There aren’t many hunting accidents around here anymore but my brother Dave was a hunter and death seems like it should be an accident, not anybody’s intention, so that’s the story we’re going with, that it was an accident.

I repeat that to myself as I get in the truck to leave for the funeral, as I reach over to pull the door closed and notice the mud caked on my boots, not a good match with my new jacket. Christ, not even for an hour can I keep myself clean. I scrape my heel on the door ledge but the dirt clings there. I guess it doesn’t much matter, there’ll be more of it where we’re going.

It’s not a long ride to base camp and halfway there I go to turn on the radio but there’s mostly static. We get lousy reception in this part of Grand Mesa and in my head I can hear my mother, Now, do you think it’s respectful to play the radio today? She said it when my father died. She was good at guilt, like a cook with instinct and a pinch of salt. That day I turned off the radio, pissed somebody would judge how I felt by a damn radio. Now I reach for the knob because it’s me who wants the silence.

I get to the ranger’s station around eight. We timed it right—hardly anybody’s here, nobody from the papers, not much family. We don’t have much left anyway, my mother’s gone, my father before her, now Dave. We’re getting short on people.

I open the truck door and get out. Half a dozen vehicles are scattered around the lot but there’s no need to lock up and I start walking.

Inside the ranger station a dozen or so people mill around. They stare at me while I stand there and hate them, just for the sake of it and maybe to feel something safe. I walk up to the guide. He was the one on duty when they found Dave on the ridge top. I can feel my cousins, the ones who bothered to show, staring. I hate them for that, too.

“Bill,” the guide says. He puts a hand on my shoulder and turns to the few people standing there. “We should get started.”

It isn’t too far a walk up the ridge, not far from base and not a good place to hunt but good if you want somebody to find you, to hear the shot.

We follow the guide up the path and as we walk rocks skitter downhill.

“Kind of slippery,” my cousin Ed says.

“It really is.” His wife is alongside him like a shadow. “Maybe we should have done this someplace else.”

I want to ask why the hell she’s here, why she bothered to come.

I can hear my mother again, do you think it’s appropriate to get angry with family today?

We walk up to the ridge and I look out over the aspen and the lodgepole pine, some of the trees dead now and dying and the land laying in ridges one over another like the earth folded back on itself, like it couldn’t get out of its own way fast enough.

Christ, it’s an ugly spot. With all the pretty places around here, I wonder why Dave didn’t pick a better one to shoot himself.

We follow the guide to the ledge. On other side is a little dip like an envelope with the flap open like Dave picked a spot where the land would tuck him in, close over him and send him off.
“Everybody,” the guide says.

He’s going to ask me to speak, or somebody will, but I didn’t push myself to come up with something. Why do they need me to talk anyway, except it’s expected and all the stand-ins are gone.

“We lost a fine man,” the guide says. “Somebody who knew this place a long time and cared for it.”

I wonder why Dave didn’t care more for something else, something that could have cared back. He might have stuck around longer. Maybe he found that missing in himself, the not caring enough. He hadn’t married or had kids. Neither had I, but I had time.

The guide stopped talking. “Bill.”

I could walk up to where he is but I don’t, I stand my ground. It’s my choice, something at least is my choice.

I clear my throat and wonder what will come out as I look out over the ridge, plain as a homely woman. Who would notice a place like this? It wouldn’t be my choice.

“We don’t get to choose much in this life.”

I hear people shuffling. One or two look away. My cousin Ed worries the ground with his shoe.

“But Dave made his own choices and this place was one of them.” I look at the guide. “It was something that didn’t change for him.”

Maybe that was part of the problem, things not changing. The guide nods and I can see in his eyes he gets my meaning.

“Dave was the one to pick this place, or maybe it picked him.” We would never be sure, there would always be questions. “I think he wanted that, to leave us wondering a little what he was thinking, maybe his way of letting people know his life was worth wondering about.”

I look at the scattering of people and see they want me to go on, keep talking because there’s no resolution in what I said, but I nod at the guide and he hands me the urn the funeral home sent.

I walk to the side of the ridge, my back to the rest and all of a sudden protective of the older brother I hadn’t known too well. I open the urn and let the ash scatter. Dave was going back where he came from and I’m leaving him where he belongs.

I walk up to the guide and hand him the urn. “Would you take care of this?”

I hear people shuffling.

“Doesn’t he want that?” Ed’s wife says.

I turned around but she looks away.

“Sure, Bill, I’ll take care of it.” The guide looks around. “I want to thank everyone for coming out.” He looks in my direction.

The few people milling around seem to want me to lead the way back.

“You all go ahead.”

The relief comes up fast on their faces. They’re glad to be told what to do, glad their part is over and I have enough respect for the dead to want to stick around.

They skitter back down the ridge, a meager group. The guide lets them go.

“You alright?” he asks.

“I’m okay.”

He nods. I can see he wants to put his hand on my shoulder but he turns and walks down with the rest.

I stand up on the ridge. It sure is homely, with nothing much to it, nothing to mark it as different besides that little dip in the side. Dave must have seen it like this all the times he was out here, a place that was no place special. I stand and listen but I don’t hear anything, nothing to fill the space where a life will have to be and wonder, was this what Dave stepped aside for.

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