Cold Quiet Country (7 page)

“When Cooper comes, you send him out after me. Tell him I didn’t figure to keep up with him and the dogs and went ahead. When coroner Fields gets here, show him the body and do as he says. And one more thing: I don’t want Fay Haudesert in that barn.”

Sager nods.

“You all right?”

“Breakfast ain’t sitting too well.”

“Yeah.” I bust a clump of phlegm out of my throat. “Well, you got a job in the law. You’ll have to deal with your breakfast.”

I grab a furled balaclava and my gloves from the seat. Slap my holster. I kept a tin of jerked venison at the station and already had it loaded in the vehicle. A fistful of meat goes into my pocket. I pat my coat; pipe and tobacco are secure. On second thought, I remove them, pack a bowl and light it.

“Be careful out there,” Sager says.

I slam the door.

Go inside the barn, step around the blood and return to the loft ladder. I climb it again, and reaching the top, get real slow and careful. Ease one leg over and half-lay on the loft, fingers stretched and searching for something to hang on to. Finally my weight is more on the loft than the ladder and I get on hands and knees and crawl to the spread-out coat and the object beside it. I reach, trembling. My eyes are filled with Guinevere running in a summer breeze, making bubbles. Guinevere tumbling on warm grass. Gwen gazing with curiosity at a buzzing insect.

I wish she’d worn a dress this morning.

I grab the object—Gwen’s shoe—and put it into the wide, deep pocket close to the hem of my coat.

* * *

Looking across a field, the only way to guesstimate snow depth is by what it covers. Some places nothing sticks through, and the drifts could crest at six feet—and the storm is just getting started. Other places, cornstalks poke up, and the snow is ragged around them, clinging on the windward side, cupping on the lee, and it’s like someone shoved a stick down through a giant white cobweb. Gwen, missing a shoe, walked through this with her lover, a boy a quarter-again as old as her. Twenty to sixteen.

Too big a difference in Burt Haudesert’s book; too big in any father’s book. Gale G’Wain run a pitchfork through him because of it, and by sundown, Gale G’Wain will answer for it. I won’t have the luxury of working him over a few days before he goes to court, like in days past with vermin such as Smith Bixby or Marvin Waldock, a pair of characters that long ago learned you don’t drift into Bittersmith and leave your worries behind.

I hope young Gale G’Wain enjoys all this scenery while he can.

Smith Bixby and Marvin Waldoff breezed into town and knocked over Jessup and Clare Mails. Left them stranded on the side of the road, thumbing their way into town like second-rate trash that didn’t work their whole lives for what little they had. And them boys, racing across the state in the Mails’ F-150, thinking what they did in Bittersmith would fade like the plume of dust at their rear wheels.

I had something for them. Four days of something.

You strip a man naked and leave him in a cell with no lights or blankets or food, and show up at midnight to remind him the whole blessed world thinks he’s a piece of shit with no future, and reinforce the notion with a little body work, he’ll make sure he steers clear of your town when he gets out. There’s ways of doing it that leave no marks. Take the fleshy part of a man’s hand between the thumb and finger, and squeeze the nerve ’til he’s standing in a puddle. Take a broom handle and make him suck it, and tell him he better get it good and wet. Give him a minute to pick off any splinters so they don’t give him problems for a month, every time he takes a shit. Then do what you’ve been promising, shove that goddamn thing so far you get shit on your knuckles. You’ll break him into a thousand sniveling pieces, and he’ll always remember the folks in your town ain’t afraid to do right, distasteful or not. He damn sure won’t hijack another car.

Gale G’Wain, you better damn hope you get away.

Not thirty feet from the tire tracks I debate what the boy was thinking when he took Gwen into all that snow. Where was he going? I’ve hunted these woods and though the trees give some protection from the wind, and a copse of ponderosa might seem snug compared to a field, the air is still twenty degrees. Unless Gale has some kind of lodge out there, they’re lost. And every second I waste wondering what a boy in a dead panic was thinking, the smaller the chance Gwen will survive.

