Cold (12 page)

“You two are as bad as my brother and me when we were little shits.
 
I mean
really.
 
I was bigger and I’d always pin him down and tell him to give, and finally he’d say ‘give’ and I’d get up and walk away because it was over, but then he’d jump on my back or something and start strangling me—because he never understood what it meant to be over.
 
Done.”
 
He tucked the gun back in his pocket and started for the door.

Pete didn’t move from in front of the door.
 
Warren stopped and looked at the kid’s broad chest.

“What’re you doing?” Buck asked.
 
“You’re just going to leave?”

“I should have walked out of here five minutes ago.
 
Now tell this guy to get the fuck out of the way.”

“Pete,” Buck said.
 
“Come on, Pete.”

Warren shifted his weight.

“Pete.”

After a moment, Pete stepped aside.
 
Warren opened the door and paused.
 
“Don’t ever pull this crap again,” he said without raising his head.
 
“And Buck?
 
Next time you come by yourself.”
 
He went outside and, as he walked to his car, he leaned to his right, into the snow and wind.

•

When Liesl awoke she had no idea how much time had passed.
 
The pain wasn’t so immediate; it was kept at a distance by the morphine.
 
She lay perfectly still.
 
Still body, still mind; this was, she knew, the necessary first step.
 
Her recovery after the car accident was slow and required such stillness.
 
After Harold and Gretchen had been buried, she tried to maintain the stillness in her mind, even as she became more active physically.
 
When she worked on her house, when she sculpted or shaped pots on the wheel.
 
She had come to believe that over the years she had been able to think through her hands as she worked with clay.
 
The curve of the spinning clay changed subtly beneath her fingers, until she found the form that she saw in her mind.
 
But it went further.
 
She came to believe, after years of working, that there was a union between her mind and the clay, that each piece sought its own shape, and she was only there to witness the discovery.
 
It was a form of predestination, and it was her job to help the clay find that form, using her mind, her eyes, her hands.
 
That predestined form was what she believed people saw when they looked at her finished pieces, when they complimented her on them.
 
Many times she’d watched someone, in a gallery or at a crafts show, examine her work.
 
It was as though they were looking for something they’d lost, and they knew they’d recognized it as soon as they saw it again.
 
Usually, when the person chose a piece to buy, they would often seem assured, saying, “This is it.
 
This is the one.”

But there were times when this stillness overwhelmed her.
 
She would be frozen in time for only a few moments; then she would continue with what she’d been doing.
 
And sometimes she would be incapacitated for days, even weeks.
 
The first years after the accident the stillness came in long waves, and she learned to recognize the signs, to anticipate and even prepare for the peak of their cycle.
 
And the better she became at anticipation the better she became at controlling the stillness.
 
She could not avoid it or fend it off, though sometimes she thought she could encourage it to go away sooner than it wanted.
 
The trick was not to fight it but to ease it on through.
 
Let it pass.
 
In recent years she had learned to live with the stillness, and in doing so it seemed to visit her less.

Now it gripped her mind so that all she could do was continue to stare at the place where the linoleum floor disappeared under the radiator.
 
There she could see the smallest straight line, perhaps an inch long, left by the knife that had been used to cut the linoleum in and around the foot of the radiator.
 
And she just wanted to close her eyes; she just wanted to be horizontal so that all effort, all strain, all exertion was removed from her body.
 
For just one moment she wanted to be weightless.
 
She wanted to float in darkness.

The constable was standing in the doorway.
 
“How’re you doing?”

She had no idea how long he’d been there.
 
Somehow his expression suggested that her stillness had been revealed.
 
It took her a moment to remember his name.
 
“It’s better, Del Maki.
 
They want to send me home.
 
Would you put me down a bit?”

He adjusted the bed so that she could no longer see the linoleum under the radiator.
 
Handing her the sheet of paper again, he said, “I think you were a little preoccupied before to make a definite ID.”

She looked at the mug shots of Norman Haas.
 
“That’s him.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”
 
He didn’t seem pleased.
 
He didn’t have any more questions, and she realized he wasn’t telling her everything.
 
“What?” she asked.

Pulling the one chair over next to the bed, he sat down and leaned forward so that his arms rested on his knees.
 
“There’s a report of a jackknifed truck.
 
We don’t have many details yet.
 
Only that the cab burned badly, and there were two men in it.
 
They won’t be identified without some lab work done, but I think he was one of them.”

“Where?”

“Headed toward North Eicher.
 
He was from there.”

“I know,” she said.
 
“He said he might just go home.”
 
She tried to read what was written under Norman’s mug shots, but the morphine made it difficult for her to follow the text.
 
There were statistics—height, weight, eye color, race—but they seemed to have nothing to do with the man who had appeared outside her house in the blizzard.
 
She said, “He looked older than twenty-five.”
 
