waiting for me to climb on. I took a step toward him, then remembered
the math book on Grandma’s table.
“You go,” I said. “I’ll be right behind you.”
Shawn yanked his hat down on his head, spun the bike around and
charged down the empty street.
I drove in a happy stupor. The night was black—that thick darkness
that belongs only in backcountry, where the houses are few and the
streetlights fewer, where starlight goes unchallenged. I navigated the
winding highway as I’d done numberless times before, racing down the
Bear River Hill, coasting through the flat stretch parallel to Fivemile
Creek. Up ahead the road climbed and bent to the right. I knew the
curve was there without looking for it, and wondered at the still
headlights I saw shining in the blackness.
I began the ascent. There was a pasture to my left, a ditch to my
right. As the incline began in earnest I saw three cars pulled off near
the ditch. The doors were open, the cab lights on. Seven or eight people
huddled around something on the gravel. I changed lanes to drive
around them, but stopped when I saw a small object lying in the
middle of the highway.
It was a wide-brimmed Aussie hat.
I pulled over and ran toward the people clustered by the ditch.
“Shawn!” I shouted.
The crowd parted to let me through. Shawn was facedown on the
gravel, lying in a pool of blood that looked pink in the glare from the
headlights. He wasn’t moving. “He hit a cow coming around the
corner,” a man said. “It’s so dark tonight, he didn’t even see it. We’ve
called an ambulance. We don’t dare move him.”
Shawn’s body was contorted, his back twisted. I had no idea how
long an ambulance might take, and there was so much blood. I decided
to stop the bleeding. I dug my hands under his shoulder and heaved
but I couldn’t lift him. I looked up at the crowd and recognized a face.
Dwain.* He was one of us. Mother had midwifed four of his eight
children.
“Dwain! Help me turn him.”
Dwain hefted Shawn onto his back. For a second that contained an
hour, I stared at my brother, watching the blood trickle out of his