Judy, sad faced and slightly disappointed, went to bed alone, understanding Cotter’s refusal to join her, but nonetheless unhappy with his decision. His excuse hinged on going hunting in the morning for game and he didn’t want to wake her. Offering the used hunting rifle that Caleb had purchased, Cotter refused, stating he had his own. This raised her eyebrows, and he knew she had questions. Before he could or would share her bed, the honor which still rested deep within him whispered the word truth into his ear. She needed to know the truth about him before giving herself to man who had killed her husband. To him, he’d done her a favor, but taking a life meant one less lifeline for the remaining journey he had on earth.

In the wee hours of the morning, dressed in warm clothing, he went to his truck. Lifting the back seat where he stored his emergency supplies and work gear, he pulled out his Remington Model 783 Compact Bolt-Action Rifle with scope and silencer. He put four extra bullets in his pocket and headed towards the solar array where he’d initially seen deer tracks. A hearty roast for dinner would be nice and maybe even some deer ribs or chops.  The backstrap was always good to put on the grill, which he also found in the back yard.  A nice wood burning grill, made of stone that would get smoking hot for searing meat.

“Where ya going?” Johnnie asked, standing on the back porch in the bright orange coat.

“Hunting. Go back to bed,” he said.

“Be careful out there,” the child said, blowing him a kiss. Surprising himself, he reached out to grab it and slapped the imaginary affection on his cheek. Johnnie in return took off running from the porch into the snow, flinging her small body at him, providing a hug which tingled all the way to his toes. The hair, still tied down by the scarf Judy had placed on her head, is where he placed an actual kiss, before swatting the child on the back side and pushing the girl into the house.

“That damned kid is wrapping me around her finger,” he said softly, watching her close the back door and peer at him through the curtain.

Cotter set off into the wood line. The rifle, cradled across his arms like a child, was his companion as he looked for signs of life. The white ground blanketed in snow crunched under his boots, alerting the game that he was coming for them, making him pause at a vantage point behind a tree to watch the flat land and the early rays of the sun to break. It was colder than snot frozen to an upper lip, which meant the deer would be moving.

“Lord, this a gorgeous land,” he mumbled, imagining what it would be like in the spring, all green and lush. He’d seen small signs sticking out of the snow with labels of vegetables indicating this is where her garden grew.  Hearing a sound, he crouched down low, taking to one knee while bringing the rifle to rest in the pocket of his shoulder.

A large buck, at least 10 points, came into view. Aiming his rifle, he pointed, inhaled, and squeezed off a round. The buck dropped to the ground. Proud of himself he got to his feet, walking towards the fallen animal, hoping there were hooks on the back porch to hang the prize and dress it.

Crunches in the snow caught his attention as he turned to see a dark figure charging at him. Raising the rifle, he fired a shot, striking the man, who reached him faster than he’d realized. Brandishing a knife, the assailant’s arm went up, coming down across his arm, cutting through the jacket and drawing blood.

“Fuck!” Cotter yelled, twisting his body as the man fell to the ground.

The man rolled to his back, but in the dark, Cotter couldn’t see his face. He could see the pool of red saturating the snow, and the bullet from the rifle hadn’t missed. The man, bleeding, still swung the knife, trying to get Cotter in the leg, but he almost danced as he jumped back.

“Who the fuck are you?” Cotter yelled.

The man, looking up at Cotter, realizing he wasn’t in fact Caleb Morrow, asked the same thing, “Who the fuck are you?”

“You’re the one trespassing! And you cut me. I should shoot you again!”

“Don’t shoot,” the man said, groaning. “I’m hit. Bad.”

“It’s not bad,” Cotter said. “I wasn’t trying to kill you, just slow you down. Who are you and what do you want?”

“Can you please help me so I don’t bleed out in this fucking cold ass snow?”

“Not until you tell me who you are and why you attacked me,” Cotter said.

“Thought you were Caleb. That fucker took something that belongs to my boss. Boss wants it back,” the man said.

“Well, Caleb is dead, and whatever he took went to the grave with him,” Cotter said.

“What? When?”

“A couple of weeks ago,” Cotter said. “He sent me to check on his wife and kid. Found them half-starved and freezing. Trying to get some meat to stock the fridge before I go.”

“You friends with Caleb?” the man asked as Cotter took to a knee, using a handkerchief to tie around the man’s leg.

“That bastard didn’t have any friends,” Cotter told him, yanking the cloth tight around the wound making the man wince in pain. “I got sisters. Don’t take lightly to a woman being defenseless. Just came to help them out.”

“Nice of you,” the man said. “You fucking her?”

Cotter punched him in the face. He didn’t like anyone talking about Judy that way.  Especially not this ass wipe.

“I guess that means yes,” the man said, scooping up snow and placing it on his lip.

“It means you have no right to speak about the lady that way,” Cotter said. “Get your ass up so we can look at that wound and get you on your way.”

“You’re going to help me?” the man asked, surprised.

“You want me to call the Sheriff and have him come help you?”

“No,” he said softly. “Yield. They call me Yield.”

