Cold (42 page)

He went to the kitchen door.
 
Over the years the log walls in the kitchen had been carved and written on—there were names and dates, occasional crude drawings of women, of penises, of killing wild animals with rifles or bow and arrow.
 
There were testaments of love and there were simply initials.
 
Many were filled with grime and must have been carved decades ago.
 
As he reached for the knob he noticed the words carved deep into the timber above the door:
 
Abandon all hope, you who enter here.

Part IV

Twenty

Norman leaned against a tree trunk, shaking uncontrollably.
 
He hugged himself, trying to stop the tremors.
 
Through the woods he could see the shed burning, its column of smoke rising above the trees and then dispersing on the gusting winds.

His back slid down the trunk until he sat in the snow.
 
Carefully he touched the right side of his face.
 
The cheek was slit open, the diagonal cut running from below the ear to the fleshy part of his cheek.
 
Taking his hand away, he saw that it was covered with blood.
 
He leaned over and vomited between his knees.
 
It wasn’t so much the blood or the pain, but the thought of the blade, the swift parting of his flesh that made him ill.
 
Before going to prison he’d cleaned animals, gutted fish.
 
He’d never had a fear of knives until he’d seen too many inmate fights, too many ugly scars—and then the day last summer in the exercise yard:
 
Bing, suddenly kneeling in the dirt, cradling his bloody intestines against his blue uniform.
 
No one was near him; no one approached.
 
No one appeared surprised that it had happened either.
 
He’d been slit across the belly and his intestines seemed to have a life of their own, determined to ooze out of his grasp.
 
It was as though they were no longer a part of him, but something only determined to escape confinement.
 
His shaved head gleamed in the sun and he didn’t make a sound—no screaming, no crying out.
 
He seemed baffled by his situation as he used both hands, frantically trying to gather everything together.
 
He was dead before the ambulance arrived in the yard.

Norman knew he was lucky.
 
He realized that he had underestimated Woo-San.

“Why are you here?” he had asked.

At first Woo-San wouldn’t answer.
 
He sat on the bench in the shed and stared straight ahead, as though he were alone—as though he were meditating or praying.
 
As though Norman didn’t exist.

“You came and stayed in North Eicher.
 
Why?”

Woo-San had folded his arms.
 
Questions seemed an insult.
 
The knife with the bone handle was still in its leather sheath, just below his right hand.

“I bet you ran away,” Norman said.
 
“You can’t go back to wherever you’re from.”

Woo-San didn’t seem to hear him.
 
There was no apparent expression on his face.

“Somebody ran you out.”

But then Woo-San’s head turned toward Norman and he spoke rapidly, his deep voice bursting from his chest.
 
“Why
you
come?
 
For that
whore?”

“This is where I’m from.
 
This
is
my home.”

“Here!
 
Why you come out
here?”

“
Here
is why I had to go away in the first place.”

“Why you not take whore and
go—
run away.
 
Hide.”

“Because they’d find me, and they’d just send me back.
 
I’m not going back.
 
And she’s
not
a whore.”
 
Woo-San faced straight ahead again.
 
He seemed to be trying to will Norman into silence.
 
“I went out there to the sawmill in the logging camp,” Norman said.
 
“I saw the cage—it’s your idea.
 
You brought it in, didn’t you?
 
What is it, you don’t kill the bears right away now.
 
You put them in the big cage—and
what?”
 
Woo-San’s lips were trembling.
 
“What good are they to you alive in a cage?
 
Look at me!
 
You have any idea what’s it’s
like
to be
locked up?
 
Why do you lock up the bears?”

Woo-San turned his head toward Norman again and shouted,
“You not understand Grandfather.
 
His bile medicine. Give strength.
 
Save lives.”

“Take the bile?
 
From a bear in a cage?”
 
Norman couldn’t see this; he could only think of a black bear behind the bars, wild at first until it exhausted itself.
 
He’d seen this in new inmates at the prison.
 
They’d be pissed off at everything when they first arrived, often until they hurt themselves—getting into a fight with other inmates, or beaten by the guards—then they’d become quiet because their energy had been used up.
 
They would just sit, some of them, just sit and wait.
 
Then, it didn’t matter where they were or what happened to them.
 
“How?” Norman asked.

“Belt,” Woo-San said.
 
“Bear wear belt with shunt go into gall bladder.”

 
Norman was sitting on the wood floor of the shed, his arms propped on his knees.
 
He rubbed his face and he felt the cold dried blood in his ear.
 
“You must have to tranquilize them,” he said quietly.
 
“Over and over, from the same bears, a little at a time.
 
You tap them like a maple tree.”
 
He knew Woo-San was looking at him now.
 
“You don’t kill them till they’re sapped dry and they’re just so much meat lying in a cage.”

“Grandfather never die,” Woo-San said, his voice hardly a whisper.

“You don’t even pay them the dignity of death.”

It was then that Woo-San put his hand around the bone handle and withdrew the knife, and he appeared to enter into a state of prayer.
 
“Grandfather never die.”
 
He sat perfectly still and a low deep hum rose up out of his chest in preparation for something—a ritual, an offering.

It was hard for Norman to look at the knife.
 
