Isaac returns and tries to confess to Harris

Isaac English’s return to Buell becomes an attempted confession that Bud Harris deliberately interrupts. Isaac comes back prepared to tell the truth about the machine-shop events and to accept their consequences, but Harris makes clear that further disclosure could expose the few people still alive who know what happened. Isaac leaves without giving the full account, choosing instead to trust Harris and go away again.

The return and the decision to speak

After walking nearly twenty miles from Little Washington to Speers, Isaac has only eight miles left to Buell. At night he stands on the I-70 bridge looking over the Mon River, then descends toward the train tracks. A group of teenagers beneath the highway falls quiet as he passes; he realizes they have noticed the hunting knife at his belt. Once out of sight, he removes it and throws it into the river. The gesture accompanies a decision to stop living by an older, violent code: rather than let circumstances make his next choice for him, he understands continuing to live as a choice renewed one step at a time.

Isaac keeps walking south beneath a clear night sky, reflecting on the stars and on the transformations by which matter passes between earth, human life, and the natural world. He feels something leaving him, as though he were stepping out of a skin. South of Naomi, with only a few miles remaining for the morning, he stops beside the river. He cannot simply go home, he thinks, because those close to him might persuade him not to do what he believes is right. He gives his father credit for having tried, and resolves to tell Harris what he did. The riverbank is a pause before accountability: Isaac expects that his last night of freedom is ending, but he has not yet learned what Harris will do with his confession.

The attempted confession

When Isaac enters the Buell police station, Ho, the officer who had been present when Isaac and Billy Poe were caught at the machine shop, is behind the desk. Isaac asks to speak to Harris and is told that the chief is unavailable. He goes down the hall anyway, knocks at Harris’s door, then opens it before receiving an answer. The room’s wood furniture, leather, and paintings contrast with the police station’s cinderblock walls and fluorescent lighting. Harris is on a couch beneath a blanket, pale and disheveled, with one hand supported in a splint.

Isaac tells Harris he is turning himself in. Harris stops him before he can continue, checks the hall, and locks the door. In private, Isaac begins with the central fact he has come to disclose: Billy Poe did not kill the homeless man. Harris reacts as if struck by the statement, closes his eyes, and asks Isaac not to say anything more. Isaac insists that he is telling the truth; Harris answers that he is not. When Isaac starts to explain what happened between himself and Billy, Harris leans across and covers his mouth with a hand. The exchange turns the intended confession into a struggle over whether the story will be told at all.

What Harris reveals

Harris explains that the district attorney has just informed him that the two men who were with Isaac and Billy at the factory have been found dead. He stresses that the three men from that night are now all gone, leaving only Isaac and Billy alive to connect the events. When Isaac asks what happened to them, Harris says it could have been anything. His response does not establish how the men died; instead, it exposes the danger of Isaac’s continuing. The confession he came to make would not simply identify his own role. It could also place Billy and the remaining witnesses under renewed scrutiny.

Isaac’s return therefore brings two kinds of truth into the room: his own account of Billy’s innocence and Harris’s news that the other men are dead. Harris does not invite a fuller explanation or ask Isaac to provide evidence. His urgent interruption, locked door, and warning about the surviving witnesses make the limits of the conversation unmistakable. The scene leaves the facts of the deaths unresolved while showing that Harris wants Isaac to understand the consequences of speaking further.

Leaving Buell again

Isaac tells Harris he is going to leave town and thinks he should live with his sister in Connecticut. He is surprised by his own decision, but it feels right to him. He also asks what will happen to Billy. Harris estimates that the authorities will probably have no choice but to release him after about a month. He offers Isaac both his cell and home numbers and says he will meet him if Isaac begins to feel troubled by what happened. Isaac declines the offer as something he does not think he will need.

Harris nevertheless tells Isaac that he did the right thing by coming in, and says he wishes he could offer him something in return. He ends the meeting by sending Isaac home. The exchange gives Isaac neither absolution nor a completed confession. Instead, it leaves him with a possible future for Billy, an invitation to seek Harris again, and Harris’s acknowledgment that returning to tell the truth took unusual courage.

Trust as the unresolved ending

Isaac walks out of the office, down the steps, and onto the road toward town. Halfway through Buell, near the river, he recognizes that he has decided to trust Harris and the others, and to see how that decision turns out. This is a change from the solitary resolve that brought him back: he had expected to disclose everything and face what followed, but now accepts a future that depends partly on other people’s discretion.

He crosses the old railroad and stands among reeds on the riverbank. His mind is quiet as he watches sunlight on the slow water, touches the river, and sees terns heading toward open water. The movement suggests departure without settling whether he will return. Harris watches him leave and wonders whether he can keep quiet; even after Isaac is gone, the outcome remains uncertain. The event closes not with legal resolution but with a choice between disclosure and loyalty, and with Isaac trusting Harris while preparing once more to leave Buell.