A Blind Eye (2 page)

“You wanna rent the car or fetch the luggage?”

“What I want is to go back to Seattle,” she said. “You don’t need a playmate, and I don’t take fugitive gigs. You’re gonna have to dodge the cops on your own, Frank. I’ve got a life to live.”

He started to speak but changed his mind. After a moment he said in a low voice, “Soon as we get to Madison, I’ll put you on the first flight to Seattle.”

“For real? No speeches? No messy scenes in the airport?”

He held up two fingers. “For real.”

“I still think it would serve you right if I turned your ass in.”

“The car or the bags?”

“I’ll get the car,” she said.

Corso dug into his back pocket, pulled out his wallet, and extracted a credit card.

“On me,” he said.

“Damn right,” she said as she snatched it from his fingers and strode away.

I
t’s getting worse.”

She was right. No more fluff floating down from the dome of the sky. Now it was a torrent of ice slanting onto the metal skin of the Ford Explorer, hissing like static and rocking the big car on its springs. What had, four hours ago, been the sharp slap of windshield wipers was muted now. Despite the full-blast roar of the heater, snow had collected at the extremities of the windshield, leaving only a pair of crescents through which they could peer at the deserted freeway ahead.

“How far have we gone?” she asked.

Corso checked the odometer. “A hundred and fifty-three miles.”

“We should have driven out of it by now.”

“Presuming your friend Jerry was right.”

She shifted in her seat and bared her teeth. “Don’t start with me, Corso. This fiasco was
your
idea, remember? As I recall…”

The recollection lodged in her throat as a violent gust of wind buffeted the car, throwing it out of the solitary set of tire tracks they’d been following for the past hour, sending the rear wheels skittering back and forth across the icy surface. Dougherty grabbed the overhead handle.

“What was that?”

“The wind,” Corso said, as the Ford wiggled back into the ruts.

She tapped a long red fingernail on the dashboard. “You noticed the outside temperature gauge?”

Corso flicked his eyes down to the green digital readout. What had, in Chicago, read twenty-four degrees Fahrenheit was now registering minus three.

“We should have turned around when the snow-plow did,” she said, for what Corso reckoned to be the eighth time.

He grunted. As much as it pained him, she was right. For the past hour, the freeway had been deserted. Service areas closed. Snowed-over cars and trucks abandoned along the shoulders of the road. Seemed like the whole state of Illinois had decided to sit this one out in front of the fire.

“When the snowplow gives up and turns around…you know…I know this sounds crazy to you, Corso, but maybe we should have taken the hint…. Maybe we should have showed a modicum of…of—”

Corso wiped the inside of the windshield with his sleeve. “Exactly where are we?” he interrupted.

“In the middle of a goddamn blizzard is where we are.”

“I mean like on the planet,” he said. “Where’s the map?”

Dougherty was feeling around on the floor beneath her seat when Corso feathered the brakes several times and brought the Ford to a halt.

Her dark eyebrows merged as she looked up at Corso.

“What?”

Corso inclined his head toward the windshield. She sat up and looked out. Whoever they’d been following for the past hour was gone. While the eastbound lanes of I-90 were a maze of ruts and tracks, the westbound lanes ahead were an unbroken ribbon of drifted snow.

“Where the hell did he go?”

“Beats me.”

“What are we gonna do?” Dougherty asked, as much to herself as to Corso.

“Depends on where we are,” he said.

She started to reach for the floor.

“I think you put it in the door thingee,” Corso said.

He watched as she retrieved the map and snapped on the overhead light. She pulled an emery board from the pocket of her cape and laid it down next to the scale indicator on the map. Using her thumb as a marker, she worked her way up their route from Chicago. “Presuming the odometer is right, we should be somewhere along the Illinois-Wisconsin border.”

“How far would it be if we turned around and headed due east for Milwaukee?”

She took a measurement. “About a hundred miles.”

“How far to Madison?”

“About half that.”

“We’re down to a quarter tank of gas.”

She checked the map again. “There should be a town named Avalon somewhere up ahead.” Corso clicked on the high beams, but the extra wattage only made visibility worse. Looked like they were inside a Christmas paperweight.

“This was really dumb.”

“We’ll get off at the next exit,” Corso said. “Spend the night in Avalon.”