I cross the edge of the field and question the wisdom of a seventy-two-year-old walking into a blizzard with a half-pound of jerky and day’s worth of tobacco. Gwen keeps me going. The air is cold, but once a fella gets walkin’ it could drop another twenty degrees and it won’t bother him. A good heavy coat—and all of a sudden I realize Gwen’s got no coat. I just turned away her mother and all I took was the sweater, and part of me is already thinking in the back of my head that it isn’t going to matter, and I quiet that voice and turn back. Follow my steps to the tire tracks and then the widow’s footprints to the house. Winded by tobacco smoke, I rap my corncob pipe on the porch post. The cherry falls and there isn’t even a sizzle as it plunges into the snow.

Fay Haudesert opens the door, and her face is lit like she expects me to tell her something she hasn’t heard.

“Let me take her coat,” I say.

“Of course. I’ll just pack a couple of things. Some food for her.” Her eyes are fixed on my pocket and she steps to me.

“Just the coat,” I say, and spot it draped over a chair.

“What’s that?” she says. All at once she’s up close, pulling her daughter’s shoelace from my pocket, and when she holds the shoe in her hands, it’s like a wave of tears has nothing left to hold it from breaking loose. Her chin puckers.

“I’m going to find Gwen.” I lift the girl’s coat from the chair, and take her shoe from her mother’s hands. Back out the door and close it before Fay Haudesert reveals any more of her horror.

I’m careful negotiating the steps. There’s three, but no rail, and it’s different going down than going up. On snow. The latest is an icy powder, not so much flakes as beads. I’m on the last step and the crunch of tires pulls my attention and I look to a sedan spinning up the driveway, fishtailing, plowing through a plot of unbroken snow. The motor races and the sound is distant though the car is only a dozen yards away.

My heel catches an ice patch and I drop six inches just like that, and slip on the packed snow of the path to the barn. I land on my ass and sit as Burt’s mother, Margot Haudesert, explodes out of the car and hurries toward the Bronco.

“Margot! No!”

She spins. The wind blows her hair, still red, and she still doesn’t wear a hat. Her dress is too thin; her legs show through even as it flaps about them, and it is easy to remember them in the summer, bare, with water streaming from her sodden hair. It’s always easy to remember when she was Margot Swann.

She stares at me with a passion that is not love. She turns, closes the remaining distance to the barn.

Sager opens the Bronco door as Margot glides closer. He spreads his arms and steps toward her but she’s not yet to the Bronco and races around the other side.

Fay Haudesert emerges from the house with a paper bag in hand, sees her mother-in-law and touches my shoulder as she passes me. My ass radiates pain through my back and legs, and there is no way to know, right now, what I’ll feel like standing. I twist partway to my side and press against the steps; as I bend my stove-up back, my legs decide they’re okay, and after twenty seconds of struggle, I’m on my feet. I take to the snow and break a new path.

Margot is in the barn and a caterwaul cuts through the wind. She’s seen her only son.

The sound does something to Sager; he clutches his belly, wobbles a few steps and vomits over the edge of the dirt tractor ramp where the Bronco is parked.

Margot wails again. I stop halfway to the barn.

Is this what I want to do, while Gwen is lost without her coat? With frostbitten hands and feet? I pivot to the field and in no time the wind erases Margot Haudesert’s sobs.

A boy had come to work at the farm. Gwen first thought he was a runaway from a poor household in some neighboring county, some mongrel who’d thumbed a hundred-mile ride and now hoped to find a place to work long enough to earn a meal. He was ragged. Gangly, and even more awkward in voice than body. He stood in the kitchen watching her with hunger in his stare, and said Burt had told him she’d put some food together for him so he could go to the barn and work it off. From his look, he needed the nourishment just to get back to the barn.

That night when Burt left Gwen’s room, she rolled to her side and pulled her pillow against her breast. She saw Gale’s clumsy smile. His clumsy innocence.

Neither Gwen nor her school friend Liz Sunday had shared the details of her travails with the other, yet each understood the bruises, tear-swollen cheeks, and bloodshot morning eyes. They were scrunched in the second seat of the school bus, leaning conspiratorially close. They’d ridden in the same seat for a year, always tucked below the high-backed tops, knees curled into the seatback in front. They’d held their voices low and painted hopeful pictures of escape. Such musings were irresistible. They’d fantasized about running away to Mexico, or Hollywood, or some random Iowa crossroads. Anywhere. They’d pretend to be sisters. They’d expropriate enough money from their fathers—except neither of their fathers likely had that much cash.

