Dennis Harrison’s face filled my scope. I slid the barrel to the right to compensate for wind. I raised the barrel a fraction to compensate for drop. I pulled the trigger and Dennis’ head spouted a puff of bloody vapor. He was dead before I even thought of his voice or his walk or how many times we’d played cards together. He was dead because he was about to shoot the old man. The one armed old man that shot Mick but let me live. The one armed old man I’d let live for some goddamned reason. He was gonna keep on living until I figured it out. I watched as he scrambled into a culvert beneath the road.
I slung my rifle over my shoulder and hustled down off the hill. Just three hundred yards ahead were Andersonville’s peeling yellow barracks. And Pam. She won’t listen to me. She’ll tell me she hates me again. She’ll say I should have seen the signs, that I should have taken Jill and gone AWOL before the end, before I lost my wife and she lost her sister. But how do you know when it’s time? When the moment comes – that one that signals this is it, this is the end? How do you know?