Cotter got the man on his feet, bracing his weight on his arm. He knew the name and the brand. A retrieval agent. That’s what he did for The Company. It all began to make sense to him now.

“I’m Stop,” Cotter said. The tensing of Yield’s body meant he knew Cotter’s brand as well.

“You on the job?”

“Haven’t worked in over a year, thinking of leaving The Company,” Cotter said.

“Beauty ain’t gonna like it,” Yield said, hobbling alongside Cotter to the house. The walk seemed to take forever, but eventually they made it to the back porch.

“I want to leave before she sends Exit to help me transition from the organization,” Cotter said. “No one wants to see that fucker coming, if you see him at all. Met him once, and he’s a scary dude.”

“No kidding,” Yield said. “The one who makes my skin crawl is One Way. That man is crazy. He doesn’t care how you go, but one way or another, you will be dead.”

“Never met him,” Cotter said, opening the back door and getting hit in the face with a gush of warm air.  The sound brought Judy from the bedroom and Johnnie in jammies, who stared at the man. She turned to run and hide. “It’s okay, sweetie, you don’t have to hide.”

“That’s the man!” Judy said bundling her robe around her body. “He’s the one that came looking for Caleb and a package! I told him we didn’t have anything.”

“He knows that now,” Cotter said. “I need to get this bullet out and bandage the wound. Do you have a first aid kit?”

“Just the basics, nothing to remove a damned bullet,” Judy said, surprised.

“Get me some hot water and a towel while I go to my truck,” he said. “Johnnie, help your Mama and see if you ladies can get a pot of coffee on and breakfast started, please.”

“Yes sir,” Johnnie said, skirting around the scary, scar-faced man.

Cotter bolted out the front door to his truck to secure his emergency kit. The rifle, slung over his shoulder, stayed with him. In the back of the truck in the tool box, he opened the second compartment, lifting out his first aid box. In it was everything he needed to save a man’s life or his own. Antibiotics, coagulants, EpiPens and even a snake bite kit with antivenom, just in case he ever needed it. He was grateful he hadn’t used a large bore rifle to hunt with this morning, because if he had, the man would be dead.

Inside the house, Yield sat at the kitchen table, taking note of the unmade bed cot by the fridge and the pajama pants draped across it. In the corner, he spotted The Company issued overnight bag belonging to Stop. So, he wasn’t sleeping with the woman. He was actually here to help them. What’s in it for him? He knew of one other agent, Man, who married a woman and had a life down in Georgia. Men like them didn’t get this. Stop was going to make them a family. His family. A surge of envy coursed through him.

“Let’s work on that leg,” Cotter said, coming through the door. He paused briefly, taking note of the look on Yield’s face. He opened the kit after taking off his jacket, and Judy looked at the contents. Her heart fluttered as she began to add two and two to reach a summation the scar faced man and the man who was staying in her house had history.

“I can’t get a damned break,” she mumbled, going to the kitchen to check the coffee and start the oatmeal.

Washing his hands, he donned a pair of plastic gloves and cut away at the fabric to get to the wound. From the kit, he removed a rolled-up piece of leather and handed it to Yield, who nodded and stuck the leather in his mouth. Thinking better of it, he removed it, looking back at Judy then at Cotter.

“You ever met anyone else from the job?” Yield asked while watching Cotter pick up the needle nose tweezers.

“Yeah,” Cotter said, focusing on the task at hand. He talked as he worked, shoving the instrument into the bleeding hole, inducing more pain than was necessary. Yield asked the question in front of the woman to let her know that they knew each other and worked together. She needed to know. Now was as good a time as any.

Cotter said, “I worked with Man in Cali once on a job. I’ve met Wrong Way, Merge, Falling Rocks, and Hump. It’s been a long year.”

Yield bit down on the leather, tears rolling from his eyes, his breathing short as Stop dug around in the wound and extracted the bullet. He slumped in the chair while Cotter tended the wound and began to sew it up, after rinsing it out with a saline solution. He knew his co-worker had hurt him on purpose.

“So, Stop,” the man said. “When you going back to work? Men like us don’t get the happily ever after.”

Judy stirred the pot of oats, listening to the ugly hearted scar faced man try to unseat the few days of joy she’d had with Cotter. Last night had been almost magical, and he respected her, wanted the best for her, and didn’t take advantage of her fragile mental state.  A lesser man would have taken what he wanted or bedded her the moment her fever broke, but not Cotter.

“Mister Yield, Scar, or whatever the fuck your name is, I know what you are trying to do,” Judy said. “You are lucky he’d didn’t put that bullet through your heart.”

She sat a cup of coffee on the table. “Oatmeal will be ready in a few. I don’t have any breakfast meat to offer you, but I can make you a piece of cheese toast,” she said, squinting her eyes.

“I appreciate the hospitality, ma’am,” he said. “Your meat issue is over. Old Stop here took down a 10 pointer that he needs to get back out there and get before the wolves come a calling.”

“You got a deer?” she asked with wide eyes.

“Yep,” he said, threading the needle to sew up the man’s leg.

