The Terror of Living (3 page)

    He eased down on the throttle and signaled the co-pilot. The cabin filled with the red beacon light marking the package, and the door opened. Wind rushed in for a moment, and there was the brief bounce as the weight left the aircraft and the co-pilot rolled the door closed. The pilot gave one more turn over the valley, watching the load drift with the wind, the parachute like a giant jellyfish hanging there in the air. The silent red blink of the beacon floating down.

    DRAKE WOKE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT FOR NO reason. He lay watching the wind rustle the tent walls. He'd always thought, This is how it will be. This is how I will die, in a tent with the wind all around me and no one to know it happened.

    He stared at the tent a while longer, listening. There was always the idea of being hunted, the nagging indecision about what lay just out of sight. He had been coming into the woods since he was a boy, but never without that fear that clung to him. Bears, cougars, those things that were bigger than him, that could hunt him down. He lay there listening to his own breathing; then he heard it, far out on the wind rising off the valley. The low humming sound of an engine. He heard the throttle drop an octave and he was sure of it now, the thing was climbing, bending out across the valley like a boomerang.

    He unzipped the tent and stood barefoot on the cold grass, watching the valley. He heard it again, the whine of an engine. It could have been a lawn mower for all he knew, but he knew it wasn't, not here. The moon was out, brilliant white in a navy sky. Shrouding all the stars into mere dots of light. He could see it now, a plane, running low to the trees, curving around until its dark shape broke free over the glaciers and dipped back into the blackness.

    Wind came and lifted his clothes about him, the sensation so alive on his skin and him so alone, standing there over the dark shadow of the valley below. Hadn't he been expecting this? Wasn't this why he was here, some desperate urge to set things right, to capture some piece of a life left behind? From the valley floor a flare shot up, climbing in a spiral into the air. The plane seemed to veer toward it like a trout in the water, inspecting. He heard the chute catch, the big wallop of air as the thing filled and the package floated free, red blinking lights strapped to the side and a dark cloud hanging over it. The plane ducked once through the valley, then headed north, dipping over the ridge. No lights, nothing. The silent darkness out there and the blinking red of the package floating over the valley.

    HUNT LED THE KID CRASHING THROUGH THE UNDERBRUSH. The chute had caught a crosswind and was pulling for the ridge. They'd left the horses in the meadow and climbed, sometimes on hands and knees, sometimes with their arms spread out in front of them to catch the branches and shrubs that lay before them.

    It could happen this way. It wasn't fine art. They could only guess at how it would play out - one chance, and if it didn't play, that was it. There was always the danger it would get hung up. But Hunt was careful, he'd given the pilot fair warning, shot the flare wide so the pilot could circle and get his bearings.

    "This is how it is?" the kid asked after they'd slowed and sat, watching the load - big as a metal desk and looking just as heavy-where it lay on the ground in front of them.

    "What do you want me to tell you, kid?"

    "Cigarette boats and palm trees would be nice," the kid joked. He was sweating and he moved his sleeve over his forehead to wipe the grit.

    "You cut me in on that deal," Hunt said, the white of his teeth showing. He took a knife from his belt and began to slice the cords away. The parachute caught in the wind, and as he cut, the upright sides pulled over and lay down, revealing the packages beneath, each one of them the size of a fifty-pound bag of flour.

    "Shit," the kid said, "that's a lot of coke."

    "I'll guarantee they know it down to the gram."

    "I'm just saying."

    "That's fine," Hunt said. "Just don't think too much about it. It'll get you all twisted up inside."

    The two of them worked for fifteen minutes, hefting bags the size of pillowcases over their shoulders and bringing them down into the meadow.

    "How much you think this is worth?" the kid said. "Honestly, how much?"

    "Is there a reason you're asking?"

    "No reason. Just curiosity."

    "I wouldn't worry about a thing like that. Don't worry about it. We'll be paid enough. You don't want all the trouble a thing like this can bring."

    "You've never thought -"

    "Never."

    "What is it you do for a living again?"

    "You're looking at it."

    "And it's never crossed your mind."

    "Not once. Like I said, I can't do much with a history like mine. But I can do a little, and what little I have I'm happy to hold on to."

    "Two horses and one busted-up life."

    "Not everyone that plays the lottery wins. You understand me, kid?"

    "Yeah, I get you. But it's like putting the winning ticket in my hand and asking me not to cash it in."

    "Are we going to have a problem here?"

    "No problem, man. I'm just saying. Just saying is all."

    DRAKE TOOK THE SCREE CHUTE IN BOUNDS, HOLDING the.270 by the stock and letting his thighs take his weight. The rocks scattered out in front of him, clattered off each other and followed him down. What did you expect? he thought. So what if they hear me, they're probably half-gone as it is. It's probably better that way.

    He paused to watch the thing in the air. The package pulled out over the forest and hung there for a moment. He didn't wait to see what it would do; he was already running. It was a long ways. He figured he'd dropped a thousand feet already and he still had another five hundred or so before he reached the bottom. He stopped again, listened, giving the forest a long stare. He didn't know what he would find.

    He felt foolish, the feeling coming over him as fast as anything. Someone else could be here, someone else could do this. Why him, a guy on his day off? But he knew he couldn't let that sit, and he headed off through the forest at a dead run, anticipating the dips in the damp ground before they came.

    AFTER THEY'D LOADED THE BAGS ONTO THE HORSES, Hunt went through, tightening the straps. The kid had walked off a ways, and he stood in the meadow rubbing his arms and looking up at the glacier. When he came back he was smiling. "What now?" he said.

    Hunt remembered being a kid once, years ago, before he went away. So much of his life seemed to be divided by the time he'd lost, as if a wall had been built during those ten years. He could remember waiting at home with his mother, a promise his father had made to take him to the races, and just waiting for his return, as if it was the only thing that mattered, though Hunt knew now that it wasn't.

