Cold (18 page)

The fact was she often imagined leaving North Eicher with strange men.
 
There was the guy from Minnesota.
 
And a man, easily in his late thirties, who had a scar on his right cheek.
 
And a college kid named Jeff, who was in North Eicher working on a road crew for the summer.
 
After one of them checked in, she imagined going down to the room because this guy was funny, that guy was sexy, or this guy was
really
sexy.
 
But she always imagined going to the room for the primary reason:
 
this guy might take her with him.
 
And she would lie for hours on the cot in the office imagining her life in a strange place with this strange man.
 
A perfect stranger.

But she never imagined leaving with someone she knew.

Definitely not Warren.

And now, she realized, she had kept Norman as much a prisoner in her mind as he’d actually been in the facility in Marquette.
 
She could never imagine him out, free.
 
She could never see him come back into her life.
 
It simply wasn’t possible.
 
Yet there he was, sitting behind the wheel of the blue and gray Trooper.

She never imagined that it was possible to run away, to flee with Norman.

Perhaps that’s why she was here in the driveway, her daughter in her arms.
 
She knew that it made no sense to go away with him, that in fact it was dangerous, but that knowledge seemed far off, crowded aside by the moment.
 
It made no sense and she felt she had to act quickly before she talked herself out of going.

Her mother must have thought this too:
 
If I don’t go right now, I’ll never go.

“We’re just going bye-bye,” she said to Lorraine as she continued walking toward the end of the driveway.

“Bye-bye?”
 
Lorraine’s eyes searched Noel’s face, and then she sang, “Bye-
bye!”

•

When they had left the motel, Norman followed her Trooper in the Dodge van and he left it in the parking lot behind Hautamaki’s True Value Hardware.
 
Abandon a vehicle on a county road, a snowplow is going to report it in no time; leave it in a lot where cars come and go all day, it’ll be a while before anyone realizes how long it’s been parked there.
 
Now, sitting behind the steering wheel of the Trooper, Norman wondered again if he should just go.
 
Put it in gear and go, vanish, disappear.
 
If he did, he knew that Noel would cover for him, at least for a while.

And she’d be hurt.

But she’d make up some story about her car so that her father wouldn’t call the police right away.
 
Perhaps Norman would have until the afternoon before anyone realized that he was now driving a Trooper.
 
By then he could be out of the state.
 
With luck, he might get through the border into Ontario.

But that wasn’t why he had returned to North Eicher.
 
He wasn’t
running away.

He was headed in the other direction.
 

Watching the house, he began to wonder if something was keeping Noel from coming back out with the child.
 
He was anxious to see Lorraine.
 
Perhaps Noel’s father was awake—though she assured Norman that he wouldn’t be—and he was already on the phone with the police.
 
Or perhaps he was loading one of his hunting rifles and about to come out of the house firing.
 
Or maybe once Noel was in her father’s house she simply knew that she couldn’t go through with it.
 
For her, this must feel like running away.

When she finally came out the door with the child in her arms, bundled in a red snowsuit, Norman was about to put the vehicle in gear and roll up to the end of the driveway.
 
But halfway down to the road Noel stopped walking.
 
Her face was pale except for the cold blush on her cheeks, and he understood that she still hadn’t quite made up her mind.
 
So he stayed where he was; she had to walk.

She had to decide for herself.

She had to walk away.

She was at
that
moment—just as he had been outside prison, and again standing in front of the jackknifed eighteen-wheeler.
 
He knew he had to leave her alone right now.

He had to wait and that was one thing he’d learned how to do.
 
Wait.

So when she continued down the driveway to the road, speaking now to the child, he knew she had made her choice.
 
He still didn’t put the Trooper in gear.
 
She had to walk all the way to him, get in; then they could go.
 
Together.

•

Del drove Liesl home from Marquette General, and when they were in her driveway, he came around to her door, opened it and helped her get out.
 
Walking on the snow pack wasn’t easy; her back was still stiff, making her balance precarious.
 
When he offered her his arm, she whispered, “Thank you, kind sir.”

Her neighbor’s teenaged daughter Darcy was there, so the house was warm and the teakettle was heating on the stove.
 
Darcy was a plump redheaded girl in a green and gold Green Bay Packers sweatshirt that hung almost to the knees of her jeans.
 
She helped Liesl get set up on the couch with pillows and a blanket, and then went back into the kitchen.

“Darcy was my daughter’s best friend,” Liesl said to Del.
 
She seemed tired from the trip.
 
“Her mother runs the kennel down the road.
 
She’s home-schooling her, so I’m her art teacher and she spends a lot of time working with me here.
 
I know people think I’m the recluse of the northwoods, but that’s not exactly accurate.”

Del walked into the studio and looked at the shelves of clay pieces:
 
eagles, wolves, bears, dozens of pots, bowls and mugs.
 
On the wall there were framed awards and posters advertising her shows in galleries in New York, Chicago and Minneapolis.
 
“I never understand how someone can do this,” he said, his back to her.
 
He was studying the wings of a bald eagle.
 
“See something at a distance and reproduce it on a sheet of paper—or, like this, in three-dimension.”

“Method,” Darcy said, coming out of the kitchen with two steaming mugs of tea.
 
She was obviously mimicking what Liesl had told her many times.
 
“You must first determine what your
method
is, then the image can be
realized.”

 
“I see.”
 
Del came back to the living room as Darcy put the mugs on the coffee table.

“Darcy
realized
these mugs,” Liesl said.

“Yeah, but I got to work on my handles.
 
They’re crooked.”

Del picked up his mug of tea.
 
