The Clearing

by Dan Newman

  In front of him, Tristan raised the gun in a single fluid movement. His thumb flicked out and drew back the hammer, and he squeezed the trigger hard.

  31

  Nate was pleading now. He was terrified, disassembled completely by the knowledge that Tristan was right; in a contest of pointed fingers, on this island, Tristan’s would win every time. And so he was ready to do anything—anything that would promise relief from the madness whirling around him. The clearing seemed to be almost black now, and the forest was taking on a menacing quality. “What, Tristan? What do I do?”

  Tristan stood, leaving Nate on his knees in a puddle of fear and uncertainty. The island boy towered over him, and his head bobbed up and down as if agreeing silently to some daring plan that might—just might—actually work… “Maybe there’s a way. Maybe we can save you. One way I can get you out of this.”

  Nate’s eyes pleaded in question.

  “Silence,” said Tristan plainly. “Silence is the only way.”

  “…What?”

  “If you keep quiet—I mean not a word. Not a single discussion about this with anyone—especially those parents of yours—then maybe we can keep you from whatever it is my family and the police will do to you.”

  “But…people will…”

  Tristan’s rage flared. “You can never, ever, tell anyone what happened. Not your parents, not the police, not anyone. If they ask you, you shut up and look at the ground. Cry if you have to. If you talk…if you say it was me. Well, maybe I get a dirty look. But you, you’ll die in some prison—if my father doesn’t get to you first.” He reached down and seized Nate painfully by the jowls. “You can never tell a soul. Never. Do you understand?”

  Nate was trembling now. There was no other option: to his back, a line of dank stone cells deep underground, and the wrath of a family that was nothing short of island royalty. And in front of him, a simple lie to make it all go away. His eyes dropped and Tristan saw it.

  Tristan reached over and snatched at the wooden box on top of the spool table. He flipped it open, upturned it and spilled the contents out. Two Wrist Rockets clattered onto the table. Tristan grasped one by the pistol grip handle and thrust in front of Nate’s face. “You like this, right?”

  Nate stared blankly ahead, confused.

  “You want one—I know you do.”

  Nate just stared at the Wrist Rocket, unsure of how to react.

  “Well do you?” hollered Tristan directly into his face.

  “Yes! All right, yes!” blurted Nate, a fresh set of tears welling up.

  “Then take it,” snapped Tristan, jamming it harshly into Nate’s hand. “You take this and you never say a word about what happened to anyone—no one at all. Do you understand?” Tristan looked down and saw that Nate had not taken hold of the Wrist Rocket, and it sat limply in his lap while Nate stared pleadingly into Tristan’s eyes.

  “Shit!” cussed Tristan. He reached down and snatched the slingshot, separated the two bands and slipped it over Nate’s head, setting the Wrist Rocket around his neck like a necklace. “This is yours. Do you understand? It belongs to you now.”

  Nate just stared at him, terrified.

  “Do you understand?” yelled Tristan.

  Nate nodded at last. Tristan released him, and his eyes fell to the Wrist Rocket hanging around his neck. He reached up and touched it gently, then looked at Tristan.

  “That’s yours now,” said Tristan. He stood back a step and let his hands fall to his side. His face relaxed, and he seemed to grow calm, almost in a daze. “Learn the lesson, earn the reward,” he said.

  Nate’s face wrinkled in confusion. “What?”

  Tristan dipped low and suddenly screamed the words into his face. “Learn the lesson, earn the reward!” And then he stood, blinking repeatedly as if caught in some waking dream.

  Nate simply stared at him, shivering.

  “Let me hear you swear it,” said Tristan. “Swear you’ll tell no soul.”

  Again Nate just stared.

  “You have to swear it!” shouted Tristan, his spittle showering Nate’s face. “Swear it!”

  Nate flinched violently. “I swear it,” he whispered.

  “Louder!”

  “I swear it!” shouted Nate, his tears running freely again.

  Tristan took a step back and stared hard at the boy weeping in front of him. He let him cry, and waited until the sobs became hitches and snatches for air. “Good,” he said at last.

