Cold (4 page)

“Where’s the road?” he asked finally.
 
“I don’t see a clearing down there.”

“It’s on the other side of that hill.”

“You didn’t mention a second hill.”

“Didn’t I?”

“So, it’s going to be like that?” he said, nodding.

“Like what?”

“All my life it seems people tell half of what they know.
 
I believe ‘em—then suddenly they tell me there’s another hill.”
 
Norman took a bite of chocolate.
 
“What kind is this?”

“Semi-sweet.
 
It’s one of my favorite things to eat.”

“We don’t get this in prison.”

“I used to eat a great deal, particularly in winter.
 
Harold and I were both large people.
 
My jaw was fractured in the accident and my mouth was wired shut for a long time.
 
I couldn’t eat solid food and I lost nearly sixty pounds.
 
I don’t eat like I used to, but in cold weather like this I love semi-sweet chocolate.”
 
She turned her head so she could see around the edge of her hood with one eye.
 
He had the blue wool cap pulled taut over his skull so his ears were completely covered.
 
He raised a gloved hand and tugged his cap farther down his forehead, so it came over his eyebrows.
 
There was something about his eyes that was alert, even startled.
 
She got out her cigarettes and after several attempts they both got one lit.
 
“Norman, what do you mean you ‘sort of’ beat your girlfriend?”

“I don’t know what I did for certain,” he said.
 
“I was really fucked up.
 
Told you, my brother Warren deals a little so I always had access.
 
No question I was thoroughly whacked out.
 
Noel and I were engaged, but then I found her—you know.”

“With your brother.”

“Yeah.
 
Warren.
 
A few weeks before the wedding, we were all out at this old lodge her father owns.
 
He takes hunting and fishing parties out there—mostly businessmen from Detroit and Chicago—and we all worked for him.
 
We drove ‘em in and out of there, cooked, kept the fire going, kept the assholes happy.
 
When the season was over Warren, Noel and I stayed on a few days and partied.
 
I found them in the woods, going at it in a storage shed.
 
Warren and I never got along so good.
 
He’s a couple years older and here he was doing my girlfriend and I—I did what they say I did, I guess.
 
I knocked her around, and then Warren and I really got into it.
 
I really don’t remember too clear.
 
I went off into the woods and that’s when I shot this hunting guide Raymond Yates—and, like I said, I had a bad day.”

 
“He die?”

“No.”

“I suppose it was self-defense.”

“It wasn’t like they said.”

“How was it?”

“Yates was hunting me.
 
When Noel’s father came back to the lodge and found what I did to her, he sent Yates out after me.
 
But—”
 
Norman hesitated a long moment and Liesl wasn’t sure if he was going to continue.
 
“Strange thing,” he said finally, “is that before my trial began Yates disappeared.
 
He never testified at my trial and if he did I don’t think things would have gone so bad.
 
Yates was okay, really, a true hunter, and I was just beginning to learn to guide from him.
 
So Noel’s father, he got their lawyer to make a big deal about how if I hadn’t been let out on bail until the trial Yates would still be around.”

“What happened to Yates?”

“Told you, he disappeared.”

“Never came back?
 
Never was found?”

“Nope.
 
They kept suggesting at the trial that I had something to do with that.
 
Couldn’t pin it on me but it was enough to convince the judge to nail me good.”
 
Norman adjusted the cap around his ears.
 
“I should’ve left Noel alone.
 
If I was going to get sent away, I should’ve just gone after my brother, period.”

“Where are they now?”

“Oh, they got married and were living like I never existed, but I hear that they’ve split up now.
 
Guess they thought that getting married would make it all right what they did to me, but it didn’t work out that way.”

“If you had managed to escape, I mean, to really get out of the woods, what would you do?”

“I don’t know.
 
I didn’t really have a plan.
 
I mean, my escaping was something that I just did, right then.
 
I’m what they call a trustee.
 
It’s the Level Fives, the crazies, that they keep really locked up.
 
Nobody has contact with them except the guards.
 
A bunch of us trustees were unloading supplies in the kitchen, then we were told that one of the trucks got stuck in the snow on the road out to 41, so we went out to dig and push the thing out.
 
The snow became an absolute whiteout, and I suddenly realized I could just walk into the woods and no one would notice right off.
 
So I did.”

“You’re not answering my questions.
 
Where would you go?”

He didn’t answer right away.
 
“Home, maybe.
 
But if I was smart I’d go away and try to be someone else.”

“That, Norman, is impossible to do.”

“Then I’d try to be who I was before any of this happened.”
 
Snowflakes had built up on his eyebrows and lashes.
 
She thought it was a beautiful image on his hard, lean face.
 
“Why couldn’t I do that?” he asked.

“I don’t know, that seems pretty hard too.
 
Maybe it’s just impossible, to go back like you say.
 
I know it’s what we all want.”
 
Liesl stood up and slung the rifle over her shoulder.
 
“Ready?
 
Going downhill in snowshoes is tougher than climbing.”

•

Norman led the way down the hill.
 
The strain on the legs was worse and it was harder to keep balance.
 
He often felt as though he would pitch forward and roll down the hill.
 
He never took a step without having at least one hand on a tree trunk or branch.

