Bent Road - Lori Roy [118]
Uncle Ray tilts his head an inch to the right the way a man does when he closes one eye and looks down the barrel of his rifle.
“No,” Mama shouts. “Ray, stop.”
Daniel lifts the shotgun. Brings the stock to his cheek. Back straight.
“Ray, please.” Aunt Ruth is crying. She sounds far away, like she’s inside a dream.
Daniel lines up the bead sight with the notch at the tip of the gun. Something snaps. A gun is cocked. Inhale. Exhale halfway. Just halfway, Ian had said. Hold steady. Be careful of the blockers. Give them twenty feet or so. Buckshot will scatter. The target will rise up between the pushers and the blockers.
“Now, Daniel,” Mama shouts. “Now.”
Uncle Ray squares his stance. Dad lunges. Daniel fires.
There is a crack in the air. A loud pop. Celia grabs for Ruth, pulling her so closely that together they nearly fall, tumbling and tripping over one another in their matted and muddy slippers. No matter what they see now, what they saw Ray do, he was Ruth’s husband, a good man long ago. So many things led him to this moment, things set in motion twenty-five years earlier. What man would have taken a different path? Not even Arthur. Wouldn’t he have started to drink? Wouldn’t he have eventually hated the woman who could never be Celia? Wouldn’t he have tried to kill the man who took her away? No, Ruth won’t be able to live with the sight of what’s happening to Ray.
She needs to remember him through pictures. A younger man, smiling, in love with Eve. She needs to remember that he would have been a good father had life turned a different direction. She’ll love him because he loved Eve and she’ll pass on these memories, but none of that will be possible if she sees Ray now, his shirt tearing open, his blood spraying up toward the porch light, his lower skull ripped open. She could live with the knowledge, but not the sight. Holding Ruth’s face against her side, Celia pulls her backward, down the drive as Arthur dives back and away. Daniel’s shotgun echoes in the clear night air and ends with a sharp clap. There is silence.
The force throws Ray forward. He lands near Mary Robison’s feet. Steam rises up from his torn body and, like Mary Robison’s blood, Ray’s splatters across the snow that drifts near the back door. It soaks in, leaving holes and dents in the soft white mound. At the top of the stairs leading into the house, Celia checks for Evie and exhales with relief when she isn’t there, peeking through the screened door. She’ll be in her closet, huddled under the skirts and dresses. Celia screamed at her to make her let go. She screamed at Daniel, too. She told her only son to kill a man. Had there been a kinder thing, she would have done it. Standing with the wind whipping at her skirt and blowing her hair from her face, her body harder and leaner than the day they arrived in Kansas, this is what she knows. Sometimes there is no kinder way.
Daniel is the first to move. He lowers the tip of his grandfather’s shotgun and lets it slide off his shoulder. His movement pulls Arthur from the ground, slowly. He doesn’t want to startle Daniel. He has that look about him, as if he’s not quite inside himself anymore, as if he doesn’t know his own father, as if he might fire again. Staring down at Ray, Arthur nods. He is dead. So is Mary Robison. Arthur knows dead. It takes him no time to see that. Then, he walks to his son, lays one hand on Daniel’s wrist and the other on the barrel of the gun. Daniel lifts his eyes.
“It’s what had to be done,” Arthur says in a strong voice.
There was a time when Celia would have quieted him, asked him to lower his voice. Some things are best whispered, for the sake of fine manners. But she knows that Arthur speaks in a full voice so Daniel will never feel shame.
“You did a fine job, young man. Just fine.”
Daniel turns to Celia and she nods.
Fine. Just fine.
Chapter 35
Evie closes her eyes, tilts her head toward the sky and inhales. This warm day, after so many cold, has a special smell about it. Aunt