Cold (29 page)

There was an old Indian blanket hanging on the bathroom wall; he got it down and draped it over them.
 
She snuggled close, her head on his shoulder.

“Your eyes are different.”

She raised her head off his shoulder.

“The pills do something to them.
 
Some guys inside look that way.”

“What way?”

“I don’t know, like you’re way inside yourself, trying to keep safe and protected.”

Noel seemed about to protest, but then she lowered her head to his shoulder again.
 
“This is all the safety and protection I need.
 
This is the moment where I want it to stop.
 
Right here.
 
It was this way when we first met.
 
You made me feel like nothing else mattered.”
 
He held her tighter.
 
“Then it got all crazy.
 
Both of us.
 
I wish we had just gone away together when we first met—remember how we talked about doing that?”

 
“Sure.
 
But we didn’t, and that’s why what happened happened.”

They didn’t speak for a couple of minutes.
 
The bathroom was only lit by one candle and the log walls were the color of honey, the knots black.
 
Norman listened to her breathing lengthen and by the weight and stillness of her head against his shoulder he knew she’d fallen asleep.

They would always refer to it as
What happened happened.
 
But in fact Norman wasn’t sure he understood exactly what had happened.
 
He knew that it started after the last of the hunting parties had left, all the executives who talked in percentages and yields and market shares.
 
They had cellular phones and laptop computers and it was clear they thought that this was
it,
sitting out here in the woods, hunting or fishing by day, drinking much of the night, and getting online with www-dot-something-dot-com.

When they all finally left, it was just Norman and his brother, Noel and her father; they were exhausted and it seemed like they’d earned a few days by themselves at Big Pine.
 
The season was over.
 
But things began to unravel.
 
There was the afternoon when Norman was here in the bathroom, soaking in the tub, drinking some McClellan’s Scotch left behind by one of the executives and smoking a joint Warren had given him.
 
He was alone in the lodge.
 
Pronovost had gone hunting with Raymond Yates.
 
Warren was down in one of the sheds on the river, stowing canoes and gear for the winter.
 
Noel had said she was just going to go for a walk.

When Norman got out of the tub, he put on clean clothes, something he had not done in several days.
 
It was early afternoon and he went down to the river with the bottle of expensive Scotch, but when he got to the canoe shed it was locked.
 
Norman sat on a tree stump and watched the black water flow between the narrow banks.
 
Then he heard a knocking sound, coming from another shed, one farther down the riverbank that was seldom used.
 
He got up off the stump and walked through the woods toward the shed, and when he was within ten yards he could hear them.
 
He knew right away.
 
He recognized Noel’s groans, and as things speeded up he could hear Warren gasping, his voice anguished and hoarse.
 
Norman stood still while they finished and there was only the sound of wet snow falling on dry leaves.
 
Finally, he walked back up to the lodge.

He continued drinking, as he lay on the couch in front of the fireplace, and when Noel came in the kitchen door she was alone.
 
Norman got up and said, “How was your walk?”
 
She told him fine as she began to fill a large pot with water, and she was saying something about boiling potatoes.
 
Norman went to her at the kitchen sink and, as she turned toward the stove, he punched her in the jaw.
 
She fell back against the refrigerator and the pot of water went on the floor.
 
He hit her again, this time catching her above the left ear.
 
After that, Norman wasn’t sure.
 
He may have continued to hit her.
 
But he also realized that she was screaming and crying, and eventually Warren came in the kitchen door and he hit Norman on the side of the head with one of the logs he’d brought in for the fireplace.
 
Norman may have been knocked out, but only briefly, and the next thing he knew he and Warren were grappling on the floor of the kitchen.
 
All the while Noel was screaming and both brothers were shouting.
 
When they were boys they had fought all the time.
 
Being younger and smaller meant that Norman lost more often, but he refused to give in.
 
Once they got into their late teens they avoided fights, perhaps because they both realized by then that they could really do each other damage.
 
But there in the kitchen it seemed as though they’d been waiting years for this and neither held back as they punched, kicked, scratched and bit each other.

Finally, Norman got free of Warren.
 
He went outside, running down the ridge toward the river.
 
His clothes were torn.
 
Blood ran out of his nose and his right eye was swollen.
 
His right hand was strained and the forefinger felt like it was broken.
 
He staggered out into the woods and, when he got on the other side of the river, he heard Noel calling for him.
 
He kept going, walking through the forest for perhaps an hour.
 
He felt stupid.
 
As soon as he had heard Noel and Warren in the shack he knew it was inevitable.
 
He couldn’t believe that he hadn’t seen it before, didn’t catch some look, some gesture between them.
 
All three of them had been headed toward this since Warren had returned from the Navy.
 
It had to do with the fact that Norman and Noel had made plans, to get married, to try and get into a college downstate—as Warren called it, to grow up.
 
So the shots and beers, the joints, the lines of coke, the pills—it was all orchestrated by Warren because in some way he felt it was his responsibility to save them from dreams of growing up, of leaving, of trying to change their lives.
 
It was because Warren couldn’t change his life.
 
He’d gone off to the service and come back saying it was all a lie, it was all corrupt.
 
All a matter of who you salute, whose ass you kiss.
 
In some twisted way Warren believed he was protecting Norman and Noel, saving them from the truth.

Now, he gently eased Noel’s head off his shoulder.
 
