Well we can’t leave him like that, Tom said.

No shit, my father said.

I’m not touching him, Tom said.

Another piece of fucking news, my father said.

My grandfather rolled his neck, eyes closed, rocked his head side to side, like a boxer warming up. Here, he said. Here we are.

More philosophy.

You’re not up to the test, my grandfather said. You think everything has funneled down to this, but in fact everything has become possible.

What the fuck does that mean?

You’re standing here at a moment when you could be anything.

Yeah, you’re right. This is freedom. A real gift.

It is, actually. You just don’t see it. This dead body doesn’t matter.

My grandfather stepped forward then and reached down for the dead man’s ankles and picked him up, the sack falling free, that white belly gone dark, a stiffness to his arms and legs.

Don’t touch him, my father said.

Tom was backing away with his rifle held before him, and I was doing the same. The dead man a darkened ghost, his head kinked, hands tied between his legs, looking at us from the tops of his eyes, vacant holes. My grandfather turning and swinging the body, turning like a shot putter, spinning, pulling that body in an arc and the dead man patient, holding on for the ride, his head and shoulders lifting higher above ground, levitating, and my grandfather at the center, this mound of living flesh. A hub of blood and the dead man become a putrid spoke and this wheel turned and my father backed away but not fast enough and my grandfather flung the body at my father.

The dead man lofted for a moment, an easy lift to his shoulders and his mouth open in pleasure as he sailed through warm air, the center of him still missing but that bullet hole become a second birth and this his childhood, playing on a sunny day, flung outward in pleasure but my father shrinking, caving backward, turning and his hands coming up to fend off, but the dead man collided with him, chest to chest, rolling up close to my father in an embrace, and the two of them fell back in a moment suspended forever in my mind, finally hitting ground and both shaken at impact.

My father screamed. Not something I’d ever heard from him before, but as he lay there on his back in the dirt, the rotting body on top of him, this was too much. He arched his neck and turned and threw that body off and rolled back fast away and was on his feet.

My father and grandfather with their arms curved out from their sides like wings, both ready, and I realized my rifle held low was pointing at my father, and Tom’s too. I had no idea what would happen next. Anything seemed possible.

My grandfather a mountain and without age. My father would have no chance against him, but they circled closer, arms out and ready, and my father had become desperate. His mouth contorted as if he were still screaming but no sound came out. His teeth showing as if he would snap and bite at my grandfather.

There are only two choices, my grandfather said as he circled, his voice calm, no fear at all. His knees were not bent. His legs like pencils beneath that bulk, stiff and ready to snap. He could seem fragile at times, always changing shape. You can honor the man who has been killed. You can say his death meant something, in which case we have to punish your son. I’ll help you put him in the sack right now, and we can do whatever we need to, beat him or burn him or shoot him and bury him, whatever we need to do to make it right and stop him. That’s one choice.

My father was beyond hearing. He was ready to lunge, waiting for an opening, an opportunity, circling in the pine needles near the hooks. The dead man behind me watching also. He could rise and join at any moment.

Or we can decide the man who has been shot is nothing. He was a poacher, he was breaking the law, but he doesn’t matter and the law doesn’t matter. We put ourselves first. The clan. We make our own rules. So we take his body and throw it out in the brush and don’t even bury it. We forget about him.

My father had circled all the way around to the dead man again, and he looked down at that body, and that’s when my grandfather charged. There was no sound, no warning. Only this frightening bulk moving fast and he just ran over my father. No hard impact, only a slap against that bare skin and my father curled like a child at his father’s naked breast, folded against him and then fell backward onto the dead man, a second horrifying embrace, and he rolled clear and knelt down with his palms flat on the ground in prostration. He caved forward and put his head to the ground between his palms.

My grandfather hadn’t even used his arms, hadn’t swung at my father, had only run over him. And he returned now for the dead man and untied both wrists. You won’t take any responsibility. You won’t do what you need to do, because you’re weak. So you’ve made your decision, and this man’s death means nothing.

He walked then toward the creek, dragging the body by one wrist. He passed beneath the log hung with hooks and chains and the empty pair of boots, and the dead man looked like a naughty child being dragged off to bed. His chin was stuck against his chest, frozen forever there, and so he looked penitent. He knew what he had done, and he understood being dragged away now.

My grandfather’s feet in only socks, no boots or moccasins, slopping into water and sand and rock with no care or hesitation, ripping through ferns, the dead man yanked and shaken and soaked and torn. The ferns lush, deep green and unlikely, unchanged for a hundred million years, and the dead man now like how many generations before him, dragged away, and my grandfather as terrifying as any beast the world had ever seen.

Then through pines and into sunlight, the meadow, dry yellow grass and shimmers of heat, a different world entirely, my grandfather luminous, a second sun brought close. All distance collapsed, each world brought next to every other and no gate at the boundary. My grandfather’s legs hidden by the high grass and so he seemed an orb that glided across that field, disconnected to the ground. The dead man leaving a wake of darker yellow, dull and not catching the light, a hollow that would not fill, and he gazed into this wake, would not lift his eyes to the sky, kept his chin pressed tight, intent.

This meadow the place of all my childhood play, close to camp, a small and nearly perfect meadow that should not have been used for this. One transit erasing all others, polluting memory. But my grandfather did not pause. Swept along unstoppable until the dead man had left his wake and disappeared into brush. We had lost them. Too far away for sound. Tom and I had not moved. We stood with our rifles and watched the far rim of that meadow. My father on the ground in prostration, and no sound from him either.

We waited and the entire mountain seemed to wait with us, all oriented toward where my grandfather had gone down over the horizon and waiting for his return, same as any sun but the night sped up and no darkness, no rest or new beginning, day after burning day without end, and he reappeared above those grasses and left no mark as he advanced upon us, an orbit that could not be changed, and nothing that had ever happened had left any effect on him.

He crossed the meadow and grew in size and crossed the threshold into pines, in shadow, extinguished, and crushed through ferns and the boundary of the stream back into our world, and he did not stop or notice us with our rifles held low and level, pointing at him, but walked right between Tom and me. If we fired now, and the bullets found some way of passing through him, we’d be shooting each other. But he did not look at either of us, the tremendous weight of him set in motion with his pencil legs unsteady and erratic until he reached his mattress, where he collapsed upon it face-first with his arms at his sides and legs flipping up behind. The sound of rusty mattress springs, coils jounced, and that was it. He did not adjust or move except to breathe, the rough rise and fall of mottled flesh and those tiny lungs buried somewhere beneath.