Orchard Read Free

back into her hair. “I dream about him. . . .”
    “Who? John? Or Buck?”
    “In the dreams, he’s small. Like a pet. And he’s in the house. His hooves clattering all through the house . . .”
    Henry dropped to his knees before her. “Do you want me to do it? Will that make it better? You say the word, and by God I’ll go out there and put a bullet in Buck’s brain.”
    During Sonja’s long silence, the dog returned to the porch, his nails clicking on the wide boards. When he lay down, his flopping weight made a sound like a laundry bag of wet garments being dropped at their door.
    Henry moved closer to her, forcing her legs farther apart in the process. His hands went to her waist. “Do you hear me?” he said. “Say the word.”
    She twined her fingers in his hair with such force he could not be sure if passion or anger tightened her grasp. She brought her face close to his.
    “There is no such word,” she whispered.
    In 1998, forty-five
years after Henry House fired a 30-30 slug into the maple tree, a tornado dipped out of the leaden August sky and skipped across the bayside waters of Lake Michigan. When it touched the soil of Door County, Wisconsin, it dug in hard and mangled and uprooted a west-to-east route across the peninsula. One of the trees irreparably damaged was that sugar maple. In the process of the tree being cut and split for firewood, the tunnel that Henry’s bullet bore was improbably opened, more likely by the ax or maul and wedge than the chain saw. When the logs were brought into the house and stacked behind the woodstove, the slug slid out. A three-year-old girl, believing it was a pebble, picked it up. Even her child’s hand could tell it had a warmth and softness unlike any stone.
    Henry turned his
back to the bar, and with both hands held his rifle overhead. He raised his voice so all the patrons of the Top Deck Tavern could hear him.
    “Can I have your attention? I got a Winchester thirty-thirty here I’m willing to sell to the highest bidder.”
    A man at a table near the window shouted out, “What’s the matter, Henry—won’t your wife let you out hunting no more?”
    Henry ignored him. “Those of you know me know I take care of my equipment. The man who buys this rifle will get himself a clean gun that shoots true and has never jammed.”
    A cigar smoker sitting a few stools away from Henry said, “If it shoots so goddamn straight, why’re you selling it.” He didn’t pose this as a question, and his companion, the only man in the bar wearing a tie, said, “A fellow hard up for cash and in a hurry. Always a bad combination.”
    The bartender wiped off the bar where only a moment earlier the rifle had lain. He inspected his rag as though he expected it to show a stain of gun oil. “Suppose I bid a buck,” he said confidentially to Henry, “and that’s the only offer you get.”
    Over his shoulder Henry said, “Then you got yourself a rifle and I’m a dollar richer.”
    “Jesus, Henry. You could just as well give it away.”
    “If it comes down to it, Owen, I might do exactly that.”
    From the end of the bar, a man sitting alone said, “What the hell. I’ll give you fifty dollars for your rifle.” If it weren’t for the voice—as deep and casually precise as a radio announcer’s—you might have thought, as you squinted through the Top Deck’s dim light, that this offer came from a boy, so slight was the figure perched on the stool.
    “Maybe you’re joking, mister,” Henry said, “but I’m bringing this gun over to you and I expect to get paid in return.”
    “For Christ’s sake, Henry,” Owen said. “You don’t want to do this. If you’re strapped for cash, there’s other ways.”
    Henry looked down at the Winchester as if he were contemplating an object that already belonged to another.
    “I could help you out myself,” Owen said.
    “If you want to help me,” Henry said, “offer me fifty-one dollars and take this gun out of my