He tripped again but was able to catch himself this time. He tried to pay attention to the forest. He knew they couldn’t help Dad and JoJo up by the lake. They had to get to the road to find Uncle Ted. Dad and JoJo had gone out into the open to meet the men so that Mom, Bub, and he could get away. If they turned back now, it would have been for nothing.
Mom had called Uncle Ted after they left Dad and JoJo by the lake. He was close, and she’d told him to meet them by the road. But the road was long, and the Drop was wide, and Charlie was very cold.
“Is that it?” Mom asked him. She pointed ahead.
There was a band of open white beyond the trees. Though Charlie knew that the road hugged the mountains this far south, he still did not think they had gone far enough. When they got through the trees, they saw that it wasn’t the county road but the access road to the state preserve. They had reached the southern edge of their land.
The access road would take them to the county road, and it had a gentle slope and thin snow cover. Walking it would be easier than hiking through the forest. But Charlie was very tired.
“Maybe Uncle Ted can find us here,” he said.
Mom tucked Bub into the crook of her arm and made the call.
She was talking to Uncle Ted, and Charlie was thinking about the heat in his uncle’s car, when the second gunshot rang down the mountain. It was softer than the one before it. Much of its roar had been lost to the snow and forest that separated them. Mom had not heard it, but Charlie had.
His legs gave out and he sat down heavily in the snow while Mom finished talking to Uncle Ted.
“Ted thinks he saw the turnoff for it when he was looking for a place to pull over,” Mom told him once she shut the phone. “If it’s the right road, he’ll be here in a couple minutes.”
Charlie nodded. He could not stop his hands from shaking. He could not swallow the lump that had swollen in his throat.
“You’re cold, honey,” Caroline said. She sat next to him in the snow and hugged him. She rubbed his back to warm him. “Uncle Ted will be here soon, then we’ll head to the bookstore to wait for Dad. Then we’ll go back to the city. Won’t it be nice to be back there?”
Charlie buried his head in his mother’s side. He thought of the gunshots. He thought about Dad, alone in the cold and the dark.
Headlights painted the frosted trees, and Charlie shielded his eyes from the glare. The car stopped just ahead of them, and Charlie squinted to see who it was. For a moment Charlie thought it was Dad, and he jumped to his feet. But it was Uncle Ted. His face had the same angles as Dad’s. He had the same dark hair and light eyes. He looked just like Dad. So did Charlie.
Mom moved to the car, but Charlie did not. He stood on the side of the road, trembling in the cold.
“Wait,” he said, and Mom turned back to him. He wanted to say so many things to her, but he couldn’t just then. “Wait.”
He ran back through the trees before she could stop him.
57
You never hear the shot that kills you.
When Ben was a teenager, he’d gone through a noir phase. Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, Dashiell Hammett: He couldn’t get enough of them. He loved their ambience. How they could immediately conjure a place that was utterly foreign to a suburban teenager like himself.
He also loved the bon mots that peppered them. It had always appealed to him, how just a few well-chosen words could make a page sing. To say goodbye is to die a little. The past was filling the room like a tide of whispers. He felt like someone had taken the lid off life and let him see the works.
Ben would sometimes creep up behind Ted to whisper in his ear, “You never hear the shot that kills you.” It was a great line because it could mean so many things.
It was strange that these were the first words to come into Ben’s mind when he fell back into himself, but there they were.
He’d been shot. Ben knew this because he felt wetness under his coat. He didn’t know if he’d lost consciousness or if his mind had just wandered. He didn’t think he’d been on the ice for long, because he heard Simms and Harp talking to each other about where to look for his family.
When Ben opened his eyes, the chief was leaning over him. He had his gloves off, and his fingers glistened in crimson. His lips glistened, too. His mouth was stretched into something like a smile.
Ben felt the wetness spread across his chest. He thought it would be warm, but it was cold, and he did not think that was good. He expected pain but felt only heaviness. But when he tried lifting his head, it was not as hard to do as he thought it would be. He looked down at his chest and saw the blackness of his blood and the scruff of white where the insides of his coat had been blown away. There wasn’t as much blood as he’d expected, but he figured there was more under his coat.
Then he realized that the wetness he’d felt wasn’t all blood. The bullet had gone through him and into the ice. It had chipped a hole through the lake’s frozen surface. When he shifted his legs, he heard the ice underneath him creak.
Walter Harp saw him moving and nudged Simms.
“Let the cold finish him,” Simms said.
The chief turned his glassy-eyed stare away from Ben. “Hafta make it look enough like an accident that the FBI won’t think anything of it,” he said. “Bad luck that they’re here on account of the baby going missing. An animal attack, maybe. Something messy like that could slow down the ID.” He walked over to the others, then he turned back to Ben. He again made that face that looked like a smile.
