Cold Quiet Country (29 page)

Where? She thought. Where? She continued and the brightness faded. Still moving, fading. The heat ended and she wanted to go back and explore the warmth, but she sensed the drawing of another face and she drove farther from the Godhead until the bullfrogs started to groan and she saw, staring back through her, Guinevere Haudesert.

She saw herself and it was startling like electricity. She heard the notes, the bullfrogs. On another plane she contemplated death with certainty; indeed she stared into her maker. Gwen searched her other face for a sign and her heart quickened when she detected a trace of smile, a flinty mirth in the corner of her eye. Unlike her grandfather, grandmother, grocery man, and Burt—unlike all of them—she would go someplace nice.

Only she and Gale.

Gwen tried to find the place in her mind where this very moment her other self beheld God. Someplace within her must burn from seeing Him, but no place was warm. Now that she had looked farther to the left and found herself, she was again aware of the driving snow and ice and that she stood ankle-deep in coldness. The disparity was that between black and a rainbow; between nil and love. This world was pain and confusion and embarrassment and sin, and the next was so pure it burned, so loving it attracted her deeper and deeper until she wanted to forget herself and dive in, and merge and finally be stolen from endless night.

“Gwen?” Gale said.

She left her eyes closed for another moment, and soaked in the truth. She may never see these things again.

“We have to hurry,” Gale said. “If you can hang in there, we’ll be to the forest soon. We’ll find cover. I’ll build a fire. Gwen, please, stay with me. Open your eyes, baby.”

Gwen opened her eyes. Wind assailed her. Ice. Snow. Cold. Again she was numb, and tired.

“Come on, baby,” Gale said. “I got you. I’ll take care of you.”

She righted herself with her arms and hands in the snow. Took Gale’s hand, and faced the wind. The forest was ahead. Gale’s voice faded. She’d seen God. On one side of Him was Gale, and on the other was she, and everything was clear. They would not be together long.

* * *

Gwen’s gaze fell to Gale’s boot print. Drifts had accumulated in the lee side of a windrow of brush. They had reached the edge of the field and now entered an obstacle course of ice-covered logs and stumps, half-buried in icy waves of snow. She dropped her foot into Gale’s boot print the way she might drop a frozen fish into a bucket.

Gale plodded onward. His ruddy ears shone through locks of hair that seemed like frozen tufts of mud. If she closed her eyes, she would see Gale’s other face, the one that communed with the Almighty. Looking beyond, she would glimpse purity—and on the other side she would see a version of herself in the same contemplative pose as Gale.

Earlier, she’d yanked the knife from Gale’s leg and his eyes were full of water and when he’d regained his feet, he spun in circles like a rain dance, hopping and slipping, and she’d tucked the knife into her pocket with the blade up in the air.

Now she pulled out the knife and used one hand to wrap the other around the haft.

Gwen followed deeper into the woods. They neared a copse of ponderosa where the snow on the ground was lighter. Gwen stopped and Gale continued. She pressed the tip of the blade to her ribs until the point homed on a trough between bones. She angled the handle to point the blade at the center of her core, and inhaled. Closed her eyes.

The bullfrog song came. Gale looked through her into the deity beyond. She studied Gale’s face and though he couldn’t see her, she desperately wanted to communicate with
this
Gale, the one who would understand what she was about to do. She would tell him she hadn’t loved him at first, but it was her fault. And that he was so pure she’d fallen in love with him in spite of the ugliness Burt had planted in her heart. This Gale would understand she was saving him and her choice wasn’t merely selfish. That it was all good, that everything was white, that coldness and ice melted in the face of purity.

She had no voice for this Gale. He stayed where he was, imperturbable, looking into deity without needing to rush headlong into it. He was stronger than she. That was why he could stay a while longer, and why he would someday understand she had no strength to remain.

She opened her eyes and Gale was yards ahead. She dropped the knife to her side, hid it in her pocket. “Gale!”

He whirled to her, raced back. “Let me help,” he said.

“I love you. I just wanted to say that.”

“I love you,” he said. “Soon we’ll be at a rock ledge where I built a fire last night. I’ll carry you.” He stepped to her.

“No. I’m fine.”

