Deep Winter (21 page)

Another shot rang out, and Sokowski fell forward and thudded down beside Lester. He wasn't even able to put his arms out in front of him to slow his fall. His throat gurgled, arms and legs jerking and twitching.

Lester stared over at Sokowski and watched as blood pumped out in spurts from the dime-size hole in his neck. The deputy kept twisting in the snow, his boot heels digging little divots in the frozen earth. He clapped a hand over the wound, but the jugular vein had been severed and dumped blood like a water hose. Sokowski
gurgled some more, arms and legs slowly losing their fight. The bleed-out took less than a minute, and then his body came to rest.

Lester squinted up toward Danny, and the boy wasn't holding the rifle on his shoulder like you were supposed to—it was down by his hips. It reminded Lester of how John Wayne held his rifle in some of his favorite classic Westerns.

Right before Lester blacked out, he saw Danny drop the rifle into the snow and kneel beside him. The boy wasn't crying anymore. There were no signs of fear or shock or dismay on his face. It was an expression Lester had never seen on the boy's face before. Danny appeared calm.

“We'll get you help, Sheriff. Don't you go and die on me,” Danny said.

Past Danny's shoulder the sun was barely a sliver of light above the trees as night took over the day and Lester slipped away.

D
anny woke up early like usual—before the sun had risen. He peered out his window and watched the snowfall in the orange dawn sky. The moon was full and partially hidden behind thick gray clouds.

The pain in his jaw had kept him up most of the night, and when he did sleep, Mindy was there, alive and well. Since all the bad things had happened, Danny thought he would have the scary kind of dreams. Dreams about what had happened and all the blood and about the man who made it all happen. But instead he dreamed about Mindy when she was a little girl. Dreams of sitting behind her in Miss Bradley's class and looking at her long pigtails—she always wore her hair in tight pigtails. Dreams of her on the playground, playing dodgeball with the boys. Dreams of Mindy sitting next to him in the lunchroom and sharing her tuna-fish sandwich and carrot sticks when no one else wanted to.

Danny shuffled to his dresser—he still had little aches and pains throughout his entire body—and picked up the bottle of pills that Doc Pete had given him. The bottle stood among the wood carvings of birds, snails, rabbits, squirrels, and the one lone turtle, Rudy. He opened the medicine bottle and shook out a pill. Just one. Doc Pete told him to take one every morning when he woke up to help with the pain. Most of the time it did.

He swallowed the small blue tablet without water and took a look at himself in the mirror. Most of the swelling in his face was gone, but his neck was still black and blue. He had tried to shave once since Mindy's accident, but the razor hurt his skin too much, so he let his beard grow out. He didn't like the way his whiskers looked. They made him look like all the rest of the men in town, and he didn't like that at all. And it was too itchy for his liking. He sure didn't understand why so many folks in town wore beards.

His tongue brushed along the pins in his mouth that the doctor had put in. The ambulance had taken him to a big hospital up in Towanda. It was the biggest and brightest building he'd ever been in, with nurses in blue uniforms bustling around, making him take medicine at all hours of the day and pee in a little plastic jug when he couldn't get out of bed. Danny couldn't remember the doctor's name, and he wasn't as nice as Doc Pete, but he was the one that fixed Danny's jaw and said that it would be as good as new in a few weeks.

Danny pulled on the same green pants that he always wore. Most of the blood had come out, but there were still a few dark stains on one of the pant legs. He had put it through the washer down in the laundromat three times and used extra laundry soap, but the stain was stubborn and wouldn't come out. He wasn't sure whose blood it was. There had been so much.

He opened his small closet, and behind his winter jacket hung a blue dress shirt. It was Uncle Brett's—the only thing that Danny had kept of his. Uncle Brett never went to church, but he had his one nice blue dress shirt that he would wear to weddings or fancy parties. It was the same blue shirt Uncle Brett wore to Danny's parents' funeral.