Sound asleep, she curled her legs up so that she was a soft concentration of breasts, arched hip and smooth thigh.
 
Getting up, he tucked the Indian blanket around her.
 
He gathered his clothes and went out into the Great Room, where he dressed before the fireplace and then stacked new logs on the andirons.

•

When Noel woke up she was alone beneath the Indian blanket.
 
Standing, she wrapped herself tightly, though the wool was scratchy, and went to the sink.
 
She leaned close to the mirror to see her face.
 
By candlelight, she looked older.
 
Her cheeks were hollow, her eyes dark and sunken.
 
This was how she would look ten years from now, in her mid-thirties.
 
Lorraine would be going into her teens.
 
It seemed a remarkable length of time, ten years.
 
But ten years ago she had been a teenager in eighth grade.
 
How did she get here so fast?
 
She looked tired.
 
She felt exhausted.
 
Twenty-four years old and she usually felt exhausted.
 
She considered simply lying down and going back to sleep.
 
Instead, she picked up her purse and looked through it until she found the plastic vials.
 
She knew this had to end, that this wasn’t the answer.
 
She knew that pills wouldn’t get her through the next ten years.
 
But when do you stop?
 
What day?
 
What time of day?
 
How is that day different from the others?
 
Why on a certain day would you suddenly find the strength to stop?
  
Norman was right.
 
The contents of these amber vials provided her safety, protection.
 
To abandon that would take strength and she wasn’t feeling very strong right now.
 
She took two pills and went back out into the Great Room.

Norman wasn’t there, but the bedroom door where Lorraine was sleeping was ajar.
 
Noel pushed the door open and found him standing next to the bed.
 
Lorraine’s hair was matted to her forehead, her breathing heavy, her face illuminated by the fire from the Great Room.

“Look at her,” he whispered.
 
“She’s so beautiful.”

“I know.
 
I’ve already noticed things about her that are like you.”

Noel went to him and put her arm around his waist.
 
The flickering light danced on the child’s face.
 
Norman reached down and touched Lorraine’s hair, brushing it off her forehead.
 
They left the room, pulling the door shut behind them.
 
Noel gathered the blanket around her on the couch.
 
Norman put a couple more logs on the fire and sat next to her.

“We need to talk about what happened,” she said.
 
“What
really
happened.”

He nodded.

She pulled the blanket up around her shoulders.
 
“This is how it looked, Norman.
 
This is how it came out at the trial:
 
you went berserk.
 
You were the wild man in the woods.
 
Remember what that lawyer Daddy brought up from Detroit said in his closing statement—you were less civilized than Big Foot.
 
You beat up Warren so bad that he needed stitches at the clinic in North Eicher.
 
You beat me up so bad I lost my hearing and I still get headaches and auras all the time.
 
And best of
all,
later that day Raymond Yates drives himself down to the clinic in North Eicher with a gunshot wound in his shoulder.
 
They wanted to get you for attempted murder, as well as assault and battery, but then Raymond disappeared just before the trial begins.”

“And no one’s heard from him since,” Norman said.
 
He continued to gaze into the fire.
 
“That Detroit lawyer—one of your father’s hunting pals—wanted to nail me for murder, but Yates never turned up again.
 
Still no one knows what happened to him.
 
So they put me away for everything else.”

“What I said at the trial was true, Norman.”

“I know.”

“I was hurt.”

“I know,” he said quietly.
 
Turning to her, he asked, “Know why I shot Yates?”

The light from the fire danced in his eyes.
 
“You were angry,” she said.

“I was scared,” he said.
 
“Why else would I shoot Yates—with his own rifle?”

“I don’t know.
 
At the trial you said he was after you—it was self-defense.”

“That’s right,
he
was chasing
me
—out there, in the woods.
 
After I left you and Warren here, I was just wandering around out there, for hours.
 
Your father and Yates came back to the lodge and found you and Warren, right?”
 
She nodded.
 
“Your father took both of you down to the clinic in North Eicher.”
 
Norman faced the fire again.
 
“And he sent Yates out after me—your father told Yates to hunt me down.”

Norman got up and went over to the fireplace.
 
With the iron poker he shifted the logs, tipping up their glowing undersides, which gave off more light and heat.
 
When he stood and turned around, he was silhouetted against the flames.
 
“You know, at first I didn’t even think that Yates was following me.
 
I thought he was out hunting.
 
I saw him from a distance and figured I should get out of his way, so I worked my way off to the east, thinking I’d go wide around him and head back here to the lodge.
 
But the next time I caught sight of him, it was clear he was still following me, so I started toward him.
 
The brush was dense and I didn’t want him to mistake me for an animal.
 
I called out to him, but then I saw him shoulder his rifle and he took a shot at me—he missed.
 
And I understood right away—your father had found you back at the lodge and he’d sent Yates after me.
 
So I took off into the woods, and Yates followed me.
 
I couldn’t lose him.
 
The man could track anything, and he was patient—he knew I’d tire.
 
After maybe an hour he took a second shot at me and missed—probably because I stumbled.
 
When I looked up I could see him coming down a steep hill.
 
He lost his balance and fell and came rolling down through the brush.
 
When he stopped he didn’t move, and his rifle was well below him.
 
I thought he’d been knocked out, or maybe he broke something.
 
I climbed the hill and picked up the rifle.
 
When I looked up he was pulling an automatic from his holster.
 
So I fired first.”