Cold (8 page)

“Come on!”
the bearded man yelled. “Give me a
hand.”

“Yeah, sure.”
 
Norman started to climb the snowbank so he could get around to the driver’s door.

But something sprung loose in the engine and there was a hiss that grew louder.
 
Norman slipped and rolled down the snowbank, and for a long moment he wasn’t sure what had happened.
 
His hearing was gone.
 
His face was in cold snow, but there was intense heat pressing into his left side, and he realized that the engine had blown.

Raising his head finally, he looked up at the flames that now engulfed the cab.
 
He could barely see the two men; they were motionless, and appeared to be huddled together.
 
The heat was incredible.
 
He could see the bearded man’s mouth open in a silent scream.
 
Norman turned and crawled away in the snow.
 
When he got to his feet he looked at the cab again and now he couldn’t see the two men at all through the fire.
 
Norman kept backing away from the heat, his arm raised to protect his face.
 
A tire blew, and immediately after that something in the engine began knocking until metal buckled under pressure.

Norman turned his back to the heat and walked toward the van.
 
He opened the door and climbed in behind the steering wheel.
 
It had been almost three years since he’d driven.
 
As he pushed in the clutch and shifted into first gear, he realized there was a familiar smell in the warm van.
 
The ashtray was full of rolls of Certs; he picked up one and began peeling back the paper.
 
In the rearview mirror he could see the burning truck.
 
The flames now rose high above the cab and thick black smoke blew into the trees alongside the road.
 
Norman put a Cert in his mouth.
 
The taste reminded him of inside, where he sucked on Certs all day long.
 
Wintergreen.

Part II

Four

Noel Pronovost had taken two more pills, downers now, and was just dropping off to sleep when the phone rang.
 
Because there was no longer a phone on her nightstand, she had to get up from bed and answer the wall phone in the kitchen.
 
Afraid that the ringing would wake her daughter Lorraine from her nap, Noel walked quickly in her slippers, one hand touching the wall.
 
Since she’d lost her hearing in her left ear her balance had never been the same.

“Hello?”
 
She could hear music in the background, the sound of men talking, a cash register.
 
“Warren?”

“You in la-la land?
 
Sound like you’re half asleep.”

“I was
trying
to sleep, thank you.”

“Three o’clock in the afternoon—”

"I was up half the night with Lorraine and I have to work tonight.”

“I remember that drill.”

“Right.
 
Like you ever got out of bed to check on her.”
 
She waited a moment, but he couldn’t be bothered to argue the point.
 
“What do you want?”

“What do I want,” he said.
 
“What do I
want?”

“Warren.
 
Don’t start.”
 
She sat at the kitchen table and turned her head so she could see her reflection in the toaster.
 
Her face there was bulbous, one eye grossly larger than the other, like that cartoon character Bill The Cat.
 
With her free hand she gathered her short blonde hair and smoothed it down the side of her skull.
 
When she lifted her hand away slowly, her hair raised up again, as if by magic.
 
It was because it was so cold—she was afraid to touch anything for fear of getting a static shock.

“It’s snowing like hell.”
 
He was barely whispering into the phone.

“You called to give me a weather report?”

He took in a long breath—a drag on his cigarette—and as he exhaled he laughed that tight, wheezy laugh that came out of him when he was half in the bag.
 
“It’s snowing so hard, it’ll be to his advantage.”

She stopped playing with her hair.
 
“What?”

“Got the phone to your good ear?
 
Remember which one still works?”

“Fuck you. Advantage?
 
Whose
advantage?”

“They won’t find him in this shit.
 
Probably won’t even try.”

“Find who?”
 
But she knew now.

“That’s right,” Warren whispered.

“This is about Norman?”

“Isn’t it always about Norman?”

She didn’t say anything.
 
Her large purse was on the kitchen table.
 
Aged black leather; the gold plating had chipped off the buckle.
 
For over a year she’d been telling herself she needed a new bag.
 
She reached inside and took out the brown plastic vials, one slightly larger than the other.

“Isn’t it, Noel?
 
It’s
all
about Norman.”
 
The clink of glass on his teeth, a pull on his beer.

She nestled the receiver between her ear and her shoulder so she could use both hands to get the safety cap off the smaller vial.
 
She tapped out a white pill into her palm.
 
She thought of them as her seesaw days:
 
uppers followed by downers followed by uppers, until she could hardly remember what she’d taken last and all that was achieved was this blanked out neutrality where she was too tired to sleep, too wired to think straight.
 
She put the pill down on the Formica counter and said, “Will you just tell me what’s going on?”

“What’s
been
going on, is the fucking question,” he said.
 
“I’ve seen the letters.”

“What letters?”

“The ones he’s written to you.
 
The ones you keep in a shoebox in the closet.”

“Fine.
 
You’ve seen the letters.
 
You ever hear of something called privacy?”

“No wonder you were so in love with the guy.
 
Who writes love letters anymore?
 
You could ask every guy here at The Blue Anchor and not one of ‘em would tell you they write love letters.”

“Those guys have no one to write
to,”
she said.
 
“Some of them probably don’t even know
how
to write.”
 
