When we returned, my grandfather on his slab had his arms spread wide and mouth open, as if he would devour all, reclaim and ingest the world he had made, only borrowed by the rest of us. A great splitting sound from deep within him, shifting of continents, audible even over the truck.

Tom as far away as he could be, sitting in an old camp chair beyond the basin, facing us and my grandfather, not sleeping. His rifle across his knees.

My father turned off the truck and my grandfather’s breath caught and it seemed almost that he might not breathe again, and I could hear only the water, but then he sucked in another great chunk of sky and the tumblers inside him ground again, chewing on rock and tree and cloud and returning each thing to what it was made of to be made again.

Is it done? Tom called out.

Yeah, my father said. He walked over to the table and I walked behind him with my rifle, keeping an eye on my grandfather and also on the buck’s head where it hung now alone. Walking a kind of gauntlet between them. Antlers made larger by having no body. Head peering down but large eyes animated still. Something in them beyond what could be killed.

Where? Tom asked.

Upper glade.

Upper glade? How do you bury a man in the upper glade? That’s a cliff with grass.

Well.

Well what? How the fuck did you bury him there?

My father sitting on the wrong side of the table, the downhill side, Tom’s place. Tom standing now and pacing, holding his rifle in both hands like some wind-up soldier. He was always like this, guarding nothing, waiting for something but wholly unprepared, spooked from the moment I first pulled that trigger and spooked still, believing maybe everything was unreal and nothing had happened. He was like most people in that way. Continuing on, day to day and year to year, outraged and doing nothing.

Let’s just have lunch, my father said, and he didn’t even look up. It wasn’t a question. Because every Tom can be ignored. Tom didn’t use his rifle but hung it over his shoulder on an old webbed strap, more army surplus, then opened one of his wooden boxes and began pulling out bread, lunch meat, cheese, mustard, ketchup, pickles, because that was what he did.

You didn’t bury him there, Tom finally said.

In a way, my father said. It’s done, anyway. An open-air burial.

As in no covering of dirt.

Yeah.

That kind of burial.

Yeah.

Well that’ll look good.

No one’s going to see it.

Won’t they? Tom set down a paper plate with the lunch meat, perfect circles of flesh remade. Then he leaned in across the table, his face close to my father’s. Listen, he said. Let’s just leave right now. Before he wakes up. I’ll say it was him. Even if it wasn’t, it might as well have been. He’s the one we have to watch out for. Tom glanced at me then, and he didn’t seem entirely sure.

Stubble along Tom’s cheeks and neck, dark stubble. Wearing no hat. Dark hair matted to his head. Those thick glasses and thin wire frames, eyes large and afraid.

Tom, my father said quietly. His face equally as stubbled and dirty, a vertical line in his cheek filled with dirt and sweat. The two of them peering at each other in close, humanity conspiring against their gods, against fate, ducked close in conference through every age, as if they could hide.

We just leave now, Tom whispered.

He’s my father.

Save your son. That’s enough. Someone doesn’t make it out of this. There’s no way around that.

Tom, you’re not talking sense.

I’m the first one talking sense this entire trip. You listen, because this is the first time you’ve heard something that’s not crazy.

My father shook his head and closed his eyes. He put his hands up over his face and rubbed at his forehead. The water in the basin a constant weight, and the stream beside us made of lead, pulling down this patch of earth and dragging it away. All of us holding on against that.

We just go back tomorrow, my father finally said. As we planned, and we move on. If we ever hear who the man was, we send something to his family to help them. Anonymous. And that’s it.

Rivers of lead or mercury, heavy and silver-gray, working down through this mountain, the arteries and veins. This entire ridge the buried goat made not of blood and flesh but of mercury and stone. I can’t find the source of that pressure now, but it was always when I sat at that table, and perhaps it was only panic at how little held us together.

You think about this, Tom said. This is the rest of your life you’re deciding right now.

It’s already decided, my father said. There’s nothing I can do. You and he both tell me to do things I can’t do.

Tom bent down to pick something off the ground, something I couldn’t see, but when he straightened, he had a small stone in his hand, and he hucked it at my grandfather where he slept. Rise and shine, fucker, he said. Looks like we’re going on the hunt after all.

Aborted snore, half a lung sucked into his throat and blown back. Smacking sounds then, chewing on some meal from dreams, first images of what the world might be, and then an enormous yawn.

We all waited unmoving. The trees not pillars but ribs, this place not a cathedral but a cavern, and my grandfather was held nowhere. He was both smaller and larger than this mountain.

He bent his knees in the air, wearing only his boxers, legs thin as bone, draped with loose pale skin and no meat, and he swung them forward to rise to a sitting position. Hundreds of pounds somehow levered by nothing at all. Only boxers, naked otherwise, and the great teats hanging down, pink and waiting to feed all that would be.

You look like deer, he said. Frozen in place, watching, about to jump.

Fuck that, Tom said. I’m not afraid of you.

My grandfather smiled.

Tom looked away, then sat down and started making a sandwich. My father and I unfroze and worked on our own sandwiches. The water thickening and slowing beside us. Pink meat and yellow cheese, white bread, red ketchup. All of us aware of every movement my grandfather made, pulling on his pants and boots, his shirt and jacket, tottering off to the outhouse and returning with his vacant stare to sit on the uphill bench beside Tom and swing his legs in. He reached for his knife, drove it into wood to stand beside our knives, large curved blades, and in this moment we could have been all the same, but only in this moment.

I see you decided not to use the buck’s head, my grandfather said. So the man has had a proper burial?

My father glanced at me and didn’t answer. The two of us on the downhill side sharing a bench, hanging on.

Something went wrong, my grandfather said. I’m curious now.

I focused on chewing. The bread gumming at the roof of my mouth.

Well? he asked.

But my father only ate.

Did he come back to life? Was that the problem? Did you lose track of him?

My father brushed the crumbs off his hands, grabbed his knife and sheathed it, then stood. I’m leaving for the hunt in five minutes, he said. I don’t care who’s left behind.

Tom grabbed his knife and looked at my grandfather. Then he sheathed it and stood and walked away toward the truck. I’m ready, he said. His rifle already slung over his shoulder, and I saw he had his canteen, too.

What was it like to bury your kill? my grandfather asked me.

I didn’t, I said.

So he’s not buried?

No.

My grandfather smiled. Where is he, then?

In the upper glade. In two pieces. He fell apart.

Fell apart.

Yeah.

My grandfather grabbed his knife and looked at it. He was chuckling. Fell apart.

It looked like he was taking a dive.

Into what?

I don’t know.

My grandfather’s pig eyes cold and small. The chuckling and grin on the surface only. The rest of us here for his grim entertainment. Holding his knife in one meaty fist, point up, twisting it slowly as if gouging the air, working a small rip, tearing a bit at the fabric of the air, opening some vacuum invisible that would begin to pull all things inward. Annihilation. It was always what my grandfather promised, and it might begin in one tiny point, without warning. He had a different relation to air and light and sound and weight. He was nimble even in the places we could not see.