Deep Winter (20 page)

T
he old bastard had a bunch of liquor after all, and Sokowski found it in the cabinet above the stove. They didn't drink whiskey, but that was okay. They had a bottle of vodka, one of rum, couple bottles of wine, but Sokowski went straight for the bottle of tequila. Virgin bottle of Jose Cuervo Gold. Still sealed. Sokowski put an end to that.

He drank nearly a quarter of it while standing in the middle of the kitchen. It tasted pretty sweet going down, but the violent urge to vomit hit him fast. He leaned over and retched out the contents of his stomach onto the kitchen floor in three violent heaves. After he spit out the last of the chunks from his mouth, he decided to drink some milk from the refrigerator. He gulped some of that down to coat his stomach, then tried a few more pulls on the tequila bottle. He waited to see if his stomach would reject it again, but it appeared that the booze would stay down this time.

The burn in his side from the bullet wound throbbed red hot. It felt like his skin was on fire. Sokowski glanced down at the damage—blood gurgled from the hole in his flesh, dark and thick, and spilled down his shirt and ran halfway down his denim jeans.

Gotta stop the bleeding some. Stupid fucking Carl.

Sokowski reached back into the liquor cabinet and grabbed the bottle of vodka. He didn't want to waste any more tequila. He spun off the cap and poured it onto the gaping wound.

It stung like a son of a bitch. Like a hundred fucking bee stings. He bent over and clutched at his side, dropping the vodka bottle to the floor, where it popped and shattered. Sokowski took a moment to let the pain ease off. He leaned against the kitchen counter and waited for the tequila to get to his brain—not fast enough—so he reached for the Jose Cuervo and sucked on the bottle again. After an agonizing minute, the pain began to slowly drift away.

He looked around at the Bennetts' perfect little kitchen. Glass canisters of flour, sugar, and ground coffee lined up nice and neat on the counter, a toaster polished up like it had never been used, a bread box and a cookie jar. Sokowski stared at the drapes hung over the window above the sink, then at the tablecloth that covered a small kitchen table—they had matching patterns of pheasants in flight with hunters crouched behind a tree, aiming a gun at the birds.

“Goddamn.”

Sokowski staggered back into the living room on feet that felt like cinder blocks. The old bitch was gone. If the retard took her with him, they wouldn't be too hard to find. He wanted to finish this—had to finish it. A few loose ends to deal with first, and then he would hop in his truck and never look back at this shithole of a town. Head up to Canada and start over. The border was about a four-hour drive. He'd be across it and free of this shit before Lester or the cops
knew he was even out of town. Sokowski would have no problem smoking with and selling weed to the Canucks—that would be just fine by him.

He glanced over at Carl's body and took another pull on the tequila, then spit down on his corpse.

Stupid asshole.

The overwhelming urge to shit hit him like a boot to the stomach. He didn't know where the bathroom was and didn't really care. He just unbuckled his pants, squatted down, and emptied himself onto the carpet and didn't bother to wipe. Blood leaked from the puckered hole in his side and rolled down his naked ass and puddled onto the carpet next to his pile of waste.

Christ. My fingerprints are everywhere.
The thought made him laugh out loud, sounding like the caw of a damn crow.

He stood back up and buckled his pants, then retrieved his rifle. He noticed the old man's rifle and picked that one up as well. He limped to the front door and peered back at the room one last time.

“Adios, motherfuckers.”

And he staggered out of the house.

L
ester dreamed that he was having breakfast with Bonnie. She had whipped up a whole stack of buttermilk pancakes with fresh blueberries, a pile of bacon, and homemade hash browns. The house smelled like a taste of heaven. The kitchen looked different but kinda the same. The table and chairs were the same—made of hickory wood from a shop down in Dushore. Same stove and refrigerator. The same cookie jar perched on the edge of the counter that he visited a few times a day. But there were no pictures or calendars of cats. No cat figurines. No cat magnets on the fridge. No four-legged critters winding between his legs, purring and screeching out their high-pitched meow. Not a single cat in the whole goddamned house.

