Episodul 225 · The Man Before the Shot

On the first night of the assignment, Soles put the agency phone beside the bed and kept his own in his hand.

He chose the chair facing the door. Three months of practice had given him several ways to sit alone.

He opened Maxim’s number. The last call had lasted less than a minute. Soles could remember saying he was busy; he could not remember what Maxim had called about.

He left the screen open until it went dark.

Bull’s head had been heavy in his hand. He had washed that hand, eaten with it and counted out money. He kept remembering how long he had held on.

He turned it palm down.

When sleep came, he stood near the new plant. Haya’s eyes still passed across him without recognition. Soles had watched the man die protecting the forest; he knew almost nothing about the years before that night. He touched the coarse leaves. The cold reached his wrist.

— Sol II —

Snow pressed cold against the inside of his wrist.

He lay beneath a spruce above the frozen creek. Across the water, a low bank hid the rest of his patrol. One man had reached the footbridge; another was crawling back from it, leaving a dark smear behind his boot.

Haya knew the bend. In summer, the creek barely covered his ankles. He had once carried a boy across it with a stolen snare hidden beneath the boy’s coat. The boy had denied everything while the wire dripped creek water down his father’s steps.

There had been a way to finish that afternoon. Give back the snare, speak to the father, return the next week. He had gone home annoyed about the lost hour.

Beyond the footbridge, an enemy soldier moved between the birches. He wore a pale cover over his coat and carried his rifle low. When he stopped, the forester could hear the wounded man breathing on the other bank.

His orders were to watch the crossing while the patrol withdrew. Until this morning, the officers had wanted him for paths, distances and places the maps got wrong. A sergeant had learned that he could shoot and given him somewhere to lie.

The soldier stepped over a fallen branch. A loose strap had caught beneath his boot. He shook it free, impatiently, and glanced toward the creek.

The forester waited for him to turn away.

The soldier lifted his rifle toward the bank.

He had brought his own rifle when he reported for duty. The stock had a shallow dent from a winter when the ranger’s stove door would not shut. He had used it to push the iron plate into place, then spent a week hearing about it from the man who repaired it.

His thumb found the dent.

The wounded man tried to rise. The soldier followed the movement.

The forester fired.

The soldier folded against the birch and sat down hard. His rifle slid from his hands. For a moment he looked like someone who had slipped while crossing the creek, bewildered by how much it hurt.

The forester kept watching. The man pressed a mitten to his coat, brought it away and looked at it. His mouth moved. There was too much water running beneath the ice to hear him.

Then his head rested against the trunk.

Someone reached out from behind the low bank and pulled the wounded man out of sight. The forester stayed beneath the spruce. His hands had remained steady through the shot. Now the small muscles along his jaw were drawing tight, and he could not make them stop.

He had killed animals. He knew what a bullet did. The man beside the birch had been about to shoot someone he knew.

He went through those facts again. Each remained true. He still wanted to crawl across the creek and put the loose strap back where it belonged.

A hand closed around his ankle.

— Haya. We’re clear. Come on.

He followed the patrol through the trees. At the first halt, the sergeant gave him a drink and told him he had done well. He swallowed before answering. The cup knocked once against his teeth.

— Did he get across? he asked.

The sergeant pointed to the wounded man lying beneath a coat. Alive. They had stopped the bleeding.

The forester nodded and returned the cup with both hands.

He would have to do it again. They were already looking at the next crossing on the map. He bent beside them, found the path they needed and kept his face where the sergeant could see it.

Two evenings later, the wounded man was sitting beside the stove in a barn, trying to mend his coat. He held the needle with three fingers. The other two were bound together.

Haya sat on the far end of the bench to clean his rifle. There was scarcely room between the stove and the wall for anyone to pass; men kept stepping over their boots with cups of hot water.

— Give it here, Haya said.

— I can do it.

The needle fell. Both men watched it disappear between the floorboards.

Haya fetched another from his kit.

— I’m beginning to see that.

The man laughed, then stopped with a hand against his side. Haya waited for him to breathe properly before holding out his own coat.

— Put that over you.

He mended the torn seam beside the stove. The man had been a delivery driver before the war. He talked about a bridge whose tollkeeper knew every excuse for forgetting a purse, including the ones Haya began to suggest.

When the seam was closed, Haya gave back the coat. The man examined the stitches.

— Better than my wife does it.

— Don’t tell her.

Haya returned to the rifle. His thumb settled into the dent on the stock. Across the barn, someone dropped a log into the stove, and for a moment he was back beneath the spruce, watching the mitten come away from the soldier’s chest.

He put the rifle across his knees until the driver finished speaking. Then he answered the question about the road.

After the others slept, he cleaned the weapon again.

❦

Soles woke before the room grew light.

The agency phone lay where he had put it. He knew what was expected of him when he found the man. He had been thinking about the forester as someone who could make the finding easier.

Now he remembered the coat laid over another man’s shoulders while its owner sat close enough to the stove to keep working.

He took his own phone from the blanket and opened Maxim’s number again. This time he sent a message.

I owe you a call. Tell me when you’re awake.

There was no answer yet. He left the phone where he would see it.