“How long has it been since we passed anybody?”

“Maybe an hour,” Corso said, easing his foot off the brake, allowing the car to creep forward.

“You know why that is?” she demanded.

“No…but I’ve got a feeling you’re going to enlighten me.”

“It’s because we’re the only people on the planet rat’s-ass dumb enough to be out driving around on a night like this…that’s why.”

Corso pressed his lips tighter and gave the Ford gas. His back ached from leaning forward, squinting into the gale. He took one hand off the wheel and used it to massage the back of his neck. The twin cones of halogen light disappeared about fifty feet in front of the car. The overhead freeway lights illuminated only themselves.

The dull thump of the wipers and the roar of the heater filled the inside of the car. Corso let go of his neck and reached for the radio.

“Pleeease.” Dougherty strained the words through her teeth. “I don’t think I could stand it.”

They rode in silence. A mile and they passed a trio of cars, snowed over and abandoned on the shoulder. Then two more cars and an abandoned bus before Dougherty pointed and said, “Stop.”

Corso eased the Ford to a halt. Twenty yards ahead, covered with snow, a road sign rocked in the wind. Dougherty popped the door open. The interior was immediately filled with swirling snow. “I’ll be right back,” she said, slamming the door.

He watched as the wind propelled her to the snowed-over sign on the shoulder of the highway. Her cape was pressed tight around her body as she used the flat of her hand to smack the sign, sending a wall of snow slipping to the ground around her boots.

Avalon 2 miles. She used her hands to clean off several smaller signs mounted lower on the post. Blue and white symbols. Gas, food, and lodging.

Halfway back to the car, she slipped on the icy surface, teetered for a moment, and then fell in a heap. Corso jammed the Ford into Park and fumbled for the seat belt. Just as he got the belt loose, she was back on her feet and leaning into the wind with her cape flapping wildly as she trudged back to the car and climbed in.

Her eyelashes were a solid line of snow. Her lower jaw chattered as she spoke.

“Daaamn, it’s c-c-c-cold out there.”

“You okay?”

When she nodded, the snow in her hair dropped into her lap.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said, brushing snow down onto the floor.

“Avalon, here we come,” Corso said, easing the car forward.

She shuddered. Tried to turn up the heater but found it was already running full bore, and then sat back and re-fastened her seat belt.

“What’s Avalon mean anyway?” she asked.

“It’s a Celtic legend. Supposed to be an island in the Western Sea. A paradise where King Arthur and his knights were taken after death. Kind of like Round Table heaven.”

“There’s the exit,” she said.

Corso tapped the brakes several times as they rolled down the exit ramp and skidded to a stop. “Icy,” Corso said.

On the far side of the road, the gas, food, and lodging symbols were accompanied by a blue-and-white arrow, pointing to the right.

They both leaned forward and peered down the tree-lined road.

Dougherty rubbed at the inside of the windshield with her sleeve.

“I don’t see a thing.”

“Town’s probably just up around the corner,” Corso offered.

Fifty yards and, without warning, the road got steep. The Ford skidded several times as the two-lane road wound down into the valley below. Corso shifted into first gear and allowed the engine to hold the car back as they descended, and still the tires fought for traction. Corso wrestled the wheel. “Icy,” he said again.

“Town’s probably down at the bottom of the hill,” she said in a low voice.

“It better be,” said Corso. “’Cause there’s no way we’re getting back up this thing until the snow melts.”

“A problem we wouldn’t have if you had just—”

“Give it a fucking rest, will you?” he snapped.

Suddenly her tone matched the weather. “Is that my employer speaking? Am I being ordered to just take my imaginary photographs on demand and otherwise keep my mouth shut so as not to annoy the famous writer?”

Corso sighed. “No…it’s your friend Frank Corso speaking, and he’s telling you that we’re in this together. Maybe trying to drive to Madison wasn’t the brightest idea I ever had, but we’re stuck with it now…so we might just as well not act like…”Uncharacteristically, he fumbled for a word and then gave up.

“I see. You’re not telling me what I can and can’t say. You’re just telling me to stop being such a bitch.”

Corso searched his mouth for a denial, but “Something like that” came out.

Her face said she should have known. “How quick they forget.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Whatever you want it to.”

