by Tim Poland
“Don’t worry,” Margie said, trying to lighten the moment. “You’ll still be able to fish.”
Sandy turned her eyes away from Margie, up to the ceiling. “Is he dead?” she asked. Her jaw was sore and swollen, making it difficult to open her mouth much.
“Oh, honey.” Margie squeezed Sandy’s hand and began to stroke her arm. “I’m so sorry, but yes, he’s—”
“Not James,” Sandy said. “The other.”
“Yes. My god, what the hell happened out there?”
Two investigators from the state police came into the room a short time later, seeking answers to the same question. When Margie took in their stern faces and close-cropped hair, she was adamant that Sandy’s attorney be present and demanded that the officers wait. Their wait was brief, however, as Jackson Stamper was on the floor below Sandy’s, having the remaining toes removed from his foot. Margie returned in a few minutes, rolling Stamper into the room in a wheelchair. He wore a hospital gown under a royal blue bathrobe with his initials elaborately stitched into the breast pocket, and his foot was freshly bandaged.
“Hello, gentlemen. I represent Ms. Holston.” The sudden appearance of this big, affable man stuffed into a little wheelchair clearly caught the officers off guard. He shook the hand of each officer and rolled on to Sandy’s bedside. Sandy looked at him, unsure if what she saw was real, but Stamper patted her hand and told her to answer their questions as best she could.
The investigators were terse and close-mouthed, not particularly forthcoming with information. They said they had pieced the crime scene together fairly well, but a couple of questions remained. Did she know this Charles Heaton? What was her relationship to him?
“Was that his name?” Sandy asked.
She recounted the scenario of that morning, a basic review of the events, stripped bare of the rush of terror and anger, of pain and loss, that had surged through her. She said nothing of the mountain lion that the bearded man with the rifle had stalked to its den. Neither did she tell them that as she was losing consciousness, she thought she saw the lion slip out of the cave and flee. She couldn’t be sure if that hazy memory was real or a delusion, but she wouldn’t have told them either way. The officers confirmed that her version of events seemed in keeping with their assessment. Since Sandy and Keefe had both been shot and the man had not, they deduced he had been the aggressor, the one doing the shooting.
The officers rose slowly. They each thanked Sandy and told her they’d be in touch again.
Stamper assured her this would all be wrapped up in no time and for her not to worry, that he’d come by and see her again soon if they didn’t decide to lop off any more of his body in the interim. As Margie pushed him out of the room, Sandy asked him to hold on. “That job. At the furniture plant,” she said.
“You don’t fret about that,” Stamper said. “I’ll call him, tell him to sit tight, that he’s got one hell of a woman coming his way.”
Before Margie could get Stamper out the door, Sandy stopped her again. “Where’s Stink?” she asked.
“He’s fine, honey. We have him at our place. And good luck getting him back. Matthew is nuts for him.”
After a few days, Sandy was transferred out of the intensive care unit. Margie not only remained in attendance but made sure Sandy was placed in a private room. The story was out. Sandy could see it in the faces of the nurses, both those caring for her and those who peeked surreptitiously through the open door of her room. She had seen the look before, the commingling of fear and awe, of revulsion and respect for the woman whose life unfolded so differently from their own. And this new story had blended into the old one from all those years earlier—not only a woman for whom men died, but now a woman who had killed one of those men herself. A woman who had survived a gunshot wound and beaten a man to death because he had killed another man, who had, they assumed, died for her. Their eyes revealed their uncertainty. Was she some sort of half-wild new heroine for them, or a cursed woman stalked by death? Should they admire her or pray for her redemption as they fled her presence?
One night Sandy woke to find Margie at her post in the chair by her bed, her forehead pressed to the edge of the mattress, crying quietly. Sandy lifted her hand and laid it on Margie’s head. Margie’s eyes dripped tears when she raised her head.
“Oh, honey. Goddamn it all,” Margie said. “I wish we could bring that son of a bitch back to life so I could help you beat the motherfucker to death again.”
Mingled with the irascible temperament and the profane tongue was a heart that cared deeply, unconditionally, for the lives she came into contact with. For Margie, love came naturally.