“You’re shivering. Your lips are blue.”

“So are yours. Hurry. I’ll follow.”

He nodded, holding her eye. “Okay. Hurry.”

“And Gale? I love you. Remember.”

She followed to where Gale had spent the night. He gathered wood.

She brought the blade to her ribs. Nestled the point below her breast where it would glide between the bones. Closed her eyes and looked into the other Gale’s face one last time before slipping beyond him, around, toward the white heat and purity. She turned and as Godhead grew closer she wilted under the glare. It was agony and it was magnetic. Farther, farther. Hotter. Up and down were gone. Left and right didn’t exist. Everything in all of time and space was inside her. Deity was a crucible, and she was within it, burned pure. Whiteness blinded every dimension of her being; she was agony and pleasure; she writhed and her skin leaped, her heart soared and in a vague way she knew she had fallen onto the knife. Some other part of her let go. Some other part was sticky and red and rapidly freezing—but not Guinevere Haudesert.

She saw Gale one last time and whispered.

* * *

I watched the firefight. I remember that much. Odum did like I thought—came in from three sides, totally exposed, like an idiot.

I rushed as best I could on old legs in deep snow. I remember that. Sager went down first, and I couldn’t see Travis. Must have happened quick, because inside of two minutes it was just Odum firing into the basement, and then taking off around the back. I set off at a run, right up the driveway.

And next I know, my legs don’t work and my chest is inside a table vise. Everything’s black and my face is numb from snow. I’m thinking of Burt, and Gwen, and Margot, and the vagabond from 1951. I’m thinking of bullets and numb skin, wondering if this is the end of Sheriff Bittersmith—couldn’t even drag his sorry ass to the fight.

I’ll be damned.

But I can’t move.

* * *

Everything is black. I look out the window for the last shooter, but it’s dark outside, too. The pistol fire has stopped.

In a moment the snowmobile rocks as Liz mounts it and the springs adjust to her weight. The key clicks and there’s a mild knocking sound as she sets the starter cord.

She yanks and the motor surges to life. The headlight fills the basement and in a second the air is smoky with exhaust. Liz revs high while holding the brake, getting the engine hot. I point the rifle at the window. The din is like holding a chainsaw to your ear; the metallic rattle penetrates skull bones and vibrates the brain. Finally—all this has taken two seconds—she releases the brake. The engine screams bloody murder and the snowmobile darts across the basement floor, up the ramp, and blasts through the sloped wall door.

A series of flashes appear as the snowmobile becomes a receding airborne shadow—flashes that carry sharp reports with them.

Our third adversary was waiting. The snowmobile flies following the cant of the ramp, and smashes the man on the downward slope of the yard.

I struggle to the ramp and hold the rifle barrel before me as I climb out of the basement.

A man lies crumpled in the snowmobile’s tracks. His pistol is pressed to his chest. He’s breathing. On either side of him is the door, ripped in two by the sled’s nose. Liz races across the lake without letting up and then turns left. As the headlight begins to point back to the house, her progress stops. She waits and her snowmobile engine idles.

I step to the man’s feet and aim at his head.

“I’m sheriff,” he whispers.

I take the pistol from his hand. He bleeds from his mouth and his body begins to shake. I’ve seen enough death moments to recognize his. “Where’s Bittersmith?”

“He’s done. Last day.”

“Yours too.”

* * *

I sit at the edge of the basement entrance on the cement block wall. Liz races closer on the snowmobile.

She died in your place…

I should have been killed so many times. Which death did Gwen take for me?

Liz stops at the lake bank, just off the ice. The motor dies and she sits there, waiting.

Only now in the silence does everything make sense. Gwen saw my face with the music and convinced herself she could save me by dying. Only now does the uncertain feeling I’ve had all along—not knowing if I loved her because she needed my protection, or if I loved her because of her character—resolve. I’ve never known anyone so beautiful.

And only now do I fathom the depth of my hatred for Burt Haudesert. He thought invading Gwen’s bed was an inconsequential thing, but he stole her entire life.

Liz walks toward me, rifle in hand. I wave. I’d like to redirect my thoughts back to Gwen, but Bittersmith is still out there. He’ll come to me, or I’ll go to him.