He got to his feet quickly when Woo-San stood up.
 
The man was silent now.
 
As he came forward, quickly, even gracefully, Norman felt somehow paralyzed, as though he needed to wait and make sure this was really happening.
 
It was only a moment, but he remembered it clearly.
 
Beneath the dim light from the kerosene lamp, Woo-San’s expression had solidified into a kind of devotion that somehow prohibited Norman from reacting.
 
There was no doubt then.
 
No pleading or begging, no crying out.
 
There was no asking for reason.
 
Woo-San had committed himself to the act, and he was obliged to be swift.

Woo-San first tried to stab him in the abdomen but the blade only cut the bulky material of his coat.
 
Then, swiftly, the knife came up toward his face—for his neck.
 
Norman turned his head away and the blade sliced down his cheek instead.
 
It was only the force of the pain as the knife blade was drawn across his skin that ended Norman’s paralysis.
 
He fell backwards.
 
Woo-San, too, appeared to have been brought suddenly out of a trance.
 
He appeared confused and perturbed that Norman had resisted him at all.
 
Where there had been patience in his eyes and the set of his mouth, there was now anger, even disgust.
 
It seemed that he was again actually seeing Norman.

As Woo-San lunged a second time, Norman buckled, bending forward, and his forehead struck Woo-San on the bridge of his nose.
 
Straightening up he watched Woo-San stagger backwards, knock the lantern to the floor, where it burst into blue flames, which spread across the wood upon the widening pool of spilled kerosene.
 
Norman pushed open the door behind him, and the rush of air into the shed fanned the flames.
 
Woo-San stamped his boots on the burning floorboards as the flames ran up his pant legs.
 

Norman slammed the door shut with his shoulder just as Woo-San threw himself against the other side
,
shouting.
 
Heat was coming through the wood.
 
Woo-San continued to scream and pound on the door and then, quite suddenly, he stopped and there was only the sound of burning wood.

Again, Norman vomited into the snow.
 
He kept telling himself to stand up but he remained with his back against the tree trunk.
 
With his eyes closed he listened to the crackling fire and he thought he might pass out.
 
When a large burning branch exploded and fell to the ground, he opened his eyes.
 
At first he wasn’t sure:
 
there seemed to be something dark moving along the far bank of the river, a gray form angling down through the whiteness, almost as though it was flying.
 
When it reached the footbridge he knew it was Pronovost.

Norman scooped up a handful of snow and held it against his wound.
 
The pain made him lightheaded.
 
He struggled to his feet, clutching snow to his face, and moved deeper into the woods.

•

Warren strapped on the snowshoes and followed the trail down the ridge.
 
Across the river he could see Pronovost standing before the remains of the shed.
 
There was no sign of Woo-San.
 
No sign of Norman.
 
Pronovost moved on into the darkness of the trees.
 
Warren continued to the bottom of the ridge, walked alongside the river and crossed the footbridge.
 
The fire had given way to smoldering charred rubble.
 
He saw the arm; somehow he was certain it was not Norman’s.

Following the tracks into the woods he came to a tree where there was darkness in the snow; leaning down he could see that it was blood, and he could smell something else—something so vile it caused his mouth to secrete painfully.
 
He continued on, periodically finding more blood in the snow.
 
He knew they were following his brother.
 
Whatever happened at the shed, he was sure that Norman had been injured.

The wind diminished as Warren went deeper into the woods, though overhead branches creaked and clattered.
 
The snowshoes were an advantage.
 
Ahead of him, they would be moving slowly—Norman because he was injured, Pronovost because he was a cautious hunter.
 
It was like tracking a wounded animal, which was always a mixed blessing.
 
On one hand, there was the adrenalin rush from shooting your quarry.
 
But there was also the hard admission:
 
it had not been a clean shot.
 
Things could get messy.
 
It could take hours before you bagged your kill.
 
Or you could lose him because of terrain or because of nightfall.
 
Warren had never lost a wounded animal.
 
With time they only become weaker.

•

Liesl knew what Monty was doing when he turned onto County Road 187.
 
Taking this route could cut their time in half—rather than driving west to North Eicher, and then turning north, they could head directly northwest and pick up Laughing Pike Road as it approached Lake Superior.

“Hypotenuse of the triangle,” she said.

“It’s all I remember from high school geometry.”

“Provided the road isn’t snowed in.”

 
“If you’re going to believe in anything up here, it better be your four-wheel drive.”

“Otherwise, move to Florida, where it never snows.”

“And there’s a patrol car on every block.”
 
He’d had three mugs of coffee and he gripped the steering wheel as though it might try to get away.
 
He picked up the microphone to his Roadmaster unit and punched in a series of numbers.
 
After listening to a recorded message, he hung up.
 
“Leo Waara’s a friend of mine.
 
He’s with the DNR over in Drummond Corner, but if this shortcut gets us through we’d beat him by a good a hour at least.
 
But he’d be a good back up.
 
He’s probably stuck somewhere in a snowdrift himself.”
 
Monty hung the mike up and shrugged.
 
“We’re the closest thing to ‘authority’ there is out here.
 
Every morning I get up and look in the mirror and I go, ‘I
am
the authorities.’”