“Isn’t this conversation just a joy to be part of on a wintry night?”

“I can remember a time when you thought so.”

“That was then.” He took a hand off the steering wheel. “We were…you know…then.” Waved it. “You know what I mean. It was different then.”

She put on her astonished face. “I most certainly don’t know any such thing. Why doesn’t the famous on-the-lam crime writer enlighten me.”

“When you’re…you know…”

“Doing the nasty.”

“Yeah.”

“Go on.”

“When you’re…you know…involved like that…the rules are different. You put up with a little more shit than you otherwise might.”

She sat in silence for a moment and then emitted a dry laugh. “So what you’re saying is that when you’re getting laid, you’ll listen to a lot more bullshit than you will when you’re not.”

He thought it over. “Makes complete sense to me,” he said finally.

She looked at him for a long moment. “Amazing,” she said. “Guys are absolutely amazing.” When he didn’t respond, she folded her arms across her chest, sat back in the seat, and said, “You’ll be sure to let me know when I’m allowed to speak again, won’t you?”

The muscles along the side of Corso’s jaw tightened. Ahead, a bright yellow sign announced a 20 percent grade. Corso worked the brakes. Gritting his teeth as the Ford slid around a corner, Corso turned his head toward Dougherty.

She sat stiffly in the seat, staring through the wind-shield, wearing her most disinterested gaze.

“Why don’t we just…”he began.

He watched as her eyes opened wide. “Corso!” she bellowed.

He snapped his eyes back to the road. It took a moment before his brain was able to register and categorize what his eyes were seeing.

Ahead, a snow-encrusted pickup truck lay on its side, blocking both lanes, passenger door open and pointing at the sky. When he tapped the brakes, the Ford surrendered the last of its traction and began to accelerate down the steep incline.

“Do something!” Dougherty screamed as the hill pulled them faster and faster toward the wreck. Corso stood on the brakes, but the Ford was out of control now, gaining speed, turning a lazy circle before plowing headfirst into the wreck.

Inside the Ford, Dougherty’s face was a mask of fear. The last image she processed was the bottom half of Corso’s face covered with blood. And then the Ford began to pinwheel along the undercarriage of the pickup truck, the scream of tearing metal filling the air, in the instant before they bounced over the guardrail and became airborne.

C
orso…damn it…get off me.”

She grunted as she tried to push him off, but Corso’s unconscious bulk remained welded to her left shoulder. The scratch of the wipers was slower now, the heater a mere whisper at her feet. Her right ear, pressed against the window, was beginning to freeze. She grabbed him by the ears, lifted his head, and looked into his face. His nose was squashed nearly flat. In the eerie moonlight, the twin rivulets of blood running down over his lips and chin shone obsidian black. Using his ears as handles, she gently shook his head. Called his name. Nothing. She shook him again, and he coughed. Groaned. Suddenly his eyes fluttered, rolled several times in his head, and then popped open. He moved a shoulder and brought a tentative hand to his face. She watched as he blinked several times, trying to focus on his bloodied fingers.

“Corso,” she said again. He looked her way with nothing in his eyes. “I think you busted your nose,” she said.

His lips blew bubbles in the blood as he touched his face and winced.

“Nose.” He said it as if he’d never before heard the word.

Without warning, the car began to slide, the sickening sound of ripping metal again filling the air. A silent scream stalled in her lungs as the Ford slid downward, bouncing twice before coming to rest again. From the corner of her eye, Dougherty could make out the rough bark of a tree pressed against the passenger window. “We gotta get out of here,” she said. Corso was still staring dumbly at his hand. “Come on, Corso…move.” He blinked, trying to clear his vision, and then rolled his shoulders to the left, easing his weight from Dougherty as he grabbed the steering wheel and pulled himself upright in the seat.

She grunted as he knelt on her side and groped for the door handle. She heard the click of the lock. Watched as he tried to push the door straight up and failed. Then tried again, without budging the door from the twisted frame. Blood from his nose dripped like red rain onto her shoulder as he eased himself higher, found the button for the window and pulled it downward. The window squeaked but didn’t move.

