Lamb (20 page)

“You’re sure?”

“What else will we do?”

“No,” he said. “You’re right. You’re sort of a step ahead of me.” He grinned at her.

She ran her palm up against her nose and sniffled. “It’s no big deal,” she said. “It’ll be like camping.”

“In the bunk room?”

“Yes.”

“And I’ll come visit you when it’s safe, right?”

“Okay.”

“And you can go out this side door to pee. Right?”

“Okay.”

“And when you know we’re out in the cabin—you’ll know because I’ll leave that little desk light on as a signal. You know the desk light on the workbench? I’ll leave it on when it’s safe for you to come
out and raid the fridge, by which I mean the cooler, right?”

“Okay.”

He lifted her chin and kissed her mouth. “You’ll still call me Gary, won’t you? Promise me you will. Promise me you always always will.”

“Why?”

“Because no one else in the world calls me Gary. You’re the only one who knows me this way. Like I’m the only one who knows you as Emily. They’re our true names. If you could see through my flesh”—he took her hand and put it on his chest—“Gary would be the name written across my heart.” He kissed her on the temple and the forehead and the mouth. “You were wonderful.” He kissed. “You saved us, do you know that? Just like you said you would. And we have luck on our side. I want to tell you something, okay? Something I’ve never told anyone in my life.”

“What?” She sat up a little and looked at him.

“I’m telling you this so you’ll understand how precious you are to me. It’s about my brother.”

“You have a brother?”

“Three brothers.”

“Oh.”

“You won’t tell anybody about this, will you, Tom? You’ll give me your word?”

She nodded.

“My littlest brother, Tommie. He disappeared.”

“Where?”

“Nobody knows. He was just your age, just a little bit older. He was twelve.”

“He was kidnapped?”

Lamb was whispering now. “I don’t know, we never knew. He used to sleep behind the gas station, in his sleeping bag.”

“Why?”

“Our house was kind of a sad place. I think you know how that can be. And one morning he just … didn’t show up. Didn’t come back.”

“Not ever?”

“Not ever.”

She was quiet a moment.

And look. The two days that Lamb and Linnie and Tom spent arranged in this way—the dark early mornings with Tommie in the bunk room, she in her beautiful nightgown and he in his big sheepskin coat; breakfast with Linnie back in the cabin, back in the fold-out couch—the AM radio and eating canned sausages and mandarin oranges with their fingers; the evenings of sitting with Linnie beside the fire in the cold, sharing a cigarette in the dark, the smell of snow and cold dirt and dead grass in the wind; running a piece of chocolate or a kiss or a surprising mouthful of whiskey to the girl in her snug little sleeping bag nest. So much love
all over everyone—they were sweet days for everybody. Any one of them would tell you so.

It was late afternoon and already dark when Linnie and Lamb woke on the fold-out couch under piles of blankets and the heavy throw rug he’d pulled over the top of all of it. She sat up and looked out the window behind them.

“Hey,” Lamb said, “why don’t you lie still and let a man sleep.”

“There’s someone out there on your road. Actually, two someones.”

David sat up beside her and they watched a white suburban follow a black jeep.

“They’re going to Foster’s.”

“The old man?”

“His wife is dying down there.”

“Oh. How sad.”

“She’s all hooked up to machines and in the same bed all the time. I’ve seen him wash her face with a bowl of soapy water and a washcloth.”

“So sad.”

“Sometimes the caretaker goes first. Know what that means?”

“What?”

“I’m going to have to find some backup girls to assist me on my deathbed.”

“Oh, please, you act like you’re an old man.”

“I am an old man.”

“You are not.”

Lamb got up and poured some of the steel-cold river water outside the door into the enamel coffeepot and set it on the woodstove. He opened the door and turned the wood, added another piece.

“Do you think they need help with something? Seems like a lot of activity, doesn’t it?” She was up on her knees looking out at the road, the blankets pulled up around her shoulders.

“What I think,” he said, and tore off the rug and the blankets one at a time to reveal her, bare and shivering on the dusty threadbare couch, “is that there’s a cold front moving in.”

“Yeah, you think?” She reached across the couch for one of the blankets in his hand.

