Cold Quiet Country (10 page)

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Of everything I laid out on the coffee table—the gauze, cotton wraps, Mercurochrome—I failed to bring aspirin. I’m in a doctor’s house: surely he has something more potent than aspirin. This is a war-style wound. Can a fellow get a bottle of morphine? My leg shouts and I look. Burn marks are squiggly like the red-hot brass I used for a brand. Lymph and blood percolate like I seared a steak but didn’t cook it all the way through.

I paint Mercurochrome all the way around the fleshy part that is black and bloody, then wipe Bag Balm over it. The burn inside from the Lysol isn’t going away, and the longer I sit the more I’m ready to vomit salted venison and peaches into the fireplace. I press a wrap to the sticky balm and unroll gauze around my thigh until the whole area is white and the bandages will hold. A couple strips of tape and I’m ready to return to the front lines, except I’m still sitting in a puddle. To the small degree the agony in my leg fades, the sting of sitting in piss for ten minutes replaces it.

I fight my way upstairs to the bathroom and discover the house has no water pressure. So I go to Doctor Coates’s room and find another pair of underwear and carry them to the living room. I fill a bucket from under the kitchen sink with snow on the porch and put the bucket next to the fire, and in a few minutes, while I meditate on Guinevere, the snow melts and I sponge-clean my privates.

Finally dressed and warm again, I add a few logs to the fire and journey upstairs to the rifle room. Those pistols weigh on my mind. I’m trying to think like a soldier might, about repelling an attack, and it seems the more bullets I’m ready to offer my opponents and the more mobility I have while doing it, the better I can avoid being shot. And if in the end it comes down to a face-to-face at close range—well, a cowboy doesn’t fetch a rifle to a duel.

The pistols’ workings are internal and there’s no way to puzzle them without breaking the weapon down. But one looks like the perfect gun, the one everyone sees when he thinks of a pistol. It is a revolver with a long barrel. The grips are white and the metal looks like silver bleu cheese or horsehair pottery. I search for a marking that will tell me which box contains the right bullets.

Tree roots had lifted the sidewalk panels. Gwen kept her gaze to her feet as she and Liz Sunday walked past the sheriff’s station. Sunlight broke through the leaves and danced like butterflies on the grass and the cement sidewalk. Gwen kicked a bottle cap and watched it bounce over the curb.

“What are you girls doing away from school?”

Sheriff Bittersmith sat on a chair on the station porch and smoked a corncob pipe. His feet propped on the rail, he exhaled smoke through his nose. Eyed them up and down. He held the pipe at his mouth, dropped his feet to the floor, and leaned.

Gwen took Liz’s arm. “We’re going home, Sheriff.”

“Home?”

“That’s right.”

“Not well, huh? School nurse have a look? Why didn’t they call your father, girl?”

“He’s not around.”

“Well, hold on. Don’t keep walking when I’m talkin’ at you. So what’s the problem, Liz? Liz Sunday?”

Liz nodded.

“Not well enough for school, but well enough to walk all the way home?”

“It isn’t far.”

“Come around the side lot and I’ll take you home in the Bronco. That way you both won’t miss school.”

“Thank you, but I need to walk.”

“Need to walk?”

“She can’t sit very well. Very long,” Gwen said.

“I can’t sit. It’s—”

“Then we won’t stop for ice cream.” Bittersmith took the handrail and descended the steps. Gwen and Liz backed away.

“Thank you, but we really have to keep moving,” Gwen said.

Bittersmith stood at the bottom step and sucked on his pipe.

Gwen stumbled on a sidewalk panel.

“Easy,” Bittersmith said. He smiled and nodded and nothing could have been plainer, Gwen thought, as she blushed in anger and embarrassment over losing her step, that his look was an appraisal and his nod was an invitation.

They walked with a harried pace until they reached Wilcox Avenue. At the traffic light, Gwen turned as if speaking to Liz, and sought Sheriff Bittersmith through the corner of her eye. He leaned on the rail and watched.

“Well?”

“The old pervert’s still staring at us,” Gwen said.

The light changed and traffic moved. Gwen and Liz crossed Wilcox. “You want to take the shortcut by Sheep Hill?” Liz said.

“The creek?”

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s a river. It’s overflowing.”

