Page 10 of So Far Gone

Kinnick could see the pain on Asher’s face. “Fine. Take him.” He turned to Leah. “You want to go with them?”

Dean took the children into the church. The other man stayed, staring at Kinnick, who had the feeling he was being guarded .

When they were gone, the man with the goatee said, “We know all about you.” His smile was edged with jutting eyeteeth.

“Yeah? Well, I know about you, too. I used to get my email from AOL. What’s the name of your secret lair, MySpace?”

The smile disappeared.

“Naziscape?”

“Shane said I should watch out, that you’re a sucker puncher. Are you a sucker puncher, Mr. Father-in-Law?”

“Depends.” Kinnick could feel the blood rising.

“Think you’re so smart. You don’t seem so smart to me. You gonna sucker punch me, smart guy?”

But Brother Dean emerged with Leah and Asher before anyone could punch anyone. Kinnick and the man with the goatee watched

them walk across the parking lot.

“Today is the adult chess tournament,” said Asher when he arrived, clearly disappointed. “We got ’em mixed up. The kids’ tournament is next month.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what, we’ll come back,” Kinnick said. He turned to Brother Dean. “You’re not taking them.”

Dean narrowed his eyes. “Yes. I am. You don’t have a choice in this. Their father asked me to watch them until he gets home.”

“Well, then, I’m going with you,” Rhys said.

“That’s not what Shane wants.”

“Bethany left a note asking me to watch them.” Kinnick took a half step forward. “And that’s what I’m going to do.”

That’s when the man with the goatee casually pulled his jacket back to show Kinnick the pistol in his holster.

Brother Dean closed the distance between them, getting almost nose-to-nose with Kinnick, and cocking his big, bald head. “You

skip out for ten years,” he said. “And now you want to play Grandpa? Is that it?”

Rhys felt that one in his gut. Seven years , he thought, not ten . But this time he didn’t say it out loud because he knew it wasn’t much better.

Then, out of the blue, he remembered how he knew Brother Dean. “Wait a minute. You’re Dean Burris! I covered your trial. You’re

the Dominion Eagle Killer.”

Dean Burris took a step back, confused, his face coloring with embarrassment. Or maybe rage. Kinnick had written about Burris’s

federal poaching trial ten, maybe twelve years ago. Burris had been a long-haul truck driver who, in his spare time, poached

eagles across the West. Mostly on Indian reservations. Burris would shoot a deer, then leave it out in the open, scaring off

coyotes and other scavengers until a bald eagle or a golden eagle came for the carcass. From a hunting blind, he’d shoot the

eagle and part out the valuable birds on the black market: wings, talons, tails, feathers. Sometimes he sold whole stuffed

birds for thousands of dollars. He’d also, in his illustrious poaching career, killed and sold bears, bobcats, cougars, and

Canadian lynx. He tried pleading not guilty by way of dominion over animals , but the judge hadn’t accepted that particular legal theory. Burris had also challenged the jurisdiction of the federal court,

of gaming agents, of Indian reservations, of pretty much every aspect of the case, but the judge rejected all of his sovereign

citizen defenses and sentenced him to five years in federal prison. Amid rising concern over radical right-wing crime, there

had been great interest in these stories, and Kinnick had gotten good play in the paper—three days of front-page bylines.

Dean’s eyes narrowed and his jaw tightened. “Kids. Come on.” He began to turn.

Rhys tensed, his fingers curling into fists. “Wait—”

“Grandpa, it’s okay,” Leah said. She put a hand on his arm, giving him the strangest look. Widening her eyes, as if warning

him about something. Or telling him: It’ll be okay.

Don’t start trouble. They were Celia’s don’t-start-trouble eyes.

Bethany’s not-now-Dad eyes. Clearly, she had adopted her mother’s strategy of dealing with people like Shithead Shane—stay back while the pot boiled over.

Rhys felt something rise in his throat. “Everything in circles,” he muttered.

So strange being out among people again.

He just kept speaking aloud the words he thought he was only thinking.

Brother Dean grabbed the kids’ backpacks out of Kinnick’s car, then shepherded them toward the pickup, while the man with

the goatee remained watching Rhys, arms crossed, that grim smile still on his face.

What to do now? Kinnick couldn’t just let his grandchildren go. Not with the Dominion Eagle Killer. Not so these AOL loons

could marry off his thirteen-year-old granddaughter to some pastor’s kid and keep his sweet nonprodigy grandson from losing

at chess. “Stop!” he said. “Don’t do this. Let’s call Shane. I’ll talk to him. Apologize—” The kids were almost to the truck,

and Kinnick had only taken a first step toward them when Dean Burris half-turned back and gave a nod to the man with the goatee.

There was flash of something black. Kinnick’s head snapped.

The sound inside his skull was like someone breaking a stalk of celery behind his ear. What just hit him? He didn’t see it

coming and he didn’t see it land. One second, Kinnick was standing, taking a step forward, and the next, he was on his hands

and knees, blood pouring from his nose and mouth, his face throbbing. Was his jaw broken? A wave of pain shot through the

left side of his head.

Then the word came to him: blackjack. Sap.

Christ . Had he been hit by a goon out of the 1940s?

Kinnick looked up from his knees to see the man who’d hit him walking away, heels of his cowboy boots making little puffs

of dust. The goateed man climbed in the passenger side of the extended cab pickup truck. The door closed and the truck pulled

away, gravel crackling in the parking lot, Leah’s pretty face staring at him through the extended cab window. She had a hand

over her mouth. He couldn’t see Asher.

“Wait!” Kinnick tried to stand but he was unsteady. Blood pulsed from his nose. He felt the return of an old feeling: hopelessness. Well, hello, my old friend . He sat back down in the gravel and watched as the pickup truck turned out of the parking lot. The brake lights winked, and

then the truck rolled away down the street.

A young man was running awkwardly from the abbey toward him. “Are you okay? Did that guy just hit you?” He had thinning blond

hair and wore a priest’s collar under a casual black sweater. His fingertips were warm, gently touching Kinnick’s throbbing

left cheek.

“You have a fractured zygomatic arch,” the young man said. “Sucker- punch injury.” He clicked his tongue, then ran inside

to get some towels before Kinnick could ask how it was that a baby Episcopal priest could make such a strangely specific diagnosis.