Page 149 of The River We Remember

Ever so slowly, Scott eased the shotgun closer and gripped it with both hands.

Creasy sat down by the fire, laid his rifle at his side, picked up the can of sausages, and began eating again.

That’s when Del made his move. He came out from behind the pickup, the pistol in his hand raised and aimed at Tyler Creasy. Scott could see them both clearly in the firelight: Del tensed with the gun pointed and Creasy frozen with his mouth open, ready to receive a little sausage. Behind them both, the water of the Alabaster River, in the remarkable way that it responded to moonlight, had turned milk white.

“Go to hell,” Del said, and Scott saw his hand stiffen as his finger pulled the trigger.

But nothing happened.

Before Del could move again, Creasy was up and had swung a fist and knocked Del back against the pickup’s grille. He swung again, and Del fell to the ground, nearly senseless. Creasy bent and swept up the dropped Luger.

The man stood breathing heavily. He looked at the pistol, shook his head, and laughed.

“You picked the wrong gun, boy. This piece of shit always jams.”

Del stared up from where he lay, still dazed by the blows he’d received. Creasy fiddled with the Luger, cleared the jam, pointed the barrel toward the night sky, and fired.

“Works fine now,” he said. “Boy, if you didn’t have bad luck, you’d have no luck at all.”

Move, Scott told himself. Do it. Now.

But he could not. His faulty heart hurt in a way it had never hurt before. His head pounded, and he could barely breathe. And there was something else, a paralysis that was pure fear.

“You never liked me,” Creasy said. “Well, Delbert, I never cottoned to you neither.”

He held the Luger at arm’s length, poised with the barrel slanted down at Del’s head.

Now Scott rose, at last unthinking, ignoring the pain in his chest, the pounding in his head. But before he could act, something else happened.

From the blind side of the pickup flew another figure, a swift dark shape that collided with Creasy and took the man down. They rolled together across the campfire in an explosion of embers that spread the flames and dimmed the light. Scott could see only a dark tangle writhing in the moonlight on the riverbank. The gun fired, but the struggle continued.

Del staggered up and stumbled toward the fight. He grabbed at a shape and tugged, and now it was like a ball of black snakes coiling and uncoiling against the white curtain of the Alabaster. One figure finally separated itself and sprang up and backpedaled a dozen feet. In the silver-white moonglow that bathed Inkpaduta Bend, Scott saw that it was Tyler Creasy. The next figure that stood was Del. And the last was Noah Bluestone, who held a hand to his stomach, where his shirt was stained dark. He placed himself purposely between Del and the gun that Creasy held.

Scott stepped nearer, but Creasy didn’t notice, so focused was he on those in front of him. Creasy spoke no word. He simply fired, then fired again. Scott saw Bluestone drop to his knees and fall face forward onto the ground.

Del looked at Creasy, and there was nothing between them now but the barrel of that Luger.

Something in Scott finally broke loose, broke wild. He lifted the shotgun to his shoulder. “Tyler Creasy!” he yelled. When the man swung his way, Scott pulled the trigger. The recoil was the kick of a mule, and for weeks afterward Scott would carry the bruise. Creasy’s face and neck were obliterated by a bloom of black, wet and shiny in the moonlight. The man stumbled backward from the impact of all those searing pellets. Scott readied himself to fire once more, but it wasn’t necessary. Creasy dropped the Luger, tipped back, and fell with a splash into the river.

Across the course of his whole life, Scott Madison would never forget that scene. It would play itself out in unexpected moments, in dreams and in nightmares, in those solitary reveries he couldn’t share, in the parade of all his regrets. Noah Bluestone lying dead on a riverbank that was so white in the moonlight it was like a bed fitted with a clean sheet. Del above him, still stunned and swaying, but alive and shining as if he wore clothing spun of moonbeams. Tyler Creasy falling backward into the milky flow of the Alabaster River. And from a place Scott could never quite fix in his remembering, the sound of someone crying.

BY THE TIME Graff and Brody drove up, it was all over. Death had come again to Inkpaduta Bend, reaped its harvest, and gone. Scott sat on one side of Noah Bluestone’s body and Del on the other. In the headlights of Graff’s pickup, they reminded Brody of soldiers who’d refused to abandon their downed comrade, and their faces, when they turned to the glare, brought back to him a gallery of hollowed faces from another war.

Brody left the truck and walked to the boys. He knelt on one knee next to Bluestone’s body, put fingers to the neck, checked the artery there, found no pulse.

“Creasy?” he asked the boys.

Scott spoke without inflection. “The river. I shot him.”

Graff stepped to the bank, bent, and reported to Brody, “He’s in there. Current’s about to take him away.”

“Snag him,” Brody said. He walked back to the truck, killed the headlights, then returned to the boys and sat with them. The scattered sticks from the fire still burned and gave a little illumination. The moon gave more, and Brody studied the boys in that light. He could see that more damage had been done to Del Wolfe’s face, a swelling that might have been from a broken jaw. The damage he saw in Scott’s face was of a different kind.

From the distance came the whine of sirens. Asa Fielding, Brody figured, and officers from the other agencies who’d been involved in the manhunt that day.

Graff returned from the river and said, “Creasy’s going nowhere now.”

“Get on the radio, will you, Connie? Let Hank Evans know that we’ve found the boys and that they’re safe. Have him call Angie.” He said to Del, “We’re going to take you to the hospital and get you checked out, okay?”