Heartbroke Bay (35 page)
Authors: Lynn D'urso
Hans groans, climbing to his feet, then leans back against the wall and bends at the waist, putting his head in his hands to fight off a wave of nausea. When the room stops spinning, he stares a moment at the great lump that was Harky, then straightens, wide-eyed, and takes a step toward Dutch, who lies crumpled at an impossible angle into the juncture of wall and floor. In the dim light, the bodies lie loose-jointed and flattened, marionettes cut loose from their strings.
“Jesus,” croaks Hans. “He’s killed everybody.”
Hans shuffles to his wife, who stands crying over the Irishman, repeating a rolling incantation—“Why, Michael? Why?”—and looks down at him. Severts lies on his back, his lips slightly parted and moving soundlessly. The orbs of his eyes flutter in erratic circles beneath their lids.
Hans is still a moment, glaring at Hannah. His look grows narrow and dangerous. The swelling of his broken nose is beginning to spread and darken into the area under his eyes.
“Hans, are you all right?” asks Hannah. Her husband ignores her for a moment, staring down at the man at his feet. When he looks up, his hair and eyes are wild, and the lower half of his face is streaked with blood. It is a face, brutish with anger, twisted by some hissing, animal part of the soul that frightens Hannah as much as the murder that has shattered the frozen night.
Severts moans, lifts a hand weakly from the floor, then drops it again and tries to roll to his side. The motion catalyzes Hans, and he lashes out with a boot to Michael’s ribs. “Murderer! Bastard murderer!”
Kicking and shouting, he strikes again and again at the prone man. Hannah screams at the sound of his boot thudding into Severts’s side.
“Hans! Stop it! Stop it!” She grabs at his arm. Hans shoves her, and she stumbles backward, trips on the outstretched leg of Harky’s body, and falls to the floor. When she pushes herself to her knees, her hand slips in something warm and sticky. “Oh God, Hans, please, you’re killing him!”
“Damn right I’m killing him!” shouts Hans. “Murdering bastard!” Swinging a fist hard, again and again into Michael’s face and head.
“Stop! Stop, for the love of God, no more!”
Hannah crawls crabwise across the floor, stumbling, her boots catching in her skirts, and grabs up the gun. Without thinking, she rises and swings the barrel down hard against Hans’s shoulder, and he howls and falls to his knees.
Stepping back, Hannah raises the gun and points it into the astonished face of her husband. “Hans, no. Get back.”
“What in hell?” Hans bellows, as he tries to rise, then clutches at his shoulder as a shock of pain knifes him back to one knee. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I can’t let you kill him. Get back.” She makes a thrusting motion with the gun barrel that pushes Hans a step back.
The sudden violence and murder, the blood, and the sickening sounds of brutality spin Hannah’s mind into a whirl of horror. How has it come to this, that she, who has never raised a hand against another human, or even whipped a dog or used a quirt on a horse, stands now surrounded by the dead, her hands slick and stinking with the fluids of murder, holding a gun on her own husband in defense of her lover? Twice in a moment she has seen murder done, and twice in a moment she has struck with fury and metal against a man with whom she has shared her body. Something splits and cracks within her, as the final reality of how far she has come from all that had been her genteel life spikes itself sharp and deep into her heart. The sensation of a growing web of fractures spreads, breaking away like the fragile shell of an egg, until there is only one desire, one thought, one word remaining:
“Stop.
“Hans, stop. We must stop this.”
Hans is incredulous. “Stop? Damn it, Hannah. The man’s a coldblooded murderer. He killed Harky. He killed Dutch. And I’m going to kill him!”
“No, you are not!” She glances at Severts, who lies curled and still at her feet. His face is swollen, black from the fury of Hans’s blows, and his mouth is a crimson pulp of blood. Hannah feels a knot cinch itself into her stomach at the sight of his destroyed, beautiful face. “You cannot kill a helpless man.”
Hans sits back on his haunches, leans against his good arm, and a calculating look fixes itself in his eyes.
“If we kill him . . .” Hannah gropes for words to explain what her desperate bones know. “If we kill a helpless man, we will be no better than him. We will be murderers, too. We must stop.”
“Stop? Hannah, that man”—Hans points at Michael’s still body—“just killed in cold blood. What else will we do? Shall I call a policeman?”
Hannah cannot respond. There is no answer in her mouth. There is no one to call, no way to change or affect what has happened. There is only this, the horror of all-come-undone, in the last place on Earth, in a land that feels the farthest any human can be from solace or safety. There must be a way to correct
something
, to bend things in such a way that will give them hope in this hell.
something
, to bend things in such a way that will give them hope in this hell.
“No, the killing is done. We’ll tie him up.”
“Tie him up? Then what?” asks Hans.
Again Hannah’s mind gropes for a solution, but there is nothing. There is only the smell of Harky and Dutch, whose bodies lie cooling as the blood-warmth of their lives soaks into the cold ground. There is the killer at her feet and the would-be killer she is looking at over the barrel of a gun. There is no order, only chaos. Another piece of the shell flakes away . . .
“I won’t let you kill him. If you kill him . . .” She cannot think what to say. “If you kill him, I will see you charged with murder for killing a helpless man.” And as she says it, she knows it is true. She will fall back on the law, on the strength of that world that still exists out there somewhere that prevents this sort of madness, where men cannot kill without consequence.
“I will see you charged, Hans. If you kill him, you will have to kill me, too. Will you do that? Will you kill me, too?”
Hans lowers his face to glare at her from under his bruised brow, his eyes growing wary and unsure, as he senses her determination.
“We must hold him until we are rescued and can give him up to the authorities. We don’t know why he has done this.” She swallows and moves the gun barrel an inch to indicate the dead. “Mr. Severts will be properly tried. Properly, not murdered by you.”
