Cold Quiet Country (25 page)

Doctor Coates’s house could be my last stand. I don’t know how I’d fare in the wild with a couple of holes in me, and I can’t expect much friendliness from civilization. More men will come and I might as well face them here as anywhere.

Part of me thinks in terms of obedience. Mister Sharps said get a mop bucket and hit the cafeteria floor so it sparkles, and I did. Burt Haudesert said we’ll be getting up early tomorrow because we got fifty acres of corn to get in, and I said okay, just wake me. And Mister Haynes said take this knife and press it to the cow’s neck right here, where the swell of her shoulder ends and there’s a little vale between muscle groups, and slit from the bottom to the top, fast and deep—and I did. My lot was doing as I was told.

But on my own, things are different. Months of working for Burt and then Haynes revealed that although Mister Sharps always did the right thing, other men are different. Most are like that old fool Schuckers who didn’t know how to spell his name so it would make sense and thought he could take advantage of a bunch of boys just because no one wanted them. And Burt taught me the lesson, best of all.

Burt Haudesert showed me even family isn’t a strong enough tie to keep a man straight and just. If a man wants something bad enough, he’ll step on anyone at all to get it and then make up whatever justification he needs.

Burt also clarified thinking that Mr. Sharps had laid the foundation for. Though the lesson didn’t apply to Burt’s daughter, he said free citizens had rights granted by their very births that had to be jealously guarded. He said there was no authority so high that a man had to subject himself to it against his conscience.

I’d just add that God gave me my morals and if they run counter ten thousand men with guns, I’ll stand alone.

The first I exercised this thinking was against Burt, when I tried to take Gwen away from him.

Hip deep in bodies and blood, the whole thing makes sense. Burt’s ideas influenced me, and though I knew challenging him for Gwen was a crisis of obedience and expeditiousness versus moral reasoning and standing against a world gone mad, the latter ideas were comfortable like a truth I’ve always known, and following them gave me the thrill of being in for an honorable fight.

All that adds up to where I am right now, with a total of seven bodies, counting the deputy, cooling in the snow. Each dead from bullet holes I gave him. I don’t expect Saint Peter will get his robes rumpled over it, but a judge surely will.

But I’ll never explain this in a court of law.

At the last supper, Jesus turned to Judas and said, do what you have to do, and Satan entered Judas at that moment. But if Jesus had held his tongue, would Judas have gone on like any other disciple? Did God give him a charge he could entrust to no other? When I missed my head with the carbine, was God sparing me, that I might accomplish some other task?

God has so many excellent ways of taking someone out, there’s only one reason to have a man do it: to remind other men that in the case of protecting their little girls, they should have been culling the rapists all along.

The story of Judas always fascinated me.

Haynes told me about Sheriff Bittersmith, the sole arbiter of the law and truth and justice in town during the nine months before my birth. I know all about Bittersmith I need to know. Haynes related an incident with a niece of his that sounded quite like what Mister Sharps remembered about my mother.

I’m not going to leave knowing Sheriff Bittersmith is around to sow another bastard orphan. Coming full circle, I’ve only got one future. I’ll stay here and fight until there are no more comers.

If there’s more need killed after that, I’ll find them.

Life sweeps along, full speed. I’m doing things so far beyond yesterday’s imagination I don’t know where they’re coming from. When Jesus told Judas to go ahead and betray Him, maybe Judas thought the same thing. Maybe he said, “Are you fucking kidding, Lord?” And none of the disciples wrote down those words.

All these dead bodies tell a story, but the lawmen and townsfolk reading the pages are going to skip lines. Miss the justification.

I tend my arm. The bullet passed all the way through, just under the ball of my shoulder. I can’t lift my limb horizontally. I can curl a little, with struggle. I smear the entrance and exit holes with ointment and stick a gauze pad to each, and propping my elbow on the sink while standing on my knees, wrap the whole thing with a bandage. When I lower my arm the wrappings cut my circulation and I have to redo everything.

Meanwhile the sky outside the window darkens. A heavy swath of snow-laden clouds is about to bury the bodies before I’ve had a chance to move them.

Sometimes the sparrow has to relax and know the food is going to be there.

I get my arm fixed so I can let it hang and the bandage isn’t too tight. I take another shirt and sweater from the doctor’s bureau. If he’s watching, I bet it gives him indigestion, being a doctor, how many of his clothes are soaked in blood.

