HardScape by Justin Scott Page A

had, after all, accepted his job and his money. Did quitting absolve me?
    I looked at her, and she looked away and stood up and moved to the opening in the wall. She stared out. I drank champagne. Suddenly her whole body stiffened. She thrust her head and shoulders through the opening in the stone, straining to see.
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    I stood up beside her and looked where she was pointing. The sun had deserted a meadow but for the eastern edge along the woods, and there in the last rays something gleamed white. It was quite a distance away, and yet I could sense it shiver when the wind riled the grass around it.
    â€œI don’t know,” I said. “Looks a little like a deer’s white tail, but they don’t lie down in the open, and certainly not at this hour. It’s feeding time. You’ve never seen it there before?…Maybe your husband shot another one.”
    â€œNo,” she said impatiently. “He’s away.” She turned to the stairs, worried, and said loudly, “I have to see what it is.”
    She started down the metal steps, fast. I left my glass and followed. Down the steps, my hurt knee locking, through the big door, down a hall, and into the kitchen and out the back door. On the lawn she broke into a run. I limped after her, to the edge of the meadow. She plunged into the higher grass before I could warn her about the deer ticks. I stopped to pull my socks over my pants and trotted after her. She could shower off later. I could dry her back.
    She crossed the meadow, exactly where I had trod last night, and up the slope to the woods. Suddenly she slowed, then stopped, rigid, and put her hand to her mouth. I caught up. The white thing blowing in the wind, gleaming in the sun, was hair. Blond hair. Her boyfriend was sprawled on his back, with a brick-size bloody exit wound where his muscular chest had been.

Chapter 6
    There’s truth in the cliché that people seem to shrink when they die. My father’s body had looked hollow at Butler’s Funeral Home; by the time we got him to the churchyard he was almost transparent. A prisoner I saw shanked—a big man—fell like laundry. Mrs. Long’s boyfriend was different—robust—drinking in the sky with wide-eyed wonder. I remember thinking that the last innocent had escaped the planet, and those of us still stuck here were the dead ones.
    His name was Ron; she kept calling him Ron as she knelt beside him and took his body in her arms. I reached to comfort her and lead her away, until I thought, Wait, this isn’t television, let the poor woman grieve. I backed off, and stood guard, or something, at a distance.
    It could have been a hunting accident. Some damned fool poaching out of season, spotting the white flash of Ron’s hair, mistaking him for a whitetail deer. It happens, both in season and out, though most often when they issue doe licenses, because then the hunter doesn’t even have to try to confirm he sees the buck’s antlers. Just spot a white tail and blast away—Oh, my God, it was my kid; or my father; or my cousin. Or my wife. (Sometimes called a country divorce.) High-powered weapons, low IQs, and plenty of booze; little wonder we have too many deer.
    I wished I hadn’t smelled the gunsmoke in the turret.
    It would be dark soon. I really should call Oliver. But Mrs. Long—Rita—she just wasn’t going to be Mrs. Long for me any more, or anyone else, when it was established Ron was on the property—Rita was still holding him, still whispering in his dead ear.
    Poachers tend not to have hunting accidents. They are, in their way, professionals. A woody who puts deer meat on his table, or earns some spending money selling to butchers, usually treats guns with the respect they deserve. I’m not saying that a Chevalley boy—or one of the Jervis clan—would never have an accident poaching, but it’s less likely. Still, Oliver Moody