He banged the window with the flat of his hand and the car began to spin on its axis. They lay perfectly still until it seemed the car had finished moving, and then Corso tried the button again. This time, with a sorrowful groan, the window began to ease open. Slowly, as the dashboard lights dimmed and the wipers slowed to a crawl, the window began to slide down into the door.

Powdery snow swirled into the car’s interior. The remnants of the heater output and the collected warmth of their bodies instantly disappeared, replaced by an icy, bone-numbing cold. Corso pulled a knee to his chest, got one foot on the steering wheel, and levered himself up through the window.

Relieved of Corso’s weight, Dougherty reached over, grabbed the steering wheel, and began to pull herself sideways in the seat until first her knees were on the inside of the passenger door and then higher until her boots made contact and she could push herself to her feet.

She stood on the door, her toes resting on the arm-rest. Above her head the open window gaped, velvet black. “Corso,” she cried. She waited. Nothing. And for an instant she felt the fear rise in her chest. Had he fallen and gone skittering down the hill into the ravine below? Had he, in his stupor, simply wandered off and forgotten her? Again she hurled his name into the darkness. And again his name was swallowed by the storm. The snow stung her cheeks as she sniffed back a tear and mustered her strength. And then suddenly she felt the car move, and the black void above her head was filled with Corso.

He’d stemmed the flow of blood by packing his nose with snow. He stuck his arms into the car and grabbed her roughly by the shoulders. On countless afternoons she’d watched the rippling of his thick muscles as he’d worked on the boat. On countless nights she’d reveled in the controlled power of his embrace as they’d made love in the dark cabin below. She knew he was strong, but nothing like this. He groped around until he had his hands under her arms and then plucked her from the car as if she were a child.

Next thing she knew, she was sitting on the side of the Ford. Snow and her hair swirled around her head, obscuring her vision. She shuddered, pulled her cape tightly around her shoulders, and looked around.

The Ford was lodged against a tree, about fifty feet down the incline. The muted purple glow of a street-light was visible above. Below, the incline seemed to steepen before disappearing altogether into blackness. Above the roar of the storm, she could hear Corso breathing raggedly through his mouth. He reached over and took her hand.

“Let’s go” was all he said, before stepping off the car onto the hillside, dragging her along in his wake as he struggled up the hill, using bushes and trees to pull them upward toward the light. Halfway to the top, he fell heavily to his knees and began to slide back toward her. It seemed, for a moment, they might slip backward into the void below, but he dug in with his feet, stopped his slide, and then began crawling upward, until he disappeared over the guardrail, where he again turned back and reached for her. She gasped as he ran his rough hands over her breasts, feeling around until he found her upper arms and lifted her to his side. “Jesus, Corso…” She waggled her shoulders and brushed at herself. “If you wanted a feel, all you had to do was ask.”

“I’m blind,” Corso rasped.

“What?”

“My vision’s all screwed up. It’s like I’m cross-eyed or something.”

Before she could reply, the sound of breaking glass rose above the roar of the storm. They stood on the snow-covered road, wincing as they listened to the Ford bouncing off trees and boulders as it made its way toward the black silence at the bottom of the ravine.

Shaking in the cold, Dougherty reached over and fastened the five buttons on Corso’s overcoat. “We’ve gotta find shelter,” she said. “We’re not gonna last very long out here.”

“Down,” Corso said. “We keep going down.”

His words seemed to anger the storm. Above their heads, the trees swayed like frenzied dancers. The snow seemed to thicken, nearly obscuring the overturned pickup truck forty yards away. She poked a hand out from inside her cape and took him by the sleeve. He pawed at his face, trying to clear his vision, shook his head twice, and then followed her down the slope toward the ghost truck.

They skirted the wreck on the high side. The under-carriage was a solid layer of dirty ice. The open door rocked slightly in the wind. She pulled Corso around the front, bent, and wiped the snow from the wind-shield with her bare hand. The truck’s windshield was completely iced over from the inside. No way of telling if anyone was there. “I can’t see anything,” she shouted above the locomotive wind.

Corso pulled her back the way they’d come. He groped around on the undercarriage with his hands and then stepped back a pace and kicked at the ice. Four times, until a block of dirty ice fell on his boots, revealing a rusting muffler and exhaust pipe. Corso let go of her hand. He grabbed the open door-frame, put his right foot on the exhaust pipe, and pulled himself upward until he could look down into the cab.