  And for Nate, there was a hint of comfort in the finality of that last word, something absolute and authoritative. It implied a way forward, a way out, a way to stop the horrors from coming true. He reached up and touched the slingshot around his neck again. It was cold and angular, and hideously powerful. And now it was his. Learn the lesson, earn the reward. It made almost no sense, and the words seemed angular and filled with jagged edges like a mouthful of nettles, but they also offered what he needed most: hope. And they offered it now.

  Nate resolved to do exactly what Tristan had said; he would say nothing about what happened out by the river. Ever.

  Tristan slapped him on the shoulder. “Now we can go.”

  • • •

  Ten paces from Nate, Tristan raised the gun and pulled the trigger.

  But in the instant that the hammer snapped forward, Tristan seemed to jerk sideways, almost as if reacting to the recoil of the round before it was discharged. In a single action the bullet let fly, streaking only inches over Nate’s shoulder, and the gun fell from Tristan’s hand and onto the ground.

  Nate was transfixed. He had felt the bullet miss him, heard the air being ripped apart as the slug flew wide, but what he had just seen made no sense at all. Tristan was reacting to the odd moment as well. He was staring at his hand in confusion, as if it had somehow disobeyed him. His eyes were pinned wide open in a wild, almost unhinged way, and he began to frantically search the bush-line. But his dismay was short lived. He flicked his eyes to Nate and then back to the gun, and threw himself headlong after the weapon.

  Nate’s hands squeezed instinctively, and he became instantly aware that he was holding something in each. He opened his right hand and found a rusty ball bearing sitting in the center of his palm. He glanced to his left hand, but he already knew what was there. Nate shredded the brown paper bag and the Wrist Rocket slipped easily into his hand. The pistol grip with its scalloped finger guides fit his hand perfectly, and the leather pouch fell obediently open. In a motion that seemed entirely automatic, Nate slipped the rusty ball bearing into the pouch and drew the twin bands back the full span of his arms.

  On the ground in front of him, Tristan was desperately clutching at the dirt in an effort to retrieve the gun, but something in the stillness of the man before him made him stop. He looked up and saw Nate, arms fully extended, hands shaking gently against the energy in the twin bands aching to be set free.

  Tristan lay still, the gun just inches from his hand.

  “If you reach for that gun I’ll put this bearing through your head,” promised Nate.

  On the ground, Tristan held his position. The wheels were turning, and Nate could almost feel him weighing the odds. Could Nate make a clean shot?

  “Nate, don’t do it!” came Rachael’s voice from the edge of the clearing.

  Both Nate and Tristan glanced toward her; for Tristan it was all he needed. Like a coiled spring set free, Tristan snatched the gun from the ground and pivoted athletically onto his back, snapping the muzzle to bear on Nate.

  Nate shifted his aim instinctively, almost imperceptibly, and released the pinch-grip he had on the leather pouch. The rusty ball bearing hissed through the air of the clearing, across thirty years of angst, and struck the side of small black gun like a hammer on an anvil. It glanced off the gun and tore on into Tristan’s throat with the power of a bullet. Tristan went over backwards almost silently, his hands rising to his neck as he went, while a plume of crimson sprayed from him. The gun fell harmlessly to the ground.
His legs flailed about as he clutched at his throat. Through the hole, he gurgled and frothed.

  On the other side of the clearing from where Rachael stood with her hands cupped over her mouth, Nate thought he saw something move in the bush-line. It was almost nothing, just a branch swaying back into place, a few leaves swishing across one another. He turned back to Tristan.

  The man on the ground had stopped writhing, and had taken on a state of relaxation that was even more frightening than the frantic thrashing that had preceded it. Nate dashed forward and dropped to his knees beside Tristan, and was staggered by the sheer volume of blood that had pooled around him. Tristan’s face was vacant and ashen, and Nate immediately thrust his bare hands onto the wound to stop the bleeding. “Rachael!” he called out desperately. He looked over his shoulder but Rachael was still frozen, still fixed with her hands cupped to her mouth. “Rachael, quickly!”