Lester knew he must be dreaming.

Bonnie poured him a fresh cup of coffee and smiled down at him. She looked the same but was prettier than ever. Younger, too. She looked like she did when Lester still had a full head of hair.

He didn't say anything. Just smiled back at her. Sometimes saying nothing was a whole lot better than saying something that didn't mean nothing. The sound of children's laughter came from somewhere outside the house. Lester looked out the kitchen window, and it wasn't snowing one bit. The sun was shining in all its glory, and it looked to be a beautiful day.

Bonnie put two more breakfast plates down. She filled two juice glasses with fresh-squeezed OJ—nice and pulpy the way he liked it—and glanced toward the back door. She opened her mouth and called out, but no sound came from her mouth. Her lips moved, and she was definitely saying something, except Lester couldn't hear anything but the sound of a strong-blowing wind. He hadn't noticed the steady howl of wind till now.

Bonnie smiled as the back door swung open, and the kitchen was immediately bathed with bright, intense sunlight. Lester had to shield his eyes from the blinding light and he squinted at two silhouettes of small children framed in the doorway. As the children ran toward him and leaped onto his lap, the wind picked up and stung at his face. Then Lester woke up.

His eyes fluttered open. The wind was snapping at his face and neck. His back and head felt cold. Above him the sky was a checkerboard of black and white cumulus clouds. He still remembered learning that word, “cumulus,” back in the tenth grade. Always stuck with him. His tenth-grade science teacher, Mr. Salsman, would be proud.

A major storm front was moving in. Lester stared up at the sky and watched the clouds fold into one another and move along at a snail's pace as the remnants of his dream still tickled at his brain. He noticed the snow-covered tree limbs that hung above and knew that he wasn't dreaming anymore, and he sure wasn't at home.

He tried to sit up, but the whole left side of his body felt numb. Lester knew that it wasn't the cold or frostbite. He knew what it was.

“Hell.” He rested his head back on the ground again. He stayed there and didn't panic—wasn't exactly the panicking type. He needed to figure out how bad his condition was. If he got himself all worked up, it would just make matters that much worse.

He tried to lift both arms toward the sky. The right side moved up just as his brain had ordered, but the left side went up a little ways, a few inches off the ground, and that was about the extent of it.

He smacked and licked at his lips to get the feel of them. “All right, Lester, just what are you gonna do now?” It felt mighty strange to talk to himself, especially out loud, but his voice sounded clear and he didn't slur any. That was a good sign at least.

Once again he tried to sit up. He hadn't attempted a sit-up since he was growing the short and curly ones down below his belt buckle in the seventh grade. He managed to get his right hand under him and push himself to a sitting position after a few attempts. It was a long struggle that took well over a minute or two, but he managed. He sat in the snow and tried to catch his breath.

The forest stood quiet around him. The call of the coonhounds was gone. The wind blew steadily, causing creaks and groans from the trees. Dead brown leaves that stubbornly hung on to branches flapped and rattled like tiny dancers above him. Large snowflakes floated down, ending their long journey from the storm clouds. It was peaceful. So damn peaceful.

Lester didn't know why, but he smiled. Maybe that's what folks do right before they're taken to their Maker. He wondered whether he had done all the things he'd set out to do as a young man. He felt pretty confident that he had. He never had the yearning to move
away from the place where he was born and raised. He had wanted kids, sure, but that wasn't in the cards. And that was okay with him. He fished and hunted and watched football and baseball. Played cards once a month or so. Those things made him happy. He knew of many men who constantly wanted more out of life. Wanted more money, a bigger house, a younger wife, a job that wasn't real work. More stuff parked out in the driveway. Those men made themselves crazy. Pacing and grumbling and hating everyone and everything they weren't.

Lester pretty much accepted what he got and didn't complain. He loved his wife and liked his job. His friends who were still living treated him well and were there for him if he needed to bend their ear. He had done good with his life.

