Double Exposure (7 page)

Small slope.

Very little vegetation.

Thick, broad leaves cover the ground.

Dense tree canopy above.

Layers and layers of light and dark green leaves.

He’s entered a beech-magnolia forest.

Thousands of years in the making.

Southern magnolias: Smooth, gray bark. Large, oblong leaves.

American beeches: Smooth, gray bark. Small, crinkly leaves.

The trees are so close together, the canopy they form so thick, very little sunlight ever reaches the forest floor. If not for the fallen leaves, there would be little more than dirt on the ground. Among the magnolia and beech are many other species, including the overstory trees of pine, oak, maple, sweetgum, walnut, ash, and the midstory holly, elm, palm, dogwood, and plum. So many trees in such close proximity survive by layering, shedding their leaves at different times, and by capturing sunlight in differing color wavelengths; green above, bluish beneath.

As he makes his way through the relative ease of the terrain, he wonders how his mom’s doing.

Please let her be okay. Let her sleep through the night or send someone to help her.

Because she was sick most of his life, he didn’t realize until young adulthood that he was much more like her than his dad. Or would have been if the MS hadn’t changed her.

She had given him his first camera.

It was his fourteenth birthday.

—Follow me, she says.

Easing down the hallway with the help of her creaking aluminum walker, she leads him to her bedroom and into her closet.

—Grab that for me.

He reaches up to the back shelf above her hanging clothes and pulls down a large shoe box and camera bag.

Backing over to the bed and leaning back onto it, she pats the comforter and he places the items next to her and sits down beside them.

—I want you to have this.

—Your camera?

—I won’t be able to use it again.

—Sure you will.

—Don’t be condescending.

—Sorry.

—Look at these.

She lifts the dusty lid from the shoe box to reveal a few hundred small black and white photos she had developed herself.

High contrast. Artistic. Moving. Powerful.

What might she have been if her disease hadn’t ended her life so early?

—They’re great, he says.

—You’ve got the eye for it. I can tell. Open the case.

He unzips the dusty old case to find a pristine Nikon F2A.

—Mom, I can’t take your camera.

—It’s not mine anymore. It’s yours. Get out there and do what I can’t. For me. Please.

—I will, he says. Thank you so much.

—Happy birthday.

For a while he had honored her requests, honored her art form, but it was too short-lived. In pleasing his practical father, he had not only betrayed himself, but his artistic mother. His ad work was creativity of a kind, but not this, not art.

Not that ads can’t be art. They can. Often are. But he had worked in a restrictive environment, forced to be fast—and far to crassly commercial to ever even approach anything like art.

If I can just show her the shots I’ve gotten tonight, just see her face as she sees the mother bear and cub, the bobcat and bats.

Please let me do that.

Thinking of those images reminds him of the others—of someone’s daughter, someone’s sister, someone’s friend.

Evening. Glow.

Dark figures.

Shot.

Explosion.

Bloom of blood.

Body dropping to the cold ground.

Death. Digging.

Fire.

Red-orange flames licking at black outlines backlit by red-orange horizon.

D
ampness.

Haze.

Biting.

Fog thick as gauze. Moisture laden.

Vaporous.

Limited visibility.

The moon a small, solitary headlight smothered by a blanket of smog.

The swamp tapers off and he enters a large, open pinewood flat.

Unlike pine forests planted by people, the trees of these natural occurring longleaf flats are spread out, some eight to ten feet apart, a rich carpet of wiregrass covering the ground between them.

So hungry. So thirsty. So spent.

The break from the hardwood canopy makes it possible for him to better see the night sky, and he searches the horizon for Polaris. If he can spot it, he’ll find north. If he finds north, he can find east, and then the river.

He thinks of the nameless, faceless girl again. Pictures her partially charred body surrounded by the cold dirt of the opened and re-covered earth.

What if that were Heather? It is. She’s somebody’s Heather, somebody’s flower.

