Abandon

“It means . . . it means I don’t know where the gold is. I thought I did, but I don’t. I’m horribly disappointed, believe me.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“But it just isn’t here. I don’t know where else to look, and that’s the truth. So here’s what I’m thinking. We don’t know a thing about you, so what if you three just leave us here, disappear into the night. We never see you again. You never see us. And we never say a word. Not even about Scott. We’ll pretend this never happened.”

“He’s right,” June said, staving off tears. “Emmett and I would just be so grateful to be home again. To put all this behind us. I’m sorry you didn’t find the gold you were looking for, but can’t this be over now? You men came wearing masks, which tells me that you didn’t come into these mountains intending violence.”

“We could just leave, Isaiah,” Jerrod said. “Scott and Lawrence know more about me than any of us, but I’d be willing to walk.”

Lawrence said, “Look, we could spend tonight in Packer’s mansion, give you guys a chance to head out. I’m telling you, it’d be like this never happened.”

Isaiah stared at the snow-dusted stone beneath his feet. “Stu,” he said, “you got an opinion about this you’d care to toss into the hat?”

“I’m with you, man. Whatever you wanna do, I’m with you.”

Isaiah nodded. He turned around, looked at Abigail and the Tozers, who were standing together on the east side of the veranda. He approached them, faced Emmett.

“I don’t think I caught your name.”

“Emmett Tozer.”

“Cool if I call you Em?”

“Sure. June calls me that all the time.”

“Well, Em.” He pointed at Lawrence. “For this, you can thank that motherfucker.”

He raised the machine pistol to Emmett’s forehead, a red bead drawn between the man’s widening eyes.

June screamed, “No, it’s not his fault!”

The Glock coughed a burst of fire, and the back of Emmett’s head blew out. He dropped to his knees, fell over sideways. In the low light, the blood looked like steaming oil as it blackened and spread through the snow.

June threw herself over her husband’s body, shrieking his name.

Abigail tasted that salt and metal in the back of her throat again. The worst moments of your life you never see coming. She turned and spewed over the railing, knew as the bile burned her throat that she’d spend the rest of whatever life she had left trying to sever herself from this moment.

“You happy, Lar, you greedy motherfucker?” Isaiah said, his voice rising. Abigail sank down into the snow. She could barely hear Isaiah speaking over the wind and June wailing, “Em, come back! Don’t you do this!”

“Know what’s gonna happen next?” Isaiah was in Lawrence’s face now, Lawrence backed up into a corner of the veranda behind the hatch. “I’m gonna make that bitch get down on her knees, and you are gonna watch me put a bullet through her head. Then I’m gonna get—”

Lawrence cried, “No, don’t. I’ll—”

Isaiah grabbed his throat. “Don’t ever f**king interrupt me! Then I’m gonna get this bitch”—he pointed at Abigail—“but I’m not shooting this one. I’m gonna take this knife and slowly cut her throat, let you watch her drain.”

Abigail looked at Jerrod, noticed his legs quaking. Stu had pulled the bottle of vodka out of his backpack and begun to work off the cap.

“And then, if you’re still maintaining you don’t know shit . . .” Abigail made herself stand. She wiped her mouth. “. . . I’m gonna go to work on—”

“Isaiah!” Jerrod yelled.

“What?”

Jerrod started toward him. They met at the skylight, both men covered in snow.

“What the f**k?” He pointed at Emmett’s body. “I did not sign up for this shit.”

“What are you saying? You want out? That it?”

“I don’t—”

“You know, you never had the stones to finish the hard shit, did you?”

“I don’t want out. I just . . . You didn’t say it’d be like this.”

“Well, it is, so stop your f**kin crybabyin.”

Isaiah lifted his machine pistol, started toward June, who still lay sobbing on top of her husband. “You watching, Larry?”

“I’ll tell you whatever—”

“You can tell me after. Just wanna be sure you know I am not f**king around with you.”

He stopped and put the gun to the back of June’s head.

Lawrence pushed off the railing, lunged toward Isaiah, screaming, Jerrod and Stu running toward him, Isaiah swinging his machine pistol toward Lawrence, Abigail thinking, I’m about to watch my father die.

Lawrence’s fourth step brought him past the skylight, and all seven of them suddenly occupied the same twenty-five square feet of floor space.

There was a deep crack, like a rafter fracturing, and the veranda of Emerald House caved in.

1893

TWENTY-EIGHT

The preacher and the Curtices reached Abandon at noon, having descended from the massacre at Emerald House in half the time it had taken them to hike up into the basin. Ezekiel hurried them down the desolate middle of Main and up a side street toward their cabin, his jaw set, eyes more intense than Gloria had seen them in a long while, enveloped in a slow burn.

The preacher said, “Zeke, I think we should alert the town to—”

“Ain’t arguin with you about it anymore, Stephen.”

“We’ve got vicious murderers roaming—”

Ezekiel spun around. “Do I come into God’s house of a Sunday morning, tell you how to preach a sermon?” Stephen shook his head. “Don’t counsel me how to proceed in matters a law.”

“Zeke.” Gloria grabbed his arm. “Look.” The hillside above town was dotted with smoking cabins, half-buried in snow and tucked into groves of tree-line spruce, web-trodden paths branching from each one to the side street. Bessie McCabe staggered toward them along the path from her cabin, Harriet in her arms, neither dressed for the weather, wrapped only in quilts, Bessie’s flour-sack underpinnings showing through, and no hat to be seen on mother or child as the snow gathered in their hair. Gloria could see that Bessie’s face was flush with cold, the bruises on her left cheek turning purple and yellow around the edges.