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| A Hunter's Prize | |
| By andybyers | ||||||||
| 12 September 2007 | ||||||||
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I wrote this getting on... wow... twenty years ago. Yikes. :) Kind of a mood piece. Through the gloom of grey autumn the chill wind had stepped into the valley, strewing its cloudy robe across the soft Appalachians until a bleak sheet hid them from the sun. Frost had set and then melted off; the trees were divesting themselves of the luxury of leaves as they prepared for the coming depression of a New England winter. It was October. The wind was still that day, however; no cold crystallized the air. It was cool, and in the grey pallor the snow fell thick and in huge flakes: it was almost a fog. Through this fog Garrson trudged, thumb in strap with his rifle slung over his shoulder, like a soldier on the march with Washington. The snow clung to his plaid lumber jacket and his cap. It even tried to decorate his mustache, as if it felt that the streaked forest of black and grey hair deserved a touch of white. In reply, like some Greek god, he merely breathed the flakes away or out of existence. Garrson's mind was calm; thoughts and feelings fell like snow in his skull and settled in his gut to lay there cold. The average man would find this pointless advance over hill and down valley tedious in the extreme. Garrson, on the other hand, had come out here for exactly this purpose. He was less here to shoot something (although he would if the opportunity presented itself) than just to be out there, nowhere, for a week or two. His need to get away seemed to have grown in proportion to his opportunity to do so: as he rose in the company he seemed increasingly to need to get away from it, before the accumulated weight of stress blasted his smoldering temper up through his otherwise dour exterior. Out here, he seemed to be able to extrude stress, like piss, or vomit. Only it seemed to him to evaporate and come out in every breath, and every pore. He imagined it, rising like steam from his body, visible only to people with special stress sensitive lenses, and to the angels, the fools. For a man in his late forties, Garrson was healthy enough. He had a large frame without much fat on it — he took everything in moderation — and a hairy skin that was, like his moustache, ubiquitously black and grey... increasingly grey; but if his father was any indication, Garrson too would go to the grave with a full head of hair and with quite a lot of it still black. But where his father had had merry, laughing eyes, Garrson seemed to have inherited his mother's perplexed, worried ones. Except that on Garrson they had grown, under corporate influence, into tight, narrow, searching ones. Dully aching, they seemed; peering out of a stone man or statue that saw life around it but neither knew how to, or even if to, participate. But out in the woods, it was easy to participate with trees: Garrson ignored them, and they, to the best of their abilities, ignored him. So in his blunt way, Garrson liked the woods. As he went on Garrson neither whistled nor sang, but his mind hummed a steady low thread with his footsteps providing the beat. The snow, too, seemed to relax: it fell only sparsely now, and so was easier on the eyes. When his stomach complained he would take a bite of the chocolate he carried with him... even at the office he liked to have something handy; the hours got ridiculous every now and then— Garrson stopped. Across the snow and brush of a quarter of a mile he saw him — a brown, well-crowned buck. It was unlikely a shot like Garrson could miss at this distance, a little over a thousand feet - was it sporting? Why not, Garrson smiled wryly. Always after the almighty buck wherever you are, eh, Gar? he thought, raising the rifle carefully and lowering his eye to the sights. He aimed with great patience and care... But just as he squeezed the trigger, the buck, having spotted some interesting morsel through the snow, turned, and the crack of gunfire was the seasoning Garrson sprinkled on the would be meal. The buck flipped and, hurling himself at the woods, was absorbed by the forest. "Damn—" Garrson took a couple of hurried steps in the buck's direction, but stopped: nothing unhealthy moved that fast. He had missed, and the announcement of his failure echoed across the mountains. Quietly he stood, letting the bitter, empty tide of disappointment wash slowly over him. Suddenly worn, he sat down on some giant felled by age and nature's ax. He sat drowsily and lost track of time, like a ruler washed clean of eighths and sixteens until all that remained were huge block inches, smooth and ill defined: they might as well be miles. It was a sound that stirred him and poured time and sense back into his brain. Something high pitched, that carried. Listening closely, with the whole sonic world taunting him, he could almost hear the snow hit the ground heavy. But intermittently, he would catch it; a high, pure