“Not a crier, though,” Simms said. “Didn’t expect that from him.”
Ben rested his head. His ear was pressed against the ice, but it did not hurt. He could hear the beat of his heart against the frozen lake and hear the bending of the ice underneath it.
He forced himself to sit up. There was a black smear against the ice he’d been lying on. He took the rock out of his pocket and hit it against the hole the bullet had made.
“Trying to swim himself out now,” Simms said.
Walter Harp laughed. “Must be half a foot of ice, if it’s an inch.”
Ben timed the impact of the stone to the beat of his heart and the movement of the trees and the rhythm of the wind. He put everything he had into striking the ice. The rock was well suited for this. Perhaps Lisbeth had been right about this, too. Maybe there really was an answer provided for every problem.
When he slammed the stone down a third time, the crack split a little farther in both directions. The men from the village stopped grinning.
“Enough of that,” the chief said. He walked toward Ben to take the stone from him, but a massive black weight crushed him down onto the frozen lake. JoJo howled as he mashed the chief’s head into the ice. To Ben’s ears, it sounded like the wind.
Simms and Harp pulled at JoJo to get him off the chief, but he was too big and it was hard for them to keep their footing on the ice. They tumbled over each other as they grappled with him. The chief threw his head back and sank his teeth into JoJo’s neck.
Ben continued to slam the stone into the ice. The crack widened and spread. Soon the sound of breaking ice was as loud as the cries of the men who fought in front of him. Soon the crack had taken on a life of its own and Ben stopped hammering at it. The piece of ice he lay on became dislodged. He flattened himself against it.
He watched the men tumble as he lay there. Deputy Simms tried and failed to regain his footing after his boot broke through into the freezing water. His head made a wet sound as it connected with the lake’s frozen surface, then his body slowly slid into the dark maw beneath the ice.
A geyser of blood exploded from JoJo’s neck where the chief had found his carotid artery. But JoJo did not stop mashing the other man’s head into the ice. Harp was on top of JoJo, trying hopelessly to wrest the big man from the chief. Their combined weight was too much for the lake’s fractured surface. They plunged through the skin of ice with enough force to send a surge of water into the air. For a mom
ent, there was nothing but ice shifting, where a second before there had been four men. Dark arcs of blood stark against the broken surface were the only evidence of any of them having been there.
A gloved hand burst from between two sheets of floating ice, but then it was yanked under again. If Ben closed his eyes, he could imagine JoJo, with his hair and fur pelts floating, pulling the villagers down to the lake’s cold bottom.
Then it was quiet except for the noise from the trees. The world began to slow.
Ben rolled onto his back so that he could see the stars. The sky was beautiful. He could see the jeweled haze of the Milky Way so clearly up here, far from the city. He should have spent more nights appreciating it. His chest began to hurt. He started to feel very small in front of a universe that was so unimaginably vast. Up against the full sight of it, he dwindled and diminished, until at last there was nothing left.
58
You think: This is it.
The end of not just a page or a chapter but of your entire book.
This isn’t the way you thought it would go. But, unlike a novel, a life has no useful sheaf of unturned pages with which to estimate its remaining length. Instead, you amble onward cluelessly until the words of your world run out.
It’s a shame, because the narrative doesn’t conclude with you. Charlie’s tale continues, and Bub’s, and Caroline’s, too. You hate to leave a story only half read, and, besides, you’ve become invested in these characters.
A boy like Charlie could grow up to be almost anything or anyone. But he’s had setbacks, too. What if other people can’t keep him safe, the way you’ve tried to? If you’ve learned one thing from this life, it’s that it has so many twists that just about anything could happen to him. Without your help, who knows what kind of man he’ll become.
And Bub, well, you didn’t get to know him at all, did you? Will he like to read? Is he athletic? Does he have a sweet tooth? You have no idea. In a year, he won’t even remember you. You’ll be a story to him.
Of course, what you really don’t want to think about is how this could all be academic. It matters only if you’ve bought them enough time to get away in the first place. Even now, Caroline and Ted could be lying gutted in the snow, with Charlie chained fast to a tree.
A surge of agony crashes over you, but it’s not from the gunshot. You thought you were done with this. The pain, the worry, the questions. You thought the tethers of this world had finally uncoiled from you. But not yet.
The world remains insistent. Like the sound in your ears and the rapping on your shoulder. Someone is crying, you realize. When you open your eyes, you see a figure kneeling next to you. He’s very small against the drifts of snow and the edifice of the trees. He’s pulling on your arm, as if you’re an uncooperative plaything.