He found himself getting a little misty and shook away all the sappy thoughts. “Hell, old man, you ain't in the grave just yet.” He reached down into the snow and grabbed hold of a fallen branch and set it in the ground beside him. He readied himself and pushed up. His knees popped and his lower back ached, but he managed to right himself.

He waited a bit before trying to walk. While his body played catch-up with his brain, he looked around to get his bearings. Footprints trailed off to the left of him—the direction he'd come from. He looked at the sky again and figured he hadn't been out for very long. Maybe twenty minutes or so, but darkness wasn't far off.

He put his right foot forward, but his left wasn't so accommodating. He dug his makeshift cane deeper into the frozen ground and pushed himself ahead, dragging his left foot and leg behind him like a gimp.

He laughed at himself again and kept hauling himself forward. He was in sad shape, but he intended to take care of the unfinished
business at hand. He pictured Danny in his head. Poor, big, slow Danny. Just an overgrown kid with his crew cut and clean-shaven face. Then it hit him. Just like that.

Clean-shaven. That boy doesn't wear a beard. Never has. Mindy's face was all scuffed up by a man's facial hair. Those marks weren't from the carpet. Hell.

Then he got to thinking about Mike's face and neck when he first saw him out at Mindy's trailer. The deputy said he got into a scuffle at some party in Towanda.

Lester pushed himself to limp faster, but his weary bones would only move so fast.
Hell, old man.

D
anny hoped that the voice in his head was right. It hadn't told him who was out there in the woods who would be able to help him. It hadn't said anything else to him since he started to follow the deer. Hopefully the voice would lead him to the sheriff—Lester would have to believe Danny now.

But if the voice in his head was wrong, and there was no one out there, Danny knew he would get lost. And, if he got lost, he sure was worried that Mrs. Bennett wouldn't get the help she needed. So many people had been hurt and worse.

The deputy was a bad man. Kinda like his Uncle Brett, but a whole lot worse. Maybe Uncle Brett would drink too much and hit Danny when he was a little kid, but Danny knew that Uncle Brett was just real sad about losing his brother and having to take care of him. Uncle Brett used to blame Danny for him not being able to marry a young woman and told him as much. Uncle Brett used to
blame Danny for lots of things, like having to spend too much money on him for food and clothes and visits to Doc Pete—money he didn't have, he told Danny. Maybe if Danny wasn't around, Uncle Brett would have gotten married and finally been happy. Maybe, just maybe. That's why after Uncle Brett went away to heaven, Danny knew he should live on his own and take care of himself. If he wasn't anybody else's problem, then he couldn't make anybody else sad or mad and he couldn't get anyone hurt again.

He watched the three-legged deer hopping ahead of him. He had been following her for a while now, but she never let him get too close. Danny guessed that he scared her a little. Especially now with his face looking like some kind of monster's face and the fact that he was carrying a gun. Hunters carry guns and bows and arrows. A hunter is who hurt her and made her walk funny.

Maybe he should drop the gun in the snow and bury it so it couldn't hurt no one else. All guns did was hurt folks.

Keep the gun, Danny.

He looked toward the doe. She was standing still and staring back at him with big black eyes.

Keep the gun for a little while longer.

Danny nodded and kept walking toward her. The doe stayed put where she was and watched him approach. He got real close to her. Could see the deer breathing and the crystals of snow frozen around her mouth. If he reached out, he would be able to touch her soft fur now and pet the doe like a dog. He didn't do that, though.

The doe stuck her nose close to the snow and sniffed around for something. It was gonna be dark soon, so Danny didn't understand why they were staying put.

“I'm hungry, too, but I think we should keep going.”

The doe looked up from the ground. Her nose was wet and had a clump of snow stuck to the end of it.

It's almost time.

Her ears twitched, then snapped straight up in the air. She looked forward and stared into the forest ahead of them. Danny stared in the same direction. He saw something move between the trees. Something big. And it was moving straight toward them.

The three-legged deer kept her watch and waited, and Danny stood beside the doe and waited right along with her.

H
is left leg had stiffened up like a son of a bitch. Lester thought that maybe it would loosen up or get some feeling back once he was on his feet and moving again, but the paralysis—he hoped to God it was only temporary—was getting progressively worse with time. The cold wasn't helping matters—the temperature dipping down in the low teens.

