A terrible scream of pain exploded from me, just as my father got the gun, and he and Jay struggled for it. He raised himself high, away from my brother. And I pulled the trigger to release my arrow, just as the gun fired, filling the air with sound and the acrid smell of cordite, making my ears ring.
There was a long moment where Jay and I locked eyes, and my father wobbled in place, the arrow in one side of his back, its green feathers vibrating.
Here, the whole world took and released a breath.
My father fell heavily to the side with a groan, dropping the gun. I raced over to kick it away from him. That’s when I saw the flower of blood blooming on Jay’s white shirt. I dropped the bow and ran to him where he lay, put my hands to the flow, right over his heart. I tried, tried so hard to press it all back inside of him, to reverse the flow, the passage of time.
“Please,” I whispered. “Please.”
He grabbed my wrist, urgent, his eyes wild with fear. But he never spoke another word. And I lay my head upon his chest and listened to his last breath leave him, looking up in time to see all the light drain from his gaze.
And all I could do was scream with rage and sorrow. The sound bouncing around the room, around the inside of my head.
My father grabbed hold of my ankle, and started pulling me toward him. He was so strong, even then, with the arrow sticking horribly out of his back. I kicked at him hard, hitting him in the jaw and getting him to release his grip. I didn’t want to leave them but I had to, grabbing my bow, backing toward the door.
“You did this,” he said. With one hard pull, he yanked the arrow out of his back, howling in pain. He rose, pitching, unsteady to his feet, drunk on rage and pain. “You did this.”
Even then I knew it wasn’t true.
“No,” I told him. “You did.”
He lunged for me, his face contorted. With him at my heels, I ran.
Robin was ahead of me like the white rabbit showing me the way. Around us the sound of shouting and gunfire, just like I imagine war must be. It was a war, a battle anyway. One I’d already lost and was just trying to survive. Above us, the swaying trees and the starlight.
This way, she kept calling back to me. This way.
I heard him calling my name over and over. Robin. Robin. Robin.
I ran straight into Jones Cooper, who caught me against the great barrel of his chest, in the expansive strength of his arms. He pushed me behind him, and pointed his gun at the darkness. We both heard him coming, crashing through the trees. He came to a stop when he saw Jones, the gun aimed at him.
“Stay where you are,” said Jones. “Get down on your knees and put your hands in the air.”
He didn’t yell.
But there was the unmistakable volume of authority, a righteousness to the command. And my father, winded, injured, defeated, suddenly and abruptly complied, as if all the life had drained from him. He sank to his knees, then fell to the ground weeping. He was a big man, physically formidable. In that moment, he was a child, damaged and broken by the life he’d lived, the things he’d seen and done. None of it was my fault. But it wasn’t all his fault either. I sank to my haunches and leaned against the big tree as Jones Cooper put handcuffs on my father. I held his eyes and saw all the depths of his pain and rage and deep sorrow.
I saw it all. And still I hated him. And I never forgave him.
The rest of that night, and most of what followed in the weeks after, is blur of grief and the profound misery of unimaginable loss.
“This is the worst night of your life,” Maggie Cooper said as she wrapped me in a blanket and took me stunned and in deep shock away from that place. I remember the back of her car vividly, the velvety softness of the upholstery, the light scent of something floral, the cool of the window. There were no words in my head, just a siren of misery. “But you are going to get through it.”
It was more of a command than an assurance. I remember thinking that I didn’t want to survive. That I wanted to go where my mother had gone, and my brother, and that first doe I killed. I wanted to go to the place where you go when the light dies.
I’m trying not to go back to that night as Joy talks, but the sights and sounds and smells come back to me vividly. Some things you can never forget, hard as you try. It’s all well and good to say that the past is gone and all we have is the moment. But for me, the past is a haunting.
Bailey is antsy, his knee bouncing as Joy takes the scenic route to the night I lost everything. There’s a tension, an awkwardness between us now. I try to ignore it.
“There were three families on that property. Your family who owned the land, and the Stones and the Wilsons who rented other structures on the property. Both pretty bare bones, an old barn which the Stones converted into a relatively livable place, drawing from the well and building a septic.”