“We’ll get the first big snow. It’s time,” he said and appraised the sky. “Maybe they’re just stocking up down there, having the visiting nurse come in and straighten up camp and make sure everything’s in working order before the snow falls.”

Clouds drooped and condensed and there was a wet white circle of vapor around the sun.

“Think we’ll get snowed in?”

“Maybe, if it drifts. It’s covered up the windows before.”

“Snow cave.”

“We’ll gather up all the blankets on the property and load them up on our bed, and board up the bathroom window, right?”

“Okay.”

“I have a lot of stock in the shop. We’ll bring in piles of it so we don’t have to move from the stove here.”

Lamb and Linnie watched the front come in, the clouds sagging and seeming to fall between them and on top of the cabin and shop. While they ate their canned stew and pan-fried biscuits in the cabin, the wind finally stopped. The tree outside the window went completely still. The constant rush and clatter of the wind went dead, and the snow came. It came light and gently and fell straight down like gauzy curtains and it was thick and heavy and wet—odd snow for fall in the mountains. A low groan rumbled around them. Thunder and snow. Lamb shook his head and held Linnie on the pull-out couch before the window.

“It’s wonderful. It looks like the lightning is going to touch the ground.”

“Because we’re so high up.”

“Can’t I come live with you and be your love?”

“You’d get tired of it out here. There’s nothing to do.”

“You’d be here.”

“Oh, you. Come here.”

The night was mild, the snow poured like still pools of white milk into the ditches and over the dirt road and in every crack and crevice until everything was blue-white in the dark. Lamb did not leave Linnie’s side all night, trusting his girl to sleep tight and warm in the shop. In the small hours the wind picked up again and swept all the snow clouds south and east and what snow had fallen piled up in drifts against the shop and cabin and across the road.

It was only just past dark, very early in the morning, when they were both awakened by a knock at the door. Lamb pulled on his Levi’s and peeked out and opened the door. A fine smoke of snow blew in at foot level. When he opened the door the man spoke in a low voice, and it was for Lamb as though his head was filling up with snow, his thinking brain temporarily blanked out, eclipsed by the sudden flash of danger.

“She had the fire built up good in the shed and swore she was all right,” the man said, indicating Tommie, “but she looked a little bugged out to me.”

Tommie glanced up at Lamb, her face very still and her lips white. “My stomach hurts,” she said.

Lamb stumbled as he opened the door wider, looking back into the room at Linnie, who was wrapped in the blanket and the rug. She sat up straight but could not move. She was not wearing any clothes. Unthinking, he opened his arms to the girl and she went to him, teary and dead silent.

“Stomachache like you’ll throw up?”

She shook her head in his flannel shirt.

“Dad said you had a snowplow we might use. Didn’t think you’d be awake, thought I’d return it later this morning.”

“Oh,” Lamb said, smiling and looking stupidly from the man to Linnie, ignoring the girl now. “Oh good. Yes, sure.”

“Is she okay?” the man asked Lamb, and suddenly Linnie saw that, somehow, this child was Lamb’s and did not belong to the man at the door. She was the ghost, the dead girl, the girl swept off the swing set. Linnie’s mouth went sour and her limbs went hot and liquid and when she spoke she heard her voice as if it were coming from someone else, someone outside of her.

“Who is that, David?”

He made a sheepish face. “Linnie, this is my niece.”

“Emily?”

Lamb gave Linnie an odd smile. “That’s right.”
Lamb raised his index finger at Linnie to shush her and turned to the man at the door. Linnie stood, the blankets and rug wrapped around her, and immediately sat down again. She looked at the child not with sympathy or concern but with rage. The girl did not look at Linnie.

“It’s a not a shed,” the girl said. “There’s a whole bedroom.”

Linnie stared at her.

“That’s right,” Lamb said. “Bunk beds and books and blankets and snacks.” He looked down at the child and smiled at her, then winked at the man in the doorway.

“Everything’s okay here, then?” the man asked again.

“Sure, we’re great,” David said, and he wrapped Tommie in an afghan and sat her on the edge of the pull-out couch beside Linnie. The two did not look at each other. Tommie’s eyes were fixed to the cabin floor and Linnie’s upon Lamb.

“What about you? Are you down at the Fosters’?”

The man outside the door finally extended his hand. “I’m Emory Foster. My mother passed away day before yesterday.”