He felt like old man Moses wandering the wild with his staff in hand. Except he had no flock and he sure the hell wasn't headed toward the promised land—not yet at least. But he had put his faith in the Lord's hands back before he got married to Bonnie, at both her urging and insistence, and he had kept it there ever since.

His progress had been slow going. It took him three times as much energy to walk three times slower.

Keep moving, old man. More than your backside at stake here.

His stomach churned and rumbled in his belly. He hadn't eaten
anything since dinner the night before, and he had smoked his last menthol cigarette a few hours ago. If God was hell-bent on testing him, he sure was doing a bang-up job of it. If Lester actually got through this mess, maybe he'd even give up smoking.

“Ha.” The laugh shot out of him, and the sound of it surprised him. Maybe he was delirious after all.

Up ahead of him was a small clearing. The trees gave way to a snow-covered area that for whatever reason didn't have foliage of any kind. It was about twenty yards by twenty yards. He entered the clearing, dragging his useless leg and pulling himself along.

Midway through the clearing, he noticed them. It took him a second to register what exactly he was seeing, then another few seconds to convince himself that he wasn't dreaming again.

It was Danny Bedford, or what was left of him, sitting in the snow at the other end of the clearing. He had what appeared to be dried blood on his jacket and pants and caked on his face and neck—blood all over him, in fact. Lester had seen plenty of men on the losing end of a bar fight. Their eyes blackened, a bloodied nose, a gash upside the head delivered by a cue stick or a beer bottle. He thought he had seen it all till he glimpsed Danny. The boy appeared much worse off since Lester had seen him at Doc Pete's earlier in the day. The boy's head seemed enormous. His jaw hung open like the bottom half of a rotted Halloween pumpkin. Danny's eyes were swollen up like the rest of him, but they seemed pretty clear.

Or sane, which is what Lester was hoping for.

But to make the sight before him even more of a head scratcher, the boy he'd been searching for during the last fifteen hours and then some was in the middle of the forest, squatting next to a three-legged doe like it was his long-lost dog. The two of them weren't but
twelve inches apart from each other, and they just stared at Lester like they'd been waiting on him for a lifetime.

Lester had never seen anything like it. A man and a wild deer keeping each other's company. Once he noticed the doe's stump, he knew that she was the victim of a bow hunter. The hunter's arrow had found its target but failed to make the kill. Lester had seen gangrene before. An animal that chewed off its own leg to free itself from a trap or deer that took a bullet or arrow but didn't lie down and die. Most deer didn't survive long after the infection had set in. The poison got into the bloodstream and killed them within ten days. This deer should be dead but apparently wasn't ready to die just yet.

When Danny stood up, Lester noticed the gun clutched in the boy's hands.

Lester took a few more steps toward the curious pair but was careful to move slow and easy. He kept his own rifle held down low in his left hand. The closer he got, the more the doe's tail snapped back and forth like a surrender flag caught up in a gust of wind.

“Hello, son. Been looking for you.”

Danny nodded but stayed put. He watched the sheriff struggle to stay upright.

“You don't look so good, Sheriff. What happened to your leg?” Danny asked.

Lester stopped walking and pushed his cap back on his head a little. “I guess my body needed to remind me that I'm an old man.”

“You gonna die?” Danny asked with no ill intent.

“I hope not. At least not today.” Lester noticed the pained look in Danny's eyes. He figured that the boy must be in a world of hurt. He was surprised that he could even stand in the condition he was in.

“There's been more killing,” Danny said. A simple statement of fact. “Up at the Bennett place.”

“That so?” Lester tried to sound calm, but he clutched at his rifle a bit tighter.

“I didn't do nothing to Mindy, Sheriff.” Danny's tone sounded hopeful, like he really needed the sheriff to believe him.

“Why don't you tell me about that, son?”

Danny looked to the doe for a moment before answering, like he had to check with her before continuing on. “I was just going to her place to give her a present. Yesterday was her birthday, you know?”

