Deep Winter (4 page)

D
anny had to keep his eyes nearly closed from the sheer white intensity. He kept his chin tucked against his chest and wore a heavy coat, sweat trickling down his back despite the bitter-cold temperature. He didn't know how far out of town he was, but the road's sharp incline was taking its toll. His frosted breath billowed out in large, colorless clouds, drifting up and into the gray Pennsylvania country sky. Thick, gnarled limbs of birch trees hung low and heavy with snow over the road, creating a blinding white landscape.

A few inches of fresh powder covered most of Turkey Path Road, which wasn't much more than an old dirt path that wound its way up Lime Hill. Other than a few hunting cabins, no one actually lived along the ridge. Rocky terrain ran steep, making it hard to build on. Snowplows didn't get out this way much, so the snow piled up high all around him. A truck passed him earlier, big four-wheel-drive tires covered with chains, clanking up a storm.

Danny's boots squeaked against the snow and ice. It was nice and peaceful. Real quiet. He could hear a hawk cawing from up in the sky. He looked for the bird, but the clouds were too thick. His toes were getting cold, his socks felt wet. Must be a hole in the bottom of his boot. He'd have to save some money before he could go and buy a brand-new pair. He tried not to think about the cold and kept plodding forward.

He heard the sound of children's laughter up ahead of him and over the crest of the hill. He wasn't far now. A few more minutes. His stomach rumbled, complaining of hunger. Danny figured he should have eaten lunch before coming out all this way, but after breakfast his stomach hurt real bad, as if someone punched him in the belly.

He didn't like the deputy one bit. He knew he wasn't supposed to think bad of other folks, but the deputy had always picked on him ever since he was a kid. He still remembered the first time Mike Sokowski had beaten him up. It was over at Pickett's Bowling Alley.

•   •   •

D
anny had just turned eight. He was in the arcade with a couple of nickels clutched in his palm, watching the lights blink yellow and red on the Gottlieb Spot Bowler woodrail pinball game. Mr. Pickett had just bought the pinball game and placed it between the Shuffle Alley and the jukebox. Danny played Shuffle Alley a few times but didn't like getting sawdust all over his hands. He stood mesmerized by the newness of the Spot Bowler game. Everything about the pinball game drew him closer, like a kid to a candy counter. The flashing bumpers, the flippers, the miniature bowling pins lit up like candles, and five steel balls about the size of walnuts ready to
knock down all the little bowling pins. Danny put one hand on the panel of glass that covered the game and shook the nickels in the other.

“Hey, retard, what are you doing? Laying a turd in your pants?” Danny looked behind him. Two older boys with crew cuts smiled at him with grins that weren't so friendly or kind. One was big-boned, tall for his age, and had a cauliflower ear on the left side of his head. Mike Sokowski, only a few years older than Danny but already the meanest bully in Wyalusing. The other kid was fat and wore clothes a size or two too small for him. Carl's gut hung out from under a stained T-shirt that pulled tight over his belly.

“You deaf, too, retard?” Sokowski asked.

Danny still didn't answer. He looked past the two boys toward Uncle Brett out on bowling lane four. Uncle Brett held a beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and talked with a few of his drinking buddies.

Sokowski and Carl stepped a little closer to Danny, boxing him up against the Spot Bowler game.

“Whatcha got in your hand?” Sokowski sneered.

Danny's hand gripped the nickels tighter. “Nothing.”

“Doesn't look like nothing,” Sokowski said. “Check his hand, Carl.”

Carl did as instructed. He grabbed Danny by the wrist and shoved it hard behind his back. Sokowski took Danny's face and shoved it flat against the panel of glass. Danny could smell the licorice on their breath.

“Just give us the nickels, shithead. You're too stupid to play arcade games,” Sokowski mocked while Carl twisted Danny's arm up higher behind his back, forcing him onto his tiptoes.

The muscles in Danny's shoulder burned hot, and he could feel
them stretched to their limit. A wave of dizziness wrapped around his head like a plastic Halloween mask, causing a feeble moan to escape his lips. The pain was finally too much, and he opened his palm, and the nickels bounced to the linoleum floor. He tried not to, but he started to cry.