However, as late summer became fall and Gwen began noting little things—the way Gale’s Adam’s apple moved when he sang Amazing Grace, for instance—she dampened her runaway conversations with Liz. At the same time, Liz became more and more frantic to continue them. Her eyes seemed to be shrinking into black beads that disclosed nothing, ready to flash into any kind of wildness.

“I’ll get away, someday,” Liz said. “Tell me about this Gale G’Wain again. What does he look like?”

“He’s got red hair, like mine, and his joints are too big. But he works from sunup to down and never says anything but ‘thank you’ and ‘that tasted real good, thank you.’”

“Does he like you?”

“I don’t know if he likes anything but food.”

Gwen closed her eyes for a moment. She didn’t add that Gale attended church with the Haudeserts, when they went. Or that when singing, his sweet voice never stumbled in search of words, even when flipping pages in the hymnal. She didn’t mention the way he seemed to pull the lyrics directly from the crucifix behind the pastor, from which his eyes never strayed. “He likes food,” Gwen said. “Food and God.”

“If you don’t run away with him,” Liz said, “I will.”

* * *

The comment wore on Gwen for a month.

Burt sat at the supper table, brooding as if he looked upon Gale from under a rock. Gale didn’t seem to notice, but instead studied dishes of potatoes and meatloaf. He took the place that had been Cal’s. Jordan fell into the next chair.

Gwen watched. She imagined a smaller table, a smaller kitchen, with only her and Gale taking seats.

Normally Gwen would fill her father’s plate and then proceed around the table. Instead, she hoisted Gale’s, carried it back to the other side and filled it. Passing the plate to him, Gwen retracted it at the last moment. “You look like you could do with an extra piece of meatloaf.”

She doubled his portion.

Below the table, Burt touched the bare skin of her leg. Gwen stepped sideways. Burt’s face pointed toward Gale, and his lines were taut. Gwen lifted her father’s plate and dropped a slab of meatloaf and a scoop of potatoes. A couple spoonfuls of carrots.

Burt’s hand crawled higher. Gwen’s mother had been washing dishes used in meal preparation, but the clatter and rattle had died several seconds ago. Gwen faced the sink. Her mother watched with humiliated eyes set above lips like a crack in concrete.

Gwen stepped away from Burt. Her mother leaned against the counter and looked off through the window.

“Time to eat, Fay,” Burt said, without turning. “Come sit down.”

“I’ve lost my appetite.”

Gwen filled another plate and sat to the right of her mother’s empty chair.

Burt bowed his head. “Good Lord, we thank you for this food. And do something about the price of corn, would ya?”

“Amen,” Jordan said.

Gwen watched Gale. He waited for everyone else to lift a utensil before deciding on his fork, and upon Burt’s first spoonful of mashed potatoes, shoveled a quarter slice of meatloaf into his mouth. Gwen watched his jaw work, the muscles at the hinge, the bobbing of his Adam’s apple. He was a queer boy, the way he mixed carrots and potatoes. Oblivious to all save what he ate, as if fearful it might leap from his plate and be forever lost.

Jordan cleared his throat, flicked his eyes to Burt. Gwen turned. Burt had been watching her. No one moved save Gale, who devoured his victuals with relentless concentration.

Glass shattered at the sink. Gwen twisted in her chair as Fay stalked away, crushing shards of a broken glass under her feet. She held one hand in the other and blood dripped from both. Burt turned back to the table, and a forkful of loaf that had been arrested in midair continued to his mouth.

Gwen trailed her mother to the bathroom; found the door closed. She tapped.

“Ma?”

Nothing.

“Ma?”

“Go away.”

“I’m opening the door. Ma?”

“Don’t.”

Guinevere tried the knob. It was locked. “Unlock the door so I can help you.”

Silence.

“Please?”

“Let her tend herself,” Burt said.

The lock clicked from inside and Gwen twisted the knob, peered around the corner. A trail of red drops led from the door to the sink. Fay stood with her hand in the basin, her face flushed and her eyes lined with water. Her shoulders shook but no sound issued.

Gwen closed the door, approached. Blood covered her mother’s hand, the bottom of the bowl.

Gwen placed her palm on her mother’s back. With her other hand, she twisted the faucet knob. “Run cold water on it.”

“It’s nothing.” Mother wiped her cheek on her shoulder and kept her face angled away. Her hands shook. “It’s a small cut. Just needs a Band-Aid.”