These Silent Woods: A Novel(5)

“You hunting?” I asked him, nodding to the weapon. I figured, I’ll play dumb, like I don’t recognize what kind of weapon it is, make him think I’m just a stupid camper out here in the woods. But what I was really thinking is, what does he need an automatic weapon for? And why is he here? And what would I do if things turned ugly and the answer, I realized, was anything. I had no limitations, no lines I wouldn’t cross because hadn’t I already crossed all the lines I could think of? Thing is, once you’ve crossed, once you’ve done almost everything you ever said you wouldn’t do, you also lose your sense of assurance that you won’t do those things again.

He laughed at my question, a growly, throaty laugh, like he was thinking I’m an idiot, and that’s exactly what I wanted. “Yeah,” he said, his teeth ugly and gray. “Hunting. Bunnies.”

I told him I was Cooper and then I pointed to Grace Elizabeth and said, “That’s Finch.” When I said the word, “Finch,” she looked at me, like it really was her name, like she recognized it and it was right. And even though Cindy was the one who’d named her, who’d leafed through a fat book with ten thousand names looking for the right one, I felt Finch was a suitable replacement, given the circumstances.

He gave a little nod. “Cooper’s all right, but I think I like American Prodigal.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“You heard me, neighbor.” He began to laugh.

There was something about him. Something shifty and scrappy and what? The word that came to mind was “otherworldly,” something not quite real. Well, the possibility that he wasn’t real did cross my mind, because though it hadn’t happened since right after I came back from overseas, it had happened, me seeing people who weren’t really there. But otherworldly wasn’t quite right. Strange. Unnerving.

A crow descended from a nearby pine. Small thing, not full-grown, with a red piece of yarn tied to its leg. Hovered near my face, like a gnat or a mosquito. Fluttering its wings, trying to provoke me. I swatted it and Scotland clucked and the thing flew to his shoulder. He pulled a crumb of bread from his shirt pocket and the crow plucked it from his hand, no lie. “This is Crow,” he said. “That’s his way of letting you know he doesn’t like you.”

He slid the AK over his head and placed it on the ground. He wasn’t that tall, not as tall as me, and he was skinny, but he looked fast and wiry and strong, the veins in his arms thick and pronounced. He was older than me, maybe twenty years, maybe ten. Hard to say because he had the look of someone who lived hard and it showed. On his right arm he had a large tattoo of a girl with blond hair, the details of her face rendered in great detail: eyes, nose, mouth, everything in color. Another face on the other arm, a woman, and then a USMC tattoo farther down, on his forearm. He was military, too.

He kneeled down next to Finch on the blanket and reached out his dirty hand and took his pointer finger and ran it under her chin. “Pretty little thing,” he said, and then he turned to me. “‘Children are a heritage from the Lord.’ Psalm 127:3. Especially girls.” He paused and lifted his head to the trees and a breeze swept in, and the leaves, heavy and green, shivered overhead. “The Bible doesn’t have that part about girls. I added that myself.”

I’ll be honest here. I thought about killing him right on the spot. I could keep the AK and we would never see Scotland again. I was vicious with grief then, a rabid beast, with Cindy just gone and Finch and me hunkered down in our little tent and here was someone that didn’t belong in the picture, who stood to threaten the tenuous ground on which we stood, and it just about sent me over the edge.

Settle, Kenny. Cooper. Settle.

I told myself if this were at the grocery store, at a coffee shop, if me and Finch were just a father and daughter out for a morning stroll, and a stranger came up and said she was pretty, there would be nothing abnormal about it. Finch was beautiful and people commented on beautiful babies. It meant nothing. Quit assuming the worst in people. Quit being so paranoid. I could almost hear Cindy saying it.

Scotland stood and sauntered over to the porch and looked at the wood stacked against the front. I’d been working at it, here and there, chopping firewood. “This isn’t near enough,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re planning to be here awhile,” he said: a fact, not a question. “You’re gonna need a whole lot more than what you’ve got.”

“Needed a change of scenery.”

Scotland made a noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a grunt, and I interpreted this to mean he didn’t buy it. He shielded his eyes and looked at the rooftop, the chimney, assessing every detail. He wandered over to the small orchard and inspected the branches, leaning close and looking at the tiny balls that didn’t quite look like apples just yet. “You been here six weeks already.”

He’d been watching us. Keeping track. I thought again of the Ruger. Disturbed by the fact that the idea of killing him swam to me so easily, that it felt like a natural solution. This is what has happened to you, I thought to myself. This is who you are now. There was a time when you would cringe at Aunt Lincoln skinning a deer. Blood, muscle, fascia, bone: you couldn’t stand the sight of it. You would position yourself to the side and turn your head. Not anymore.

My mind flickered to Cindy then and I saw her laughing in the dusk, hair in her teeth. When I came home from Kabul, there were times, moments like sun on water that glimmered and burned and I thought, with Cindy, I could be the man I was before. It would take time, but I could get there, with her love, with a certain pace of life, with grace. I could go back to being a person who had to turn their head from death, who would look away.