In all the excitement I’d forgotten that I’m wearing a revolver. The leather belt eats into my side and I loosen the buckle one notch, and adjust the way it rests on my hip. I put more wood on the fire, and fully dressed for winter, face the blizzard.

I want the exterior to look as much like it did before I came as possible. I don’t want the sheriff to see a field of battle, strewn with corpses and dead machinery. I want him to wonder, aside from the smoke, if there’s anyone here.

The red Bolens snowmobile is out front. A film of snow covers the seat. I glance left, across the field to where the deputy had parked his car. The snow falls so heavily I can only faintly see I am alone.

I reach the snowmobile. Slowly, almost afraid to see the corpse of the man I shot through the tracks, I lean over the seat.

There’s no body.

Going easy, the Bronco tread holds. Word about the storm is out. No one’s on the roads. I’ll leave it in all four wheels for the duration. I turn onto 19 and head north. Wipers flapping, heater blasting. I drive with one hand at the bottom of the wheel. So easy to slide, you got to relax or you’ll end up in a ditch. There’s hardly a track, and after I pass Nordic Lumber, drifts from the bank force me into the opposing lane for a long stretch. If another vehicle approaches, one of us is short-term fucked. But I get through and back to my lane. No one’s out. I’m two mile from Coates’s.

“Uh, Josephus…Sheriff Bittersmith,” Fenny calls on the radio.

“You don’t have to call me ‘sheriff,’ Fenny.”

“It’s all so bad. Just awful.”

“What’s going on?”

“Odum swung by the station. Wanted to know where you were with the Bronco.”

“What? He figured on taking it?”

“He’s just stepped out to go to Coates’s and wanted me to get on the horn and make damn sure you wasn’t going there too.”

“You tell him I won’t be in his way.”

“He’s a damn fool—” Static cuts her off. “—a lot of shooting, and Travis is waiting a little past the driveway in the cover of the woods.”

“You’re breaking up, Fenny. I’ll holler at you later.”

So, Sheriff Odum’s got a situation. He’s got a killer holed up in a house that has more rifles than a National Guard armory—and not just any killer. A wild boy out of the Youth Home, brung up with no conscience or principles. A killer who’ll do it with a pitchfork, or up close with a knife. Up so close he could’ve smelled Gwen’s sweet breath.

Green sheriff is going to take a green deputy, Travis, and a useless deputy, Sager, against Gale G’Wain.

* * *

I press my knees to the Bolens’s seat and hold the steering bar. Not only is there no body, there never was. The snow is unbroken.

The hair on the back of my neck stands.

Footprints—hazy with accumulated snow and wind—follow the wide snowmobile track toward the lake and diverge at a sizable hardwood that stands on the knoll, stark against the sky. A knob on the trunk doesn’t seem right—it’s a man with a rifle aimed at my heart.

I keep turning, like I hadn’t noticed, while the man at the tree decides whether he has the conscience to be a murderer.

I head for the house at an angle that will quickly carry me beyond my adversary’s sight. He’ll have to adjust around the tree to track me, something he’ll avoid if he’s the coward I hope. Until today I wouldn’t have known how easy it is to sit with your gun on someone and not have the courage to kill him. Still, each step I advance without another bullet in my body feels like a small miracle.

I imagine the spatial relationships of the house, my tangent, the tree, the rifle—to guess whether I’ve traveled far enough to hazard looking over my shoulder—giving away that I know his presence—

I glance.

The tree trunk is straight on both sides.

I draw the revolver from under my coat and pivot toward the tree, quickening my pace and pointing ahead, ready to blast at the first movement. Each step crunches the snow. My fingertips tingle. My socks have slipped and bunched at my toes. A nasal drip that normally I’d blast free with a quick exhalation tickles the tip of my nose. I draw closer and closer to the tree. Close enough to see the black-suited leg of a man on the slope, his toe dug into the snow. I approach from the right; his rifle points around the left. He’ll have no way to swing it to me.

I step broadly around the tree and point at his chest.

“Who you waiting for?”

He says nothing. Slowly twists his head. “I couldn’t do it.”

The voice is falsely guttural. Female?

“Roll over.”

“I had you in my sights and I couldn’t pull the trigger,” she says. “And now I’m going to die.”

That voice is familiar. “Shut up and roll over. Who are you?”

She wears a full-body snowmobile suit and a balaclava with the flaps across her cheeks. I push her hip with my toe and she rolls away, jerks the rifle barrel into the tree.

