Read Online Light Action in the Caribbean by Barry Lopez - Free Book Online Page B

and rain, and in that baleful light I spotted a figure walking in from the north, a boy with a riflebalanced across his shoulder, the barrel forward in his fist. I could tell it was a boy by the stride. As he came on I saw his silhouetted head was close-cropped and that his jeans bagged in a style popular in large cities but rarely seen at the time in rural Montana. A dog followed which looked pensive and dour and mostly bluetick hound.
    The boy chucked his chin as he went by, but in a surly manner. The dog glanced up as he passed, but with no more interest than if he were taking in the familiar chair, occasionally occupied.
    I smoked the cigar out, ate supper, and retired. I was reading a collection of unsettling stories I’d bought called
Jesus’ Son
. Its premises kept me awake until two, after which I decided to get up and go down to the porch and sit in the moonlight. A flaring match to light another cigar would have ruined the stillness, quite inseparable from the moonlight, so I only sat there in a jacket and my undershorts. I was not surprised when I saw a small figure walking the same path the boy had walked hours before. It was a continuation of a disturbance, one initiated by the boy’s passing, and it was this that had really brought me out onto the porch. I soon saw that it was the girl, and I could tell that it was bad, the lopsided way that she advanced, sweeping a hand in front of her to locate obstruction. I sat rigid, a motionless spectator.
    I could pick out little detail in the dimness, but when she drew near I saw plainly the dark welt of blood congealed like paint on her face and run out across her chest in her blouse. I didn’t want to move my eyes, to deliberately examine her body, but I sensed her clothing was twisted, and one hand hung still and distorted. He had left her for dead, I thought.
    She stopped a few feet away. Her disheveled body seemed an object dragged in the wake of her will.
    “Are you all right?” I asked. Despite her wounds she appeared calm, even invulnerable.
    “He’s got a surprise,” she said evenly. Within the keep of herself, I imagined, she had not heard my question. “He knows I was shot before,” she continued. “He wanted to be part of that. He was always asking to see the wound. The thought of it, the bullet going through my head, made him excited. He wanted to see where it went in, where it came out, and put his fingers against the places. And then he did it himself, shot me in the head. He pulled down my pants. And then he walked away. But I’m here now and he has to look at me. He has to look right here”—she lifted the stiff hand to her creased temple—“where the bullet went, be forced to look at it until he makes a mess in his pants. For him, that’s going to be the beginning.”
    I wanted to stop her, cut her off. I didn’t know where the boy lived, where a doctor might be, and, strangely, had no urge to help. The girl was eerie in her stillness and independence. She’d suffered adversity, and perhaps knew better than I now what she needed to hold herself together. The boy would suffer. I knew there was hell to pay for this, and for the other shooting.
    She had me fixed with a stare from her dark face. Her breath was winded but steady. It seemed she expected me to go with her.
    I stood up, gesturing at my legs. “I haven’t got any pants on here. I’ve got to get my pants.” I lit a wooden match and held it to my lips. “Where’s the boy? Where’s he live?”
    She remained still as a dog with a leg shot away.
    I guessed the boy might be sleeping in a trailer somewhere, maybe with the gun. What about her parents, why weren’t they out looking? Why weren’t people off searching, lights on, the sheriff arriving? Nothing but the girl alone.
    “You can’t take his life,” I continued. I struck another match. “You can’t hurt him back for what he did, can’t kill him for it, even if it’s justified. Only the state can kill him,” I