Sokowski gave Danny's face a final shove into the panel of glass before letting him go. “Aww, listen to the little pussy cry.” Sokowski chuckled.

Carl snorted like a laughing pig and snatched up the coins.

“Leave him alone, assholes,” a girl's voice demanded.

The boys looked behind them. Mindy Knolls, pigtails tight on the sides of her head, glared right back at them. She was smaller than the two boys, but that didn't matter to her at all. Her skinny chest swam under a shirt that looked like a hand-me-down, and she crossed her bony arms over her stomach, waiting to see what Sokowski and Carl would do next.

“Why don't you go play with your little peckers somewhere?” Mindy said.

The boys knew that they weren't supposed to beat up girls. Besides, Mindy sported two sets of knuckles nicked up from her fair share of fighting and standing toe-to-toe with two older brothers. She clenched both fists down at the sides of her small hips, ready to use them.

“The retard your boyfriend or somethin'?” Carl sneered.

“Shut up, Carl. You want me to tell my daddy that you're picking on Danny? He'll whup your fat ass.”

Carl shut up. They got their nickels. That was enough for him.

But Sokowski wasn't done yet. He pointed to Mindy's chest, snickered a yellow-toothed grin. “Looks like you got two mosquito bites under your shirt. Sure ain't boobs.”

If that rattled Mindy, she didn't let it show. “Sure beats your mosquito pecker.”

Sokowski's grin slipped right away, and his face brightened red. “Wouldn't you like to know?”

“Bet Carl here already knows.”

Sokowski's face burned brighter. He turned his venom back on Danny. “We'll be seeing you around, retard. And next time you won't have any stupid girl to hide behind.” Sokowski cocked his fist, made Danny flinch, then left the arcade room and headed toward the soda machine. Carl snorted again and followed right after him like a little duckling.

Danny's breath still hitched in his chest.

“Don't let 'em get to you, Danny. They're just a couple of stupid pudwhackers.”

Danny wiped away the tears and snot from his face.

“You know, you're as big as they are, Danny. Why don't you just punch them in the face? That'll shut them up good.”

Danny shook his head and rolled his shoulders. “Naw. Couldn't do that.”

“You could. Just
won't,
” Mindy said.

Danny glanced back at the Spot Bowler pinball game and watched the lights flash for a second.

“Wanna go outside?” Mindy asked him.

Danny looked over her shoulder to where Uncle Brett was high-fiving a fellow bowler. “Can't. Not allowed to go outside.”

Mindy followed his gaze. “He's drunk. He ain't gonna notice anything.”

Danny didn't resist as Mindy took his hand and led him through all the cigarette smoke, past the clatter of bowling pins, in between
a group of men drinking bottles of beer by the bar, and out of the bowling alley.

The moon shone nearly full and the sky was as clear as a tall glass of springwater. Moonlight illuminated the seemingly endless rows of dried cornstalks that surrounded the bowling alley and disappeared into black. A wind gently blew, sweeping through the field, filling the cold night air with the sound of swaying stalks. Dried leaves rustled and brushed against one another, creating a soothing whisper song.

Mindy led Danny through the maze of corn, the dull echo of bowling balls colliding with pins a faint rumble behind them. She stopped in the middle of the field and met Danny's gaze. When she smiled, moonlight displayed the wide gap between her two front teeth, big enough to stick a straw through. “I like coming out here at night. I like listening to the corn. Kinda feels like it's talking to me.”

Danny listened, but he didn't hear any voices.

Mindy moved a little closer to Danny. He could smell the soft, flowery scent of her shampoo. She smelled real nice. Pretty and clean. Uncle Brett didn't make Danny take many baths. That kind of stuff was up to Danny to do. Washing his own clothes, brushing his teeth, cleaning his ears, and the like. Danny felt dirty all of a sudden. Aware of the grime that covered him and the bad taste in his mouth. His hand went self-consciously to his own hair. If felt greasy and flat and unclean.

“You ain't scared of me, are you, Danny?”

“Naw.”

“Good.” She picked up a rock and chucked it into the corn. “My daddy says that the accident is what made you slow.”

“Guess so.” Danny looked around him. He wasn't sure which direction was the way back to the bowling alley.

