The Empty Chair

exotic. . . . But she doesn’t understand life down here. And she doesn’t understand Garrett. You know him—that’s one sick boy and it’s just a fluke that he’s not doing life right now.”
    “I know Garrett’s dangerous. I’m not arguing there. It’s Amelia I’m thinking of.”
    “Well, it’s us that I’m thinking of and everybody else in Blackwater Landing that boy could be planning on killing tomorrow or next week or next year if he gets away from us. Which he might just do, thanks to her. Now, I need to know if I can count on you. If not, you can go on home and we’ll have Jim send somebody else in your place.”
    Jesse glanced at the box of shells. Then back to her. “You can, Lucy. You can count on me.”
    “Good. You better mean that. ’Cause at first light I’m tracking them down and bringing ’em both back. I hope alive but, I tell you, that’s become optional.”

    Mary Beth McConnell sat alone in the cabin, exhausted but afraid to sleep.
    Hearing noises everywhere.
    She’d given up on the couch. She was afraid that if she remained there she’d stretch out and fall asleep then wake to find the Missionary and Tom gazing at her through the window, about to break in. So she was perched at a dining room chair, which was about as comfortable as brick.
    Noises . . .
    On the roof, on the porch, in the woods.
    She didn’t know what time it was. She was afraid to even push the light button on her wristwatch to glimpsethe face—out of the crazy fear that the flash would somehow beckon to her attackers.
    Exhausted. Too tired even to wonder again why this had happened to her, what she might have done to prevent it.
    No good deed goes unpunished . . .
    She stared out at the field in front of the cabin, now completely black. The window was like a frame around her fate: Whom would it show approaching through the field? Her killers or her rescuers?
    She listened.
    What was that noise: A branch on bark? Or the rasp of a match?
    What was that dot of light in the woods: A firefly, or a campfire?
    That motion: A deer goaded to run by the scent of bobcat or the Missionary and his friend settling in around the fire to drink beer and eat food then prowl through the woods to come for her and satisfy their bodies in other ways?
    Mary Beth McConnell couldn’t tell. Tonight, as in so much of life, she sensed only ambiguity.
    You find relics of long-dead settlers but you wonder if maybe your theory is completely wrong.
    Your father dies of cancer—a long, wasting death that the doctors say is inevitable but you think: Maybe it wasn’t.
    Two men are out there in the woods, planning to rape and kill you.
    But maybe not.
    Maybe they’ve given up. Maybe they’re passed out on moonshine. Or were scared off at the thought of the consequences, deciding that their fat wives or callused hands are safer, or easier, than what they had planned with her.
    Spread-eagle at your place . . .
    A sharp crack filled the night. She jumped at the sound. A gunshot. It seemed to come from where she’dseen the firelight. A moment later there was a second shot. Closer.
    Breathing heavily in fear, gripping the coup stick. Unable to look out the black window, unable not to. Terrified that she’d see Tom’s pasty face appearing slowly in the frame, grinning. We’ll be back.
    The wind was up, bending the trees, the brush, the grass.
    She thought she heard a man laughing, the sound soon lost in the hollow wind like the call of one of the Manitou spirits of the Weapemeocs.
    She thought she heard a man calling, “Get yourself ready, get yourself ready. . . .”
    But maybe not.

    “You hear shots?” Rich Culbeau asked Harris Tomel.
    They sat around a dying campfire. They were uneasy and not nearly as drunk as if this’d been a normal hunting trip, not nearly as drunk as they wanted to be. The ’shine just wasn’t taking.
    “Pistol,” Tomel said. “Large caliber. Ten millimeter or a .44, .45. Automatic.”
    “Bullshit,” Culbeau said. “You can’t tell it’s an automatic or not.”
    “Can,” Tomel lectured. “A revolver’s louder—because of the gap between the cylinder and the barrel. Logical.”
    “Bullshit,” Culbeau repeated. Then asked, “How far?”
    “Humid air. It’s night . . . I make it four, five miles.” Tomel sighed. “I want this thing to be over with. I’m sick of it.”
    “I hear that,” Culbeau said. “Was easier in Tanner’s Corner. Getting complicated