She studied her bloated reflection in the toaster as she put the pill in her mouth and worked up enough saliva to swallow.

Warren was laughing.
 
“Maybe, but inmates got all that time on their hands.”

“I'm hanging up now, Warren.
 
I'm hanging up and unplugging the phone here in the kitchen.
 
There isn’t a phone in the bedroom to unplug anymore ‘cause you broke it against the wall.
 
Remember?”
 
He was laughing again.
 
Now it was the laugh that said
Come on, dump more shit on me,
the one she hated most.
 
“Phones, cars, light bulbs—”

“Light bulbs?
 
You still on that?”

“Light bulbs,
Warren.
 
You just won’t admit to that light bulb thing, will you?
 
You come in here while I’m out and remove
every
fucking bulb
in the apartment.”

For a moment she thought she was going to begin crying—something she promised herself she would not let him see—or hear—again.
 
The night she had come back to her apartment and found all the bulbs gone it was after midnight.
 
She found the flashlight she kept in the kitchen, its batteries barely working, and she called her father.
 
He told her to just get out of there, but she couldn’t—it was exactly what Warren wanted, to make her feel as though she couldn’t even stay in her own apartment anymore.
 
Her father then told her to stay put and he’d be right over with bulbs.
 
She waited in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet seat, terrified.
 
Fortunately, Lorraine slept through the whole thing in her arms.

Noel put her finger in her left ear and tapped gently.
 
Nothing.
 
For a long time there had been a dull ache on that side of her head, but now the ear was just useless.
 
She used to love to listen to her CD’s through headphones—The Cranberries, Smashing Pumpkins, and certain old songs by Billy Joel—but now music meant nothing to her; she only played tapes in the car for Lorraine, who liked to sing along with certain Country and Western songs.
 
She closed her eyes and the darkness was soothing.
 
The speed was kicking in; a pleasant tension seemed to clutch at the back of her eye sockets.
 
“Listen, Warren, I have to be at the motel by six and I need to give Lorraine a bath before I take her over to Daddy’s.”
 
She started to pull the phone out of her hair.

“He walked away,” Warren said.
 
He sounded almost proud.

Out the kitchen window she could see the snow in the driveway behind her house.
 
She lived on the second floor, above an elderly couple named Kapala; her father owned the house and he covered her rent.
 
He owned the house across the street, too, and the convenience store at the end of the block.
 
What her father owned used to impress Warren, but she couldn’t care less.
 
“What do you mean ‘walked away’?”

“I mean Norman got out.”
 
Warren didn’t say anything for a while.
 
There was nothing coming over the line except the sound of a cash register drawer sliding closed.
 
“Tommy Lovell called me at work and told me.”

“Tommy Lovell?”

“State police.”

“Oh, the fix-your-speeding-tickets guy.”

“Tommy grew up on our street,” Warren said.
 
His voice had lost its humor now.
 
“He keeps tabs on Norman for me, and he called to say he walked away in the middle of this blizzard.”

“Where is he now?”

“The fuck should I know.
 
Thought maybe you would.”

She ignored this.
 
“They’ll find him?”

“Eventually.
 
Though Tommy says this blizzard’s so bad nothing’s hardly moving anywhere in the U. P.
 
The state police just keep indoors like everyone else and wait for it to pass.”

Noel stood up.
 
She could hear her breathing through the phone, and she knew Warren could too.
 
She held the receiver away from her mouth and took a long deep breath.

“Just go about your business,” he said.

She could hardly breathe.
 
“That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

“You believe it?” Warren whispered.
 
“He fucking walked away in this shit.”

•

“Hey!”
Monty said, when Del came into the office, "Marquette got top billing on the Weather Channel!
 
We could get over four feet before this thing passes.
 
And there’s more coming in off the Pacific.”
 
He turned back to the television that sat on the file cabinet.
 

Del put the pizza box on Monty's desk, unzipped his coat and sat on the sofa.
 
The blue vinyl crackled beneath his weight.
 
The splits in the material had been taped with gray duct tape, which after a while had split also.
 
He shrugged out of his coat, which was heavy because of all the things he carried in the pockets.
 
Outside pockets, inside pockets; some closed with zippers, some with Velcro.
 
One leather pocket he had sewn in on the left side especially to hold his .38 Smith and Wesson automatic.
 
Shoulder holsters were too binding.
 
He had a system for his pockets so that he knew where everything was:
 
wallet, keys, notebook, binoculars, Swiss Army knife, handcuffs, cellular phone.
 
He didn’t like anyone touching his coat.
 
In old Western movies cowboys often had a thing about anyone touching their hats—Del felt that way about his winter coat.

Monty opened the box and carefully removed a slice of pizza.
 
“I like Lucinda,” he said, nodding toward the television.
 
“Something about her walk.
 
But that Darlene, have you noticed what's happened to her since she had her baby?
 
She lost that weight and now she's
all
woman.”
 
He took a bite out of his pizza slice.
 
“But this new one—I don't know.
 
Somebody oughta teach her how to dress.
 
Looks like she's in the school marching band.
 
Lotta reds with brass buttons, and those epaulets on her shoulders.
 
Kinda got a military thing going there.”