Danny slipped the shirt off the hanger and thought it would look nice at Mindy's funeral. He wanted to look real nice. It was important. He didn't remember his folks' funeral very well, but he remembered that Uncle Brett made him wear a nice shirt and a pair of pants with no stains on them.

He finished getting dressed and ate some applesauce on his bed. He couldn't chew nothing, but he could swallow okay. He finished the entire jar, then made his bed. After that he sat and looked at his wood figurines for a while. He wanted to start carving a new one but wasn't sure what animal to make. Whatever animal he decided on would be a gift for Mrs. Bennett. Maybe he would make a cardinal. She liked cardinals. Or maybe he would carve a doe. He had never tried carving a deer before.

The funeral wasn't for a while, so Danny decided to go downstairs and clean up the laundromat.

Mrs. Bennett wanted to keep the Wash 'N Dry open for business. She told Danny that it would be what Mr. Bennett would have wanted. She asked him if he was ready and willing to take care of it all by himself. It would be up to him to go and buy the sodas at the IGA and keep the machine stocked. Mrs. Bennett gave him the keys to all the machines, and he kept them in his dresser upstairs, safely hidden under his socks. He sure didn't want to lose them. She said that she would drive them to Towanda once a month or so to buy the little boxes of soap from the place that made those kinds. She knew that Danny couldn't drive, and it was too far to walk.

Danny flicked on the lights and went about sweeping and mopping. He checked all the machines for forgotten clothes and emptied the trash. The room was already pretty clean, but he knew he had extra time so he swept behind the washers and dryers, too.

It was still early, so he decided to go ahead and walk to the cemetery. He didn't want to be late and figured that he would visit his parents at the graveyard, since he was going there anyway.

He unlocked the front door and stepped out onto Main Street.

•   •   •

S
ycamore and sweet birch trees surrounded the cemetery like tall, silent guardians. Hundreds of grave markers poked through the snow that blanketed the acres of burial grounds. Here and there dead flower arrangements leaned against old grave markers left behind by the left behind. Some of the larger headstones had bronze flower vases anchored to the side. Some had silk flower arrangements neatly placed inside the containers, but most of the vases had fresh-cut flowers, now brown and wilted, that hung forward as if reaching for the ground.

In the center of the large cemetery, a blue canopy had been erected over a newly dug opening in the ground. A John Deere backhoe was parked twenty feet away from the open grave next to a pile of dark brown dirt that had been covered up with a tarp, waiting to shoveled back into the hole. A funeral worker wearing green coveralls shoveled away some fresh snow to make room for stands of flower wreaths and sprays. After finishing with that chore, the man rearranged a dozen folding chairs and made them into nice, even rows. The worker took off an old cap, wiped the sweat from around his neck, then dug into his coveralls and pulled out a pack of Marlboros and lit one up. He looked up at the gray sky as if to check
on the likelihood of snow before he made his way toward a single-story brick building.

The cemetery was quiet for a few minutes. The trees swayed in a slow-moving breeze, and a flock of blackbirds flew overhead, filling the air with the shrill sound of caws. The tranquillity was finally interrupted as a few cars and trucks started to trickle into the gravel parking lot, tires crunching on the small stones, and men and women dressed in black or dark colors exited somberly. Only a few wore dress clothes. Most were bundled up in flannel jackets and wore blue jeans. A few farmers still had on their work clothes, smeared with dirt and manure. None of them spoke. They kept to themselves but nodded to one another and made their way slowly into the brick building.

•   •   •

D
anny hadn't been to the cemetery since his parents' funeral. He knew that this was the place that was supposed to be their final resting place, but they weren't under the ground in coffins like other folks. He hadn't seen their bodies at the funeral because there had been no coffins. Uncle Brett said that their bodies had been under the water for too long. After they fell through the ice, a current had sucked them under the black pond water and carried them deep. The ice was too thick and no one could find them. They sent a few volunteer firemen diving down into the pond, and they had looked and looked for his folks, but they never found them. They told Uncle Brett that the pond was too deep and that their bodies had probably gotten tangled up in waterweeds and tree branches.