Margie rose from the chair, sat on the edge of the bed, and stroked Sandy’s hair. Sandy grimaced with pain as she tried to sit up.
“Here,” Margie said, and reached toward the button to release another dose of pain medication.
“No,” Sandy said. Her lips began to quiver as she spoke. “Let me feel this. All of it.”
For the first time since she’d regained consciousness, Sandy wept, with abandon, collapsed in Margie’s relentlessly loving arms.
Margie had also taken charge of the arrangements for Keefe’s body. Because the law required it, the county medical examiner had performed an autopsy, but it was perfunctory, given the obviousness of the bullet hole in the top of the head. Margie had contacted the Dawkins Funeral Home and Crematory, had the body sent there, and made arrangements for cremation. She’d also had Stamper contact them to assure them that Sandy had power of attorney over Keefe’s affairs. The funeral director stopped by Sandy’s hospital room to get her signature on the paperwork, as impeccably groomed and deferential as he had been when Sandy met with him at the end of the summer to tend to the arrangements for Edith. He took Sandy’s hand as he offered his condolences and his sincere wishes that their paths wouldn’t cross again anytime soon.
“Bullshit,” Margie muttered after the funeral director left the room. “That hairsprayed fucker would love nothing more than to cash a few more of your checks.”
J.D. had held back on visiting Sandy in the hospital, so riddled with guilt was he. He didn’t make an appearance until Sandy had been moved to her new room, and Margie had insisted that this goddamn silliness had gone on long enough.
“I’m just so damned sorry.” J.D. sat hunched over in the chair by Sandy’s bed, staring at the floor, wringing his hands between his knees.
“It’s not your fault, J.D.” She patted his forearm and listened as J.D. unburdened himself of the parts of the story the state police investigators had withheld.
J.D. reminded Sandy about the dealer down in Pepper’s Fork they’d arrested for bear poaching and trading illegally in bear organs and body parts, the one they arrested the same day as Sandy’s trial. In order to make an already light sentence even lighter, the dealer had reached an agreement with the authorities to give up his suppliers, the most prolific of which was one Charles Heaton, who lived back in the woods somewhere on the east slope of Rogers Ridge. And if you were going after that crazy son of a bitch, the dealer had said, you damned well best go armed.
Once they’d located his camp, J.D. and two teams of deputies and a dog from the new K-9 unit of the Sherwood County sheriff’s office had gone out there to serve a search warrant and cite him. When they arrived the morning after it snowed, they found the carcass of a dog that had been shot through the top of the head, a stack of bear hides, a load of poached bear meat, and a lot of ammunition, but Heaton was gone. Searching the camp, they found a storage cave dug into the hillside. When they were about to leave, to return later, their dog began to raise a fuss around a mound of recently dug earth inside the storage cave. It only took a few minutes of digging in the loose earth to reveal the decaying remains of a human body, who later turned out to be that Randy Mullins fellow who had gone missing last spring. His wallet was still in the pocket of his pants.
Once the body was found, all hell broke loose. A radio call went
out to the office in Sherwood, and the state police were notified. One team of deputies followed the tire tracks in the snow and soon radioed back that they’d found what must be Heaton’s pickup truck on an old logging road that connected with the fire road that ran down along the upper Ripshin. With the truck and the empty rifle scabbard they found in the cab, they knew that Heaton had to be somewhere in the ravine, hunting.
Now they were no longer dealing with an issue of broken game laws. This was murder, and J.D. was quickly out of the lead role. While the deputies prepared themselves, waiting for reinforcements and the arrival of the state police, J.D. raced down to the fire-road gate, intending to drive up to the bungalow to inform Sandy and Keefe of the threat of danger. When he got there, that damned rusted old padlock wouldn’t budge. While he waited for a deputy to arrive with bolt cutters, he’d tried to call the bungalow, he had, but the cell signal was too weak and the connection failed.
“I thought that was you,” Sandy said.
“God, I’m so sorry,” J.D. said.
“It wasn’t your fault, J.D.”
