Bright's Passage: A Novel by Josh Ritter Page A

in the other. “What in God’s name
are
you?” she hissed. “Henry!”
    He was down off the porch and at her side in a moment. She did not look away from the Colonel as she held the rifle down for him to hold. “You remember how to use this, don’t you?”
    Henry nodded, taking the gun in his hands.
    “Yes, you do. And you remember how I taught you to pull the hammer back so the gun is cocked and ready to fire?”
    He nodded his head once more.
    “Good,” she said. “Now, I want you to cock the gun carefully, all right? Pull it back with your thumb like I showed you.” There was a click as the hammer locked. “Good, Henry.” She seemed to exhale forever. “Now I want you to point it at him,and if you see him move from where he’s standing, I want you to shoot him dead.” Her eyes flitted quickly down to see if he’d comprehended. “Do you understand me? If he moves while I’m digging this hole, I want you to shoot him dead in the face. You don’t even ask me if you should; you just pull the trigger. I need you to protect me, Henry. Can you do that?”
    He clenched the rifle so tightly in his hands that his fingers began to tingle and whiten. In answer, he pointed the gun up at the Colonel’s head. The Colonel stared hard at Henry, and those spoon-colored eyes frightened him, but he hid the man’s face behind the eclipse of the rifle barrel and kept it there as his mother dug the grave.
    The early-spring ground was still frozen solid beneath the slush, and digging was nearly impossible. She chiseled away at it nevertheless, steam rising first from her mouth and then from her entire body before she broke down and sat in the middle of the shallow gash she had cut in the yard. When she caught her breath she got up and began again. Henry’s arms began to tire and his fingers to feel numb from holding the heavy rifle trained on the Colonel. By the time his mother had dug a trench two and a half feet deep he was nearly weeping from the weight of the thing. She stood back and let the shovel fall on the frozen pile of chipped dirt by the side of the hole. She came and knelt next to Henry. He tried to give the rifle to her but after an hour his fingers seemed locked around it. Her eyes shone as she eased the hammer back down and helped each of his fingers to uncurl from the gun. “That was just fine, Henry. Your father would be proud of you.” She kissed his cheek and then heaved herself up with the rifle and walked up the steps into the house. The Colonel followed close behind her.
    Standing at the foot of the table, she took her sister’s ankles in her blistered hands and made ready to lift them. TheColonel went to the head and stood looking down into his wife’s face. He removed his broad-brimmed hat and ran his hand through the plastered strands of his hair. “Well, that is that,” he said. He reset his hat firmly on his head and strode from the room without a second glance, leaving her still holding the dead woman’s ankles at the foot of the table.
    She set the legs down and came to kneel next to Henry. “I’m going to need your help one more time. This will be hard, but we’ll go slowly. Will that be all right?”
    Henry looked out the doorway where the Colonel had gone and nodded yes.
    “Now, I want you to go to where I was standing and I want you to try to hold those legs up while I pull her off the table. Can you do that?”
    He nodded again and went to where she had been standing.
    His mother took the body by the armpits and began to pull it slowly down the length of the table. Henry followed the dead woman’s feet as they slid down the long plane of wood, and he tried to catch them as his mother finally pulled the last length of the woman’s body off the table, but the legs were too heavy and the little black boots passed through his hands and thumped to the floor. His mother caught her breath and considered her sister’s body. She looked at the doorway warily before taking the rifle from