“Hold up! I’m not shooting so there’s no need to go crazy. Easy. Who are you?”

She’s on her back. The balaclava covers her mouth but her eyes are black hot beads and her nostrils widen with each exhalation. She is not as young as Gwen, but young. Maybe as young as Gwen. I don’t know.

“She loved you and you killed her for it.”

“You’re wrong. Who are you? What do you know of anything?” I glance across the lake and turn for a quick look at the road. Something in the trees doesn’t look right.

“Well, who are you, dammit?”

“Go ahead and kill me if you’re going to anyway. What do you care who I am?”

“Why’d you come with these guys? Get up.” I nudge her with my toe. Her voice is way too familiar. “Get up, damn you!”

She rolls partly away from me but doesn’t rise. “Get up!” I fire the revolver into the snow beside her. “Now!”

She braces her hands on her knees and stands. Her nylon snowmobile suit sounds like a symphony of zippers.

I remember being on Burt Haudesert’s barn floor, kicking my feet to get away, knowing I was about to die. I don’t know who this girl is but the anger in her eyes is made of the same stuff as the anger behind mine. Born of helplessness in the face of injustice—and dangerous because it only burns so hot before it eats away the crucible and spills out.

She’s like me and if I can’t make her see it, I’m going to have to kill her.

“Take your hat off.” I lower my revolver. “Drop the rifle.”

She does both. I holster my revolver and study her face.

Liz. The girl who tried to seduce me in Haynes’s shed.

Thanks, Lord.

“I’m not going to hurt you. I only killed these guys because they came after me. And I didn’t kill Burt Haudesert, like they thought. And I didn’t kill Gwen, like you think.”

“Then where is she?”

“She’s dead. I had to leave her.”

Liz stares straight ahead and I know she’s wondering if she can drop to her rifle before I draw the pistol.

“I didn’t kill her.”

“But she’s truly gone?”

“Yeah.” I have to look away. “Yeah. Hey, you’re not going stand around out here while I’ve got work to do. We’re going to go to your sled, Liz Sunday, and you’re going to start it. I shot the gas tank, so it isn’t going to go very far. I want you to drive around the back of the house. If you take off, you’ll have a long walk in a blizzard. Get to it.”

“If I take off, you’ll just kill me.”

“Start the sled and move it to the back of the house.”

“Why?”

“Damn! Do it.” I march toward the sled as best I can on my wounded leg and realize I’m the only one moving. I turn, and Liz has the rifle pointed at my belly.

“Did she ever tell you about her father?” I say.

Liz nods.

“So you know why I had to take her away.”

“I don’t know why you killed her.”

I shake my head and turn from her. Continue to the Bolens. Any instant a bullet could smash through my spine and I’ll be in the snow readying a host of questions for the Almighty about Judas. But I’m not going to shoot the girl and I don’t have the patience to answer her questions. Man’s perennial quandary.

Her anger is my anger, and she needs a minute to sort it out. A minute with the rifle back in her hands so she isn’t performing the calculus under the threat of my revolver. She’ll come to the right conclusion. I’m betting it’s why she didn’t kill me when she had her first chance.

I straddle the sled and leaning makes my leg howl. I grit my teeth. It isn’t the first time. I twist the key and look over the carburetor for a choke mechanism, but maybe I won’t need the choke since the engine was running a short while ago. I twist to maneuver my bad left hand onto the throttle; once it is there I can squeeze the lever. The starter cord is directly below. I grab the toggle, yank it, and the motor sputters. Again, with less success. A third time, and the smell of gasoline is strong.

“It’s ornery,” Liz says, behind me.

“You start the damn thing.”

“Here.” She offers the rifle to me, stock first. I take it and step off the sideboards.

“I flooded it.”

“You can’t give it any gas at all.”

Liz boards the snowmobile and eases the starter a half pull. Her rear end protrudes and her back arches; in an explosive move she whips her body and yanks the cord. Farm girl. The motor sputters; she nurses it to life. The engine catches and coughs. After a few seconds of being unable to smooth its tempo, she applies gas in a series of bursts, easing just before the engine bogs, and gradually turns the sled. Immediately shy of the house, the motor dies. Liz lifts the back end by a bar below the taillight, and swings the snowmobile ninety degrees so the entire machine is hidden from the road out front. She stands with her hands on her knees, breathing hard.