I hit deep snow just before the crest of a hill and my car struggled, and I knew if I stopped I’d be stuck for sure, so I eased onto the gas. I didn’t know the road at the top bore to the left, and I came over too fast and fought with the turn. My back end came around and threw me out of the tracks, and I slid sideways into a ditch. The car lurched like it was about to tip. I held my breath and waited for the car to flip and the roof to cave in and trap me inside.

But when the car came to a stop, I realized it wasn’t going to flip, and I could tell that my right-side tires were a couple feet below the road, and, although I knew it wouldn’t help, I pressed hard on the gas and listened as they dug themselves deeper into the gully. The left-side tires kicked up snow and mud onto my windows.

I killed the engine and sat there and stared at the CB. I picked it up and thought about radioing the station, but then I looked out at the tracks. They continued out of the reach of my headlights and climbed farther up the mountain. I shut off my lights and stepped out of the car and onto the road. My eyes adjusted to the dark, and I could see that the snow was deep up here and still coming down. If it’d been fifteen degrees outside of Marshall, then I knew it couldn’t be no more than ten up on Gunter. But I figured that if the tracks had been more than a few hours old, they’d have been covered by now. I pulled my coat tight around me and set out walking up the mountain.

I’D BEEN FOLLOWING THE TIRE TRACKS FOR ABOUT TEN MINUTES when I heard a muffled noise atop a crest in the road. It was a soft sound, and at first I couldn’t make out what it was. I slowed down and crept up the hill in the hope that I’d see whoever was up there before they saw me.

Up ahead, parked just off the left side of the road, was the service truck one of the boys at the scene had mentioned. Even though I was a pretty good distance behind it, I could hear that the hushed noise was the sound of country music blaring from inside the cab.

I came up from behind the driver’s window and saw Jimmy Hall sitting inside the truck with his head leaned against the steering wheel. I took a second and planted my feet firmly in the snow, and then I flung the door open and grabbed him by the collar and pulled him out. His feet kicked all along the floorboards, and empty beer cans and crushed cigarette packs tumbled out into the snow. A country song blasted from the radio, and I slammed the door and the music throbbed against the windows.

He struggled with me good for a minute, and he tried to pry my hand from around his collar, but he was too surprised and drunk to fight. I drug him around in front of the headlights and forced him to his knees in the snow. I pulled my gun out of my holster and whipped him across the face with the barrel. The sound was dull and heavy, like hitting a tree trunk with a bat. I whipped him again and heard the bridge of his nose crack. Blood came out heavy like tar, and I watched it run into his mouth and down the front of his coat. He chewed on it like it was a plug of tobacco he was trying his best not to swallow. He wanted to talk, but his words sounded like his tongue was thick. He looked up at me and tried to blink the heavy snowflakes out of his eyes.

“It was a goddamned accident,” he finally said. He tried to clear his throat, and he coughed and spattered blood onto my hand and my sleeve. “It was an accident,” he said again.

I held him by the collar and stared down at him until he quit talking. He rolled his head forward, and his body went limp like he’d passed out. I cocked the hammer on my pistol and put the barrel to his forehead. I raised his face to mine.

Sometimes, when I get to thinking about it, I wish I’d have blown his damn head off right there and left him laid up in the snow with his brains hanging up in the limbs of some old pine tree. I didn’t do it, but I’ll be damned if I don’t think about it every day. Every single day. I’ll be damned if I don’t think about how easy it would’ve been just to take care of it all right there.

“Jesus,” he said.

We stayed like that for a while, me standing and Hall on his knees in the snow with the barrel of my gun against his head. It was quiet, but I could hear the heavy flakes light on the tree branches overhead, and I heard the hushed pulse of music coming from the stereo inside the truck. A baying dog wailed in the cove below us.

“Ask those boys,” he whispered.

I lifted my boot and pushed him onto his back and out of the beam of the headlights. I raised my pistol and squeezed the shot into the trees overhead. It rang through the woods and echoed across the valley. A screech owl flushed at the noise and swooped down from the darkness above. I turned in time to see it soar across the road and disappear into the snow-covered boughs of a pine.

Jimmy lay on the roadside breathing heavy. I walked over and stood above him. “Get up,” I said. He didn’t move. I kicked him, but he still didn’t move. I put my pistol back in the holster and reached down and grabbed his collar with both hands and pulled him to his feet. He had trouble standing up, and I leaned him against the front fender and rifled through his pockets.

“Jesus,” he muttered. “I thought you were going to kill me.”

“I ain’t decided not to yet,” I said.

I opened the driver’s-side door to the truck and took the keys out of the ignition. The radio went off, and the night was suddenly silent and still. I walked a piece up the road and stopped at the edge of the woods and looked into the darkness where I knew the trees were standing. Then I threw the keys as far as I could, and I listened to them ricochet off the tree branches and trunks until the sound of their falling was swallowed by the snow. My eyes adjusted to the dark, and I saw that the road continued a hundred yards up the mountain and disappeared around a bend. Through the trees I could see a few lights shining in the valley. I went back to the truck and found Jimmy leaning against the hood where I’d left him.

I opened the door and pushed him into the truck. “You can walk home when you sober up,” I said. It was dark and I could barely see him, but I heard him groan as he sprawled his body out on the bench seat. I knew he’d die if he passed out in that cold truck up on that mountain. I didn’t find that to be too bad of an option, and I slammed the door to the truck and walked back down the road.

THE SNOW HADN’T QUITE FILLED HIS TIRE TRACKS IN, AND I WALKED just between them on my way to the car. It was late, and the lights in the valley to my left were beginning to wink off for the night. I turned my collar up to keep out the snow, and I buried my hands deep inside my coat pockets. The wind picked up and blew through the trees off in the darkness on the right-hand side of the road. The creaking limbs and branches sounded like hundreds of squeaky doors opening and closing in an old farmhouse.

When I reached the car, I opened the door and climbed inside. The seat followed the slope of the car and tilted down into the ditch and made it difficult to sit upright. I slid down the vinyl toward the passenger side and settled my back against the door. I started the engine and radioed the station in Marshall and told them where I was.

“How’s the weather up there?” asked dispatch.

I took my finger off the receiver and looked out the windshield. “I’m sweating my ass off,” I said. “What the hell do you think it’s like?”

The line was quiet.

“I’ll send someone up that’s got a wench,” he finally said.

“I’ll be here.”

I set the CB back on its cradle and cranked the heat. Hot air poured out of the vents and my face and ears got warm. I held out my hands and felt the blood slowly creep into my fingers.

I watched the windows fog over, and I pictured Sheila in the kitchen at home, reading a book or flipping through a magazine and looking up now and then to check the window for headlights and listening for the sound of a car door being closed. I didn’t know how in the world I was going to tell her about Jeff, but I kept forcing myself to remember that I knew the routine: the pause on the steps of a stranger’s porch before you knocked on the front door, the awkwardness of answering questions and drinking coffee in the kitchen while you watched a family grieve. I’d broken this news what felt like a hundred times, but now it was my own family, and I’ll be damned if I could remember how to do it.