tone. It got progressively louder, until finally lower tones were filling in the spaces, and Garrson recognized it at last without question. Someone was whistling. Maybe watching. It was a creepy feeling to realize he was not alone, and his gut crawled just a bit at the implications. His balls crowded his body and some vestigial, furry little ancestor raced up his spine and shouted panickedly that they'd better hide. Suddenly he heard the most frightening thing of all. "Helloooooooo???" came the call. It echoed powerfully across the valley and answered itself a few times. Deep down in Garrson something was comparing this to being alone in a haunted hose and having the phone suddenly ring. There was something potent, sure of itself, and dangerous out there, and it was announcing that fact to everyone. And it was human. Worst of all, it was requesting — daring — a reply. The whistling picked up again, penetrating the snow curtain like it wasn't even there. Garrson sat stock still, hardly breathing, yet on the whole, dead calm. He couldn't pick out the tune; it was either some new rock crap thing with no melody, or simply an on line signal that, like the greeting, was intended merely to announce a human presence in a seemingly empty world. Garrson waited. Presently he heard the call again. "Helloooo? Is anyone there?" Shit, Garrson thought, realizing the guy had heard his earlier gunshot and that that had brought him. He also realized this guy was going to keep looking till he found someone. It galled Garrson to think he'd have to explain a lack of result for the shot to a complete stranger. But wasn't that better than risking being shot by some idiot in a snowstorm? Reluctantly he had to agree that it was. Summoning a deep breath, Garrson replied, "Helloooo!" A steamy cloud of 'hello' rose from his lungs into the air visibly, as if ensuring the reply should its receiver prove to be deaf... The whistling stopped at once, and was replaced by, "Hey! Heyyy! Keep talking, so I can find you!" Garrson scratched his cheek and yelled, "I'm over here!" Finally a man emerged from the bush. At first he was just a dark moving form in the snow, and Garrson waved to him. As he approached his features grew more distinct, until finally he stood before Garrson, grinning like he'd won a scavenger hunt or something. Garrson regarded him. The man was young, maybe thirty, if that. He wore a green plaid lumber jacket, an Atlanta Braves baseball cap, and khaki combat pants. He had longish blond hair jutting out from under the cap; not shoulder length, but long by Garrson's standard. He had warm blue eyes that sat comfortably in the throne of his cheeks, staring out the windows provided by round, wire rimmed granny glasses, so reminiscent of John Lennon's that it positively made Garrson's teeth grind. The grinning man shot a hand out to Garrson, saying, "Claude O'Grady." Garrson took the hand and shook it, replying, "Garrson Forbes." "Garrson," the man nodded enthusiastically. "Nice to meet you, Garrson. Whoo wee, who'da thought there'd be anybody else out here - much less that you'd meet 'em?" Claude had a definite southern drawl to his voice; it seemed to belong with the cap. "Yeah," Garrson replied supportively. 'Claude'. Who the hell still names their kids Claude? Garrson pondered, mentally rolling his eyes. Claude sat down on the tree with Garrson. "Where you camped?" he asked. Garrson looked back in the direction he had come from. He pointed. "About three miles back that way, as the crow flies." Claude stared off where Garrson pointed, as if he could see the camp from where they sat. Suddenly he wondered, "Hey, I heard a shot a while back that was you, wasn't it?" "Yes." Garrson braced himself. "Hit anything?" "No." Claude waited for further explanation, so Garrson reluctantly provided it. "I saw a deer and missed." "Oh," Claude replied. "Well, hell," he chuckled, "if I had a dollar for every shot I've missed, I could paper my walls with them and still be able to buy a date on my birthday." At this he laughed out loud, provoking Garrson to smile in friendly appreciation. In the pleasant, harmonious silence that followed, Garrson found himself wondering why, with the promise of at least an afternoonful of such a clearly pesky man, he wasn't set on edge: he found himself, without knowing why, almost glad of Claude's company. Claude took a sudden, loud, deep breath, held it, and released it. "I love this," he said, and held out a palm for the snow to light on. "Nothing like this back in Arkansas. You folks up here are so lucky. I love the outdoors, don't you?" "Well, I suppose I—" "I mean, that's what made America! The struggle with the elements! Oh, I know we can't live in log cabins an' all these days, but, hell, we're raising our kids like a bunch of pussies these days, doncha think?" As Claude's voice rose in volume the drawl became more pronounced. "These days kids don't have touch with the outdoors. Who ever heard of kids today goin' out in the forest to cut wood with their