“This was the new sheriff. He’s dead,” I say. “You can go home.”

When she is a few feet away, she says, “Now let me tell you my story.”

Liz Sunday is a sprightly character, brimming with anger; she moves like a bowed whipsaw and her voice crackles like gunfire. She begins talking as we circle the house, me gimping and her gesticulating, more and more overcome by her own audacity.

“Gwen and I were the same,” she says. “The same things happened to us, and some to me were worse. My mother ran off when I was three, and…”

I parse her excited language while she bends to her brother’s corpse.

“You want to get his other foot?” she says.

I stoop and lift, fold his ankle in the crook of my elbow. Together we heave him toward the house.

“We were friends and all,” Liz says. “Gwen told me about the music, and why it started.”

Her brother is still warm, and a red trail marks the first few feet of his passage through the snow. It quickly fades and though we are dragging a bloody corpse the snow is virgin white, something so remarkable that I cannot get my mind around it. Liz is talking still, mincing around confessing that her father raped her and that is what bound her and Gwen together.

Am I losing my mind? Have I heard all this before?

Her brother’s foot is in my arm and when I look at his ruddy, blood-speckled face, I see Jordan. Words avalanche from Liz’s mouth but she says nothing of the corpse in her hands. This is the fellow that pulled her pigtails, according to the vernacular of family life—who taunted and teased, and told his buddies that no one save he got to pick on her. Liz’s mouth foams as she describes the things her father did to her. We’re lifting and dragging her brother like a sack of meal, and her coldness informs equally on her scars and her brother Link’s apparent lifelong disregard.

His complicity supplies one more confirmation of the half-truth every orphan clings to, that he’d rather be alone after all.

“And my father sent me away to have the baby. They took him from me before I even nursed him,” she says.

“Did you ever love your brother?”

She stops. “Him?”

I don’t think words are going to penetrate her. Maybe they shouldn’t. “Where did they take you to have your baby?”

“I was at my aunt’s in Monroe. They took the baby to an orphanage there.”

Something in her tone has changed.

“An orphanage in Monroe?” I drop her dead brother’s foot. “Monroe?”

“Yeah,” she says, and her eyes seem more focused than any time I’ve seen them except the night she surprised me at Haynes’s. She says, “What? Pick up his foot. We don’t have much time.”

“What am I doing here?” I say. Did her brother molest her? Is she mad? Are there any untouched girls? Any who remain sane?

We are silent as we drag Link. I’m tired of this sport and I want to find my bunk at the Youth Home, where I spent winter evenings buried in books, imagining other men’s troubles. I follow Liz to the front of the house.

“Who are these two?”

Liz drops to her knees, pulls the man’s head to the side so I can see his face. “This is Tom Taylor. The boys called him T.T., or Titties.”

I stoop, best I can, to his feet.

“Why?” she says. “You know him?”

“No. Did you?”

“Only that they all thought he was queer.”

“Why did they take him into the group?”

“Needed members. It isn’t easy throwing a revolution.”

I recall Burt Haudesert’s continual recruiting, and the man who gave me a lift to town when I went to see Haynes about a job. The Militia always needed men.

I lift Taylor’s feet and am momentarily disgusted by the vigilantism he chose to die for. “What about that guy over there?”

“Must be Wilbur Barnes. Just snuck home from Canada.”

“So he wouldn’t fight our country’s war, but was willing to fight one against me.”

“He got a job at the farm depot.”

“Of course.”

She hoists Taylor by the shoulders. He bows in the middle and we scoot him over the snow. We drop him at the back of the house and catch our breath.

I say, “How’d you join this gang?”

“I wasn’t in the group. Link was.”

“They took the son of the town communist?”

Her nostrils flare.

“I guess you hear a lot of that.”

“They told me I could come if I stayed out of the way. And about my father… being a communist is far from the worst he’s done.” She grits through the moment. “The Militia didn’t want Link. We heard things at school. We found our dog with his head sawed off. We went to bed every night wondering what was next. At school, Link started asking about the Militia. Finally him and my father had a knockdown drag-out. That night Link went away with his aught-six, and when he came back I could see from his eyes they’d let him in. He slept like a baby.”