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together that they can’t see each other. For this we should be grateful that they are so close together. Death is laughing.
    The truck is quiet.
    Jonah reconsiders the last line—
    JONAH
    (to himself)
    Hmm.
    â€”and makes a note in his book.
    GUNNER
    Get out of the truck.
    SUE
    What?
    GUNNER
    You heard me. Both of you get out of the truck. Now.
    SUE
    What the hell for?!
    GUNNER
    (fiercely)
    Get out of the goddamn truck!
    SUE
    All right, all right! Criminy!
    At a loss, Sue climbs out of the truck in a passive aggressive fit. Jonah follows.
    SUE
    Good lord, Gunner, what has got into you?
    GUNNER
    Move away. Over there.
    SUE
    Hell…
    They move away from the vehicle and stand in the gravel on the side of the road, kicking at the cold stones. The truck idles.
    Gunner sits in the driver’s seat, staring down at some buried consideration. He looks up and through the windshield.
    The road stretches out before him in a long line that eventually disappears into the trees. Just up the road a deer-crossing sign shifts slightly in the light breeze. A murder of crows shouts out across the winter field.
    Gunner looks out the driver-side window, across the road, across the winter cornfield, and way out in the middle of the field, he sees himself, as a mud man, standing naked and covered in pale mud paint, staring back at himself.
    GUNNER
    All right, let’s go.
    Jonah and Sue hesitate, not so sure.
    GUNNER
    Well, come on.
    They climb back into the truck and Gunner pulls away.
    The fields beyond the road are empty, quiet, and still.
    ***
    A small storage room is filled with droning fluorescent lights. Thousands of salt and pepper shakers are lined up on metal shelves from floor to ceiling.
    Simone stands at her cart, filling salt shakers with salt. The room is deathly quiet, so quiet that the sound of pouring salt is quite loud.
    A flickering fluorescent light interrupts her and she stops to watch it. Then she returns to work. Salt pouring like sand through an hourglass.
    ***
    A country road runs through a stretch of trees.
    The Chevy Suburban pulls over and parks on the side of the road. Jonah, Gunner, and Sue hop out and unload some gear from the back of the truck. The winter woods are naked and still. The men are pensive and quiet before the landscape.
    Sue scopes out the area and then speaks.
    SUE
    All right, we’re gonna run a line through these woods and out the other side. Gunner, we got an existing elevation somewhere so let’s find that and set up here. Visibility shouldn’t be too bad with the leaves down so you just head straight out in there about a ways and then give us a call.
    JONAH
    How far?
    SUE
    (irritably)
    I said about a ways. Couple hundred yards.
    Jonah heads off into the woods with his surveyor’s rod.
    The trees are bare of leaves but the forest is thick with brown winter brambles and vines.
    Jonah tramps through the undergrowth, blending in with the wintry foliage in his brown construction coveralls. He counts out paces under his breath, slowly ducking and weaving through the brush, pushing branches aside, stepping over downed trunks, and crunching across a layer of frozen fallen leaves.
    When he reaches his count, he stops and slowly waves the red and white striped prism rod back and forth above his head. He speaks into the walkie-talkie.
    JONAH
    You got me?
    GUNNER
    (on the radio)
    Hang on. Yeah. Got you.
    He drives his surveyor’s rod into the ground.
    GUNNER
    (on the radio)
    Shooting.
    Jonah waits. The trees are quiet. He scans the forest. A woodpecker taps on a walnut tree.
    He looks in another direction and is surprised to discover an animal very close to him, only a few yards away. A buck deer is lying quietly on the ground. Strangely, the buck is just watching him, either unafraid, or unable to move.
    Jonah slowly walks away from the surveyor’s rod stuck in the ground and approaches the deer. It struggles to its feet, wounded. A bullet wound leaks blood from its