The clouds have cleared out, but the fog continues to fill the world, diffusing the starlight, making it impossible to identify the Little Dipper, its handle, or the north star.

Looking down from the foggy sky, he scans the scattered pines.

Eerie.

Like men standing unnaturally still in the mist, the silent trees shrouded in the film of fog unnerve Remington, and his eyes dart from one to the other to confirm that they are in fact just trees.

Occasionally glancing up in hopes of a break in the fog, he quickly looks down again to continue his search of the pine barren.

When he spies a man in the distance, standing among the trees, he thinks it’s an illusion, a trick of light or an apparition conjured by his mind.

But then the man radios the others and raises his rifle.

—I got ‘im. I got ‘im. South edge of the big bay swamp. I’m gonna run ‘im to you.

Before Remington can react, a round whistles by his head and thwacks the bark of a laurel oak beside him.

Turning.

Running.

Stumbling.

Remington spins and reenters the hardwood forest he had just stepped out of a few moments before.

Tripping.

Falling.

Rolling.

His boot catches on a fallen black walnut tree and he goes down hard. Tucking in on himself, he manages to roll, mitigating the impact—until he bangs into the base of a hickory tree.

—He’s running. He’s running. South end of the swamp. Heading west.

They know where I am, Remington thinks. I can’t run toward them. Staying on the ground, he slides over and lies beneath the black walnut that had tripped him. And waits.

—I don’t see him, the man yells into his radio. Running. Breathless. I’ve lost him.

—Maintain pursuit, the calm voice of the murderer replies. Run him toward us.

Though not much of a hunter, Remington knows the culture and practices well. If a group of men after deer go into the woods without dogs, they’ll split up. A small group will make a stand while the others go up river a few miles, get out, and walk the deer toward them. Why more men aren’t shot using this practice he’s never understood.

They’re running me like a goddam deer. Well, I won’t let them.

Fight or flight.

I’m staying. Making my stand.

I’d rather die standing than running.

He finds this thought amusing since at the moment, he’s lying down.

Remington had hoped the man would trip over the fallen tree the way he had, but coming in several feet further to the south, he misses it completely.

—You see him?

—Not yet.

—Just keep moving toward us. Go slow. Take your time. Make some noise.

—Don’t let him circle back and get behind you, a different voice says.

The man is in front of Remington now. He’s got a bright light attached to the barrel of his rifle and trains the beam along the path he’s traversing. As soon as he gets a little further away, Remington can slip out and head in the opposite direction toward the river.

The man fires a round into the air. The loud explosion temporarily halts the sounds of frogs, crickets, and other nocturnal noisemakers. And Remington’s heart.

He fires another round as he continues to move.

—You get him?

The man doesn’t respond.

—Jackson? Jackson? Did you get him?

Jackson, Remington thinks. So there’s at least five men after him. Maybe more.

—You said to make some noise.

—So I did. I’ve got Arlington setting up in the flats in case he doubles back and gets around you.

—He won’t get around me.

—What I like to hear.

So he can’t go back out into the pine flats. Where, then? Just a few more feet and Jackson will be swallowed by the fog. I guess I can go south for a while and then turn east. Jackson stops suddenly, turns, and begins to shine the light behind him, searching all around. Remington lies perfectly still.

Unable to fit entirely beneath the fallen tree, part of his body is exposed.

The light passes directly over him, but is too high to reveal his whereabouts.

Then the man makes a second pass—lower to the ground this time.

Don’t shine it over here. Go the other way.

—Anything?

—Not yet. I’ll radio when I have something.

—How far in are you?

—Not far. I’m taking my time. Making sure he’s not just hiding.

Wait.

—What is it?

Suddenly, Remington is blinded by the beam of the light.

—I got ‘im. I got ‘im.

—Where?

—Don’t move. Put your hands up where I can see ‘em.

—Which one? Remington asks. Can’t do both.

—Jackson?

—Crawl out of there very slow.

—Jackson are you there? Where are you?