Her voice trembles as the illusion of a way out rises before her. “We are not killers. We are not savages.” She can feel the ache of tears building in her throat. “We will keep Mr. Severts prisoner until he can be dealt with by the law.”
Hans’s mouth turns down, and he growls, “Mr. Severts, is it? Mr. Severts?”
Leaping to his feet, Hans bellows, “He called you Hannah! You called him Michael!” Hans charges across the room so swiftly it scares Hannah back against the wall. She screams in fear as he begins kicking again at Michael.
“No, Hans! Stop it!” Pointing the gun at the ceiling, she pulls the trigger. The explosion stops Hans in midblow as bits of roof moss and canvas shower down from overhead.
“I cannot let you kill him!” she screams. “We will not be murderers, too!”
“Damn you, woman! I’m not killing him for being a murderer! I’m killing him for making me a cuckold!” He lunges as if to renew his attack.
Hannah thrusts the shotgun out before her. “No!”
“Will you shoot me, Hannah? Shoot me to save your murdering Irishman?” Hans spits.
Hannah’s finger tightens on the trigger, even as she shakes her head in emphatic denial. “No. You’re wrong.” The lie springs easily to her lips, seeded by a wish to believe that chaos and horror can be corrected and ordered, a wish so fervent that she believes wholeheartedly as she is saying it that she has never committed adultery, that she could not possibly have given herself to a man, no matter how charming or beautiful, who is capable of murder. Wanting, she believes, and believing, she is sufficiently convincing to allay some part of her husband’s knowing outrage.
The simplicity of her denial combines with a husband’s desire to believe, and a stalemate is reached. The shotgun comes down. The cold creeps into their bones. Hannah closes the door—open all this time—and kneels at Michael’s side, peering into his face, trying to discern how a man who cried at killing a seal could send two men to their graves.
SIXTEEN
When Michael awakens, he finds himself embroidered to the frame of a bunk with cords about his wrists and ankles. Spread-eagled on his back, he thrashes, pulling weakly at the ropes, but subsides as stabbing pains pierce his arms and ribs. Through blow-puffed eyes he sees that the cabin is dark. Listening, he hears silence. Tugging against the bindings, he feels the cold of a neglected fire stiffening his fingers and limbs.
Outside, twin blazes rise up from ricks of burning hemlock spaced along the edge of the forest. Hannah huddles close to one fire, Hans the other. They stand with their backs to each other, tending their personal flames. The unwrapped bodies of their murdered companions lie on the ground beside the pyres, the light of the bonfires throwing an orange glow across the snow and high into the trees. Together Hans and Hannah dragged Harky’s massive weight to the gravesite on a tarp, while Dutch suffered the awkward indignity of being pulled by the arms. Dark streaks of blood mark the passage of the dead across the snow.
As the ground warms, the Nelsons take turns with a shovel and pick, pushing aside the angry red embers to cut at the slowly thawing soil. Silhouetted by the flames, they hack an inch at a time into the earth, burning, shoveling, then burning again. Gradually, the dancing firelight reveals rude graves that gape dark and bottomless in the night. Progress is slow. Hans’s shoulder is stiff and painful. Hannah is numb with shock.
Overhead, the sky clears and the stars take up their positions as first Dutch, then Harky are interred in the charred ground. Before rolling the dead into their graves, Hans relieves Harky of the pistol and Dutch of his boots, which are less worn than his own. The pathos of Dutch’s naked feet brings a pain to Hannah’s chest, and she cries, rasping in hoarse, angry sobs, aghast at the practicality of the robbery. From beyond the capering edge of the firelight, a pair of glowing eyes watch.
The next morning a pale light kindles behind the peaks. The sky is clear blue, the color of ice, and a stream of air so cold and dense it has become a solid substance spills into the fjord. Between the smoldering graves, a line of small human footprints pass, gnarled and splay-toed in the snow. The tooth of a bear has been placed atop each fire-darkened mound. Inside, Severts is sullen and turns his face from Hannah’s questions.
“Why, Michael? What reason can there be for this murder?”
Michael jerks at his bonds, a frown on his bruised and swollen face. He glares at Hans, who holds a rag to the bite mark on his cheek and returns the scowl.
“Doesn’t matter why, does it?” growls Hans. “He’s murdered them, and we ought to shoot the bastard.”
“There will be no more killing,” says Hannah. The shotgun rests across her lap. Beneath her gray eyes are dark circles. Scribbled lines of fatigue plow her forehead and radiate from the corners of her mouth. “Mr. Severts is our prisoner until he can be given over to the authorities.” She shifts the shotgun, feeling the cold metal of its barrel and the warmth of the walnut stock in her hands, and neither man can tell if the unconscious gesture is meant for himself or his enemy.
Michael hawks and coughs before breaking his silence. “I save your lives, and this is how I’m repaid.” He jerks one arm, pulling the rope tight. His voice is hoarse from disuse.
Hannah and Hans exchange looks. Hers is surprised, his suspicious. Severts thrashes a moment against his restraints, then is still.
Hans lowers the rag from his face and looks at the blood-stain before holding it toward Michael. “Saved our lives? By doing murder? And chewing at me like a dog? There’s a neat trick.”
Severts fists the slack of the ropes in his hands and tests the knots before spitting in Hans’s direction. “They were planning to kill you. They tried to get me in with them.”
“What?” says Hannah, startled. She knew Dutch and Harky were upset, but it is impossible to believe they could have been plotting murder.
“Aye. They said we’d split the gold three ways instead of five, with a bit extra for the loss of my boat. I told them to go to hell.”
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