Cold (24 page)

“You know that’s fucking Raymond’s doing,” Warren had said.

“So?” Pronovost said.

“So he’s torching one of your cabins.
 
We got to do something about it.”

They were passing a bottle of Jack Daniels.
 
It had been a good day, except for the thing with Raymond.
 
Pronovost took the bottle from Warren and said, “It’s just an old cabin in the woods.
 
There are others.
 
Doesn’t mean anything.
 
Raymond’s hunted these woods over forty years.
 
When someone requests a guide, he’s the first one I call.
 
Some of my best customers come back every year just to hunt with him.
 
He’s the best there is.
 
He’s got no family and he loves his dogs.
 
This old cabin doesn’t mean anything.
 
He knows that.”

Warren said, “It means everything.”

“No,” Pronovost said.
 
“It means we’re drunk and he’s drunk and there were some unexpected expenses incurred during the business transaction.
 
When he sobers up, he’ll understand that that’s the end of it.”

“We ought to go in there and track Raymond down,” Warren said.

“And do what?” Norman said.
 
At that point he still believed he understood Pronovost’s logic most of the time.
 
“You
going to catch him—how?
 
And if you catch him, what do you
do
to him?”

Warren yanked the bottle out of Norman’s hand while he was still drinking.
 
Bourbon ran down his chin and neck and soaked his shirt—it was warm enough that he was wearing a T-shirt.
 
“Fuck Raymond Yates,” Warren said.
 
“What you do is go down that logging road till you find his truck full of dogs.
 
You want to pay Raymond back you torch that dog pen he’s got in the back of his truck.
 
Let him listen to those dogs howl.”
 
Warren took a drink and held the bottle out to Pronovost as though it were a challenge.

“We’re not burning anybody’s truck full of dogs.”
 
Pronovost ignored the bottle and started walking back toward the lodge.

Norman worked his way diagonally down the snow-covered embankment and walked around the frozen pool.
 
Though it was iced over, he could hear running water underneath.
 
He passed the rectangle in the snow and continued on until he came to the next cabin in a stand of birch.
 
Part of one wall still stood above the snow.
 
That first night, the first cabin torched was one thing; Pronovost would let that go—but this cabin, burned the second night, changed things.
 
It was no longer a matter of an angry drunk hunter mourning a few good dogs.
 
It was something that could get out of hand and draw attention to the whole thing—the bear had been taken illegally.
 
As far as Pronovost was concerned, if a man can get close enough to a bear, he has the right to take it, regardless of what the Department of Natural Resources says about seasons and lotteries for bear hunting permit.
 
He hated the DNR and would not acknowledge that their regulations applied to his land.
 
But a man starts burning cabins in the woods, it’s going to draw attention to itself eventually.

So Pronovost arranged a meeting and he sent Norman out to Yates’ cabin.
 
Though it was warm and humid, Yates stood on his front porch in a heavy flannel shirt buttoned up to his throat.

Norman sensed that to even get out of the truck would be undiplomatic.
 
“Pronovost wants to settle up, straighten things out before somebody burns down the entire woods from here to Lake Superior.”

Yates was hung over and he gazed past the truck into the woods.
 
“You want to guide, you want to learn to guide?”

The question surprised Norman.
 
“Yeah.”

Yates scratched his beard.
 
He had that look some men get when they think they’re explaining the obvious.
 
They seem almost happy about it, but you know they’re really just pissed off.
 
“All gonna change, you watch.
 
Pronovost has big plans.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Won’t be no need for guides.
 
Hunting out here’s gonna go the way of that old sawmill out there.
 
Same thing, really, sawyers, hunters—just end up some old black and white photos like he’s got on the walls up there at the lodge.”

“I don’t know about that, but I’ll tell you something,” Norman said.
 
“A hunting party’s flying up from Chicago.”

“Those aren’t hunters.”

Well, they want you to guide tomorrow.”

Yates worked his tongue over the corner of his lower lip where he’d stuffed a wad of tobacco.
 
He leaned over and spit black juice off the porch.

“And Noel’s driven out from North Eicher and she’s cooking venison steaks outside on the grill tonight.”

Yates’ eyes drifted over Norman a moment.
 
The man liked his venison.

He came up to the lodge that night and Pronovost gave Yates two puppies as a peace offering.
 
By the time everyone sat down to dinner in the Great Room they were all drunk and friendly.

Beyond the second cabin there was a long low hill.
 
Norman took the logging road down along a ravine strewn with a lot of deadfall.
 
It was beginning to get dark in the woods, though the sky was still light above the hill.
 
The new snow seemed illuminated from underneath by a soft light of its own; there were no shadows, no colors, only variations of gray.
 
It was the time of day where there was perfect clarity, and Norman always wished you could just stop things right there.
 
But by the time he reached the old logging camp on the far side of the hill the light was fading away.
 
Across a small clearing stood the remains of one long brick building, the sawmill.
 
Part of the roof had collapsed and one end wall had caved in, causing the whole structure to lean to the left as if pushed by some invisible force.

Norman entered the building through a gap in the brick wall.
 
He practically knew Noel’s letter by heart.
 
It seemed to confirm what Raymond Yates had said.
 