“That a fact?”

“Same day as mine. That's one reason she was my friend.”

Lester nodded. “Mindy was a good gal.”

“Yes, sir, she was. That's why I made a present for her. When I got there, the deputy and Carl were already there. They told me that Mindy had an accident. And when I went inside, she was already . . .” Danny choked up, unable to finish. Large tears flowed down red, chapped cheeks and glistened in the setting sun.

“I believe you, son. I really do.”

Danny looked at the sheriff and seemed relieved. That brought on a new batch of tears.

“Danny, can you do me a favor and put that gun down?”

Danny looked down at the rifle he was holding and thought about it for a second, but he kept the gun right where it was. “He killed Mr. Bennett. And Mrs. Bennett is hurt real bad.”

“The deputy and Carl did that?”

“Naw. Just your deputy. Carl used the gun on himself.”

Lester was pretty sure he believed Danny but would feel a hell of a lot better if the boy would just drop his gun to the ground.

“Why'd the deputy do all these things, Danny?”

Danny gave him a strange look. “I don't know, Sheriff. I was hoping you would know that.”

Lester nodded and gazed at the three-legged doe. He wished he had a good answer for that. “And what about the deputy? Where is he now?”

“Carl shot him. Before he put the gun under his chin. The deputy was gonna kill Mrs. Bennett. She's hurt real bad, but she ain't dead. I put her up in her bedroom. Told her I would go for help.”

“I guess we should do that, but it sure would make me feel a whole lot better if you put that gun down. Those things can go off if you ain't careful.”

Danny guessed that it was okay now if the sheriff wanted him to. He started to lower the rifle to the ground when a shot rang out, and the three-legged deer flinched. A splatter of blood exploded from her chest and she fell to the ground and twitched a few times before she stopped moving at all.

Danny and Lester ducked for cover with their hands held over their heads. They both watched wide-eyed as Sokowski stepped into the clearing with his rifle secure against his shoulder. He was swaying a little and struggled to maintain his balance. His right side was soaked with blood still flowing like a leaking bottle of maple syrup.

Sokowski looked at Lester with eyes so red that it was hard to see his pupils. “Guess we finally got our man, huh, Sheriff?” His speech came out slow and mumbled.

Lester stood upright and pulled his left leg under him and tried to stand tall. Sokowski noticed anyway.

“What's the matter with you? You look like shit.”

Lester took a breath and was careful to speak nice and easy. “Been a long day, Mike. More walking than I'm used to. And my old bones don't like the cold so much, I guess.”

Sokowski kept his ground, never taking his rifle off the sheriff. “The ticker, huh?”

Lester sighed his response. He had never seen his deputy in such sorry shape. Boozed up beyond repair, all the anger boiling to the surface. His gut told him that this wouldn't end well. Just like with Johnny Knolls.

“Why don't you go ahead and drop that rifle to the ground, Lester? You won't be needing it no more.”

Lester kept the rifle clutched in his hand. “Now, listen here, Mike—”

“Go on. I ain't gonna tell you again.”

Lester hated to do it, but he lowered the gun onto the snow and winced at the discomfort bending down caused him.

“Ain't so easy taking orders from other folks, is it, Lester?”

“No. Guess it ain't.”

Sokowski had a strange smirk creasing his lips. “Things weren't supposed to turn out this way, Lester. All this killing, you know? But it's done and can't be undone.”

“All right. That's a fact,” Lester agreed.

A hard gust of wind swept through the clearing, whipping up sheets of powdery flakes all around the three men like they were standing in a snow globe.

“But I guess there's a few choices yet to be made. Danny here ain't nothing. You know that. No one really gives a shit about him.” Sokowski looked at Danny for a second, then refocused his drunken gaze back on the sheriff.

“It's time to stop all this nonsense, Mike. No sense in going on with it. Enough bad has happened.”

Sokowski lost his balance a bit but kept his rifle up.

“I don't want to kill you, Lester. Already going to hell for all that I've done today. But from the looks of you, I might not have to go and do that. You're a walking dead man unless you get some medical attention.”

