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By Root 2442 0

on his back, staring up into the ceiling of the covered porch, the spilt coffee already iced into the wool of his sweater. He sits up. The clouds are gone, the sun low in the sky, half-obscured behind that distant white bluff. Tingling specks of black have infiltrated his vision — particles of dying that will soon overtake him. A small blood puddle has frozen on the wood beneath his feet, rosy in the petering sun. He is blisteringly cold. The pain is back, but he does not respond to discomfort in the whimpering, human fashion. He is indomitable, though he should depart soon if he intends to survive the bullet Andrew Thomas put inside him.

He stands, takes up the shotgun, and staggers back into the cabin. At the end of the hallway, he unlocks the door of the guest room and kicks it open.

Andrew Thomas lies motionless on the bed.

"Get up," Luther says. He hasn’t entered the room since the previous night, when he dragged Andrew inside. With a pained exhalation, Andrew struggles to sit up against the logs. The quilt still wrapped around his shoulders, he shivers, his breath steaming.

"Come with me," Luther says.

Andrew looks up at him, vanquished. "I heard the shotgun. Are they all dead?"

"Come with me."

Orson’s brother looks down at the floor, tears filling his eyes. "Just kill me."

Luther falters. Lurching into the wall, blood dripping from the hem of his blue jeans, he tries to take aim. But the shotgun slips from his hands and he slumps down upon the stone.

*

I lift the shotgun from the floor and touch my finger to one of the triggers. When I place the barrel against Luther’s chest, I can taste the madness, and my God it’s sweet. I want to squeeze the trigger, feel the shotgun buck against my shoulder, and watch him bleed out on the stone. In short, I ache to kill him, which is precisely why I don’t.

I drag Luther, alive but fading, onto the porch and bind him with seventy feet of rope to the last available rocking chair. Then I lift the red fleece blanket I took from Orson’s bed and wrap it around Percy Madding and the woman beside him, who I assume was his wife. I want to bury them, but the ground is frozen beneath the snowpack. This is all I can do for the man who saved my life.

When I’ve managed to close Percy’s frosted eyelids, I wade out into the snow and turn and behold the dying and the dead.

The parting rays of a cold sun gild the spectacle of the front porch, a sight I will never be rid of: Percy Madding, his wife, Orson, and Luther Kite, each in a rocking chair, three dead, one not far behind.

It startles me when Luther speaks. He shivers now, his teeth clicking uncontrollably. I cannot imagine him surviving the night. I wonder whether he’ll bleed to death, or if the cold will claim him first.

"You stand there appalled," he says. "At what, Andrew?"

"At all this blood, Luther."

"We all want blood. We are war. That’s the code. War and regression and more and more blood. Tell me it doesn’t speak to you." Luther’s black hair whips across a pale, bloodless face. He awaits my reply, but I have none.

At last, I approach my brother. Our faces are inches apart. Orson’s eyes remain open, his mouth frozen into the slightest grin. The abject violation of the Maddings and every other human being he butchered consumes me, and I scream at him, raging, my voice filling the desert: "Is this beauty, Orson? Is this truth?"

Then, like a fever breaking, finally I start to cry.

Eastward, I glide across the snow toward 191 under the purple immensity of the Wyoming sky, and the madness diminishes as the cabin falls farther behind. I wonder if Luther is dead yet. I wonder many things.

The skis scrape across the pavement, and I bring the snowmobile to a halt on the other side of the road. Alighting, I unfasten the two suitcases filled with clothes and the contents of Orson’s drawer. I sit down on the shoulder. The highway has been plowed — the only snow on the road is windblown powder. All is still. My left arm throbs, but luckily, Percy was wrong. The bullet tore through — I extracted the mushroom of lead