My Temporary Life (35 page)

There’s a sharp thud behind me on the truck door, and a clump of snow falls from a pile that we’re perched against, shocking us back into reality. I look back towards the exit where we let him pass us. There are no signs, no other vehicle. There’s no one else on the road.

We didn’t gain much ground as we spun around. I can see the exit clearly from where we sit, and still there’s no sign of him. We wait. I expect to see his car come flying back; driving the wrong way over the exit, trying to find us again. I expect to see him coming straight at us, but still there’s no one, just the silent falling of the snow.

We’re lodged against a snow bank, and have dug ourselves into a rut. I try to move us forward, but it’s no use, we’re stuck. I rock us back and forth, jamming the transmission from drive, to neutral, to reverse, over and over again, until finally we jar loose and find some traction.

I carefully turn us around, watching for him. It feels like he’ll come from anywhere, from any direction. I can’t chance us driving to the exit and having him flying over it, forcing us off the road. I pull over as far as I can, and put the truck into park. I need to look. I need to get up over the exit, and see if I can see him, see if I can see his vehicle. The snow will be silent. He won’t hear me. I just need to know if it’s safe to keep driving through the exit. I need to know where he is.

“
This is crazy, Malcolm, you can’t. Don’t go out there.” She grabs at my arm, trying to hold me back, as I try to explain to her that I just need to see. I need to see where his car is.

I give her all the options. “We can’t keep driving. If he is sitting just on the other side of the exit, he’ll come at us as soon as we get onto the top of it and force us off of the road.” She keeps holding onto my arm as I try to explain to her. “We can’t go back. We’d be driving the wrong way in white out conditions. And, I can’t stay here. I need to know where he is.”

I can’t see any other way. The highway is empty again. There’s just us and whiteness everywhere. I need to know what happened to him. He increased his speed just as we slowed down and must have hit the incline for the exit at a tremendous acceleration. I pull away from her, almost roughly, then, seeing the bloody forehead and her worried look, reach over and touch her once more. “Remember what I told you, remember what I always say when I come and kiss your head. Why did I do it? Why do I always turn around and come back and kiss you?”

Her eyes tear up and I see my Heather; I see her as the girl in the boots with the green hair, and I see her as a little girl, all at the same time. I know that she’s thinking of our life, our real life back home, or maybe our life at the lake at the end of the world. “I know. I know.” She answers, shaking her head.

“
I do it because I can, not because I have to, just because I can.” I reach over and kiss her forehead just as I’ve done so many times, before opening the truck door.

The coldness of the night hits me immediately, and sends a shiver right through my body. I hear her locking the door behind me, as my feet crunch down into the snow, and I start walking towards the exit. It’s snowing heavily still, but I can see the tracks of his vehicle. They keep going towards the exit, and don’t stop, continuing up to the top of it. Still, there’s no car, no sign of Postman.

I walk, over at the side, barely skirting the piles of snow by the ditch, watching for him, listening, imagining where I’ll jump to if he suddenly comes barrelling over the road. Carefully, I make my way up the incline, keeping my feet firmly in the deep snow, glad of the traction. The tracks kept going, and don’t come back. He somehow made it over the hill, and around the curve. I keep straining my ears, trying to listen past my own breathing, for any sounds of his vehicle. I steal a look back at Heather. Her face is pushed up against the windshield, watching me, as the snow quickly covers the old vehicle once more.

I crouch down, as I reach the crest of the hill, trying to make myself appear smaller. I keep to the edges, to the ditch, but his tracks still move forward. He didn’t stop, didn’t brake. I suppose he was going so fast that he just powered right over the top of the hill, probably not even touching the ground.

The curve of the hill is covered in snow, and the banks at the side lessen, then heighten again. It isn’t until I walk right around the curve that I see him. I see the blackness of it, sticking out of the snow. I quickly cross over the road and see Postman’s vehicle lying on its roof, upside down, directly in the middle of the ditch, at the side of the road. There are no skid marks, no signs of slowing down. He can’t have had time. He must have known that the exit curved. All the times that he must have driven this road, yet he still didn’t make the curve. He kept driving straight, and with the speed, he hadn’t been able to navigate it and ended up powering through the snow pile and into the ditch.

I stand for a moment and can see the wheels spinning still as it sits upside down. I carefully make my way down the curve and over towards this car. I still see no sign of the man. The driver’s side of the vehicle faces me, and there are no footprints, no signs that he’s gotten out of the door. I strain my eyes through the still heavy, falling snow, trying to see him. The silence is eerie. It seems as though there should be people. It seems as though there should be someone around, someone helping, but there’s no one, just the steady turning of the car’s wheels as it lies on its roof.

I slide, and then right myself, as I get closer, and still I see no footprints. I climb over the lowest spot in the snow bank, all the while trying to see over it, watching for any movement. I look back over at the exit, thinking of Heather sitting there. As I look at his car, I slide down the other side of the bank into the ditch. Then, I see him. He’s still in the car. I make my way towards it, and see his head, his face, upside down, in the car seat.

I get closer and cautiously kneel down, peering forward to get a better look inside the vehicle. He’s no longer a threat to us. He’s hanging from his seatbelt, blood pouring from his head and his mouth. His right arm isn’t a part of his body anymore, as it hangs unnaturally away from him, and his left hand holds onto his neck which also has blood coming from it and seems to be broken. The windshield is cracked and the steering wheel bent from where he must have bounced off them during the impact. His eyes are open, and his head is twisted towards the side window. He looks at me, not blinking. His head doesn’t move; he just keeps holding onto his neck, trying to stop the bleeding. The window is still open, and I can hear him. There’s no smile now, no deathly goading. There’s just his steady plea, as he stares at me, through the same eyes that terrorized his daughter.