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.
 
It has to do with the woods and I can’t explain it really.
 
They mention the old sawmill like it was some kind of code.
 
And the line that had haunted him for months:
 
He’s out there in the logging camp.
 
He’s one with the bears now.

Norman worked his way down the length of the building.
 
There were chutes and conveyors, an elaborate system designed to turn logs into building materials—along one wall were large bins, some still marked:
 
Clear, #1 Select, Moulding.
 
But after being idle for decades the roof and sections of brick wall had caved in, allowing shafts of cold sunlight to angle down to the dirt floor.
 
The far end of the building was nearly dark and there was an open area where the roof had not yet fallen in; his eye was drawn toward something that glinted there—a small round spot of light winking on and off.
 
He circled piles of rubble and crouched under collapsed beams until he saw that the glinting light came from a small metal disk.
 
Quite suddenly he realized that a system of black lines loomed above him at least ten feet high.

Iron bars.

He walked on until he was sure that it was a large cage at least twenty feet deep.
 
Still he couldn’t make out what caused the glinting and, removing his glove, he took hold of the metal disk.
 
The padlock was cold in his hand.
 
When he let go, the clang of metal resounded up through the iron structure.

•

Warren parked on Linden Street and walked a block over to Tom’s Party Store.
 
Through the plate glass he could see Pete behind the counter, stocking the shelves with pint bottles.
 
Otherwise, the store was empty.
 
Pete’s Camaro was parked next to the building, back by the dumpster.
 
Warren crossed the street and approached the small cinder block building from the side so that he couldn’t be seen from inside the store.

He pulled a long wool sock out of his coat.
 
When he was stationed in San Diego, he and his shipmates went down to Tijuana often.
 
Besides the bars and the women, they liked the Sunday afternoon bullfights in Tijuana de Playa.
 
They would sit in the
del sol
section and buy beer from vendors, who carried the bottles in a galvanized bucket full of chunks of ice.
 
One afternoon the crowd was displeased with a succession of matadors and there was a riot.
 
Though the bulls had been killed it apparently had not been done correctly.
 
The sailors soon became the focus of the hostile crowd in their section of the seats.
 
None of them had brought weapons across the border.
 
They bought a bucketful of ice from one of the vendors who had sold all his beer; each sailor filled a sock with chunks of ice and used them to get out of the arena.
 
Now, standing next to the party store, Warren loaded the long wool sock up with chunks of icicle that had fallen off the roof of the party store.
 
He went up to the passenger door of Pete’s Camaro and broke the window with the sock.
 
After unlocking and opening the door, he felt around under the bucket seats, and then he checked the glove compartment.
 
There was no vial; there was no gun.

Behind him an oblong of light spilled across the parking lot.
 
Warren turned around and saw Pete’s silhouette in the doorway.

“The
fuck
you do to my
car?”
 
Pete came out into the lot, blocking more of the light from the store.

“You got something of mine,” Warren said.
 
“You got my stuff, you got my gun, all because you and your shithead friend were shy twenty bucks.
 
This crap has to stop and it ain’t going to end on me, I promise you that.”

“Look at my car!”

Warren swung the sock and the ice made a hard, hollow sound when it connected with the Pete’s skull.
 
He went down on all fours and Warren worked his back and sides good until the ice started to break up into smaller pieces.
 
When he stopped, Pete was lying on his side, whimpering.
 
Warren knelt down and put his mouth close to Pete’s ear.
 
“But who needs guns, right?
 
They’re for chickens.
 
But you’ll thank me for those pills because it fucking hurts so bad when you piss blood for weeks at a time.”

Standing up, he tossed the sock into the open dumpster and walked away.

•

Liesl was dozing on the couch when Del called.
 
He said he was in a motel in North Eicher and that he’d just eaten dumplings, hot and sour soup and chicken fried rice, washed down with a can of Vernors Ginger Ale.
 
Norman and the girl were gone, it seemed, and Del had decided to spend the night before returning to Yellow Dog.
 
While he spoke, Liesl stared into her studio at the clay bust she’d worked on for nearly an hour.
 
She’d started with the brows; somehow it seemed necessary to get the forehead and brows right before anything else.
 
In the kitchen, Darcy was boiling pasta, and the house smelled of damp clay, tomatoes, onion and garlic.

Liesl said, “I think it’s real love.
 
Maybe Norman and the girl will get away.
 
Maybe the world will let them go.”

 
“Doubt it,” Del said.
 
“This weather’s on their side, but it won’t last.”
 
He paused a moment, and she realized she liked the way he would take a moment to consider what he was going to say next.
 
Too often men just went on and on.
 
“I don’t know where to look next.
 
Norman and the girl were here last night, I think, but they’re long gone.
 
State police haven’t seen anything either.
 
I’m sorry.
 
I know you don’t want to see him hunted down, but I don’t know where to look now.
 
There’s not exactly a manhunt going on out here.
 
It’s just too damned cold for that.”

“Don’t apologize.”

“Well, I have to tell you something,” he said.

“No, you don’t.
 
Really.
 
Describing your dinner washed down with Vernors was a remarkably personal revelation and I wouldn’t want you to overdo it.”