They came to a trail in the snow, deep narrow tracks, frequent patches of urine, and small pellets.
 
When they rounded a knob on the side of the hill they saw half a dozen deer standing in the snow.
 
They were scrawny, their coats ruffled by the wind.
 
All the deer started to move off, except one, a smaller deer, which simply stood still, with its head turned toward Norman and Liesl.

She stepped past him.
 
“Winters like this a lot of them starve.
 
It takes a long time to do that, and they’re so cold eventually they can't move.
 
I see them around my house.
 
They just stand there.”

She walked toward the deer and stopped when she was perhaps ten yards away.
 
The deer only watched her approach.
 
Liesl took aim with the rifle and shot the deer in the chest.
 
It fell over, it’s blood seeping into the snow.

Norman walked up to the deer.
 
Though its eyes were open, it was dead.
 
Small dark pellets issued from its anus into the snow.

“I used to watch the weak ones die.”
 
She came up and stood next to him.
 
“But finally, a couple of years ago, I went out and shot one.
 
Now I do it when I’m sure they’re not going to make it.”

“There was a photograph on the wall by your bedroom door.
 
It’s gone now.”
 
She looked at him, surprised, then curious.
 
“It was of your husband and daughter?”

“No, it was a photograph Harold took of the Chateau Frontenac.”
 

“What’s that?”

“It’s a huge old hotel in Quebec City, on a cliff overlooking the St. Lawrence.
 
We went there on our honeymoon, then we went back with Gretchen when she was five.
 
It’s odd, photographs of Harold and Gretchen aren’t so bad.
 
I have several in the bedroom.
 
I like looking at them.
 
I do for long periods of time.
 
But photos of places we’d been, especially Quebec, they’re much harder.
 
Maybe it’s because they were places we visited and liked, and they’re still there, in the world, so to speak.
 
Places I’ll never go to again.
 
Something like that.”

“The only thing I know about Quebec is that they speak French and the Nordiques moved to Colorado and became the Avalanche.
 
And Noel’s father’s ancestors came from there.
 
Her name’s Pronovost.”

They left the deer and continued down the hill, zigzagging slowly through the woods.

“Everything is in French,” she said from above and behind him.
 
“And the architecture is—well, I’ve never been to France, but it
feels
like being there.
 
Very old buildings, many with these tall steep roofs covered with copper, which over the years has turned a bright green called verdigris.”

“I’ve seen that,” he said.

“And even if you don’t speak French you quickly pick up enough to manage in shops, restaurants and cafes.
 
Some Americans complain that Quebecois pretend not to understand them.
 
But we never encountered that.
 
We always found them friendly.
 
I think that when they first look at you they make a distinction—something about body language or maybe our eyes—and determine if you’re American or English Canadian.
 
If you’re American and you don’t walk in expecting them to speak your language, they treat you fine.
 
And the food!
 
All you’d do is eat, then walk, then eat, then walk some more.
 
Moules et frites—
mussels and French fries, that was our favorite lunch.
 
And when you’re not eating or walking you make love in a room with a view of the river—with French music on the radio.”

Norman stopped and looked over his shoulder.
 
Half of her mouth formed a smile, while the lax side hardly moved.

“Perhaps your friend Bing’s wrong,” she said.
 
“Rather than thinking of tortures to forget the cold, you should think of things like good food and a long afternoon of fucking.”
 
She laughed.
 
“Don’t look so shocked, Norman, and let’s get down this hill before dark.”

•

They reached the bottom of the hill, crossed a narrow valley and climbed the smaller hill.
 
It was not nearly as steep and they made good time.
 
It was late afternoon when they descended, and below through the trees they could see County Road 644.
 
They didn’t talk once they were in sight of the road, and Liesl began to worry about ending this.
 
When Norman had first approached her outside the shed, she would have shot him if he tried anything.
 
Now she wasn’t sure she could.
 
She wondered if he knew that.

•

 
As they neared the bottom of the hill, there were frequent rock ledges jutting through the snow.
 
They were walking along the edge of one when Norman felt Liesl suddenly clutch at his arm, but she couldn't hold on, and she fell off the ledge.
 
It was only about six feet into snow, but she lay still and looked up at him with an expression he didn't understand.
 
He walked around the corner of the ledge, then made his way down to her.
 
She hadn’t moved.
 
Lying in the snow, she looked like she’d been dancing, then suddenly froze in mid-step.

“It’s my back,” she said.
 
“I’ve had problems with it ever since the accident.”

“Can you get up?”

Slowly she raised an arm toward him.
 
“Pull.”

He positioned himself over her, took her arm and helped her up out of the snow.
 
Her body leaned against him and he held her as she breathed heavily.

“I don’t know,” she said, her voice shaking.
 
“I don’t think I can walk.”

“It’s not far to the road.
 
I’ll carry you.
 
Let me get your shoes off.”

As he crouched down, she kept both hands on his shoulders to keep herself upright.
 
He removed his gloves and unbuckled her snowshoes—the leather straps were caked with ice, which he had to break off with his fingers.
 
It took a long time to get her boots free of the harnesses, and his fingers were frozen.
 
Finally, he got his gloves back on, then put his arms around the back of her legs.