He blinked and rubbed at his eyes, trying to put his kaleidoscopic vision back together. An old man lay at the bottom of the cab, squashed against the window. Stone dead. Frozen white and partially covered with snow. Corso levered himself upward, resting his belly on the doorframe. He used his right hand to brush at the frozen driver, as if removing the snow would somehow bring him back to life. He could hear Dougherty’s voice chattering with cold as she called his name, asking what was inside.

Corso began to pull himself from the cab when he noticed the odd angle of the dead man’s right arm. Held upward and away from his body. He brushed away the snow covering the hand and arm. His breath froze in his throat. The old man had spent his last moments trying to warm himself with a yellow Bic lighter, which now lay frozen in his stiff dead fingers. A voice deep in Corso’s head wondered if such an ignominious and futile gesture might not be a fitting metaphor for life. Candle in the wind and all that. And then, for reasons he couldn’t explain, Corso reached for the lighter. The old man held it fast in his icy death grip. Bringing his other hand into the cab, Corso pried the corpse’s fingers back one by one. The frozen fingers unfurled with a sound like crackling cellophane, until the lighter dropped into Corso’s palm.

Corso wiggled himself from the cab, found footing on the undercarriage, and then dropped silently to the ground. Dougherty stood, hopping from foot to foot, pushing buttons on her cell phone. Her hair was completely covered with snow.

“No service,” she shouted.

“There’s an old guy inside. Frozen solid.”

She pocketed the phone. “That’s whaaat weee’re gonna be if weee don’t get out of heeere.”

As if to give her comfort, Corso offered the ice-covered lighter. She grimaced.

“Jesus, Corso,” she said. “You must have busted something loose in your head. What goddamn good is that gonna do? Come on.” She snatched the lighter from his hand and began pulling him down the hill.

After a quarter-mile and three hairpin turns, the road began to level. They walked shoulder to shoulder, shuddering together in the arctic wind. Half a mile more and they were on the flat, stumbling along beneath an arched cathedral of bare trees, when Dougherty began to falter, to stagger slightly, and finally dropped to her knees in the snow. She looked up at Corso. “My legs,” she stammered. “I can’t feel them anymore.”

Corso picked her up and set her on her feet again. “You gotta keep walking,” he said. She nodded. Took a single step forward and pitched facefirst into the snow.

Corso dropped to one knee, scooped her into his arms, and then struggled back to his feet. Holding her in his arms, he began to trudge forward, one slow step at a time, weaving from shoulder to shoulder as he made his way down the narrow road.

Dougherty went inside of herself. To the place where the rest of the universe didn’t exist. The world where the voice in her head was the only sound and the pictures the voice painted were the whole of creation.

She kept imagining the old man in the truck. Wondering how long he’d held out hope. Whether he’d finally had a moment where he knew he was going to die. Had he taken that last instant to bark out his defiance to the universe? Or had he gone meekly into the frozen reaches of the night? She wondered about hope. About how it was the only evil left in the box after that silly girl removed the lid. She was wondering about how hope had risen from final evil to state of grace when another sound began to intrude.

“Can you see it?” the voice said. “The purple light? Over there.”

A hand pushed her chin to the left. “See it?”

“It’s a house,” she said. “Put me down. You can make it. Get the people. Come back for me.”

Instead he boosted her upward with his knee and again began staggering forward down the road. His ragged, frozen breath burst out before him as he fought his way forward. They were at the driveway now. All she could see was a single light and the shape of a house through the swirling snow and ice.

“Put me down. Go get the people,” she was pleading, but instead he lifted her higher and began to trudge through the knee-deep snow of the driveway. Every step was an exercise in agony. She was beating his chest and screaming. Crying. “Oh, god, Corso,” she was yelling. “You gotta put me down. Something’s broken inside your head. You’re bleeding to death through your nose. Please. I can make it on my own. Really I can. We gotta stop the bleeding. Please, Corso, please.”

Corso was making a noise now. A low keening sound, almost a chant, as he forced himself forward, his puzzle-picture vision growing dimmer and dimmer, the pleading voice fading to silence as he moved onward. Then he stumbled and fell forward, pitching her out onto something hard.