“It’s better than being out here where everyone can see us. We don’t have to walk in the water.”

They followed Wilcox to a steel-frame bridge. Its blue paint had peeled, exposing rusted metal. Hundreds of love aphorisms and declarations vied for space on rare stretches of uncurled paint. Love Sucks. Joanne Remington sucks. You wish. Fuck you. Lou loves Michelle. Michelle gets around. No I don’t.

They stood at the base of the bridge, Gwen scanning the names while Liz watched nothing at all, until an approaching car passed. They ducked around the column by the sidewalk and glissaded awkwardly down loose rocks to the trail beside Mill Creek. The overflowing creek’s winding path would pass near both Gwen and Liz’s homes two and three miles away.

The grass was dewy as if the sun had just risen. The sound of rushing water was hypnotic, and the humid air was dense and rich in a way that made Gwen drowsy. She yawned. A thicket of blackberry bushes spilled from the shade onto the trail, and Gwen stopped.

“They’re not good this late in the season,” Liz said. “Watch for stinkbugs.”

Gwen plucked a berry from the bush. Dropped it into her mouth.

“Have you tried to see people?” Liz said. “You know? With the music?”

“One.”

“Only one?” Liz led the way. The trail wound close to the creek. She misplaced her foot and slipped, barely catching a birch branch to stay upright. The muddy water carried an occasional leaf or small branch, but was mostly a roiling, churning torrent. The path narrowed, half of it below water. Gwen followed and collided with Liz, and they were awkwardly close, separated by books, looking through stringy hair tousles at each other.

“Who else should I try to kill?” Gwen said.

Liz backed a step from Gwen, and then another.

Gwen followed. They walked single file, ducking low-hanging branches, sidestepping tufts of wet grass, each foot closer to the roiling muddy water.

“Was he your first?” Gwen said.

Liz marched faster and Gwen allowed her a ten-pace lead. The creek tunneled through copses of vibrant green trees, walled by emerald shrubs so that every turn was a mystery and she couldn’t see more than a few steps ahead. The path finally separated from the creek bank. Liz passed out of sight and around a bend to the right.

Gwen said, “I didn’t mean anything. Of course he was your first.”

Liz didn’t answer and Gwen rounded the turn.

“Wha—!”

Liz stepped toward her, red-faced, eyes rimmed with water. “What is it with you?”

“What?”

“Why won’t you let up?” Liz stepped closer.

Gwen felt Liz’s breath warm across her face. “I don’t know—”

“Yes you do,” Liz said. “Just shut up. Stop asking.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not. Why’s it so important? I got pregnant. It happens. It happens!”

“I know.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“No.”

“I didn’t want him. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t DO anything!”

“What?”

“Nothing. Stop. Won’t you?”

“Okay.”

“No! Dammit,” Liz said, leaning forward. Her eyes flared and her mouth smiled confusion.

“What happened?”

Liz swallowed then cleared her throat and spat. “Never mind.”

Now I pack a revolver. Doctor Coates was a southpaw; the holster hangs on my left hip. I haven’t fired it, but I learned how it works with the chamber empty, and I’m satisfied that when I pull the hammer and squeeze the trigger with the cylinder full of bullets, it will fire. If it fails, I’ll take it God made a mistake when the carbine misfired.

I stand on the porch not knowing the hour, feeling days have passed since this morning. Snow falls. It only looks aggressive when you let your eyes blur and take the whole panorama in at once, thousands of acres of sky, all filled with invading snowflakes, each one barely a wisp of water but combined with a billion brothers, enough to make life screech to a halt on half a continent.

Across the lake and a mile beyond the woods at the far shore, Fay Haudesert or Cal or Jordan has discovered Burt in the barn. Follow these footsteps off the porch and across the lake, and keep going through the woods along the side hill, across the Haudesert fields, and eventually they wind up at Burt Haudesert’s barn. Eventually my boot prints smear Burt Haudesert’s blood. These prints link me to a specific event that his kin are just now beginning to comprehend. These prints are real enough evidence for angry men. Cal and Jordan will follow them. The sheriff and his deputies will follow them. They’ll all arrive here and want to retaliate for something that is impossible to avenge. They’ll want to lay blame, and they’ll be unable to see that the person who deserves all the blame—and the person who deserves all the credit—is already dead. They’ll find me and I’ll either again receive unmerited grace, or they’ll execute me.