  Rachael ran to them, dropped to her knees and pried Nate’s hand from the wound. She replaced it almost immediately, and turned her attention to Tristan’s face. She lifted his eyelids, one after the other, and then slipped her fingers around to the other side of his neck, searching for a pulse. She drew her hand back slowly and settled on her heels.

  “Do something!” said Nate. There was panic in his voice. “You have to do something, quickly!”

  “Nate, he’s dead.”

  “Go get help.”

  Behind them something in the bush broke cover. It briefly stopped them both and they followed the sound. It moved hastily, too far off to be seen, clattering its way through the bush in the general direction of the house.

  Nate refocused on the man lying before him. “Now, Rachael, you gotta go now.”

  “Nate.”

  Nate exploded. “Go call for help now! Right fucking now!”

  Rachael rose and ran back down the path, heading for the plantation house.

  “Tristan?” Nate shook him lightly. But the man on the ground was relaxed in a way that went beyond sleep. Nate closed his eyes briefly to calm himself, and when he opened them a moment later, he saw that is was Richard lying there, sodden and still at the river’s edge. Then it was Pip, then his father, and finally, Cody. He shook his head gently and the gathering quietly and obediently receded; in front of him was just a gray husk that had once been Tristan.

  He moved his hand from Tristan’s neck and looked at the wound; the bleeding had stopped, or more accurately, the bleeding had finished.

  “I didn’t come here to hurt you. I came back to put this where it belongs.” He reached for the Wrist Rocket in front of him. Nate stood and walked slowly over to an old rusting kitchen chair near the clearing’s center. He held the slingshot by one of the bands, stretched it and then ran it briskly back and forth along a jagged edge of the chair frame until the rubber finally parted.

  The slingshot was useless now, and Nate placed it on the ground beside Tristan. “It’s yours now,” he said flatly. “It always was.”

  • • •

  Nate followed the path back from the clearing, walking slowly toward the track that lead to the house. There was no rush anymore. No urgency. But legions of memories were calling for his attention. His childhood was so close he could feel the very fabric of thirteen. If he closed his eyes he knew he would see them all: Richard, Pip, and Tristan, racing ahead of him, laughing as they followed the twists and turns of green at full speed.

  The pathway dissolved and the forest spilled him onto the gravelled track, and as he turned onto it he could see the car, and the house beyond. There was no sign of Rachael. She would be in the house, calling for an ambulance, perhaps the police. He looked down at his palms. They were smeared with Tristan’s blood.

  Rachael’s voice, high pitched and tight with panic, shouted to him. “Nate! Come quickly!”

  She stood ahead, with her arms raised on the balcony of the house. She called to him again and Nate broke into a run.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, taking the stairs two at a time.

  “It’s Vincent.”

  She led Nate into the gloom of the main hall, and as his eyes adjusted he could see Vincent in his wheelchair at the room’s center. He was slumped in his chair, as if asleep, with his head pitched back and his mouth open wide. Despite the dimness of the room Nate could see that the old man’s mask was pulled down and hung loosely at his neck, and his lips were lightly tinged in cold blue. “Is he dead?” asked Nate in disbelief. He could see that Vincent’s eyelids were half closed and still.

  “No. He’s still breathing. I’ve called the ambulance but his oxygen tank is shut off tight; I can’t budge it.”

  “Let me try,” said Nate, seizing the top of the green cylinder harnessed to the back of the wheelchair. He twisted hard on the cylinder valve but it wouldn’t move. It held stubbornly fast, and Nate’s hands, slick with Tristan’s blood, couldn’t find purchase. “Shit!” he cursed, standing back and looking around the room for a tool. “I need something I can put through the holes in the knob, something I can use as a lever.”

  Rachael ran to the kitchen and returned with a sturdy butter knife. “What about this?”