dad? That's what I did; I can still swing an axe with the best of 'em. But it's not just that, just the work, but even the play! Skinny-dipping in the local stream! Playin' baseball in short pants and skinnin' your knees! None of this yuppie community swimming pools and $500 worth of sports equipment crap. It's the land that made great men, and great men that made America great." Claude summed up and waiting for a response. "I guess," Garrson replied, wondering what skinned knees had to do with virility. "Look at the music kids play today," Claude appended. "'Take drugs, screw everything that moves, become a homo'... I mean, where's that gonna get us in the long run?" "Nowhere good, I suspect," Garrson said more to pinch the topic off than to express empathy. Claude seemed to have come to the end of his outdoor thesis anyway, because he changed the subject. "Hey, look, my camp's just over that rise. Let's grab a bite and then see what we can flush outta the bush together. Whaddayuh say?" Garrson knew this was his chance to push off, but for some reason he didn't feel like it. Not yet. So he accepted the offer. They set off over the hill. As they walked they were silent; Claude seemed to be back on duty as far as hunting went, and that suited Garrson just fine. But soon the camp, comprising a rough tent and cooking utensils tossed about around a fire, was visible through the trees. In short order Claude had the camping mainstays out, beans and franks, and he had them over the fire on sticks and right in the can. Garrson was impressed, and slightly envious: he'd never been quite able to get over ingrained preferences for sanitary, stainless steel, even out here. His admiration for Claude, though, however slight, waned when Claude, rather presumptuously Garrson felt, began to get personal. "So, Garrson," Claude said, turning a hot dog on a spit to burn more evenly, "whaddayuh do? What's your bag in normal life?" Garrson took a gulp of the fist through the wall tar Claude had left brewing before he'd gone hunting. Apparently Claude thought it was coffee. Feeling betrayed by semantics, Garrson chose his words with due care, managing, "I'm VP in charge of research and development for Drakmar Cybercognizance." Now it was Claude's turn to be impressed. "No kidding," he remarked, eyes brimming behind the suddenly tiny glass circles. "Hey, you guys just won some big Pentagon contract, didn't you? Talkin' billions, right?" "A fair bit of money, yes." "Have anything to do with reelin' it in?" Claude smiled, pantomiming a fly caster. "Yourself, I mean?" "No," Garrson shook his head. "R & D, not Marketing." "Oh, yeah," Claude said, self-deprecatingly. He perked. "Myself, I'm a programmer for Templeson AI. Pretty minor right now - me, I mean, not the company... Well, I guess Templeson's pretty small itself right now. But that's all— Jesus!" Garrson turned to the fire where Claude was hauling a blazing hot dog away from the flame. Claude blew on it with cheeks like Dizzy Gillespie's, and the flame clung as long as it could, but finally succumbed. Claude examined the smoking black hot dog. He smiled, tucking it in a bun. "I'll take this one." "Whatever," Garrson agreed. Claude put the less charred wiener in a bun and offered it to Garrson. "Sorry I don't have any stuff for 'em," Claude said, stuffing a mouthful into his face. "Shtrickly ruffig it," he mumbled. "No, that's fine," Garrson said. Claude spooned some beans into a cup for him. "You married?" Claude prodded. "No." "Me either. Can't be tied down. Don't get me wrong; I love skin diving as much as the next man; maybe more," he said, giving Garrson a nudge, "but I wanna go when I wanna go. No questions. And one person... well, I don't see how... I mean, that would get boring. I think so, anyway. You divorced or what?" Garrson finished chewing a bite as he ruminated about his response. "She died," he said flatly. "I'm sorry." Claude at least let a respectable period of silence pass before he asked, "Was it long ago?" "Eight years. It was cancer," Garrson said patiently, intercepting Claude's probable follow up question. "It took fifteen months for Sylvia to die, and when she did, I buried her." Garrson and claude sat in the suddenly cold air. After a few moments, it was full of snow and Claude's observations on baseball. "Following the tracks," Claude said, balancing on a rail as he walked, "you're more likely to find game. Least that's what I find. First, it's fifteen yards wide and clear, and goes on that way for miles. And second, I think there's more of the stuff deer like to eat beside the tracks. Y'know... 