Something woke him. He jerked up and sat listening. The camper silent. He did not know how quickly sleep had come. How long? Minutes, maybe. The light outside was dim. Then he heard what sounded like a truck engine somewhere out on the road. Distant but getting louder. The motor slowed. Then whined to a halt.

He sank down and listened.

The camper filled with doubt.

He listened. The hunting site was far from the road, and the road was remote. Anyone coming wasn’t here by accident. He argued to himself—unconvincingly—that someone had seen the truck and stopped to make sure everything was fine. A Good Samaritan.

But no. The truth was right there in front of him.

Red had called someone.

When he looked through the camper window, the first of them was already coming into view through the trees. One, two, three men. Two of them bearded. Carrying guns. One with an axe in his hand.

Jack lurched for the door and fell into a crouch in the snow outside. He made it two steps away from the camper before looking back to see one of their number advancing with the butt of a rifle raised.

Jack said, “You—” and the world tipped upside down in his view, and there was the glitter of sky while dark spots jumped before his eyes. Rolling over, he stood and staggered across the snow, ears ringing, then the gun struck again and he was down. He stumbled to get up but the world tilted, and he felt himself lying in the snow, lying crumpled, while the spots turned to fuzzy black circles, and there were boots and the mutter of voices uttering unknown words, and the black circles spread until he was inside them, and silence.

XVI

I was ten when my father gave me a book of poems. It was the nicest thing I’ve ever owned. The leather was all embossed with gold words. The paper thick. Decades old. I thought the pages inside held all the secrets of life. I read those secrets until the words faded and the paper thinned and frayed away in clots from the spine. My father always watched me read.

In stories, he said, we learn what’s really true.

In that book I read “Invictus” for the first time. That poem by William Ernest Henley. He thanks the gods for his unconquerable soul and says that no matter what happens to him, he doesn’t wince or feel afraid. Whatever hell or darkness he suffers, he doesn’t bow his head.

Sometimes you read something and the whole world becomes very simple. You step out of yourself, and you see the truth clearly. And you think, What total shit.