Free Four Live Rounds by Blake Crouch

her husband. “So how
many nights have you been up here?”
    “My second.”
    “You’ve been here before?”
    Roger wiped his mouth. “Goddamn that’s
smooth.”
    “Actually, this is my first trip to Shining
Rock.” Donald took the scotch from Roger and after a long,
deliberate swallow, looked at the bottle a moment before passing it
back to Sue. “I usually do my camping up in northern Minnesota, but
figured these southern highlands would be worth the drive.”
    “Where’s home?” Roger asked.
    “St. Paul.”
    Roger and Sue glanced at each other,
smiled.
    “What? No, don’t tell me the pair of you are
Minnesotans.” He drew out the “o” in stereotypical Midwestern
fashion, and they all laughed.
    “Eden Prairie as a matter of fact,” Sue
said.
    “You could make a strong case for us being
neighbors,” Donald said and he looked at Roger. “What are the
chances?”
     
    Midway through his second hand of UNO, Roger
realized he’d gotten himself drunk—not a sick, topsy-turvy binge,
but a tired, pleasant glow. He hadn’t meant to, but the scotch was
so smooth. Even Sue had let it get away from her. She was laughing
louder and with greater frequency, and she kept grabbing his arm
and pretending to steal glances at the twenty-plus cards in his
hand.
    Sue finally threw down her last card and fell
over laughing on the blanket.
    “Two in a row,” Donald said.
“Impressive.”
    He pulled out the cork and took a slow pull
of scotch, then offered the bottle to Roger.
    “Oh Don, I think I’m done for the night.”
    “Come on.”
    “No, I’m good.”
    “One more. Bad luck to skip a nightcap.”
    Roger felt the twinge of something in his gut
he thought forty-eight-year-old men were impervious to. He took the
bottle and drank and passed it back to Donald.
    Sue sat up. “Say, I meant to ask why you had
a machete lashed to your back?”
    Donald smiled. “Sometimes I like to get
off-trail, do a little bushwhacking. I did a few tours in Vietnam,
and let me tell you, that was the only way to travel
upcountry.”
    “What branch of the military?” Roger
asked.
    “Green berets.”
    “Wow. Saw some shit, huh?”
    “You could definitely say that.”
    Donald suddenly tilted to one side and
squelched out a noisy fart, then chuckled, “Damn mountain
frogs.”
    Roger thinking, Well he’s definitely a little
drunk.
    Donald corked the scotch, said, “You have
children?”
    “Twin girls,” Sue said.
    “No kidding. How old?”
    “They’ll turn twenty next month. They’re in
college at Iowa. Michelle wants to be a writer. Jennifer, more
practical of the two, is pre-law.”
    “How nice.”
    “Yeah, this trip has been a sea change for
Roger and me. Our family’s been coming to Shining Rock, God,
forever, but this is the first time it’s just the two of us.”
    “Empty nesters.”
    “How about you, Don? Any kids?”
    Donald bit down softly on his bottom lip and
looked away from Roger and Sue at the moon edging up behind the
black mass of Cold Mountain.
    “I didn’t pick twenty-one-year-old scotch to
share with you two on a whim. This whiskey,” he swirled what liquid
remained in the bottle, “was put into an oak barrel to begin aging
the year my little girl was born.”
    He pulled out the cork, tilted up the
bottle.
    Sue said, “Is she in school somewhere
or—”
    “No, she’s dead.”
    Sue gasped, and through the gale in his head,
Roger sensed something attempting to piece itself together.
    “I’m so sorry,” Sue said.
    “Yeah.” Donald nodding.
    “What happened, if it’s not too—”
    “She’ll have been gone six years this coming
fall.”
    “She was sixteen when…”
    “Yeah.”
    Roger reached for the scotch and Donald let
him take it.
    The bottom edge of the moon had cleared the
summit ridge of Cold Mountain, and somewhere in the meadows of
Beech Spring Gap, a bird chirped.
    “Was it a car wreck?” Sue asked.
    “Tab was a cross-country runner in high
school. Captain of her team