Episodul 30 · Better Them

He said it quietly, without defending himself. Soles had no reply. He had come prepared for lies, threats, a gun. Not for a man who knew what he had done.

Movement on the road caught Soles’s eye. A door had opened on the gray car.

He turned toward it. The ringing in his left ear had covered the sound.

The man stood above the riverbed beside the gray car, one hand on its open door. He stayed there, too far away for Soles to read his face. They had agreed not to leave the opposite bank at all. Soles looked back toward the bridge.

— Soles.

The voice came from the path through the reeds, closer than it should have been. Maxim had crossed while finishing the call that would bring the officers to the right shed. He said Soles’s name without shouting, in the same tone he had used for “take your hand off that.”

All Soles had to do was turn and go back. He had not heard a name yet. He wanted another minute.

Kerr’s good hand caught the edge of the boat. His body had gone rigid around the arm in the sling, and he watched the man by the car the way an animal watches a dog that has not barked yet. His gaze stayed on the road when he spoke.

— Leave, he told Soles. Now!

— You?

— I’m staying.

— The police are coming.

Kerr tore his eyes from the road and looked at him. For the first time, something almost human appeared on his face: a crooked, bitter relief.

— Good, he said. Better them.

A massive man with a gray beard and a broad, weathered face came out of the shed, a rope-cutting knife held low beside his leg. He stopped in the doorway. His eyes went from Kerr to the man beside the gray car, then to Soles, and stayed there.

— I told you to leave yesterday, he said to Kerr.

— I know, Ivo.

Ivo did not look at him. He was looking at the stranger who had crossed the riverbed while the gray car watched.

— They sent you on foot?

Soles understood the question only when Ivo was already moving.

He came around the end of the boat faster than a man that size should have, the knife low, edge up, carried the way a man carries a tool he means to use. Soles backed along the hull. Not the bridge. He’ll catch me on the boards. Behind him there was only mud and the open yard. He could not run with his chest, and he could not fight with one hand.

Ivo reached across the hull with his free hand, took Soles by the coat and hauled him in.

The keel struck him under the dressing. White light went through his chest and out through his teeth. For a moment he could see nothing but the tarred planks an inch from his face, and the knife coming around the bow.

The wedge.

He had seen it without meaning to, the way he saw everything that held something else up: the near trestle stood crooked in the mud, and a single block of wood kept it level. He kicked it.

The trestle lurched. The bow came down a hand’s width, then all at once, and the full weight of the boat dropped onto Ivo’s forearm. The knife went into the mud.

Ivo grunted. He did not let go with the other hand. He dragged Soles closer across the keel, until their faces were close enough for Soles to smell tar and coffee, and drew back his fist.

Past his shoulder, Soles saw Kerr. His good hand had left the boat. It was under his shirt, at his waist, and it stayed there. His eyes were on the two of them, and Soles could not tell which one they had settled on.

The fist did not come.

Ivo was looking at his face. Not at the coat or the bandage or the car on the road. At his face, close, as though reading a name under paint.

— Kale’s boy, he said softly, almost to himself.

His grip opened. He set his shoulder under the bow and lifted it off his own arm, the way a man lifts something he has lifted a thousand times.

Soles slid down the hull until he was sitting in the mud. Kerr’s hand came out from under his shirt empty and rested on the boat again, as if it had never been anywhere else.

— You knew my father? Soles said.

Ivo never got to answer. From the road above the riverbed came a siren, still distant, then another, closer. The figure beside the gray car moved. He got back in, slammed the door, and drove away without lights, slowly at first, then faster, until the car vanished around the end of the last shed.

Soles stayed in the mud beside the boat, his question about his father still unanswered. Maxim came out of the reeds and reached him there, breathing a little hard, phone still in his hand.

— I told you to wait on the other bank.

— I know.

— Did he hurt you?

— No.

It was not quite true. Maxim looked at him, then toward Kerr’s good hand. He stayed beside Soles without saying anything else.

Kerr had sat down on the bench made from crates. He rested the arm in the sling on his knee and stared at the ground, at the unlit cigarette. Ivo stood in the doorway, holding his forearm against his chest. The knife lay in the mud where it had fallen. Inside, the radio had moved on to an old song Soles knew from Mary without knowing its name.

The investigator got out of the first car and saw Soles before anyone else. He looked at him with an expression Soles had seen on Kale’s face when Soles came home later than he had promised.

— We’ll talk later, he said.

Kerr did not resist. He stood on his own when two officers approached. One took a pistol from the waistband beneath his shirt before they cuffed him, taking care with the injured arm. Soles watched the officer turn the pistol over in his hand. He thought of Kerr’s fingers at his waist while Ivo held him against the hull, and did not know which of them it had been for. Kerr did not look at Soles as he passed. He looked up toward the road, toward the empty place where the gray car had been.

It took more than an hour before they were allowed to leave. Each time Soles told it, he stopped at the same sentence. You weren’t supposed to be there. You were supposed to come later. The investigator wrote it down.

Ivo refused to speak to him. He did not once look at Soles’s face. When Soles approached, he told the officer beside him that he had work to do on the engine and went into the shed. The door remained open. The radio had gone silent.

Back at the truck, Maxim got in and fastened his seat belt. He sat with his hands on the wheel, staring at the dark riverbed.

— I have the number, he said at last.

Soles turned toward him.

— From the gray car?

— Half of it. The rest was covered in mud. Strange, for such a clean car.

— Did you tell the investigator?

— Yes. He said it’s better than nothing.

Soles leaned back. His ribs hurt more than they had all day. The bandaged hand trembled in his lap, and he pressed it with the other to stop it.

— I was supposed to come later, he said.

— I heard.

— After what?

Maxim did not answer. He started the engine and pulled back onto the road. Soles saw the row of stone blocks along the bank once more before the bend hid it.

— I thought he was going to disappear, Soles said.

— I know what you thought.

— It doesn’t make it all right.

Maxim kept his eyes on the road.

— I can help you look. I can drive. I can call. I can’t keep being the person who finds out you’ve changed the plan by watching you walk away.

Soles looked at his cousin’s hands on the wheel. He wanted to offer another promise. He had offered one before leaving the house.

— I’m sorry.

Maxim nodded once. He was not ready to make it easier than that.

Soles took out his phone and opened the conversation with Krista.

I’m back. They took him.

The answer came before Maxim had left the gravel road.

Are you okay?

Soles looked at the question for a long time.

I don’t know yet. I crossed when I said I wouldn’t. I’m in one piece.