Julius Winsome

Julius Winsome, a 51-year-old recluse, lives alone in a remote cabin in the North Maine Woods, in the St. John Valley near the Canadian border. On the afternoon of October 30, the first day of rifle hunting season, he sits reading Chekhov by his wood stove when a gunshot rings out less than 500 yards away. He has let his dog outside, a small brindle pit-bull terrier named Hobbes, and after finishing the story he realizes the dog has not returned.

Julius's cabin was built by his French Acadian grandfather, a descendant of the French settlers expelled from Nova Scotia by the British in 1755, on two acres of cleared land surrounded by forest. His English father filled the walls with 3,282 books on shelves ringing every room, calling the cabin "an outpost of Alexandria in Maine." Julius has never married, lives off seasonal landscaping and machine-repair work, and has inhabited the cabin his entire life. Apart from Hobbes, his only companions are the books and the silence.

Late that afternoon, Julius finds Hobbes lying among the flowerbeds near the cabin, bleeding from a shotgun wound. He drives 15 miles to the veterinarian in Fort Kent, the nearest town. The vet determines the dog was shot from only inches away, meaning the shooter likely patted the dog first. Hobbes cannot be saved. After the doctor and his wife leave the room, the dog lays his head on Julius's arm and stops breathing.

Julius buries Hobbes that night in the flowerbeds where he found him, visible from the cabin window. The next morning, when he catches sight of the fresh grave, grief strikes with force. Alongside the sadness, something else enters him, an unnamed feeling that crept in from the woods and refuses to identify itself. As a boy, Julius's father taught him Shakespeare's invented vocabulary, having him write out lists of Elizabethan words like "blood-boltered" (covered with blood) and "besmoiled" (covered with dirt). Julius still uses these archaic words in daily speech.

He creates a poster reading "DOG SHOT" and drives to Fort Kent to tape it to the wall outside the supermarket. When he returns, someone has defaced it with mocking words. Enraged, he tears it down and burns it at home. He walks to where the shot originated and finds a yellow shotgun shell and a frozen pool of blood, confirming the site.

Julius reflects on the Lee-Enfield rifle he has inherited. His grandfather fought in World War I, traded his Springfield for a British sniper's Pattern 14 Lee-Enfield that had killed 28 men, and never fired a gun again. Years later, the grandfather suffered a delayed breakdown, haunted by the faces of those he had killed through his telescopic sight. Julius's father fought in Holland in 1944, threw away his carbine afterward, and likewise renounced shooting.

On the Wednesday after Hobbes's death, Julius retrieves the Enfield from the barn, loads it, and walks into the forest. He waits until a hunter climbs a tree stand 80 yards away, then shoots him in the neck. He approaches, shows the dying man a sketch of Hobbes he carries in his pocket, and asks if the man shot his dog. The hunter shakes his head and dies. That afternoon, Julius kills two more hunters. The second, a crossbow hunter, nearly kills Julius by grazing his neck with a bolt. Julius acknowledges that two of the three were likely not the shooter and that he killed them unjustly.

A flashback reveals how Julius met Claire, the woman who briefly transformed his solitary life. Four years earlier, she walked out of the woods claiming to be lost and was struck by the thousands of books lining the cabin. Over subsequent visits she stayed overnight, read French poetry, and suggested Julius get a dog. Together they adopted a terrier from the Fort Kent animal shelter and named him Hobbes after the philosopher, the first name found when pulling a book at random from the shelf. During an outing, Claire sketched Hobbes in pencil; this is the drawing Julius now carries. Claire, who lived with her parents in the nearby town of St. Agatha, visited regularly, but Julius's emotional reticence caused her visits to dwindle and stop. Months later, she told him she was with another man. Julius returned to solitude with only Hobbes.

Julius drives to Fort Kent with a replacement poster and encounters a police checkpoint. In town, the television news reports three missing hunters. Outside the supermarket, Claire kisses him and tells him to be careful. Her partner, Troy, a local constable, arrives and leads her away. The replacement poster has been defaced again. On the night of November 2nd, Julius lies awake considering whether Claire might have killed Hobbes to sever their last connection, but he concludes she was not capable of such cruelty. He recalls being followed by a car one foggy evening and suspects that driver may be connected to the shooting.

On Friday, November 3rd, Julius drives to St. Agatha with the rifle and its telescopic sight, climbs a tree stand near Long Lake, and shoots a hunter from approximately 450 yards. The news soon describes the killing as the work of a possible sniper. At the diner, Claire warns that Troy is directing the investigation toward Julius's area. On the supermarket noticeboard, new writing in the same hand as the previous defacements reads, "Guess who shot your dog."

On Saturday morning, Julius reads Dickens beside Hobbes's grave until persistent gunfire from nearby hunters shatters the quiet. He retrieves the Enfield, wraps himself in a white blanket for camouflage, and walks into the woods. A hunter in an orange vest fires at him, grazing his shoulder; Julius kills him. A truck crashes through the saplings, the driver firing a shotgun. Julius shoots the driver, whom he recognizes as the man he spotted defacing his poster, through the windshield. A third bullet passes Julius's temple. He drops flat under the blanket and inches forward over 30 minutes, a trench warfare technique passed down by his grandfather, to put the stalled truck between himself and the shooter. After an hour circling through the trees, he closes to 10 yards. The man turns. Julius recognizes Troy.

Troy admits he organized the ambush: The first hunter was an unwitting decoy, the truck driver was meant to flush Julius out, and Troy waited on the flank as a sniper. Under pressure, Troy reveals he had previously come to the cabin to spy on Julius out of jealousy over Claire, and that Hobbes ran at him barking. Julius forces Troy to the cabin at gunpoint. Beside Hobbes's grave, Troy argues that Claire needs him, that he can offer her a family Julius never could. Julius asks if Claire is happy. Troy hesitates, then says he thinks so. Julius understands Claire is truly gone from his life. He tells Troy to leave and never speak to him again. He aims at the back of Troy's head as the man walks away but releases the trigger, letting him go for Claire's sake.

Alone with roughly five hours before Troy can bring police, Julius carries his father's chair into the clearing, sets the gramophone to play "Greensleeves" and Elizabethan lute songs, and sits beneath the stars with sherry, his pipe, and Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. He watches a lunar eclipse turn the moon blood-red. He spreads seed across the barn floor for the birds, frees a small bird trapped against a window, and places his grandfather's pipe and the play on the chair's armrests. He looks one last time at the grave, the clearing, and the woods from which Claire once emerged. Then he takes the Enfield with its two remaining bullets and sets off on the 12-mile walk to Fort Kent, intending to turn himself in at the police station by dawn. After a minute on the dirt road, he glances back. The trees have closed in, and the cabin is lost to view.