“Oh.” David shifted his eyes and his weight. “I’m sorry to hear that. It must hurt.” He ignored Linnie and Tommie completely now, kept his eyes and
attention entirely upon the man. “How is your father doing? Can we help?”

“Well, actually he asked me if I’d come down here and just let you know. My wife’s up there with him now, and we’ll be expecting Doug Michaels—the county coroner—an old family friend. He’ll be along shortly.”

“Okay.”

“We just got a couple drifts in the drive and”—he looked out behind him at the road—“I think most of this will clear up through the day, but I can plow us a straight line from here to the house while I’m at it.”

“Please. Go right ahead. Or”—he touched his chest—“do you want me to do it? Maybe you want to be inside with your father and wife?”

“Oh, no. Little air will do me good. I’d appreciate it. I’ll bring back a second cleared line when I return the plow. Make it easier on Doug that way.”

“Well.” Lamb looked for the first time at Linnie and Tommie, then back to Emory. “Fact is we were all planning on shipping out today.”

Tommie and Lamb glanced at each other.

“We were just going to make a family breakfast the three of us and ship out.”

Emory nodded. “Okay. Well, I’ll do this right away and get back case you need it too.” He looked back
again, at the girl, and at Linnie. “Though I think it’ll clear up pretty quick.”

“It’s a bright sun at this altitude.”

“It is.”

“Emory.” Lamb extended his hand again. “I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks.” He leaned into the house and waved. “Good to meet you, Emily. Hope you’re feeling better soon.”

She looked at the man in the doorway but said nothing.

Emory Foster pushed the snowplow from the drive up the road into the jewelry of early winter. Lamb stooped down and asked the child if she wanted hot chocolate, then asked if the fire was still going in the shed. Linnie sat frozen in place while Lamb put on his boots to walk Tommie outside. As he was stepping out into the snow, he turned back.

“You want some hot chocolate too, Linnie?”

“Sure. No. David?”

“I’ll be right back. It’s a bit of an odd situation but everybody’s okay, I’ll tell you in a minute. I just want to see about her stomach and make sure she doesn’t have a fever. She’s been sick. I didn’t want you getting sick.”

“You didn’t even say.”

“It’s okay. Everybody’s okay. I’ll be right back.” And he pulled the door shut and went back out into the shop with Tommie.

And they hadn’t a minute alone again—not David and Linnie nor Linnie and the girl. David explained he really should take the girl back to her mother, her fever had broken but she wasn’t well and the time they were going to spend out here fishing and camping had pretty much been snowed out. Her father—my little brother Nel, he explained—died years ago and it had fallen to Lamb to be the occasional father figure.

“She never remarried?”

“She tried once—twice, actually—but it was no good.”

“Sad.”

“It is. You would’ve liked Nel.”

“How much younger was he?”

“Four years.”

“Oh.”

“He was a blondie.”

“I’m sorry, David. I didn’t know.”

“Let’s reschedule this for … first of the year, you and me. We’ll rent something with big wheels and come back out, right? Drive through the nineteen feet of snow.”

“I’d love that.”

“This seems like a bad time doesn’t it. Emily sick, Foster’s wife suddenly gone, unexpected snow. Let’s all get home. I’ll take the girl back to her mother.”

“It’s Chicago?”

“Michigan. Muskegon.”

“Ah.”

“Her mother drove her to Chicago, but I’ll take her all the way back up.” Linnie nodded.

“David.”

“Lin.”

“Why the story? About the kid who disappeared?”

He lifted his chin, a thin-lipped smile on his face, as if to convince the day around him that he was smiling and not about to sob again like a boy. There’d been enough of that.

“Now that we can be … you know … closer, you’ll learn more about my family.”

“And you mine,” she said. “But I don’t understand.”

“Be patient with me, Lin. Please. I need that from you.”

She was quiet a moment and studied him. He smiled.

“Excuse me just a minute, will you?”

Lamb went to the girl in the shop to help her gather up her own things while Linnie packed up her car.

•  •  •

“We get the afternoon together,” he told Tommie.

“We do?”

“And the night. And tomorrow. And the next day. Our last day.”

“Three days?”

“We’ll have you home on day twenty. That’s almost four times as long as we originally said.”