His hands folded into fists and shook visibly. Margie stood behind the chair and leaned over, wrapping her arms tightly around her shaken husband.
“Why didn’t I just call in to the office? Have them call you?”
“J.D.” Sandy’s hand on his forearm tightened. “It’s not your fault.”
Sandy rolled back onto her pillow and stared out the window.
When Joyce Malden and Tommy Akers stopped in to see her, Joyce sat at Sandy’s bedside, patting her hand.
“Oh, poor dear. Bless your heart.”
Tommy stood behind Joyce, holding his cap in his hand. The eyes in his ruddy face showed worry as his fingers fidgeted with the bill of the cap. He was clearly unsure what to say to the woman he thought he knew as a neighbor, as a friend, but who was now beyond anything he had ever known of a woman.
Joyce reached down to a tote bag by her chair, produced a small pumpkin, and set it on the table by Sandy’s bed. “Get Well Soon, Sandy” was written across the pumpkin, and both Joyce and Tommy had signed it.
“That’s the last pumpkin from the garden this year,” Tommy said.
“It was Tommy’s idea,” Joyce said. “He’s a big oaf, but he’s got his sweet side, too.”
“Thank you,” Sandy said.
“Pretty sorry-ass pumpkin,” Tommy said, “but it’s about the best we could do. Flood made one hell of a mess of the garden. You saw that. Lucky there was anything there to harvest at all. That damned government—”
Joyce turned in her seat and swatted at Tommy’s hands. “Now you just stop it. Enough of that. We’re here for Sandy, not your grumbling.”
Even though it made her jaw ache, Sandy couldn’t restrain a slight smile at Tommy and Joyce’s exchange, the good-natured, cranky banter only possible between two people who had comfortably settled into their roles as two halves of a couple. She thought someday she might tell Tommy about the mountain lion, let him know he’d been right about the big cat. But she couldn’t risk it, not now.
Because of a postoperative infection, Sandy was kept in the hospital longer than originally predicted, and Margie insisted on having Thanksgiving dinner in her hospital room. She arrived on the holiday with J.D. and the boys in tow. From an array of bags and plastic containers, she produced a massive holiday feast and began to set the food out on Sandy’s tray table, her bedside table, and on a gurney she’d pilfered from down the hall. Given how much time she’d spent at her side, Sandy couldn’t imagine when Margie had been able to put it all together.
“Next year you can make the pies,” Margie said as she set a pumpkin pie on the gurney.
J.D. and Matthew wanted to know if it would be okay with Sandy if they watched the football game on the television mounted on the wall in front of Sandy’s bed.
“Thanks,” said Matthew, jabbing at the buttons on the remote control.
“How’s my dog?” Sandy asked Matthew.
“Stink’s cool,” the boy answered, “but he smells kind of funny, doesn’t he?”
“True enough,” Sandy said.
While J.D. and Matthew watched the game and Margie darted about setting up the meal, Sandy noticed that Luke, the older boy, held back, standing by the window, his bird book in his hands, staring at the floor. Sandy caught Margie’s eye and nodded toward the boy. Margie peeled the cover off a container of stuffing, and spoke to her son.
“Go ahead, honey. Tell her what you wanted to say.”
The boy walked slowly toward Sandy’s bed, still looking at the floor.
“What is it?” Sandy asked.
“That Mr. Keefe. He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he is, Luke.”
The boy stared at the floor a moment longer, then turned his eyes first to his mother, then to Sandy.
“I’m sorry. He showed me a pileated woodpecker. Hardly anyone ever gets to see a pileated woodpecker, but he knew right where to look. That was nice of him. He was kind of weird, but he was nice, too. I’m sorry he died.”
J.D. looked over his shoulder at his stepson. Margie held a green-bean casserole in one hand, her other hand over her mouth as her eyes welled up.
“Thank you, Luke,” Sandy said. “I’m sorry, too. And you’re right. He was kind of weird.”
By the time Sandy was released from the hospital, the police had received the results of the ballistic tests done on the two guns found at the scene, confirming that the same pistol had killed both Randy Mullins and James Keefe. The bullet that wounded Sandy Holston was never found. The case had been resolved to their satisfaction. Ms. Holston had clearly acted in self-defense. No charges would be brought against her. A carved walking staff, heavily caked with dried blood, had been taken into evidence. It was never returned.