“You remember the accident and everything?”

“Not really. Some of it, I guess.”

She picked up another rock and gave it a toss. “You miss your folks, Danny?”

He nodded and hoped he wouldn't cry in front of Mindy again.

“My grandpa died last year. Grandma says he's up in heaven and it's a better place, but I don't wanna die and be buried in the ground.” Mindy shrugged. “Grandma says that's where we all go if we're good, and then we get to be with our families again.”

Danny didn't know nothing about heaven. He just knew that his mama and papa were put in the ground and covered up with dirt and he wouldn't see them in Wyalusing anymore.

“How's people supposed to get up to the sky if they're in the ground?” he asked.

Mindy shrugged again. “Guess their body stays down here and another part of them goes up to heaven.”

“What part?”

“Beats me.” She pulled a dried ear of corn off its stalk and chucked it up into the sky. Danny watched it get swallowed up into the night and land with a thud somewhere in the field.

“Ever seen a girl's boobs, Danny?”

Danny felt his face redden and hoped Mindy couldn't see him blush.

“My mama's got real big ones. Says that mine will get big like hers one day.”

Danny looked down at the frozen dirt under his feet and toed a rock. He wished he had just stayed in the bowling alley.

“I'll show you my boobs if you show me your thing.”

“Naw. Better not.”

“Why?” Mindy smirked at him and didn't wait for an answer. She pulled up her shirt, exposing a flat chest. Danny looked up for a second. Saw her breasts, then looked down again quickly.

“It's okay to look.” She pushed her denim pants and underwear down to her ankles.

Danny shook his head.

“Come on. It's cold. I won't tell no one.”

He took another quick peek, then tore off running. He ran blindly through the cornstalks. Long, dead leaves smacked against his face. He threw up his hands to deflect the stinging husks of corn from his eyes and searched the rows for the way out. He turned down another endless row, the sound of corn husks whistling past his ears, but it all looked the same.

“Danny!” Mindy yelled from somewhere behind him, but Danny kept on running. His heart thudded in his chest, and he was breathing hard—he didn't run around much like other kids did. Uncle Brett called him a “fat-ass.”

The moon slipped behind some clouds, and the ground beneath him darkened. He kept running. Fast as he could. His sneakers smacked against frozen patches of water on the dirt.

He searched desperately for the lights from the bowling alley but found only darkness and more and more rows of corn. His foot caught on a rock, and he toppled forward. Danny tried to catch his fall, but he landed hard on the ground and rolled across frozen dirt and sharp stones.

He jerked upright and clutched at his knee. His pants were torn open, exposing a bloody gash on his leg. The knee began to throb and sting, but he was more worried about his ripped pants—they were his only pair, and Uncle Brett was sure to get good and sore.
When he touched the rip in his jeans, his fingers came back dark red. Danny stared at his fingertips and he felt something warm and thick drip into the corner of his eye. He blinked through the pain and wiped away the stickiness. More blood poured from an ugly cut on his forehead.

“Danny?!” Mindy called again from out in the darkness.

Danny stumbled to his feet, unsteady at first—then began to run again. Ice crunching under his shoes. The crackling sound of the breaking ice filled the night air. He tried running away from the sound, but it just got louder and louder until that was all he could hear. Breaking ice.

“Danny!” But this time it wasn't Mindy calling his name. It was his mama's voice. “Don't go so far out on the ice!” Danny laughed at her. It was all a game to him. The blades of his skates cut across the ice. He glided faster and faster, craving more speed. The cold wind stung at his face, but it
was exhilarating. For a moment everything seemed perfect. Blades sliding like butter on a skillet. Blue skies overhead. Birds swooping and chirping. The pond just going on and on. Then Danny's laughter cut short by a thunderous cracking sound. Everything shook, and the world below him gave way, and he was sucked into a cold, wet blackness that shocked the breath from his chest. His arms flailed in the water that wrapped around his body like a heavy blanket. Danny opened his mouth, tried to scream, but water sucked down and into his lungs instead and he sank deeper into the black abyss.

The sound of footsteps poked through the darkness.

“Get your ass up, retard!” a boy's voice barked.