His breathing is wheezing, and it sounds as though he’s only exhaling, as he keeps saying over and over again, “Please, please help me, please, please help me.”

I keep looking in the window at John Postman as he lies there helplessly. I see the blood coming from his neck and his hand holding onto it, trying to stop the bleeding. His eyes are not the eyes of insanity any more. They’re the eyes of a dying man. I put my hand on the door handle and hold onto it, as his eyes follow me, willing me to help him. I keep holding the handle, watching him, watching his crazed eyes, as he continues to plead. I can hear his breath as it escapes from his lungs, as he keeps saying, “please, please help me,” over and over and over again.

I think of Emily, and I think of Heather, and I think of Hardly, my friend, Hardly. And, I think of the years of your life that you don’t ever get back. I look at John Postman once more, as I release my grip on the handle of his door, and turn and walk away, leaving him to die.

She’s already coming towards me and is halfway from the truck to the exit. Her arms are swinging back and forth, trying to keep her balance as she tries to walk along the slippery road. Her eyes are huge, with a crazed look. “I couldn’t wait. I had to know that you were okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t wait.” She says it desperately, almost apologetically, and stands with her arms open, waiting for me to reach her.

I slide the remaining way down the incline, towards her, and embrace her so heavily that we swing around, and land on the snowy highway. I kiss her face, her bruises, her bloody forehead, and tell her that it’s going to be okay, before lifting her up, and getting us back into the truck.

I push on the accelerator and get us going fast enough to get over the incline and onto the highway for Woodbine. I don’t try to stop her from seeing his car. I know she’ll look. She has to. “I don’t understand? Where is he? What happened?” I look over and see that his door is partially open. Somehow, he managed to pop the door open, probably by weighting himself against it, trying to save himself. He has to be still in the vehicle. There was too much blood, too little life left in him.

“
He’s dead. There was nothing left of him, Heather. He was dying. There’s nothing we can do.” As I say it, I realize that I left a man to die at the side of the road. The image of John Postman, pleading for help as I decided whether or not to open his door, is burnt into my mind. I shake my head and try to concentrate on the highway in front of us.

Heather unsnaps her seatbelt and moves over towards me, curling her head into my lap. It’s several miles before I realize that the sound that I’m hearing is her and not the noises from the truck. She’s crying again, crying muffled sobs, as though she’s trying not to let me hear. She holds onto my knees, as I drive, holding against them firmly and sobbing. Her father is dead, or dying, but still we don’t stop or go back. We just drive on, over the snowy roads. I don’t ask her if she’s thinking about the fact that her tormentor, the man that caused her so much pain and grief is dead, or if she’s thinking that she doesn’t have a father anymore. I just keep driving, watching the road, trying not to think about the way Postman was holding his neck trying to stop the bleeding as he begged me to help him.

I take my hand from the wheel and stroke her hair, pulling it back from her face, trying to comfort her, and then quickly I grab on again, holding us onto the road. We’re just a few miles from Woodbine when the road becomes clearer, less snow covered. And, as we see the sign for the exit, the storm almost seems to stop. The blinding snow that covered the highway now falls at a slower pace. There’s a car in the ditch by the exit, and a truck trying to pull it out. Two men look over and wave, shaking their heads as we drive past them, obviously wondering how we made it over the stretch of road that we just left.

“
Will she be alone? Do you think there will be anyone else in the house?” It doesn’t matter anymore. We’ve walked into so many situations in pursuit of Emily, since coming to Woodbine, that one more won’t matter, but I ask anyway.

“
My guess is that he just left her. She didn’t say that there was anyone else living with them, but I don’t know.” She sits up, and dries her eyes while speaking. She watches the road in front of us, as though willing us to move faster, and get closer to Emily.

We pass the motel, and I see that all the lights are off. The rental car is still there, in front of our old room. It’s late, after midnight now. Claude, and his girlfriend, will be in the back, out of sight, hoping that there are no more visits from crazed policemen.

I know the way. My sense of direction is back. It’s easy to remember the streets of a small town. They all have some kind of a logical progression to them, and I can remember the day she showed me her old house. I park in the driveway this time, instead of down the street. There is a porch light on, and a faint glow coming from the big window at the front.

“
Maybe you should go in by yourself, Heather. She doesn’t know me. I don’t want to scare her. You can call out to me, if there’s somebody else in the house. I’ll just stay here.” I still haven’t seen Emily. At the library, I focused on the other little girl, and didn’t see her, and she didn’t see me. It makes sense to me, but Heather keeps shaking her head.

“
No, you don’t get it, do you?” She reaches out and touches me tenderly, holding my hand. “I should never have left you, should never have let you do any of this on your own.” She keeps looking at me. Her mouth starts to say the words, but then she stops, until finally they just come out. “You’re stuck with me, remember. I don’t want to do any of this without you, anymore.”

I take her hands, and put them on my face, enjoying the touch, and feeling that maybe our nightmare is beginning to come to an end. We get out of the truck and make our way to the front door of her childhood home.

The blinds are drawn, and all we can see is light coming from somewhere in the front room. We softly knock on the door, and Heather quietly pushes it open. She calls Emily’s name, softly, carefully. I hear every board creak under my feet, as we make our way to the front room of the old house. The room looks like a business man’s study. There are large overstuffed leather chairs and conservative-looking, sturdy tables, stacked with reference books and magazines. There’s a reading lamp, burning in the corner, and underneath it there’s a little girl, curled into a ball, laying across a couch, eyes open wide, watching us.