Lester nodded. “You're right about that, too. Been in better shape.”

Sokowski spit and lowered his gun a little. Just a little. “I can walk away from all this. All that really stands in my way is you. Maybe it ain't right, but what choice do I got?”

Lester's heart pounded erratically in his chest. The big muscle felt like it was pulsing upward and might burst right out of his throat and drop into the snow. Sweat rolled from under his hat and down his neck and back.

“You got choices, Mike. You're right about not being able to undo what's happened, but there's still right and wrong here. Too many folks have died here today. No sense in any more.”

Sokowski almost lost his balance. Squinted his eyes to block out the pain, then let go with a small laugh. “Right and wrong? Shit, Lester, when did I ever pay attention to the difference between right and wrong? You, maybe. You've always seemed to do the right thing in your life.”

Lester wanted to keep Sokowski talking. If he got him talking long enough, maybe he could get some reason into him. If that didn't work, he needed to try to take the rifle away from him.

“Well, I try to do the right thing, Mike. Don't know if I always succeed, but I give it my best shot. Damned if I don't.”

Sokowski shook his head at him. “What does doing the right thing get you here and now, Lester? Seems like it ain't gonna get you shit.”

“It's not too late here, Mike. Just think about it for a moment.”

Sokowski smiled at him and shook his head again. “Sorry, Sheriff. I've already thought about it, and I know what I gotta do.” He turned the rifle toward Danny.

But Danny didn't flinch. Didn't cower or duck for cover. He just studied Sokowski with all the blood running down the side of him. Then he stared at Sokowski's messed-up ear, a brown, shrunken piece of flesh. He knew how mean kids could be and knew that something like that would be made fun of. He kept staring at the deputy's deformity, and for some reason he didn't quite understand, Danny didn't feel angry or scared of him anymore. He only felt sadness for the man.

“What you did to Mindy and the Bennetts was wrong, Mike.”

Sokowski gave him a funny look, surprised that he would be talking right now. “Yeah? Is that right, Danny?”

“I guess what I mean to say is that you did something real bad, but maybe you couldn't help it. Like me, it's just who you are.”

Sokowski's eyes narrowed, and his face twisted with confusion. “Christ. What the hell are you yammering about?”

Danny continued on. Determined and assured. “Some folks are dumb. Some are smart. Some good, some bad. It's just who we are.”

Sokowski finally laughed, sharp and loud. “That's right, Danny. I was born one bad motherfucker.” He grinned over at Lester. “Maybe your boy ain't so dumb after all. He knows I ain't gonna change. You should listen to the retard here.”

“I forgive you, Mike,” Danny said quietly.

Sokowski cringed at the words. Hating Danny for who he was. “What?” But he had heard him. Danny didn't need to repeat himself.

Lester took advantage of Sokowski's being distracted for a moment. He let his walking stick fall to the ground and reached for his holster. The pistol slipped into his right hand and came out by his
waist in one smooth movement—he was quicker than his condition implied and had Sokowski dead in his sights.

“Let's not end it like this, Mike.”

Sokowski kept his rifle on Danny. Grinned a little. “You ain't gonna shoot me, Lester. You ain't the kind.”

“I'll do what's right, son. Trust me on that.”

It was getting dark, but Lester could see Sokowski's smile fade. Sokowski started to lower his gun, then swung it toward Lester and squeezed the trigger. It was a wild shot, but it found Lester nonetheless. Lester felt a hot blast of pain as the bullet entered his leg right above the knee. The impact knocked him backward and laid him out onto the snow. His pistol dropped from his hand and sank into a few inches of snow.

Sokowski staggered toward the sheriff and stood over him. His eyes were wild but focused down on the man. “Damn, Lester.”

Lester lay sprawled out on the ground like he was making snow angels and grasped for his pistol. He should've taken the shot. Sokowski was right. He wasn't the kind.

“You tried, Lester. You tried.” He put the barrel of the rifle an inch from Lester's head and started to squeeze the trigger.