Descent

There were no windows that he could see, and even the pale vine of woodsmoke rising from the roof pipe, hardly distinguishable from the snowfall into which it climbed, seemed a sign of abandonment and disuse.

He stood almost within the spruce, pulling the air into his lungs as quietly as he could. He looked for signs of the man he’d been tracking and saw none. No footprints before the door of the shack and no visible trail or footpath in any direction. There was the hunkered little structure and there were the trees all around it and there was the vast, snowbound mountain. He watched the seam in the door to see if anyone would pass between it and the source of light within but no one did. He looked all around him through the trees, alert to any sound. He reached into his pocket and brought out the nine-millimeter and, muffling the sounds with his gloved hands, chambered a round and thumbed off the safety. He removed his right-hand glove and stowed it in the opposite pocket with the whiskey bottle, restowed the gun carefully, and stepped away from the spruce.

Crusted snow lay under the new powder and his boot steps a

He lowered his hand and found the gun grip inside his pocket. Held his breath, listening. The ticking of the snow on his shoulders, the faint pop of firewood on the other side of the door. He glanced around the clearing and it seemed even smaller now that he was at its center, the woods that shaped it more immense and dark. He let go of the gun and raised his hand again but then held it still. There was a sound from the other side of the door, as of a chain, as of chain links unspooling over a wooden floor, like a hound hauling itself to its feet, some old mountain breed chained up against doing damage or breaking free in its master’s absence. And then the hound spoke. It spoke in the voice of a girl and it said, thinly, “Hello? Is someone there?”

Billy swallowed.

“Who’s in there?” he said.

The chain dragged again and came to rest.

“Who’s out there?” said the girl. Nearer to the door but still some distance from it.

“What’s your name?” he said, and waited, his heart pumping. He asked again, and she said: “A man is keeping me here. Please help me.”

He took hold of the gun again. “Is the man in there?”

“No. He’s gone. Please help me.”

“I’m trying, darlin. Just tell me your name. Please.”

She was silent. The chain was still.

Then she said her name. So quietly that Billy wondered if it had been his mind that said it.

55

After di

He’d seen her just once, since: dark-haired and pretty in her black dress at the old man’s funeral . . . looking up to find her looking at him. But that was not the time to talk to her, that was not the time, and what did it matter anyway?

When he got back to the house, his father had broomed off the porch steps and was sitting on the top step, smoking a cigarette. The boy sat beside him and took one of his cigarettes and leaned toward the offered flame.

“You ever look at that old man’s throat?” his father said.

“Yeah, I looked at it.”

“But it made no impression.”

“It made an impression.” He drew on his cigarette. “I’ll quit when you quit.”

Grant looked at him and looked away. “All right.”

One of the mares whi

“They’re going to miss you,” Grant said.

“Who?” said the boy. Flicking his ash.

“Those horses. Who did you think I meant?”

The boy shrugged. “Thought you meant the horses.”

“Then why’d you ask who?”

The boy said nothing. They smoked.

“Maybe we should make an offer,” Grant said. “Take them with us. The horses, I mean.”

“Take them where?”

Grant lifted his cigarette and drew on it. Across the blue clearing sat the old man’s house, dark and silent. There was no wind or movement or sound anywhere. The El Camino had been gone all day.

“You think he’s coming back?” said the boy.

Grant straightened his arm to tip his ash. “It doesn’t much matter now, does it?”

“It never did,” said the boy. “Not to me.”

Grant looked at him in his wrist cast, looking up at the moon. The moon in the very middle of the sky, in the black bowl of stars shaped by the snowy ridgelines all around, the ridgelines themselves bright and stark and close in the moonlight.

“It’s going to snow again,” Grant said.

The boy sca

“That’s a halo moon.”

“So?”

“So that means more snow.”

“Says who?”

“Says everybody.”

The boy glanced at him. “You were watching the news,” he said, and Grant nodded.

“It’s snowing in the mountains and headed this way.” He pointed his cigarette at the moon. “But anybody can see that.”

The boy shook his head.

To the north above the ridgeline a falling star burned and died, leaving a faint scratch on the black lens of sky.

Did you make a wish, Daddy?

Yes I did. Did you?

Yes.

Shoulder to shoulder in summer’s grass, a concert of summer’s insects in their ears. Th e dizzying, burning heavens.

How many stars are there, Daddy?

Too many to count, Caitydid.

Will they all fall?

No, just a few.

Where do they go when they fall?

I don’t know. Where do you think?

“Did you see that?” he said to his son.

“What?”

“Falling star.”

“It wasn’t a falling star.”

“Sure it was.”

“Stars don’t fall. It was space debris. A piece of rock.”

Grant looked at him.

“What?” said the boy.

Grant looked to the north again. As if where one star fell there would be another.

The boy drew on his cigarette and surveyed the sky all around. “See that little group of stars there, just above the ridgeline?” He was pointing to the southwest.

Grant shook his head.

“Right under Cancer?”

Grant looked at him.

“That little cluster,” the boy said, “right there, above that high point of trees?”

“All right,” said Grant. “I see it.”

“That’s Hydra, the water snake. Its head, anyway. Longest constellation in the sky. It was charted by the Greeks over two thousand years ago, and guess what?”