'cause there's no trees." Garrson strode purposefully between the rails, careful to land each step between the ties. Miles passed before he noticed it. When he did, he stepped out of the tracks. "If we get something," Claude made note, arms outstretched for balance, "I just want the horns if I shoot it. You can take the meat if you like. Personally I just leave it. Food for the bears, I say. They're gettin' set to hibernate 'bout now..." They came to a valley that had been graded such that the tracks crossed on their own steep ridge, curving as they went. Claude headed out across it. Garrson stifled the urge to ask, What if a train comes? and followed him out. forced to walk between the rails, he made the attempt to step on the odd tie. Fifty yards out, there was a whistle. Garrson stopped, turning. Behind? Claude had turned too. "Think there's something coming." "What do we do?" Claude shrugged a shoulder, as if it were obvious. "Just lie down," he said, indicating the grade beside the track. He got down himself. "'Less it comes off the tracks, we got nothing to worry about." So Garrson lay down in the snow. The whistle called again, and again. With a long howl the train came charging through the heavy wall of snow, headlights punching through the flakes. Garrson could feel his bladder as the juggernaut bore down on them. Suddenly it was upon them, with a roar of wind, whistle, and the pounding of a million jackhammers. Claude was right there, in his glory, with a "Yeeeeeee haaaawww!" Narrowing his eyes to slits, Garrson watched the sparks liap from the union of rail and wheel, over and over. There was something sexual about every aspect of a train... Maybe that was how they'd survived into the last decade of the 20th century, Garrson reflected. After an age in the ice, the train was suddenly gone. The silence in its wake was as much an assault as was the noise of its presence. "C'mon," Claude smiled, dusting himself off. It would be dark soon. The tracks had offered nothing but the excitement of the train's passing, so they had abandoned them in favor of the woods again. Garrson bided his time. When darkness fell, he plotted, he would excuse himself from Claude's company and make his way back to his own camp. With any luck, if he were careful, he could avoid meeting Claude again for the remaining six days of his fortnight sojourn in the woods. Till then, he would wait, smile when manners demanded, and nod appreciatively at the tenets of Claude's little philosophy of life. Claude must have been quite serious about hunting during that time, because Garrson noticed he wasn't spouting any more verbal Lego bricks to build onto what he'd already established. For the first time it crossed Garrson's mind that they might seriously bag something. So he went along, half humoring Claude, half humoring himself. The longer they stalked nothing, the more certain Garrson became that they would indeed find something. It grew in him, until God Himslef could not have been more certain of the outcome. They would get something today. Garrson knew that now. He ached to take the gun from his shoulder and stare down the cross-hairs again. He felt a strange comeradery with Claude; they both burned to squeeze the trigger this afternoon. Crossing a glen near a clearing, Claude paused. Infinitely slowly, unimaginably silently, he whispered to the wind, hoping the wind would whisper to Garrson in turn, "Shh. I saw something over there. I heard something. I know it." And Garrson heard him. Claude took a slow, painful step forward. He brought his gun gently down and held it in both hands. Garrson followed, doing likewise. "A deer," Claude conjectured hopefully. He was staring about two hundred yards across a clearing at a group of high shrubs. He moved leadenly in that direction; the clearing still twenty or thirty yards away. Claude stopped. Without turning back, he hissed. "I'm gonna head up. Get closer. Draw him out. If I miss, you got the second shot. We got him inna crossfire; we got 'im dead. Okay?" Garrson licked his lips. "Okay." "Get ready, in case he bolts," Claude warned. He moved a few steps closer, steadily, carefully advancing. Garrson raised his rifle, centered on the shrubs; with his other eye, he watched Claude step this way then that, like some ballet dancer in slow motion. Claude stopped, raised his rifle, faltered, and started moving forward again. Garrson's eyes flickered back and forth from the shrubs to Claude with increasing regularity. Suddenly, he knew why he was here, why he hadn't been entirely repulsed by Claude's sudden appearance, and what he had to do. Claude reached the edge of the clearing. "The closer I get, the more important your shot is," Claude hissed. "Don't miss." "I won't," Garrson whispered in promise. Squinting down the sights, he ever so gently squeezed the trigger. The falling snow in front of Claude was suddenly missed red. Claude fell into it like a man leaning into a satin pillow. Only the snow refused to hold him up, and so he pitched face forward into the snowy ground. An evil, sickeningly dark stain spread across his jacket from the nape of his neck. He did not move. Panicked by the report of Garrson's rifle, a partridge flushed from a bush close to Claude and scrambled skyward in a trail of feathers. Garrson watched it climb and vanish over the trees. His eyes fell earthward. Dully, stupidly even, Garrson regarded Claude's fallen form with casual abandon, as