It was the body of a man who might routinely go hungry for a day or two. David had once been like that at Ysleta High School, more lanky than chubby, but years of college and graduate school and working as a professor had softened David and left him with a slight paunch, an easy smile on his face, and the touch of gray at his temples—the looks of a distinguished older man.
The intruder stared out the window to the backyard, stepped to one side of the kitchen, and glanced out the front window of the cranberry red dining room.
“Please, just leave me alone. My name is David, and I live alone here. Please, take whatever you want.” David thought about how victims should become people to their tormentors, not abstractions. He remembered he had read that in the “Week in Review” section of the Sunday New York Times. He thought: instead of becoming a thing, become a someone. David needed to keep talking to this man.
“Oh yeah, fuckin’ David, so who the fuck is that on the mantel, your girlfriend?” the man said icily, glancing out the dining room window again. “No car, so whaddya do, walk the four fuckin’ miles for groceries into Kent? If you lie to me again, you asshole, I’ll put a bullet through your skull.” Through the open window above the kitchen sink, David heard a siren approaching from the west on 341, a rarity on these country roads. In a few seconds the siren faded and suddenly stopped in the direction of Warren, the next town to the east. A helicopter’s earth-shaking roar reverberated overhead and faded toward Huckleberry Hill. Were state troopers already hunting for this man? The town of Kent was so small, it could afford only one resident trooper, but the Litchfield barracks were not far away. Why did this man keep checking the front windows?
“Please leave us alone. Take whatever you want.” David thought about Jean. How long would she be gone? He could not allow Jean to walk into this danger. He didn’t care what happened to him as long as Jean survived, as long as she was never hurt.
“What’s in the back over there?”
“A creek that leads to Lake Waramaug, I think. Over that ridge is another pond. A small road’s on the other side of the pond, and it leads to the lake.”
“Get me a fuckin’ jacket as good as what you have on. Gloves, boots like yours, a hat.” At once David stopped staring at the black gun in the man’s hand or at his rough-hewn, pockmarked face, and noticed that this man was not wearing a coat and that he had sneakers for shoes. David walked to their mudroom, with a corner of his eye always on the gun behind him, which seemed to float in the air with a life of its own. David handed the man a pair of new Timberland hiking boots he had recently bought at the Sun Dog in Kent, the shoe shop for the scraggly and smelly through-hikers who emerged from the Appalachian Trail alongside the Housatonic River. David slipped off his jacket and handed it to him as well. He thought about El Paso and his mother and father. He thought about his boys, Matthew and Henry. He thought about Jean Catherine. He loved her more than anything else in the world. Whatever happened today, Jean had already saved him. This moron could never take that away. David could not allow this man to hurt Jean.
“Hey, asshole, you’re gonna need one too,” the intruder said, cracking a crooked smile as he slipped his arms into David’s North Face jacket and zipped it up. The man glanced again at the long gravel driveway. It was still empty.
“Please, mister, you don’t need me. Just take whatever you want. I love my wife. I love my children. You don’t need me. I don’t know what trouble you’re in. But—”
“Hey, fuckhead,” the man sneered in David’s face, jamming the gun into David’s chest. For a moment David thought about grabbing it, trying to grab it, but he didn’t. “You don’t want a jacket, then step the fuck out, and let’s take a walk.” The man shoved David into the living room facing the backyard, kicked him in the ass toward the patio glass doors, and shoved him into the doors before David could slide them open. David’s face slammed against the metal frame. His brow was bleeding. For a second he saw stars in front of him as he stumbled onto the wooden deck.
“Over there. We’re headin’ down there.” The man waved his gun toward the little creek, where David had always imagined the bear roamed. The rocky ledges formed small caves with the half-exposed roots of gigantic maples and oaks. They slowly descended the rough stone stairs his Brazilian landscaper had created with a forklift upending the earth and shoving massive stones into the side of the slope toward the creek. Jean had admired the landscaper’s ingenuity. They had originally just asked the landscaper to create an open path to the creek, but he had presented them with the handiwork of these stairs that seemed to have existed in the Litchfield forest for centuries. David took one last look at his house, at what he had worked so hard to achieve, at how he imagined his family would suffer inside that house, at how everything would change forever for his boys, once their father’s body was discovered in the forest. A tear burned across David’s face.
What did this man want from him? They marched alongside the creek, over and around dead logs and meandering channels of water, deeper into a primordial valley of nature’s matter. Sun-bright yellow and cinnamon-colored leaves covered the uneven, muddy floor. Oaks and maples and birches hovered overhead in the spectacle of a New England fall, a fluttery, animate ceiling. Would this man kill him? David had never seen him before, but that didn’t matter one way or the other now. This man, David imagined, breathing hard, was being chased by the police. He was running away. Was David a hostage to keep the police at bay? Should he refuse to go on? Why did this man need him? If he stopped, if David refused to take another step, he would die. But if they lost themselves deeper in the valley toward Lake Waramaug, away from the house, what would stop this lunatic from killing David anyway? What would stop him from eliminating the only witness to his escape?
“Hey, keep movin’!”
“I’m not going anywhere. You don’t need me. Please leave me alone. You’re free. Just leave me alone.”
“Did I tell you to stop? You fuckin’ disobeying me, asshole spic?” the man shouted at David’s face, shoving the gun barrel into his chest again. “Think I can’t guess what the fuck you are? Dominican, Puerto Rican piece-of-shit.” David imagined he was quick enough to snatch the gun from the man’s hand, quick enough to grab the hand with the gun in it and give himself a chance. But the moment came and went, and the man stepped back, grinning, raised the gun, and pointed it at David’s head. “Start movin’ or I’m putting a bullet in your skull.”
“No, please leave me alone. You’re free. Please just go. I haven’t done anything to you. I don’t know who you are. You can go in any direction from here. I won’t be able to tell anybody where you went. There’s five hundred acres of forest all around us.” A sudden revelation flashed through David’s mind: if this man shoots me, they will hear him.
Suddenly, something hard—the barrel or the handle of the gun, David did not quite see what—smashed into his face. A piercing, blinding pain erupted in his head. Blood gushed into his ear, across one eye, and he raised his hands instinctively to protect himself. Another blow came from the other side, with a savage kick to his stomach. David collapsed next to the creek. He clenched his fists, and a horrible, wild anger seized him even as another punch landed against his neck and more blows rained on his head. Stunned and half-blinded, David instinctually grabbed a hand—it didn’t have the gun—and he wrestled with the man who still smashed the black gun barrel repeatedly onto David’s head and shoulders. David was on his knees, and the man struggled to break free of David’s grip. At once David grabbed a thigh, and like a savage bull, shoved his head and shoulders into the man’s stomach. David and the man crashed on top of a pile of leaves hiding an upended tree stump. The man unleashed a guttural scream. David stumbled on top of him and lunged for the hand with the gun. Blood dripped from his face. For a second, he glimpsed the blue flames of the man’s eyes, blinking, as splashes of David’s blood fell on the man’s cheeks. David gripped the gun with all his power, pushing the barrel away from him. He would die if he let go of the gun.
The man kneed David’s back from behind, shoving his face with one hand. David struggled to stay on top of him and gripped the hand with the gun so tightly his knuckles whitened. He fended off the man’s punches and grabbed the man’s neck