Or I’ll kill them. God puts teeth on a wolf cub, just like its mother.

I step inside the house. Leave the door closed but unlocked. Why bother when the window is covered by cardboard?

My eyes adjust from the snow glare after a minute. Dr. Coates’s roll-top desk beckons. I can’t sit on the sofa and wait to die, and I can’t bundle up and walk into the storm, trusting I’ll survive the cold. Not when there’s a fireplace and logs and food and guns here. But while I’m here I’ve got little to do save wait, and it becomes tiresome. I sit in the banker’s chair, with wheels on the bottom and a leather cushion, and drag closer to the desktop. Letters in slots and papers scattered willy-nilly. Letters cast aside, opened with a clean slit the way people of culture do. And another letter, in the middle of the writing pad, penned but not signed. I steal a glance at it and look away. The portrait of Christ is above me.

Tape and White-Out and staple boxes and paperclips. A magnifying glass. Ink pens and pencils and a pencil sharpener that at first looks like a miniature coffee grinder, and at the bottom is the beveled razor. I thrust a pencil in it and twist, letting curls of wood fall to the floor. When it squeaks, I rest the pencil in the front drawer, careful of not bumping the point, and sharpen another. I’ll do the whole drawer-full to avoid reading the half-penned letter in the middle of the desk, under my nose.

But didn’t I come to the desk to read the letter? To learn a little of the story of the man whose hospitality I’ve commandeered?

Dear Jacob,

I received your invitation to chair the Bittersmith Chamber of Commerce’s Christmas Festival with great excitement. Serving as the Chair in past seasons has proven the highlight of the dreary winter season.

It is with regret that I must decline your invitation, however. I find this year I am not of the soundest health, and am afraid the event would suffer from my unintended mismanagement. I have given my little remaining stamina to the church, and the urchins who attend Sunday school not knowing the gift that has been prepared for them. The gift that was prepared for all of us who regret having been born unknowing.

I’ve become a doddering fool, and

The text ends without another word, without a signature. I imagine a gray-haired giant of a man collapsing from this very desk, and tumbling to the floor.

Not knowing, and not yet regretting they were born that way?

I read the missive again, and its mystery is no clearer. I’ve had the basics of Protestant theology drilled into my head over twenty years of mandatory church services. I’m clear on the gift that’s been prepared, but being born unknowing? Isn’t that the point?

The only book on the desk is
Moby Dick
, and I know from past excursions that I can’t read it. I take my Melville in shorter bursts. I carry the volume to the sofa anyway, and it sits on my lap while I watch the fire. There’s a giant flame that the little ones feed. It keeps trying to climb into the chimney only to fall away over and over again. Minutes drift along, and I find I’m no longer interested and only watch through half-lidded eyes.

During the daytime, Gwen and I kept our affair hidden. It would never have done to flaunt it or allow anyone to grow suspicious. I never looked at her. Even if she fawned on me I wouldn’t give away the truth. I worried she appeared to have some childish infatuation, but at least I was sure it didn’t look the other way around. I worried, but she was an actress and never slipped. In private, she stopped the teasing she had begun in the garden. No more rubbers on cucumbers.

In terms of prettiness, Gwen was fine-tuned. My instinct to help her might have clouded my feelings, but in quiet reflection I could imagine us spending a lifetime learning each other’s secrets, and I knew she was special. You don’t ever understand everything about a girl, but if you can strip away the fears that unbalance one side of the equation and the animal spirits that kowtow to the other, the real girl shines. Even before you witness her wrinkled brow and moving lips you know her prayers are sincere. You know her worthiness. In my soberest moments I knew Gwen was good.

Not that there were many opportunities to dote. Mostly I spent twelve or fourteen hours every day in the fields or the barn or the garden. Burt Haudesert only had so much equipment, and the rest of the work was done by hand, elbow, back, and knees.

A fall day came when Burt wanted me to help him slaughter hogs. Cal was barely getting around the farm with a cane, and Jordan had made it clear the night before how urgently he looked forward to turning over the section of cornfield farthest from town, some miles off. Burt sniggered and said if Jordan had a third hand he’d need a third pocket to put it in he was so damn useless. Rather sit on a tractor than mix with pigs.