Free Goat Mountain by David Vann

tired and his eyes distorted behind those glasses.
    I sat at the downhill side of the table, steered clear of my father. Rifle butt between my feet and barrel coming up past my right shoulder, in close and protected. I grabbed the pot of cream of mushroom soup steaming at the center of the table and poured it over my pancakes, creamy white with dark chunks, half-moons. Thick gravy, condensed without the water added.
    My father sat down opposite and yet managed not to see me. I was not there. He poured the gravy over his own pancakes and cut a piece with his fork. Roar of the lantern the primary sound now, close above us.
    My grandfather ambled out of the darkness to the table, and my father got up to allow him room to swivel his legs across the bench. The sound of his breath working, lungs too small for all that bulk, a heart the size of a walnut. Everything inside him shrunken away, until finally you could cut him open and find only endless fat.
    A plate put before him, and he poured the gravy and began chewing even before the food hit his mouth.
    My father cutting perfect double-layered triangles, as he always did. Portioning the same amount of gravy on each bite, chewing for about the same length of time, everything ordered.
    And then Tom joined, stabbing his legs in beside me. His plate piled with three pancakes, taking more. He poured the white gravy and then cut in a ragged way with his fork, working toward the center of the pancakes without trimming any edges. My father always annoyed by this, glancing over as he ate. And suddenly it seemed as if this could be any other hunting trip, rising early in the morning, before the light, my father glancing over at Tom’s plate and holding back from saying anything. The lantern and the spring. The wind coming up.
    The dead man just playing, a joker tied himself in a sack, horsing around. I looked over my shoulder and he was there, swaying a bit in the breeze, holding back his laughter, his chin tucked into his chest, eyes closed.
    I do understand that something has happened, my father said.
    Hallelujah, Tom said.
    But think about what the two of you have suggested. We have killing and burning my son as one suggestion, and that from his own grandfather, who apparently has lost his mind.
    My grandfather said nothing in response. A jaw chewing as automatically as any cow’s, eyes vacant.
    And then we have the bright idea of going to the sheriff, so that we can all explain how this happened and why we brought him here and put him in a sack and on and on. We’ll have lots of time in pajamas for the rest of our lives to get the stories to work out.
    It’s not too late, Tom said. It’s still only one person committed a crime.
    Not true, my grandfather said. Not true. He was staring now at the dead man, sighting him from farther off than seemed possible, and his fist on the table with the fork sticking up.
    So what’s your bright idea? Tom asked.
    We bury him, my father said.
    Bury him, Tom said. A proper Christian burial. Do we invite his mother?
    It’s easy, my father said. All this land, and no one here, no way to check all of it. We go out in the brush somewhere and dig down and bury him and forget about the whole thing.
    As if it never happened.
    Yeah.
    And what happens when they come looking for him?
    Let them look. We don’t know anything.
    And what happens when they find that blood where he was shot?
    Nothing. There’s no body. And we don’t know anything.
    We don’t know anything.
    Yeah.
    And your son never says anything, never in his entire life. Doesn’t slip and say something at school.
    Yeah.
    That man in the sack is not the problem, my grandfather said. You take care of that and you still have taken care of nothing.
    My zombie dad suddenly the fucking philosopher.
    Zombie?
    Yeah, Dad, as in you’re never fucking home. You’re as lively as a piece of wood. And now suddenly, when there’s a problem and I could use