ve been, ain’t I?”

“Yeah,” Darl said.

“Then get on with it.”

Darl stood from the tailgate and the nightglow was bright around them. A full moon rose—a supermoon the news had called it—and there was a lunar eclipse that cast its face a dim orange, the color of farm eggs. Darl was a head taller than Calvin. They were only a few feet apart, and he met Calvin’s eyes for a second or two, though he didn’t hold them and glanced down to his feet. “Come on, then,” he said as he turned.

Calvin followed Darl to the edge of the woods and they headed into the thicket, the thin brush raking them up to their waists as they melted into the trees. Darl wore a headlamp over his cap, but he did not turn it on. The moon was up and provided enough light to wander. Through the woods, an old Plymouth coupe rusted down into nothing next to a small, trembling finger of creek. They climbed a small knoll and the land opened into a field of broomstraw where a derelict barn rotted into jagged timbers.

Crossing the field, they entered the trees again, and Calvin knew this place, having been here dozens of times as a child with his father and grandfather to coax speckled trout from the stream. Those times on the creek during summers that seemed as if they’d stretch on forever were about as good as life had ever been. Calvin’s father would bait their hooks with pearls of Silver Queen corn or red wrigglers depending on the color of the water, and they’d slip those speckled trout into the mouth of a jug until they had a mess of fish for supper. His grandfather fried the fish with ramps and wild potatoes, those trout so sweet and delicate they’d eat them heads and all. The stars had seemed brighter then and, as Calvin looked up into the spangled heavens at this moment, he believed that maybe they were. Maybe there’re only one or two moments like that in a man’s whole life and maybe man is just too dumb a creature to recognize that moment’s the one until everything’s long gone.

Darl held back a whip of laurel for Calvin to pass. When he was through, Darl turned on his headlamp and shined into the woods. They were too deep into the forest now for anyone driving by to see them from the road.

“Let me go first,” Darl said, as they climbed farther up the hillside. All of a sudden, Darl jerked back as if something had taken a swipe at him and Calvin tripped over the homemade alarm, the cans jingling in the trees above them.

Calvin was tangled in the line, and as he stepped to get loose, he saw Darl’s light shining on the rusted fishhooks that dangled at their faces. “What the hell is this?”

“The old man’s ginseng patch,” Darl said. “He’s got the place booby-trapped.”

They crept along, patting at the air in front of them so as not to get snagged, and in a few more steps Darl stopped with his light shining down on the body. Calvin’s eyes settled first on the treads of the man’s boot soles, his legs twisted, and torso bent with one arm by his side, the other outstretched above. Calvin Hooper stood there in disbelief, not sure what to say or ask or do, stilled and silenced by what lay before him.

“Who is that?” Calvin finally said, those three words filling his mouth.

Darl stepped around the body and knelt by the dead man’s shoulders. He reached down and pinched the bill of the man’s ball cap, lifted his head and shined the light onto his face. At first Calvin thought his cheek was bloodied, but then he realized it wasn’t blood. The mark was too purple, too flat in hue. His eyes were clouded over but that birthmark made him unmistakable.

“Jesus Christ, is that Sissy?”

“Yeah,” Darl said. “That’s Carol fucking Brewer.”

“What the hell happened?”

“I told you I was out here hunting.”

“Yeah, but how did this happen?”

“I was up in a treestand down there in that cove and I heard something rustling around in the leaves up here and when I looked through the scope I thought it was a hog. Hell, he was rooting around on all fours. Looked like a goddamned pig.”

“Fuck, Darl.” Calvin’s mind cracked. “Why didn’t you call somebody?”

“He was dead as soon as I got to him. There wasn’t anything I could do. There wasn’t shit anybody could do.” Darl looked up and his headlamp was blinding. “Calling wasn’t going to do him any good.”

“We got to call somebody,” Calvin said. “We’ve got to get somebody out here.”

“I ain’t calling anybody, Calvin.”

Calvin couldn’t see Darl’s face, but the light shook back and forth with his answer. “What do you mean you’re not calling somebody? You’ve got to call somebody, Darl. You’ve fucking killed somebody.”

“I know that! Don’t you think I know that?” Darl’s voice was loud and stern now.

“You said it yourself. It was an accident. You might get lawed for poaching, Darl, but it ain’t murder. Not right now, it ain’t. But if you go and do something crazy it might be. You can’t do something like that.”

“And what then, Cal? What you think’s going to happen after that? That’s Carol Brewer, Carol fucking Brewer! Brewer by God!” Darl said that name loud. “You think his brother Dwayne is going to let that go? You think Dwayne Brewer’s just going to say, ‘Hey, man, I know you killed my brother and all, but you didn’t mean to. No hard feelings.’ You think that’s what he’s going to say?”

Calvin didn’t answer.

“I’d be lucky if all he did was come after me ,” Darl said. “But knowing him, knowing everything he’s done, you and me both know it wouldn’t end there. I bet he’d come after my mama and my little sister and my niece and nephews and anybody else he could get his hands on. That son of a bitch is crazy enough to dig up my daddy’s bones just to set him on fire.”

“You’re talking crazy, Darl.”

“Am I?” Darl looked down at the body and the light lit Carol Brewer’s face. Where the bullet had exited from his shoulder the wound was crusted with fragments of broken leaves and pine needles.

“So what the hell are you going to do?”

“I’m going to bury him. I’m going to bury him and ain’t nobody ever going to know anything about it.”

“You’ve lost your mind, Darl. You’ve lost your fucking mind.”

“Look, if you want to go, say so. I told you I didn’t want to get you involved. Now if you want to leave, turn around right now and you forget everything and I’ll do what I’ve got to do.”

“Then why the fuck did you call?”

“Because I needed a favor, Cal, and you’re the only one I got.”

Calvin looked over at the body that lay stretched between them. A bluish-purple hue, nearly the same color of the birthmark, had settled into the undersides of Carol’s arms like a bruise. Calvin knelt beside him and put his hand on Carol Brewer’s forearm. His skin was cool and his muscles stiff, but there was no smell to him. Not yet. None of that horror in dying had reached him in these few hours.

Calvin stood and looked around, the trees towering overhead so that they blacked out the starlight. All of a sudden he felt surrounded. He slowly turned a circle, looking at the darkened woods, the cries of the last few katydids now deafening in their mourning the turn of season. In that moment, he knew that he was standing in the midst of something that would never be forgotten, something he’d carry from this place and bear the rest of his life. There was no turning back.

That single certainty consumed him.