You tell him that he shouldn’t be out in the cold.
The boy makes a choking sound. His face is blotchy with tears, but he looks less upset than he did.
He stoops to wrap your arm around his neck. The idea of standing seems impossible to contemplate, but he is intent on it. You don’t want to disappoint him any more than you already have.
Standing is maybe the worst thing you’ve ever had to do. But the pain wakes you up. You remember more of yourself.
The fields around you are empty in the moonlight, and the ice underneath you has resettled itself. You follow Charlie back into the woods. The drifts slow him, but slow is the only speed you can go.
You remember that you have to be careful. That there are other people in the forest. Though they look for you, they are not your friends. You hear them call to one another through the noise of the trees creaking above you. They are close.
Charlie knows another way, deeper into the trees, but the way is difficult. He falls into a drift and for a moment is lost. When you pull him out, he blinks like a newborn. You make him get up onto your shoulders, even though it hurts terribly. You fall. You stand. You run. You fall. Each time it’s as if you’re freshly ripped open, but Charlie helps you up. You’re too weak to stand, and he’s too short to walk. Alone, neither of you would make it. But neither of you is alone.
The villagers who hunt you shout through the woods, and the forest in its strange way answers. Sound is different here, and in their tracking they become lost as the trees lure them deeper and deeper. Farther from you, and closer to the frozen heart of the mountains. This is a piece of fortune that feels overdue.
It’s troubling how the rows of trees only give way to more trees. But finally you see headlights ahead. You lower Charlie to the ground, and through the forest’s pillars you see your brother. He runs for you, and your wife is just behind him. Ted wraps his arm around you as he leads you to the car. Caroline takes your other side. When you look at her, something in your chest takes flight. You realize that she is crying and so are you.
They ease you into the backseat. Charlie sits up front, and Caroline squeezes next to you with Bub on her lap. She unzips your coat, puts her hands on your face, and tells you that you are going to be okay. You have no choice but to believe her. She knows you better than anyone.
The car takes off in a rush of snow and light. There is talk of hospitals and highways and state police.
Caroline gives Ted directions as she presses your wound. As the blood from your chest slows, your worries begin to mount. You remember that all your money has been flushed into a house in a village rife with lunatics from another age. You realize that everything you’ve worked toward has been lost. A home that you can be proud of. A life where you and your family can live in every comfort. Can you see it? For the first time, you can’t.
For a moment, it’s almost as if you’ve learned nothing.
The ranks of ice-glazed trees march by in their uncounted armies. Wind buffets the car from every side. But the warmth from the vents is true, and you feel your fingers begin to thaw.
You see the familiar lines of your brother’s profile as he checks on you through the rearview mirror, and you feel your wife’s unyielding grip on your chest. Bub has a tiny fist clamped to your sleeve, and Charlie’s steel-blue eyes do not even for a moment waver from your own, and you realize that you’ve been imagining the wrong kind of future for as long as you can remember.
You understand that you don’t need a dream of some distant place or time when all the pieces of a perfect life have seamlessly aligned. A man doesn’t need everything. He just needs the things he can’t live without.
Can you see it?
You can see it because they’re all around you. They’ve been here this whole time.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’m enormously grateful to my editor, Mark Tavani, for his keen insights, thoughtful edits, and all-round wise counsel.
In addition to being a crucial source of advice, my agent, Elisabeth Weed, has been a champion nonpareil as well as an inexhaustible source of enthusiasm.
A special thanks to Jane Fleming Fransson, Charlotte Hamilton, Sarah Landis, and Alessandra Lusardi for wading through many, many drafts. Your (usually gentle, occasionally painful, always necessary) edits made this happen.
I’m deeply grateful for the guidance of Kendra Harpster, Jenny Meyer, Dana Murphy, Betsy Wilson, Pam Dorman, and the excellent Jennifer Hershey.
Gigantic thanks to Patricia Gilhooly, William Duffy, Kevin Duffy, Mary-Kate Duffy, Bridget Raines, Aaron Raines, Ann Marie Ricks, Theresa Maul, Robert Maul, Susan Halldorson, Hillary Lancaster-Ungerer, Michael Ungerer, and Cameron White-Ford.
I’m also very appreciative of the extraordinary team at Ballantine, especially Gina Centrello, Libby McGuire, Kim Hovey, Susan Corcoran, Mike Rotondo, Dana Blanchette, Vincent La Scala, and Kathy Lord.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BRENDAN DUFFY is an editor. He lives in New York, where he is at work on his next novel.
@Brendan_Duffy
House of Echoes: A Novel Page 33