“Mine seems to be working just fine.”

The girl ignored him as she went over to the chair and picked up a loose pile of clothes.
 
“And I found these on the bathroom floor—
a man’s clothes!
 
Liesl, does this mean that you have a boyfriend?
 
A
lover?”

“I do.”
 
Liesl sipped her tea.
 
“But he melted away in the heat of passion.”

“Or disintegrated,” Darcy said, pinching her nose.
 
“Pee-you.”
 
As she dropped the pile of clothes on the floor next to the chair, a wad of folded notebook paper fell out of one of the pants pockets.

“Let me see that,” Liesl said.

“Love letter?”
 
Darcy went over to the couch and she started to unfold the pages.
 
“Hot, dirty sweet nothings, whispered in your ear?
 
Oh, yes, yes,
yes!
 
I
want
you!
 
I
need
you!
 
I
crave
your, your—”

She started to open the pages but Liesl snatched them out of her hand.
 
“Be gone, pain in the ass, and don’t come back till suppertime.”

“Ha!”
 
Darcy stalked into the kitchen.
 
When she had her coat on she came back to the doorway and said, “You going to make
him
melt
too?”

“Out!”
Liesl said.

Darcy laughed hysterically as she let herself out the kitchen door.

“Thirteen,” Liesl muttered, opening the pages.

Del sipped his tea from the mug, which had a good heft and a slightly crooked handle.

“Those were Norman’s prison pants,” she said.
 
“I gave him some of Harold’s old things.”
 
She looked through the pages until she came to the end.
 
“This is from the girl, from Noel.”

“Read it.”
 
Del sat on the armrest of the chair across the living room.

Liesl stroked her long braid with one hand while she tilted the pages toward the light from the window.
 
“‘Dear Norman,’” she read.
 
“‘I get your letters and put them in a shoe box.
 
I’ve written back but I never send them.
 
I don’t know, I just can’t.
 
I won’t send this to you probably.
 
It’s just that sometimes I get like this and I’m so—” I can’t make out this part.
 
It might be ‘fucked up’?
 
‘I’m so’—yes, it’s fucked up—‘so much of the time now and it just makes me sad thinking of you in there.
 
And I don’t think we’re any better off out here.
 
I thought for a while that I could put it all behind me.
 
Having Lorraine helped me do that, and I suppose to be honest there was a time when I thought that getting married would help me forget too.
 
But things have gotten so strange between me and Warren.
 
I don’t want to go into details.
 
It wouldn’t be fair to you.
 
He doesn’t live here anymore, which is good.
 
I don’t know where he lives really.
 
He just sort of exists, though I think he stays over at Bobby’s house a lot.
 
He still comes around more than I wish.
 
And Daddy may be worse than he was.
 
Warren stopped working for Daddy because something’s happened between them and sometimes when I’m talking to one of them I suddenly get scared because all that stuff up in the woods seems to be getting worse.
 
Sometimes when he’s drunk Daddy starts talking about the old logging camp and about Raymond too, he says he was always one with the bears.”
 
Liesl raised her eyes from the page and said, “All that stuff up in the woods?
 
What old logging camp?”

Del shook his head.

“Raymond?
 
He’s the hunter.”

“Yates.
 
Went missing before Norman’s trial.”

“And ‘one with the bears?’”

“I don’t know,” Del said.

Liesl continued to read:
 
“‘There’s an Asian guy named Woo-San here now and he’s in on something with Daddy.
 
He works days at the motel in the off-season.
 
I usually work nights.
 
But last fall he was up at the lodge for months at time.
 
He’s the new caretaker and I think he lives in Yates’ cabin.
 
I didn’t go up there once during hunting season.
 
Daddy kept me busy here in North Eicher.’”

“Woo-San is now caretaker,” Del said.
 
“Why an Asian?
 
Why not someone who’s familiar with the northwoods?”

“I don’t know.”
 
Liesl turned the page over and read, “‘I’ve written about all this stuff to you before but of course I don’t send it.
 
There’s nothing you could do so why worry you I figure.
 
Maybe I should just go away.
 
I imagine living somewhere else, some city, where I have a job, though I’d really like to go to school some time.
 
Live there until you get out.
 
By then Lorraine would be nearly seven.
 
I think about how we could start—’ there’s something crossed out here,” Liesl said.
 
“‘No.
 
Instead we could go back so that we are like before, like none of this ever happened.
 
When I talk about what we did to you, how we put you in there, Warren just says what happened happened.
 
Like it was written in the Bible or something.
 
I want us to be able to go back to before what happened happened so we could be like that again.
 
But I don’t even think that’s possible though sometimes I do when I read your letters.
 
So I just save them and I write back to you like I am right now and I never mail them to you.
 
I wish you could just somehow
know.
 
Just know how I wish what happened had never happened no matter what Warren says.
 
Or what my father thinks.
 
He thinks everybody gets what they deserve and so you ought to be where you are.
 
I wish you would just know how sorry I am and how scared I get sometimes lately.
 
I wish you would lie beside me on these long cold nights.
 
I wish you would know what Lorraine looks like.
 
Maybe I’ll send you a photo?
 
But that might be hard, looking at her picture all the time.
 
I just don’t know.
 
This is just so stupid I’m going to stop now.
 
Maybe I’ll send it so you can see how bad things are with me.
 
But I won’t.
 
It wouldn’t do any good.
 
I hope you’re well and that you continue to remember how it was before.
 
Love, Noel.’”
 
Liesl laid the pages in her lap and picked up her mug of tea.
 
“She was ‘fucked up’ when she wrote this, so much so that she sent this one.”