KYLE DARGAN Excerpt

From Atlantis

What Craig sees on his yard looks like a bird—small and black, something that, given the low stature of the tree, had died from the cold or hunger rather than a plummet. A runty crow. A failed forager—maybe something too big or too proud for the stale cereal he’d been tossing in the backyard.

He’d buried many birds a boy—shallow graves occasionally exhumed by strays. And though a pick axe was one of the few tools he’d purchased for his new house—that and a snow shovel— he knows the ground is hard. Winter had come early. He can imagine the ringing shock of metal striking the frozen turf, its frequency rising up the handle and translating into pain in his wrists and elbows.

No, let nature do it, he thinks. A shroud of leaves, a coffin of snow and by spring it would all be forgotten. Up to this point, he’s been thinking with his head and torso—his legs not quite awake yet, sleepwalking. But as they rouse, their curiosity, their need to do what legs do, carries him closer to the dead thing despite his back and arms’ desire to return to bed.

The December wind coaxes a tear from his eyes. This isn’t sad. It’s life.

Walking above it, he can now see the thing is not a bird but a revolver. Its gray flesh showing on the barrel and grip where the black paint has been chipped away. A gun laying beneath the maple tree, someone’s careless attempt at burial. And here Craig finds himself, unburying the thing with his wet eyes.