  “Perfect,” said Nate, sliding the handle of the knife through one of the holes in valve grip. Still the valve resisted, but with the new leverage it finally gave in, and the cylinder hissed lightly as the gas began to flow once more through the plastic tubing. Nate opened the valve fully. “Will he be okay now? Can you wake him?”

  Rachael slid the mask in place and examined the old man in the chair. She checked his airway, his pupils and then shifted his hips downward slightly so his head wasn’t lolling over backwards. Finally she made a fist and ran her knuckles up and down his breastbone. There was no reaction from the man in the chair.

  “Well?” asked Nate, rubbing his hands against his shirt.

  “I don’t know. He’s breathing, but he’s unresponsive, comatose.”

  “But he’s alive.”

  “Yes, he’s alive.”

  In the distance a siren wailed, climbing its way up to the estate.

  Nate looked back at the cylinder behind Vincent. “What the hell happened to him? How did his oxygen get shut off?”

  “I don’t know,” said Rachael, shaking her head. “He was right here when I found him, and it was only after I tried to wake him that I realized there was no flow to the mask.”

  Nate’s face folded in question. “How the hell could that happen?”

  “I don’t know,” she said again, “but the cyanosis—the blue around his lips—that worries me.” Rachael checked again that the oxygen was flowing through the tube.

  “Will he be okay?”

  “We won’t be able to tell until he wakes up.”

  Nate looked again at his hands, at the crimson stains there, and then thrust them in his pockets. Standing in that spot he did a slow circle, taking in the great room for the first time in more than thirty years. So much of it was familiar—the hall to the bedroom and the kitchen, the open windows where bats had swarmed in their thousands, and the stairs that led to the floor above, where the nutmegs would lay waiting to dry. That thought was linked inexorably to another, as it always would be, and he thought instantly of the Bolom. Nate turned back to Rachael. “Back there, in the clearing. The sound in the bush. Did you hear it?”

  Rachael stared at him blankly. “It was an animal started by the shot. That’s all it was.”

  “No,” said Nate, softly, his mind turning back to the moment. “It was after that. It was right after you said Tristan was dead.”

  Rachael tuned to face him fully. Her tone was curt. “And what do you think it was, Nate?”

  They stared at each other in silence. In the distance, the wail of the siren grew louder.

  Finally Nate looked away and waved his hand dismissively. “Nothing, I guess. This place just gets to me.”

  Outside, the siren stopped abruptly and was replaced with the crunch of heavy tires on gravel. The ambulance had arrived at last
.

  32

  In the days that followed, Nate spent hours going over the confrontation with Tristan. He still didn’t understand what had happened. Why had Tristan twitched so violently with the gun in his hands? And what had crashed through the bush afterwards? They were questions that would come back to him again and again.

  He stayed for four more days at Rachael’s dazzling Cap Estate house overlooking the water. And although they never found each other in the way they had the night before heading to Ti Fenwe, there was something between them they recognized would never truly go away. They barely left each other’s side for those four days, and perhaps it was the inevitability of their separation that kept them so close. Nate needed to go home, to face the demons of his present, having slain those of his past.

  Smiley, unimpressed with the gag order issued by his boss, had ploughed headlong into the story. The Word was a small paper with a small press, and while his editor slept, Smiley marched in and literally stopped the presses before midnight to place his story on the front page. He gleefully told Nate that he had actually said those words, Stop the presses! and that’s exactly what they had done. Nobody questioned it. It was, after all, Smiley. And his brother (he claimed) was the pressman.

  The story broke and his editor fumed, but there was little he could do. It was the single largest print run in the paper’s short history, and the tale of murder among St. Lucia’s royalty went through the island like wildfire. The police quickly launched a murder investigation into the deaths of Pieter “Pip” Prinsloo and Desmond Bailey. Suspicion fell largely on Tristan—now confirmed dead instead of just missing at sea—and there was some speculation that Vincent also had a hand. Nevertheless, the issue would never see the inside of a courtroom. News of Vincent’s death reached them on the second day. He never regained consciousness in the hospital, having finally succumbed to whatever injuries he sustained by being deprived of his oxygen.