if coming across a dead mouse in a field. Then he advanced on the steaming body as if it had somehow captured his interest for a moment... The ugly wide hole at the bottom of Claude's neck told it all; it was a perfect shot. A doctor at a party had once told Garrson offhand that the three vertebrae at the base of the neck were the most important; if you broke them in a fall, you were pretty well dead. Paralyzed at best. Garrson had aimed there almost without thinking. Claude had died instantly. Garrson wondered what his course was from here. He decided he had to do something with Claude's body. Not out of remorse, or fear of detection, but merely out of an urge to clean up after the fact. Like dumping an ashtray or knotting a condom; you cleaned up after your— What? Fun? In a way, Garrson supposed. Not like a roller coaster or a drunk out with friends, more like business. A conquest of will, a contest against the nice impulses they instilled in you to hold you back. No, not fun. Triumph. Garrson turned Claude's still warm corpse face up; he had to see the look on the man's face. It was a look of dumb wonder, as if he were seeing, through half closed, dead eyes, the answers to the ages, and was too simple to understand. Which, Garrson snorted, was probably exactly true, in all respects. Blood, sticky and red and mingled with snow, had poured from Claude's nose and gaping mouth like puke and snot. Garrson was surprised not to feel nauseous, but there it was, death. And he just stared in quiet amazement. Garrson noticed Claude's glasses had been thrown to the snow several feet in front of him by the force of the blow. Snow clung to them and a few drops of blood decorated them like spots of red paint sprayed from a roller, but otherwise they were pristine, if grimy. Garrson stooped to put them on Claude's face, then stopped, realizing they'd only come off as he dragged Claude back into the bush. He decided he'd wait until he'd moved Claude first. So he folded them carefully and then grabbed Claude's limp arms to pull him along back into the woods. Garrson wondered what to do. Bury him? That was the decent thing. But he had no shovel. Besides, the frost had set in before; the ground was probably solid a few feet down. Garrson looked around and saw the bushes the partridge had vacated. He looked at Claude and shrugged. Food for the bears, he rationalized. And he strenuously secreted Claude's earthly remains in the nestling arms of the bushes. Without hurrying, in fact, rather leisurely, Garrson returned to camp, packed up, and hiked back down to his jeep, and quietly left the mountains for the city.
* * * * *
TEMPVS FVGIT was carved in graceful fraktur letters on the clock on Garrson's mantel, and indeed the last three years had flown by. Some jealous schemer at the office had tipped the police off about Garrson's whereabouts after Claude O'Grady had gone missing (probably not believing in a million years that Garrson was actually connected with the disappearance but hoping to benefit from whatever fallout resulted), and the police had had a lot of questions. But they had nothing; technically, Claude was only missing. No body had ever turned up. Hibernating bears (or wolves, foxes, grey squirrels, whoever) were certainly voracious creatures. And so, without ever getting too cocky, the cops had milked Garrson, and then left him alone. He was their best lead, he knew, but there was nothing they could prove or even articulate. Secretly, it delighted Garrson. Recent developments, however, had put a new spin on things, and Garrson, who was reading quietly that evening, was not at all surprised or worried when the doorbell rang 'unexpectedly'. Garrson opened the door to greet the two detectives he'd been interviewed by repeatedly three years earlier. Dressed in overcoats against the winter chill, they apologized for intruding. "Not at all," Garrson replied. "It's Christmastime. You men are always welcome." As he stepped in, the older cop, the greying Sgt. Zeiger, gave a small smirk that seemed to say, Laying it on a bit thick, aren't you? Garrson closed the door behind the detectives. "Well, gentlemen. What can I do for you?" "Mr. Forbes," Zeiger began, "a bone was found — a femur, a thigh bone — in the mountains approximately where you say you were hunting three years ago, and where Claude O'Grady is supposed to have disappeared. A mended break in it matches x rays of a break O'Grady suffered in a motocross accident when he was fifteen. Consequently, Mr. O'Grady is now officially listed as deceased." Zeiger paused and looked around the room for a moment. "So you see, the investigation has to be reopened as a possible homicide." "Yes, I'd heard," Garrson said. "Interesting. So Mr. O'Grady is dead now. Did they find anything else?" The younger cop, Phipps, looked cautioningly at Zeiger, but Zeiger went on. "No. No other physical evidence was turned up, that we're aware of. Men are combing the area now, but the remains have probably been widely scattered by this time. Regardless, we