    The choices he'd made had brought him here. He could look back on them now, rationalize them, yet he still felt that dim excitement of possibility growing inside him like an old piece of charred wood, burned long ago and pushed aside, taking on a miraculous light.

    Hunt watched the edge of the forest. There was no time for the kid's excitement, or his own, no time to stop or dream or hope for things that might or might not turn out. The lacquered moonlight coated their faces, everything slate blue, the shimmer of the light catching on the bridles. He hated this part of it. Better to be done with it than wait around here. He twisted the reins over his hand and told the kid to come on.

    Hunt had never adjusted to the night forest. Better to be out of it, he thought. Better to be home in bed. A memory came to him of Nora, the cut of her nightgown as she lay in bed, her back turned and the light coming in through the blinds. Better to be home, he thought. Better to be far away from here.

    Hunt and the kid walked on a ways, leading the horses and parting the grass in front of them. There was no reason to be worried. No reason at all.

    WHEN DRAKE BROKE OUT INTO THE MEADOW, HE could see the two men at the far side, leading horses. He dropped to one knee, felt the damp of the dew-covered grass come through the fabric of his pants and rise onto his thigh. Through the scope the men were nearly straight on, their backs turned, facing away from him, their horses loaded with large bags. Drake couldn't tell what was in them, but he could guess.

    As he looked on, he talked to himself: "Don't move. Don't make a fool mistake and get yourself shot." He couldn't see any weapons on the men, but he knew that didn't mean there weren't any.

    With his hand in the soft earth, he pushed himself up and circled into the forest, following the edge of the trees around until he was almost parallel to the men. He took his steps carefully, toe to heel, slipping from tree to tree. He could hear the draw of the horses' lungs, the sound of the grass parting and then coming back together. He had the gun in his hands, held close with the barrel pointed upward and the butt at his belt. He took a big breath, he pulled in something gigantic, pressure and fear, and he felt it there in his lungs aching to get out.

    How many times had he pictured himself here, gun drawn, taking sight along the barrel? He couldn't say. Didn't even know if he could go through with it. His father had been the one to show him how to shoot a gun, ten years old, elbows raised over the alder fence out back of their property, his father in the old cop browns of the department. Four apples set there amid the grass. "Careful now," his father had said. "Take your time, you may only get one chance."

    He stepped from beneath the shadow of the trees and leveled the rifle. There was no plan. His father slipped back into memory. No one to tell him this was how it was done or to tell him otherwise. The silver light of the moon was on him, and he stood there with the rifle leveled and the two men looking at him, not knowing what to make of him.

    One of the men began to speak, the older, a voice rough and bumpy as cobblestones. With his hand Drake shushed him. Told him to shut up, told him to just be quiet. Drake was saying a million different things, identifying himself and holding the rifle in his hands and yelling and not knowing anything. Just making it up as he went along. He kept his hand on the rifle and watched the steam break from the nostrils of the horses, everybody just staring at each other, waiting for what came next.

    HUNT WAS THE FIRST TO MAKE THE ASSUMPTION. There was a good two hundred feet between him and the cop, and he guessed the man could make a nice shot. Could hollow out his head with that.270, but he wouldn't. Hunt wasn't going back to jail. It was reckless and he knew it. He was shivering all over, and he could feel his muscles tightening up and a million other things beginning to go wrong. But he had made his mind up a long while ago, when it had all started to happen for him, and Eddie had come to him and given him the job, which had been his ever since: he didn't intend to go back to jail.

    The deputy could see what was happening and Hunt knew it. Let him see it. They were in an open meadow, with the forest only a few steps off. Things were dark in the forest, and Hunt could see he might make it if he could get in there, the deputy just standing in the meadow, holding the rifle on him and yelling. Hunt didn't know what to make of it. It didn't make much sense. He wasn't listening and the kid was starting to back away and it was all going to shit.

    With one quick movement, Hunt was behind the horse and had the buckle undone, the weight of the drugs carrying the saddle off. The man was yelling, but Hunt was yelling, too, not knowing what to say, but telling the kid all the while what to do. The kid stood there like some stupid scarecrow, stuffed up with straw and hay and not real guts like he should have been. Simply dumbfounded. Hunt was pulling on the reins, pulling the horse down by its mouth, leading it down until it was kneeling there in the grass. The kid was fumbling with the strap under the belly of his horse, the deputy coming on in a straight line across the field, the rifle held out in front of him. He was yelling something the kid couldn't understand, and Hunt was rising up on the back of the horse, his gloved hands gripping the mane and the horse surging forward through the meadow.

    There was a shot, and Hunt ducked, nearly falling from the horse. The kid's horse startled and bucked back, and the kid stepped away, watching the hooves catch the air. Then he turned and ran head-down across the field, trying to keep the horse between him and the rifle. He ran wildly, not looking, keeping his head planted and his feet going. The meadow raced away under him, but he didn't have any true plan except escape, and even that seemed a tough decision.

    DRAKE WATCHED THE KID GO, WEAVING THROUGH the grass in an absurd fashion. It seemed to Drake that he was running a football pattern, juking left, then faking right. Drake raised the rifle and fired into the night. He listened as the echo caught high up in the valley and bounced back to him. "I don't have a problem shooting you in the back," he yelled, cradling the rifle again and sighting the kid. "Stop, goddamn it!" He shucked the shell casing and loaded another. The shot hit the meadow in front of the kid, and a cloud of dust bounced up like a little atomic explosion, pale and blue in the moonlight. The kid stopped, raised his hands, and waited. Drake shucked another shell casing and pushed the bolt forward.