Bright's Passage: A Novel by Josh Ritter Read Free Book Online

“I’d hit a horse,” he said. “You probably think I wouldn’t, but I would.”
    The two stood there on the empty forest road, their eyes locked. Finally Bright resumed his place in the saddle and they continued on toward town.
    “So fearful,” the angel tsked.
    “Yeah, well, it’s your fault if I am. We’re in trouble now,” Bright said. “I hope you know what you got us into.”
    “Trouble?” the horse chuckled softly. “From the old man? From his half-wit sons?”
    Bright bit his knuckle. “The things those boys did in that house over there in the War.” He shivered in the cold air. “It wasn’t half-wits that did all that.”
    “Which is why it could not have been the Colonel’s sons.”
    “Course it was them!” he said, though he spoke under his breath, almost to himself. “I know it was. I
know
it was them.” Bright twisted in the saddle and looked back down the road in the direction of the cabin. He scanned the forest to either side of the road for faces. The motley fall curtain of leaves drifted and swelled in the breeze, but none were revealed.
    “I told you to close your eyes as the figures approached you where you lay. How then did you see their faces?”
    “I opened them while they were standing above me.”
    “In the darkness?”
    “It was getting to be day—”
    “Come now, Henry Bright.”
    “What?! I’m telling you, it was
them
. Duncan stuck his fingers in my mouth to see if I was still alive, remember?”
    “How do you know it was Duncan with your eyes closed in the dark?”
    “It wasn’t dark!”
    “It was pitch dark and you know it.”
    “His fingers.”
    “You knew it was Duncan by his fingers?”
    “They’re skinnier than Corwin’s. Corwin has those big fat fingers.”
    “I see.”
    “Oh, why don’t you shut up!” He kicked the horse with his heels. “You ain’t blind. You seen how fat Corwin’s fingers are.” He shivered again at the thought of Duncan’s bony fingers in his mouth. “They knew I was alive, but they let me live. I think they let me live ’cause they wanted to torture me later. I told you about the other things those boys used to do when we were kids.” He snapped the reins curtly against the horse’s neck to dispel the memory. “You were there in the ditch with me, angel. You saw it all happen. You ain’t gonna make me think I’m crazy.”
    “You really think it was them,” the angel stated flatly.
    “I’m telling you, it was!”
    “Well, then, half-wits or not, you should be happy that upon your return from the War I told you to save Rachel from them.”
    “Yeah, yeah. But it’s me the Colonel’s gonna come kill, not some angel. Must be nice being you! All you get these days is apples and corn and I get nightmares about what them boys did over there in France.” His face turned red and he spluttered, “And I tell you what else, I bet that if the Colonel and those boys came down over the ridge today and did to us what they did to those people in that farmhouse during the War, all you’d have to do would be disappear and it wouldn’t be no bother to you no more. You’d be just fine, wouldn’t you, angel?”
    “Peace,” the angel said. “They won’t come today.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “Shush.”
    “Don’t you shush me!”
    “Shush.”

11
     
    The boys fetched the goat off the rock in the stream and, shortly after, the baby slung securely around his chest and his livestock in tow, Henry Bright climbed the incline of shale and slate tailings to the road and struck out toward the town to buy a new box of matches. He’d been riding only a few minutes when he heard the growl of an automobile coming around the curve of the mountainside. It swerved to avoid them and then was gone around the next bend, a buff-colored, open-topped blur, its tires spraying his face with bits of gravel, the chemical fumes of its engine exhaust settling in his nose a moment before being picked up by the wind and blown behind