have the corpus delicti, so we have to move ahead." "Ah. So what do you want from me — to question me again?" "No, Mr. Forbes, you've given us your statement. Besides, your memories have probably faded by now, so there'd be no point in it." "So what can I do for you?" Zeiger took a breath. "Well, actually, Mr. Forbes, you could show us the gear you had with you on your trip, if you have it handy. Now I should tell you that we don't have a search warrant, and it's perfectly within your rights to throw us out, but under the circumstances, we could prob-- " "No, no, that's quite alright," Garrson interrupted. "I understand, you're just doing your job. I won't stand in your way. The sooner we get this over with the sooner you can get on with your investigation. Everything I had is right downstairs in the basement; sleeping bag, clothes, suitcases, rifles, everything. You're welcome to it." Zeiger paused. "Thank you, Mr. Forbes." He and Phipps started for the basement. They stopped when they noticed Garrson had not moved to follow them. "Aren't you coming, Mr. Forbes?" "No, that's alright. I trust you," Garrson laughed. Zeiger headed down the stairs, but Phipps remained and walked over to Garrson. Probably thinks I'm going to make a break for it, Garrson smiled mentally. He could hear Zeiger moving things around downstairs. Malcolm was not in the least concerned. Even if they had found Claude's smashed vertebrae, they would be so shattered and fragmented, strewn across the countryside, as to make a ballistics test a joke. There was absolutely no way they could link him to the homicide — which wasn't even yet technically a homicide. He knew they were 90% sure he'd had something to do with Claude's death, and they were aware he knew, too; and that he was laughing at them inside and that it was eating them up like a slow maggot infestation. All under the surface, where it would never see the light of day in a court of law. "So what do you think happened to this unfortunate man?" Garrson asked Phipps. Phipps, hands crossed behind his back, sniffed. "I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to discuss that, sir." "Of course," Garrson replied. Still Supercop, I see, Garrson thought at him. At least Zeiger has some class. "You don't mind if I sit down and carry on with my book, do you?" Phipps breathed orally. "No sir." He exhaled nasally. "Good," Garrson said, and sat, taking up his book. Moments later, from the basement, Zeiger called, "Hey, Mike, can you give me a hand for a minute? There's a lot of stuff down here." Phipps turned, still eyeing Garrson. "Okay, Dan, I'll be right down." Garrson pretended not to notice. After a few minutes he heard footsteps on the stairs. The detectives reappeared, and as they approached, Garrson put down the book and smiled at them. "How did it go? Would you like to take anything with you to examine?" Garrson asked. "Can I see your driver's license, Mr. Forbes?" Garrson tilted his head; it was an odd request, but certainly not unreasonable under the circumstances. He produced it, and handed it to Zeiger who inspected it and gave it back. "Well, I guess you can get on with your case now, then, eh?" he said politely. "Oh, yes sir, I guess we can," said Zeiger enigmatically. "Unfortunately, Mr. Forbes, you're under arrest." He brought out a pair of handcuffs and Phipps produced a card and began hurriedly mirandizing Garrson in English and Spanish. "On what charge?" Garrson sputtered, rising from his chair. "Suspicion of foul play in the death of Claude O'Grady," Zeiger said, taking Garrson's hands and clicking the cuffs tight on them. "I found a little surprise in your jacket pocket." "This is outrageous, I—" "—'You are now under arrest'," Phipps recited, finishing off. Then he held up a plastic bag marked EVIDENCE with the date and address scrawled on it. Inside the plastic bag were a pair of neat, wire framed John Lennon glasses, their round lenses still stippled with little brown dots. Garrson's blood froze in his veins. "—At least till we get these to O'Grady's optometrist to match the prescription against his records." "They're mine—" Garrson shot. "Your license says you have normal vision not requiring corrective lenses," Zeiger said. "And you're reading without glasses as well. Let's go. You can make your call at the station." "Nice prize, Mr. Forbes," Phipps remarked as they led him to the car. "What were you going to do, wait seven years and then have them mounted?" Garrson did not hear the question. He was too involved in the thoughts and feelings rushing through his own mind. For despite all he'd lost, and all he was about to go through, he had no regrets. With his eyes bulging, his throat dry and rasping, his heart beating staccato in his chest, for the first time in fifty years, he knew what it was to be alive.
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You know what they say, if you show a gun in the first act, it has to be fired by the third.
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