Remington eases out from the black walnut, as the man rushes in his direction, gun and light leveled on him.

—Jackson?

—Yeah.

—You got him?

—Got him.

—Shoot him there and we’ll come to you or bring him to me and I’ll do it.

—I shoot him, I make more.

—Fine.

—How much?

—Double.

—Done, Jackson says into the radio, then to Remington, Get on your knees.

—I just got up.

—One shot to the head’ll be painless. I gotta shoot you a bunch of times, it’s gonna hurt like hell and take you some time to die.

—I reckon I’d like to live as long as I can.

—Suit yourself, but—

As the man shrugs, Remington lunges toward him. Going in low, beneath the rifle, he digs his shoulder into Jackson’s groin, then raises up, bucking the rifle away, tackling him to the ground.

As he falls on top of the man, he rolls his shoulder and turns his arm, smashing his forearm into the man’s throat. Rolling.

Clutching.

Running.

Grabbing the radio, Remington rolls off the man, snatches up the rifle and starts to run.

Root.

Stumble.

Fall.

Hitting the ground hard after just a few feet, Remington drops the rifle, but manages to hang onto the radio.

Crawling toward the rifle, his hands and knees slipping on the leaves, Remington can hear Jackson slowly climbing to his feet.

By the time Remington has the rifle again, Jackson is lurching toward him.

No time.

Don’t think.

Just shoot.

Instinctively, he pulls back the bolt, ejecting a bullet from the breech, then jams it forward, racking another round into the chamber.

Raising the rifle, he takes in a breath, aims, exhales two-thirds of his breath, holds the rest, and calmly squeezes the trigger.

Nothing happens.

Jackson’s almost on him.

Safety.

He presses the safety button and tries again.

The deafening sound in the dark forest leaves his ears ringing.

—Is it done? the calm voice from the radio asks.

Ripping a hole in Jackson’s chest, the round goes through and lodges in a maple tree behind him.

Blood.

Spreading.

Falling.

Death.

Dark crimson flows out of the hole. Jackson collapses. Dead in seconds.

—Jackson? Did you get him? Jackson?

Flashlight beam. Bright light washing out his face. Eyes open. Ghostly.

Remington shivers.

The lifeless man looks eerie in the small circle of smoky light, surrounded on all sides by darkness. The disquieting image disturbs him deeply, and he rushes to get away.

He doesn’t make it far before he drops to his knees. Retching. Coughing. Vomiting.

S
hock.

Numbness.

Headache.

Everything around him seems a great distance away.

Like a bad drug trip, he feels detached from his body, sick, lethargic.

Trembly.

Clammy.

Dry mouth.

Shallow breaths.

Dizzy.

Did I really just kill a man?

I had to. He was going to kill me. I had no choice.

Would you rather be dead? Is that what you want? Would that make you feel better? You dead and him alive—the man, who with his buddies, was out here hunting you like a goddam animal?

Why’re you so upset? He was one of the bad guys. A killer. You just killed a killer. You had to. He was about to kill you.

I killed a man.

You had no choice.

He dealt that hand, not you. You were here to take pictures. These men are killers. He intended to kill you. The others still do. But—

They’ll probably still kill you, so you won’t have to feel bad for long.

—
J
ackson?

—Come in, Jackson.

—Where are you? What happened?

—You think he got Jackson?

—No way.

—Somebody shot something.

—Probably just lost his fuckin’ radio again.

—Get over there and find out.

—Almost there.

H
e needs to go back and hide the body, but he’s not sure he can. You can do it.

I can’t.

You’ve got to.

I can’t. I can’t go back there. Besides, they’ll see the blood.

You’ve got to cover it up.

I just can’t.

—
G
oddam. Oh Jesus.

—What is it?

—Jackson. He’s dead.

—You sure?

—I’m looking at his dead goddam body.

—He fuckin’ killed Jackson.

—Gauge, did you hear me?

—I heard you, the calm, laconic voice says.