The Hunter

The sky has darkened, not only with the coming night: a sullen layer of purple-gray cloud has rolled in from somewhere, on no wind that Cal can feel. It’s been so long since he’s seen cloud that it looks alien, bringing the sky unnaturally close. The fields have a strange, unfocused luminosity, as if the remaining light is generated from within the air itself.

Johnny stops again, leaning heavily on the spade, his head falling back. “Hooper,” he says. Cal can hear his breath deep in his chest. “You’re a man of sense. D’you wanta be mixed up in a bad business like this?”

“I’m not mixed up in anything,” Cal says. “I’m not even here.”

“None of us are,” Sonny says. “I’m having a few cans in front of the telly, myself.”

“I’m playing cards with these two,” Mart says, indicating P.J. and Cal. “I’m winning, as per usual.”

“Hooper,” Johnny says again, more urgently. His eyes are wild. “You wouldn’t let them leave Theresa without her daddy.”

“You’re no kinda father to her,” Cal says. “And you’ll be no loss.” He catches Mart’s small grim smile of approval, across the deepening hole.

He still can’t tell whether they’re just here to run Johnny out of town, or whether the men intend more than that. Johnny, who knows them better than Cal does, believes they mean more.

Cal could try to talk them out of it. He might even succeed; these aren’t hardened killers. He doesn’t know whether, if it comes to it, he’ll try. His personal code doesn’t allow for letting a man be beaten to death, even a little shitweasel like Johnny Reddy, but he’s gone beyond his code. All he cares about is making sure Trey has what she needs, whether that’s an absent father or a dead one.

“Lads,” Johnny says. The stink of sweat and fear comes off him. “Lads, listen to me. Whatever it is ye want, I’ll do it. Just tell me. Sonny, man, I got you outa hot water before…”

Cal’s phone beeps. It’s Lena.

I have Sheila and the children. Trey is at her house. Get her.

Johnny is still talking. As Cal lifts his head from the phone, he smells a faint trace of smoke on the air.

The turn towards the mountain seems to take him forever. High on its dark shoulder is a small, ragged splash of orange. A pillar of smoke rises, glowing, against the sky.

The other men follow his turn. “That’s my place,” Johnny says blankly. The spade drops from his hand. “That’s my house.”

“Call the fire department,” Cal says to Mart. Then he runs, brambles clawing at his legs, for his car.

He’s halfway there when he hears the thudding and panting of someone behind him. “I’m coming with you,” Johnny says, in between raw gasps.

Cal doesn’t answer and doesn’t slow for him. When he reaches the car, Johnny is still at his shoulder. While he’s fumbling his key at the ignition with fingers that feel thick and numbed, Johnny wrenches open the passenger door and throws himself inside.

—

Trey pulls herself up by the wall, hissing through her teeth to manage the pain, and braces her way along it to the nearest tree. The crackle and flutter of the flames is growing, mixed with strange popping and creaking sounds; when Trey looks over her shoulder, she sees a patch of the spruce grove is made of fire, every needle perfect and blazing against the dusk.

The tree is brittle from the drought, but all the same it takes her four tries to hang her weight from a branch hard enough that it snaps off. The recoil jolts her ankle and for a second she’s light-headed with pain, but she leans over the wall and takes long breaths till her vision comes back.

It’s clear to her that she might be going to die, but she doesn’t have time to have any feelings about that. She pads the end of the branch with her hoodie and tucks it under her armpit. Then she starts down the path, step and hop, as fast as she can go.

Birds are shooting up from the spruces and the gorse on every side, calling hard and high for danger. The air smells of smoke, and the heat is churning it: small things whirl and eddy in front of Trey’s face, flakes of ash, scraps of flame. The path is steeper than she ever realized before. If she speeds up, she’ll go sprawling. She can’t afford either to lose her crutch, or to get hurt worse than she is.

She keeps her pace steady, and her eyes on the ground for rocks. Behind her, the mutter of the fire is building towards a roar. She doesn’t look back.

—

“God almighty,” Johnny says, with an exaggerated puff of air, “I’m glad to be outa that.”

Cal, flooring it and dodging potholes, barely hears him. The one thing on their side is the windless air. The fire will spread fast enough all by itself, in this bone-dry country, but with no breeze to twist it, it’ll lick uphill. Trey will be heading down.

Johnny leans closer. “They weren’t going to kill me or anything mental like that, now. You get that, don’t you? Me and the lads, we’ve known each other all our lives. They’d never hurt me; they’re not fuckin’ psycho. They just wanted to give me a bit of a fright, like, just to—”