Danny remembered that Uncle Brett had gotten a phone call in the springtime, when the ice had started to melt. Some kids had found Danny's papa when he finally floated to the surface. A few
days later, they found his mama, too. Uncle Brett said what they found wasn't his folks anymore.

After they pulled his parents' bodies out of the pond, an ambulance took them away and they were burned up in a stove that made them into ashes. Uncle Brett took their ashes and buried them somewhere out in the woods up on Lime Hill. He never told Danny where he put them, and Danny never asked. When he wanted to talk to them, he would just go out to McGee Pond. That's the last place he had seen them at, and he thought that maybe part of them was still there somehow and that maybe they could hear him talking to them.

Danny had to walk around the cemetery for a long time, looking at hundreds of headstones until he found their grave site. Their headstones weren't as big as a lot of the other markers, and they didn't have any flowers or a fancy vase on them.

Danny stared down at the engraving on the pinkish gray granite but couldn't read all the words. He recognized his folks' names and the dates of birth and death, but that was about it—
HANK BEDFORD, 1920–1949
, and
ELEANOR BEDFORD, 1922–1949
. Danny wished he could read what else was written on their headstones, but now that Mindy was gone, he didn't have anybody else to come out here and read them to him. Maybe one day he'd ask the sheriff or Mrs. Bennett to come out to the cemetery and read him the headstones. Or maybe he'd teach himself to read at the library. That would be nice.

He was getting pretty cold, but Mindy's burial hadn't started yet. He shoved his hands into his pockets and tried to think of something to say to his parents.

“I'm real sorry for what happened. I should have listened to you, Mama. I shouldn't have gone so far out on the ice.”

They didn't answer him.

“Mindy's coming to see you. Maybe she's already there. She's my friend, and I'm gonna miss her. She was always nice to me. I think you will like her a lot.”

They still didn't say anything.

“I guess I'm gonna be in charge of the Wash 'N Dry now. It's a lot of work, but it's important. Mrs. Bennett says she's counting on me. I'm gonna work real hard and try not to let her down. I think she misses Mr. Bennett, because she cries a lot.”

Danny noticed a few folks walking out of the brick building and moving toward the open grave. It was time. Danny smiled down at his folks' headstones one last time.

“I'm gonna be okay. Don't worry about me none.”

T
he priest had finished with his eulogy and let the mourners stand alone with their thoughts and silent prayers. A few folks paying their respects had already moved back to their cars and trucks and would go about their day like it was any other—feeding and milking their cows, getting to their shift at Taylor's, making the necessary deliveries.

Scott and Skeeter were on either side of their mother. Sarah looked beat up pretty bad. She had insisted on having Mindy's funeral separate from her husband's. Johnny's was yesterday, and only the boys and Sarah and Lester had been at the ceremony. Johnny wasn't liked so much in town, and that was pretty apparent by the turnout.

Lester's leg was in a cast, and the meds that the doctor gave him weren't doing much for the pain. He fought back the urge to pull out his pack of Camels, but he knew that Bonnie would give him “the look,” and he didn't need that grief right about now.

He saw Danny standing at the back of the group during the eulogy. There were plenty of empty chairs, but the boy stayed on his feet. He looked a little the worse for wear, but he'd been through a whole lot of misery in the last couple of days, and who could blame him?

Lester's memories of getting shot by the deputy were a bit muddy—like a pail full of pond water. He remembered going down, seeing Danny kneel next to him, and then he drifted off. He didn't remember a thing about the boy carrying him the three miles back to town. Lester didn't weigh much more than one-fifty, but that was a hell of a lot of pounds to be carrying off the mountain in the cold and snow and dark—especially in the condition Danny was in. Turned out that the cold did Lester a favor by slowing the bleeding a little. And how his ticker survived all that craziness—Lester knew that the man upstairs must have seen to that. He guessed that the big man must not be needing his services just yet.