“That is awesome!” Judy said, looking at her daughter who hadn’t taken her eyes off the scar faced man. “Johnnie, are you okay?”

“No ma’am. Why is that man here again?”

“He’s looking for something he thinks Caleb sent to you,” Cotter said. “Did he send you anything in the mail?”

“I haven’t checked the mail box in a month, being sick and all,” she said. “It’s too far for Johnnie to go by herself. It’s at the end of the road.”

Cotter closed the wound and got to his feet. He wrapped the stitches in gauze and took his tools to the sink to clean. “I’ll go check the mail,” he said. “Yield, I don’t want any shit out of you or the next bullet won’t be in your leg.”

Yield held up his hands in surrender. Cotter, putting his jacket on, stomped out the front door, taking his kit along with him. Grumbling, he started the truck and drove to the mailbox. There wasn’t much in it other than a few seed catalogs and marketing materials. In the stack, he found one lone letter with no return address scribbled in a man’s bold script. Everything in him wanted to hide it, but if this is what Yield was looking for, it would make the man go away. If it was bad news for Judy, he would provide her any comfort he could.

Driving to the house, he’d made up his mind. He planned to stay. There wasn’t anything for him in Venture, Georgia other than a two-bedroom house with half dead plants and a woman who popped in every now and then to give him some halfhearted sex with loud noises. No one needed him there. Here, he was needed.

Dumping the mail on the table, Judy’s small hands sorted through the pile. She located the letter and recognized her husband’s handwriting. Cotter made himself a bowl of oatmeal as he sat at the table, taking off his jacket, then adding brown sugar to the bowl along with a bit of milk and pat of butter. Judy had set the items on the table with Yield watching her closely as she picked up the envelope, opening it and reading the contents. She said nothing but laid it on the table for both men to see.

“Shit, that’s cold,” Yield said, reading the letter. No true explanation. No, I love you just that...coldness. The note was simply stated by Caleb that he wasn’t coming back and the life of husband and father wasn’t for him.

Cotter frowned when he read it, anger rushing through him. The man was an asshole. He wasn’t planning to come back when he left. Had he an ounce of decency he could have told her so, instead of having her wait for him, alone in the middle of Nowhere, Missouri with a small child. Stabbing at the oatmeal with his spoon, he took his time, allowing his eyes to go to her face. It held no expression.

“Mister, I hope this provides you with an answer on whatever it was you are looking for, because it obviously isn’t here. Caleb is not coming back, he never planned to, and he left nothing for me and his child,” she said. “Please finish your meal and be on your way.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I may need a ride to my vehicle though. Mr. Stop, can you give me a lift? I can help you load up that deer since it’s on the way.”

“Thanks,” Cotter said, not wanting to eat since he’d lost his appetite. “I appreciate it.”

“And I appreciate you not killing me,” Yield said, reaching for his coat. “Thanks for the grub and hospitality. I won’t bother you again.”

Johnnie, who had sat quietly on the couch, came over to Cotter. Pushing at his chest, she forced him to move his seat so she could sit on his lap. Cradling her face against the broad expanse of his chest, he wrapped his arm around the small body, her eyes droopy with the need for sleep.

“Sweetie, go back to bed,” Judy urged her daughter.

“She’s fine. I’ll put her down in a few,” Cotter said, kissing the child on top of the head. He let her sleep as hunger urged him to eat the bowl of oatmeal, eaten slowly as Mr. Yield observed the tender moment between the once hardened hit man and a child. Stop loves the kid. She must remind him of someone from his former life. His own kid?

****

THEY DROVE IN THE TRUCK in silence until they reached the deer. Luckily, no animals had come along to gnaw or nibble on it. Cotter used the wench in back of his truck to haul the animal into the bed. The extra weight would be slow going, even in four-wheel drive.

“They make for a very nice family,” Yield said. “Want one myself one day.”

“Caleb was an asshole,” Cotter said.

“Yeah, she deserves better. You gonna be better?” Yield asked.

“Trying,” he mumbled.

“I think your ‘try’ is far better cry than anything that dude ever ‘intended’ to do,” Yield said. “He took something that he shouldn’t have. I suspect that’s what got him dead.”

“Can I ask what he took?”

“Pictures,” Yield said. “Compromising photos of a high-powered political figure.”

“Not good,” Cotter replied.

“Nope,” Yield said. “I will report that the man is dead. No evidence with the wife and kid, but if you find them, or if they are in a P.O. Box or anything else, burn them. Please don’t make me have to come back.”

“If you come back without an invitation to dinner, I’m going to make sure you never leave this property,” Cotter said.

“Understood,” Yield said, handing him a card. “Call me for that dinner. I ain’t got plans for Christmas. I can take the cot.”

A wink and a wave were all Yield gave as he disappeared through the trees. The sun was breaking through the tree line, rising over the creek, as Cotter climbed into the driver’s seat and headed towards the house. The 10 point buck’s head dangled off the back of the tailgate. He arrived in the front yard to find the Sheriff’s truck parked there.

“Just fucking dandy,” Cotter said, putting the truck in park. “And now this ass wipe shows up.”