Closing her eyes, she said, “I wonder what we’d be like if the automobile hadn’t been invented.”

Some time passed; she wasn’t sure how long.
 
She kept her eyes closed as the tears streamed down her cheeks.

Opening her eyes, she saw that she had crumpled the piece of paper in her hands. “Confused,” she whispered.
 
“Not criminal.
 
Norman seemed confused.”
 
She turned her head slowly on the pillow until she could see Del Maki’s face.
 
“He had a girlfriend.
 
I don’t know—I got the sense she meant a lot to him, that she still does.”
 
She wiped a tear from her cheek.

“This is something.”
 
Del Maki took a tissue from the box on the nightstand and handed it to her.
 
“He left you for dead in the snow and you’re crying.”

“But don’t you see?
 
He gave me Vlad the Impaler.”
 
Del tilted his head; it was clear he didn’t know what she was talking about.
 
“It was this ‘theory’ he had that he tried to use to get through prison.
 
He gave it to me and I tried to use it when I was lying out there in the snow.
 
I tried to use it against the pain.
 
It worked.
 
He gave it to me and it worked.”

She handed him the tissue.
 
His hand was warm and dry, and something in his face revealed that he was embarrassed.
 
“I don’t know about any theory,” he said.
 
“But not everyone would feel this way about someone who left them for dead.”

“You think it’s odd?”

“Let’s just say it’s unusual.”

•

It was slow at the Deer Run Motel, even for a weeknight in January.
 
There was more weather coming, so there was hardly any traffic from the west.
 
A trucker who checked in said Route 2 was closed between Iron Mountain and Duluth.

A little after eight, while Noel was checking in a couple from Manistique, Warren came into the office and sat in one of the lounge chairs so he could watch his reflection in the plate glass window.
 
He often did this, ever since he’d moved out of their apartment.
 
Usually he would just sit there, not saying a word to her.
 
Once or twice, when he was really drunk, he’d nod off in the chair.
 
When they’d first been married, he would sometimes come in with the baby; he was okay with Lorraine then, it seemed.
 
But he was overbearing and it frightened the child.
 
Noel would give him a key and he’d take Lorraine down to a room, put her to bed and watch television.
 
Sometimes, in the early morning hours, he’d call the front desk and talk Noel into coming to the room, where they’d make love quietly to the flickering light of the TV with the mute on and the sound of the child’s breathing rising from the other bed.
 
They rarely touched each other in their apartment anymore, and soon she didn’t let him near her at all.

Now, once the couple from Manistique had left the office, Warren continued to stare at the plate glass.
 
She could smell peppermint schnapps.
 
He had a cigarette in his mouth, but it wasn’t lit.

“Eighty dollars,” he said finally.

“What about eighty dollars?”

“They couldn’t get it up.”

“Warren, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He didn’t speak for a while.
 
Once, several months ago, he’d come in after the bars had closed and he was angry.
 
She had no idea what he was talking about; some argument he’d had in The Blue Antler.
 
He was pacing around the office, shouting at times, so finally, when he refused to leave, she called her father.
 
He left before Daddy arrived.
 
She didn’t see Warren for several weeks after that, and when he did come in again he acted as though nothing had happened.
 
She told him not to come to the motel any more; but he still did; she knew he would, and she knew she couldn’t call Daddy every time.
 
Since that one time though he’d usually just sit, maybe drink some of the complimentary coffee, which he spiked with schnapps.
 
He often didn’t say anything to her and after a while would leave.

“Where are you living now?” she asked.

“Where?”
 
He thought it over.
 
“I stay over at Bobby’s house usually.
 
Now there’s a guy with an understanding wife.
 
When they split up she had the decency to leave Michigan so he still has a house.”
 
He raised his head so that she knew he was watching her reflection in the plate glass.
 
“It worry you that Norman’s out?”

She only stared back at his reflection in the glass.

“I’d be if I were you,” he said.
 
“Look what happened to Raymond Yates—disappeared and nobody’s heard from him since.”

“You think that’s Norman’s doing.”

“Yes, I think it’s Norman’s doing.
 
But I’m not so sure you’re worried.
 
Marquette’s what, over an hour’s drive from here?
 
In decent weather.
 
He’s walking.
 
And there’s a blizzard.”
 
He took out his matches and lit his cigarette.
 
“I think that you’re pulling for him.
 
Hoping that somehow he’ll get out and stay out.
 
Maybe come and find you.
 
I read his letters.”

“I don’t want to talk about any letters.”

“I guess the real question is—what did you say in
your
letters.”

“What letters?”

“You’ve sent him letters since he’s been inside.”

She didn’t say anything.

“He still loves you.”
 
Warren got out of the lounge chair.
 
He stood with his back to her for a moment, and then came over to the counter.
 
“Unfucking real.
 
You help put him away for
years
—and he
still
loves you.
 
Not a lot of women can pull that off, you know?”