Cold (32 page)

Noel took a step into the kitchen and a floorboard groaned.
 
The sound caused Norman to start, and instinctively Del began to raise his arms.
 
But the crossbow fired and the quarrel pierced Del’s coat on the left side.
 
Noel screamed and Warren stood up.

Del couldn’t move.
 
His arms were spread out from his sides and the gun, which he had been holding in his right hand, fell to the floor.

The others stared at him, and finally Warren whispered, “Holy shit.”

Slowly Del looked down at his left side.
 
“I’m stuck,” he whispered.

Warren came to him and leaned over to inspect the arrow.
 
“You’re not hit?”

“No.”

“Fuck, if you
missed,
Norman,” Warren said, disappointed.
 
“Not eight
feet
away and he
misses.”
 
Reaching up under Del’s left arm, he felt the shaft of the quarrel, and he snorted.
 
“Why, Norman.
 
You’ve gone and pinned the constable to the doorjamb.”
 
He turned to his brother and laughed.
 
“You couldn’t do that again if you tried.”

Norman appeared to be coming out of a trance.
 
“Noel, get that pistol for me.”

She stared at the gun on the floor a moment, and then picked it up by the handle as though it were something dirty that she didn’t want to touch at all.
 
She handed him the gun and he put down the crossbow and pointed it at Del.

“Mind if I just take my coat off?” Del asked.

Norman didn’t say anything, but then he nodded.

Del untied his hood and pushed it off his head; then he unzipped his coat and pulled first his right then his left arm out, and stepped away from the coat, which remained hanging from the doorjamb.

“Christ, Norman,” Warren said.
 
His laugh was loud and irritating.
 
“He’s the constable of Yellow Dog Township.
 
Followed you all the way out here after you walked away.
 
Pretty good on the chase, but he doesn’t always get his man, you know?”

“Put on a light, Noel,” Norman said.
 
She reached for a light switch that turned on the lamp that hung above the table.
 
Norman closed the refrigerator door and stepped out of the corner.
 
“Now how ‘bout some lights in the Great Room.”

Noel went into the other room and switched on several lamps.

Warren stood up, rubbing his hands together.
 
“I’ll just get in front of that fireplace.”

“You brought this constable out here,” Norman said.

“Well you can
see
that he was armed.”
 
Warren took a step toward the Great Room, but stopped when Norman turned the pistol on him.
 
“Look, I just got to get my ass warmed up some.”
 
Norman kept the gun pointed at his brother for a long moment.
 
“You know how cold it is out there?”

Norman nodded.

“Well, come on then.
 
Let me get those logs cranked up.”

“How’s Ma?”

Warren seemed irked by the question.
 
"Ma’s fine.”

“Don’t hear much from her.
 
Maybe three letters and a Christmas card.
 
Nothing in a long time now.
 
She all religious these days or has that faded away too?”

“I don’t know what she’s up to since she moved down to Florida.”

“When was that?”
 
Norman seemed genuinely surprised.

“After last winter.
 
I thought she’d let you know.”

“Well she didn’t.
 
No one let me know.”
 
Something happened to Norman’s face, to his eyes, a recognition of some sort.
 
He appeared to make some decision and Del thought he might shoot his brother.
 
But instead he lowered the gun to his side and said, “Go build your goddamn fire.”

Fifteen

Shortly after Liesl sent Darcy home for the night, the phone rang.
 
It wasn’t Del, but his deputy, Monty Price.
 
In the background she could hear a television, and two girls arguing over something.

 
“He’s somewhere between North Eicher and Lake Superior.”

“He’s found Norman?”

“No.”
 
Monty paused; the channel on the television was changed.
 
“After this cold front passes through,” he said, “we’re going to get hit with another blizzard.
 
Should start tomorrow morning.”

“Thanks, Monty.”

“No problem.
 
You okay up there on your own?”

“Yes, thanks.
 
My phone’s working again and my back’s feeling much better.”

She hung up, returned to the couch and lay beneath blankets, fully clothed.
 
When she switched off the lamp, the moonlight came through the skylights.
 
She had pared her life down so that she was unaccustomed to being concerned about someone else.
 
When Gretchen and Harold were alive, it seemed she was always waiting.
 
When the child was out of her sight, she often imagined horrible things:
 
accidents, rapes, kidnappings, murders.
 
She remembered one fall afternoon becoming so incapacitated with such fear that she sat at the kitchen table for nearly an hour, barely moving, until she heard Harold’s truck coming up the drive.
 
Then, as if coming out of a trance, she quickly began cutting up vegetables for dinner so that she appeared occupied when Gretchen opened the kitchen door.
 
She used to tell Harold that she was going to die of a heart attack from waiting.
 
Since the accident she was still convinced that she would have that heart attack, but it would be from remorse.
 
They were different, waiting and remorse, but either could kill you.

Sleep was impossible and she got up off the couch.
 
The clock on the kitchen stove said it was a little after midnight.
 
She often worked in the middle of the night, but what she needed right now was not the carving, cutting, layering and shaping of wet clay.
 
So she pulled on her old parka and went out to the shed, thinking that eventually she’d have to return to this daily activity that was essential to her life in this house in the woods.
 