Margie’s sons were back in school, and J.D. took a couple overdue days off to be home for them while Margie took a couple days off to stay with Sandy until she was sure her friend could manage for herself. Sandy protested, insisting she was fine, but Margie was having none of it.
“Don’t even go there. It’s not going to happen,” Margie had said. “Besides, gives me a break from the endless joys of motherhood.”
Sandy rode in the passenger seat of Margie’s van. With her good hand, she held the black plastic urn containing Keefe’s ashes in her lap. Stink sat on the floor behind them, his head protruding between the two women in the front. The fire-road gate hung open, the severed old lock not yet replaced. When the van arrived at the bungalow, though her legs were still rather weak, Sandy got out, let Stink out of the rear seat, and began walking across the clearing, headed straight for the pool.
“Wait. Where are you going?” Margie had to trot to catch up to Sandy and stop her. “What are you doing?”
“Ashes.” Sandy stared straight ahead, her eyes locked on the clearing pool.
“Right now?” Margie said.
“Yes, now.”
“Okay, I’m guessing you’re planning on tromping right out there in the water, so at least come inside. Put your waders and something warmer on.” With this promise, Margie was able to turn Sandy back to the bungalow. “Might want to remember you’re convalescing from a gunshot wound, a broken scapula, and a post-op infection. Adding pneumonia to the list, not such a good idea.”
After Margie helped her into her waders and draped a coat around her shoulders, Sandy retrieved the urn from the kitchen counter and headed for the door.
“Hold on a minute, you,” Margie said.
Sandy stood at the front door, staring out into the clearing, while Margie found Keefe’s waders hanging from the antlers behind the open door. They were too big for her, but she managed to cinch them up securely enough to walk, took Sandy by the arm, and led her out the door. Stink was sniffing around the jumble of firewood still lying on the front porch, but when Sandy and Margie left the bungalow and started across the clearing, he hobbled down the steps and trotted after them.
At the bank of the stream, Sandy stopped and looked down. A length of tattered yellow caution tape was tangled in a fallen branch. Sandy leaned and reached for it, but on her weak legs she lost her balance and nearly fell before Margie caught her by the arm again and held her upright.
“Let me, honey.” Margie tore the tape out of the branch and stuffed it in the pocket of her jacket. Sandy had already begun to move down the bank into the pool, and Margie rushed to catch up. Stink sat on the bank, watching.
The current forked smoothly around their knees when they reached the middle of the pool and stopped. The water was cold and clear. A mild wind funneled down the ravine, seeming to run parallel with the river, as if they both issued from the same source, high up the slopes of the headwaters. The winter-thinned forest opened around them in various shades of brown and evergreen. The mouth of the cave on the far bank opened into a dark, vacant center.
Sandy gripped the urn in her good hand while Margie removed the lid and unfolded the opening of the plastic liner. Sandy spoke in a low whisper, barely audible. “I am mad for it to be in contact with me.”
“What’d you say?” Margie asked.
Sandy didn’t repeat the words. Her hand shook slightly from the weight as she upended the open urn and poured Keefe’s ashes into the waters of the clearing pool. The ash fanned out, marking the course of the current that would carry them downstream, through pools bathed in blood, to paint the stones of the headwaters, settle into sediment, flow on through the lake and dam into the lower Ripshin, to blend with the ash of Edith Moser in the shade of a vanished hemlock tree and be carried on still further, inviolable, washed on to a distant sea.
Sandy stared at the swath of thinning gray film on the water. She felt Margie’s arm slide around her waist to hold her up, and she was grateful for it. It had taken her a lifetime to learn to love, and so much of what she had loved had been ripped from her in the span of little more than two seasons. She thought surely she must now feel irreparably alone, but she didn’t. The casing of her skin no longer marked her outer boundary. She did not end there. The water pulsing down the slopes of the headwaters bore no difference from the blood pulsing through her veins.