Lester watched Scott and Skeeter help their mother to her feet. Then he saw how Sarah looked at Danny. She nodded at him, and Danny nodded back. They'd both lost someone special to them. It didn't make it any easier, but at least it was something.

Lester put his hand to Sarah's shoulder as she passed him by. “If I can do anything.”

She nodded her thanks, and as the boys guided her frail form toward the parking lot, Scott whispered something to them and walked back over to Danny. Scott looked up at the sky that was slowly turning blue and thought for a minute about what he wanted to say. Danny waited for him to take his time. Finally Scott locked eyes with Danny.

“This whole thing. It's been real hard on my family. Especially Ma. She didn't have but one girl. And . . . well . . . I just wanted to
say thank you, is all.” Scott tried to hold back the tears, but they came anyway. “Mindy was lucky to have you as a friend, Danny.”

Danny looked down at his feet and cleared his throat. “I was the lucky one. Mindy will always be my special friend.”

Scott took a deep breath, tried to keep himself composed. “A lot of bad things happened out in those woods, Danny. To you, Lester, and that state-trooper fella.” Scott looked toward Mindy's grave for a second. “We all had it wrong about you. All of us. And the state trooper . . . I guess he's gonna be okay. Thank God for that.”

Danny nodded—he had heard about what happened to the state trooper from Towanda.

“I'm real sorry. I know things haven't been easy for you.” Scott blew on his hands to warm them up a little. “If you had yourself a car, I'd offer to fix it up for you for free.”

“That's nice of you. Maybe if one of my washers goes down,” Danny said.

“Okay. That's a deal.” Scott extended his hand to Danny, and Danny shook it. They looked at each other for another moment, and then Scott rejoined his mother and brother.

Lester glanced to his wife, and she knew his signals. Bonnie kissed him on the cheek, then stepped in front of Danny. She appeared especially small and vulnerable before Danny's wide mass, like a bear cub standing in front of its papa bear. Bonnie put an arthritic finger to Danny's cheek and stroked it gingerly.

“You're gonna heal up just fine, Danny. You're a strong boy. You take care, now.” She gave Danny a wink, pulled her jacket around her neck to protect it from the wind, and left him at the grave site in silence.

Only Lester and Danny stayed behind. Lester limped over and stood beside him for a few moments. Not much left to say.

Lester found his pack of cigarettes and tapped one out. He lit up and inhaled deeply. “Hope you don't mind me smoking. The wife is on my case to quit, and I got to sneak 'em in when I can.”

“Naw. I don't mind, Sheriff.”

The sheriff nodded his appreciation. “How you feeling, son?”

“Okay, I guess.”

Lester played with his cigarette a little and then remembered something. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the small wooden robin figurine and held it toward Danny. Danny looked at it and smiled the best he could around the metal pins in his jaw.

“Been carrying this around for you. Nice piece of work. She would've liked it, I bet.”

Danny accepted the robin from the sheriff and turned it over in his hands. He noticed that the bird's head and back had been gently sanded and repainted with a fresh coat of orange.

“Touched it up a little for you. The blood sanded right off. Hope you don't mind.”

“It looks fine. Thank you.” Danny limped up to the coffin and placed the figurine on top of the wooden box. The small bird seemed at home nestled in the flower wreath that was draped over the coffin.

“Happy birthday, Mindy. I'll see you soon,” Danny said softly.

Lester flicked his cigarette into the snow and hobbled beside Danny as they made their way back toward the parking lot where Bonnie was waiting.

“Give you a ride, son?”

“Thank you, Sheriff, but I guess I'll walk.”

“You sure? Colder than hell out here.”

“I like the cold just fine.”

“Okay, then. Be seeing you around. Take care of the Wash 'N Dry, you hear?”

Danny nodded that he would. Lester gave him a smile, patted him on the back, and climbed into the passenger seat of his truck. He watched Danny from the sideview mirror, standing all alone in the cold, feet set in the gravel, like he wasn't quite ready to leave the cemetery.