Had she not just been released from the hospital, had she none of these shooting pains in her back, she would think nothing of it:
 
switch on the overhead light, pick out a log, stand it on the block and begin splitting.
 
She had a Franklin stove and a kiln that required regular feedings.

But because she was weak, and because there were still these twinges that shot up her spine, she took her time.
 
She pulled on the leather gloves, selected a smallish piece of oak, taken from the deadfall she cleared out of the woods—an infinite source of fuel within a hundred yards of the house.
 
After standing the log on the block, she picked up the axe and waited for the right moment.
 
The Zen of log-splitting, Harold used to call it.
 
Waiting for that moment when the universe was ready for the union between the axe blade and this particular log.
 
Not just any piece of wood, but this log.
 
This log from the tree that had grown out there for decades, until one day it died; then, years later, the forces of wind and elements weakened the trunk until it fell to the forest floor.
 
And then later, usually during the summer or early fall, Liesl would cut this dead tree into two foot lengths with her bow saw, fill up her wheelbarrow and haul the load back to the shed, where she kept a pile of logs.
 
The proof was in the splitting.
 
Now she raised the axe over her right shoulder, paused to gather strength, waiting for the universe to line up just so, then swung down, driving the blade through the log and into the block.
 
Split neatly into two halves, wood clattered on the cold concrete floor.
 
She wriggled the axe free of the block, picked up one of the halves, balanced it on the block, and raised her axe once more.

She found something exquisite and primal to the rhythm of certain activities, log-splitting being one of them.
 
Once her body and mind got into that rhythm, she arrived somewhere else.
 
A true Zen practitioner might suggest it was some higher plane of awareness.
 
Or reality.
 
Or spirituality.
 
And of course the repetition of it was sexual if, for no other reason, there was a sense of exhaustion at the conclusion.
 
But she didn’t care about any of these things.
 
What she liked about log-splitting, aside from the fact that it was necessary to keep the house warm and the kiln stoked, was that during the act her thoughts often seemed remarkably free and clear.
 
She knew long-distance runners and cross-country skiers claimed to achieve a certain intellectual nirvana in the midst of a marathon or a thirty kilometer course, but for her it arrived while log-splitting at the point where each of her actions was smooth, well-timed, seemingly effortless.
 
And she would think of things that she was convinced would never come to mind during any other activity.

Constable
Del Maki was no stranger.

Liesl had broken a sweat.
 
Her back was tired, limber but not sore.
 
She picked up a new log, raised the axe and brought it down with all her might.
 
What she knew about the sheriff of Yellow Dog Township was common knowledge.
 
Towns with several hundred year-round residents have little but common knowledge to share.
 
She didn’t remember exactly where or when or from whom she learned it.
 
She knew he was trusted, but pretty much left alone.
 
Not entirely understood.
 
He seemed to prefer it that way.
 
A loner, his Land Cruiser was often seen on the county roads at all hours of the night.
 
He tried to remain impartial.
 
He was no backslapping politician; played no favorites.
 
Someone—she couldn’t remember who—had once described him as the high school teacher that students respect because he brooked no nonsense, and he was fair.
 

There was a little sympathy for him too.
 
His wife, who was not a Yooper, had left—not so much him but the place.
 
She had remarried and lived somewhere south.
 
No surprise in that.
 
People who couldn’t handle the U. P. simply left, and those who remained felt it was for the best.
 
It was a form of natural selection particular to cold, northern regions.
 
But he had not remarried, had not found a mate who would be content with what the township had to offer:
 
isolation, long winters, and the nearest decent mall five hours south in Appleton, Wisconsin.

And there was something failed about him too.
 
Everyone knew he had grown up in Marquette, and then gone downstate to college.
 
But he had not been accepted into the state police academy in Lansing.
 
His test scores were high enough but—and this was the part that was always implied, though he would take no part in such explanations—he didn’t make the cut due to the fact that he was white and he was from the U. P.
 
So he had taken the position here in Yellow Dog.
 
The state’s loss was the township’s gain.

Liesl set the axe blade in the block.
 
Split logs surrounded her on the concrete floor.
 
She could see her breath.
 
Not once did she have to resort to the maul and wedge.
 
Tugging off her leather gloves, she inspected a blister that had developed on her right thumb.
 
Her hands felt good and raw.
 
There was something else about
Constable
Del Maki, something that had been only hinted at years earlier, but she couldn’t remember—she was too exhausted.
 
She switched off the overhead light and returned to the warmth of the house, hoping that perhaps now she could sleep.

•

Noel sat on a wood chair in the corner of the living room, studying the constable while Warren stacked logs in the fireplace and Norman leaned against the gun cabinet, his right arm holding the constable’s pistol at his side.
 
Warren was doing most of the talking and she had no problem tuning him out.

The constable first name was Del and he was observant without appearing to be:
 
his eyes mostly avoided direct contact with her or either Norman or Warren, yet she could tell that he was paying attention.
 
His head was large and there were a couple of deep creases in the back of his neck.
 
She liked his hands; broad palms, thick fingers—strong but not clumsy.
 
She like his eyebrows too, the way they tended to hover over his eyes, protecting them, shading them.
 
But she kept coming back to the creases in his neck.