Bill sat for a long time, staring at the thin, soggy shape before him, at the steam rising from the wet coat and pants. His hands were trembling, although they were no longer cold. Rick lay at his feet, eyes closed. Bill thought he was unconscious but when he leaned in and grabbed his coat collar and pulled, Rick’s eyes rolled open. What are you doing? he whispered. Then the eyes closed again, slowly, like the eyes of a doll.
Bill stood and staggered backward out of the tiny cave, back into the blowing storm, Rick’s body a low heavy weight that he dragged behind him like a sled dog pulling his load, and when he was done, when he had come out beyond the glow of the fire and into the dark curl of the snow, he stopped and released his grip and stumbled back to the cave again.
When he reached its warmth, he sat and closed his eyes and prayed sleep would come to claim him. After a time even the fire disappeared. The darkness complete. He could feel his body floating in that black emptiness. Desert all around. His mother. And the brother he had lost. Other things too. The blue Datsun. The trailer he had grown up in, its metal siding sheeting off to wobble in the empty air. Impossible shapes in the snow. And Grace. And Jude. And himself. And Majer. He could feel the animals as they unscrolled themselves in that single loop of endless time and he wondered if there had been any meaning or purpose in it at all but then he knew that such questions held no meaning or purpose. And Rick. Of course. And Rick.
The forest was only wind.
WHEN MORNING came at last, the fire was only a heap of smoldering coals. It was freezing and he was shaking again and could not stop. His feet and his fingers had gone completely numb but as he lay there the sun appeared from behind the clouds and shone into the mouth of the little alcove and for a few moments he could feel a faint warmth against his face. Beside him in the frozen slush lay the dart gun and what was left of the book, its pages gutted but the cover remaining, and from that the pronghorn antelope stared back at him with the same guileless and implacable expression it had held for all his life.
He tried three times to stand, each time careening back to earth again. His feet like stumps tied to unbending knees. Clothes still wet next to his skin. On the third attempt he rolled over onto his back and scooted forward on his elbows. The snow was deep and heavy and his body plowed into it but he was able to push his way from the cliffs and up over the slight rise.
The trees were scattered down the length of the slope. Beyond them, beginning at the base of the ridge and stretching out across a broad flat plain, lay a pale and thickly packed forest coated in a clotted layer of wet snow and through which ran a black river that coiled through those bleached and albescent conifers in loops and turns and which encircled, at its center, a vast field as empty and clear as a blank page. The wilderness seemingly without end, the ridges folding into an accordioned distance. Above them rode a series of towering clouds in blue sky, their shadows cutting the lit surface of the forest below into scraps and tatters and rags. The span between here and there as impenetrable as the forest all around him. Some impossible distance. And no sign of motion anywhere.
He slid forward on his back and elbows again and managed to get himself partially down the slope before he came to Rick. He lay encrusted with snow, his skin blue and white as if the blood had been drained from his body and what remained was only a shell curled into the position that is, for all our race, the first and last on earth. He leaned in close and peered for a long time at that frozen face. A gaunt visage of sharp angles topped with eyebrows now weighted with ice. Once upon a time: your best friend.
He rolled away from the frozen body and lay for a long time on his back, staring up at the motion of the clouds, his body trembling everywhere at once. There were things in the world he would never understand. The rules men created to guide them through their lives were little more than guesses meant to fill whatever purpose they could imagine for themselves. Sagebrush and poverty weed. Ground squirrel and pronghorn antelope. Grizzly and wolf and raccoon. All designed to perform a function. But the universe held its workings in secret and a man could claim nothing from that void and instead would need to design in that obscure and private place that is his heart the laws that would govern his life. The clouds a blur of unrecognizable shapes without meaning or purpose. Only function. His had been to survive in the world he had chosen for himself. And he had succeeded. There was no law simpler than that and when he wept it was for himself and himself alone.
The sun fell once more behind the clouds and the temperature dipped until he was shivering again. At some point he managed to rise into a sitting position, although he could not remember doing so, and he remained there for a long while, his eyes drifting closed.
When the first flash of light came he thought he had dreamed it but then came another. Far below him, pools of sunlight drifted across the valley floor and from somewhere amidst those snow-