Flight of Aquavit (47 page)

to withstand the pressure of a hundred men hit-

ting it with a stick, why not attack the ailing wood

it was attached to: the door handles themselves.

After procuring another branch, I shoved the nar-

rowest end under one handle and used the lever-

age of my weight to begin a jerking motion meant

to convince the handle to pry away from the door.

Almost immediately I could feel it working. The

handle was loosening! I kept at it and in under a

minute the stressed chunk of wood fell to the

ground releasing the chain. I whooped with joy-

ous enthusiasm. Still no reaction from Jared. No

matter, I thought, we were close to home! Feeling

like Superman and Wonder Woman rolled into

one, I grabbed the edge of the door and gave it a

mighty tug.

Nothing. It didn’t budge.

I pulled and pushed and tugged at it some

more. The door stayed resolutely in its place. I am

not a man easily given to tears, but I was close to

it at that moment. I began to pace back and forth,

every two seconds giving the wretched doors a

hateful kick and tried to figure out why they

wouldn’t open. Were they locked from the inside?

Was there another chain and padlock I hadn’t

seen? Was the devil himself holding them closed?

It was only after I disposed of all those possibili-

ties that I noticed how simple the answer was.

Right in front of my eyes. Over the course of the

storm the blowing snow had drifted up against

374 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t

the building and was blocking the path of the slid-

ing door. It was stuck. The door was stuck! This I

could fix! I fell to my knees like a penitent sinner

on his first day back in church and began digging

gopher-like until the hillock of snow that was

blocking the door was reduced to a small trough

that, hopefully, would make way for the door

panel to slide open. I jumped up and tried again.

And joy of joys, it moved. Stubbornly at first, but

I knew I had it. I had won!

Eventually I made a space large enough to

wedge my arm between the two doors and then

my shoulder and then my entire body. Jared had

fallen into a near solid stupor, his eyes fluttering

as if he was battling to stay conscious. I knelt next

to him, threw his left arm over my shoulder and

coaxed him up. I helped him towards the opening

I’d made and pushed him in like a square peg

through a not-quite square hole. It took some

doing but he was finally inside, and then, so was

I. Ignoring our new surroundings, I focused first

on closing the door to shut out the storm that

threatened to follow us in. I expected a struggle,

but the door slid closed as if it had been recently

oiled, lubed and maintained and had never

caused anyone a spit of trouble in all its days. I

hated that door.

The first thing I noticed was the silence. I hadn’t

been aware until that moment what an unrelent-

ing auditory invasion the winter storm had been.

Who says falling snow is silent? My nose filled

Anthony Bidulka — 375

with a pungent smell unique to old barns—a

tangy mixture of straw, aged manure, rotting

wood and rusting metal. Immediately to my right

I noticed a ratty-looking horse blanket hanging

from a nail on a beam support pole. I yanked it

down and flung it around Jared’s shoulders, low-

ering him to a sitting position on an overturned,

empty five-gallon pail. Although he seemed bare-

ly awake, he shrugged into the warmth of the

blanket, pulling it around himself as if he was

naked. I took that as a good sign.

“You okay like this for a while?” I asked him.

“I want to take a look around, see what else I can

find to keep us warm.”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he mumbled into the folds of

the blanket. He seemed aware but not fully con-

scious.

I gave him a pat on the back and left to investi-

gate. Although it was long past sunset, the barn

was dimly lit by an otherworldly glow coming

through the windows. Likely from moonlight or

its reflection off the copious amounts of bright,

white snow being deposited around the building

like a mantle. Without insulation the inside of the

old barn was not significantly warmer than out-

side, but the lack of wind and falling snow made

it feel like a veritable sauna. I saw that one of the

barn’s stalls was stocked with square straw bales

and another with loose hay. My first priority was

to get some warmth back into our bones and this

looked like just the place to do it. I used a pitch-

fork to shove the hay into the stall where the

bound bales were and spent the next several min-

376 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t

utes rearranging the bales like building blocks, to

fashion a straw fort complete with walls, roof and

a floor lined with the hay. The physical activity

was beginning to thaw me out.

Retrieving Jared from his five-gallon perch, he

shuffled next to me muttering undecipherable

comments on the short trip to our new campsite. I

helped him crouch down and manoeuvre into the

makeshift fort. He lowered himself onto the soft hay

bed with a grateful sigh. Once both of us were

within the small and cozy space, I fluffed up

some of the hay to cover the entrance, leaving us

completely surrounded by the stuff. The smell was

strong, yeasty, but not wholly unpleasant. I lay

down next to him pulling the horse blanket over

us both and snuggled up against him. Gently as

possible I placed a kiss on the soft spot right next

to the corner of his lips. They twitched and maybe

even turned up just a bit. Maybe not. It didn’t mat-

ter. We had been targeted for murder, but we were

still alive and, if not kicking, at least twitching. I

lay my head back on the hay pillow, thrust my

hands deep into my pants to the warmest spot I

could find on my body and fell into a strangely

satisfied slumber.

It never occurred to me that we might never

wake up, having frozen to death in our sleep.

Chapter 20

WAKING UP ON A BED OF STRAW with my friend’s

partner in a barn in the middle of nowhere justifi-

ably made that particular Christmas Eve day the

most peculiar I’d ever had. Many of my friends,

especially the gay ones, profess to prefer the peri-

od leading up to Christmas rather than the actual

two days, being Christmas Eve and Day. I think

this is because they often end up having to spend

those two days being dutiful sons and daughters,

brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, aunts

and uncles at a whirlwind of family events, often

without the most important member of their own

family—their partner—with them. Since I rarely

spend holidays with relatives, I am spared all that

nonsense. So consequently I quite enjoy December

24th and 25th. I usually spend the twenty-fourth

ODing on carols and eggnog, lounging beside a

pine-scented fire while calling out-of-town loved

ones on the phone and making last-minute prepa-

rations for my annual come’n’go on the twenty-

fifth. This year however, it was becoming quite

apparent my plans would have to change just a

wee bit.

I looked over at Jared whose eyelids were half-

open, revealing the golden green beneath. Our

faces were so close that the tips of our noses were

almost touching. I could see in his eyes that he

was well. I sighed relief.

“What was that for?” he asked. His voice had a

378 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t

sexy morning sound to it. “The sigh?”

“I was just glad to see you looking better. You do

feel all right, don’t you? I’m worried about you.”

“How could I be anything but with you look-

ing after me?”

I noticed he hadn’t moved his face away from

mine. It was still chilly in the straw house I had

built, but definitely warm enough to survive with-

out necessitating such closeness. I too did not

move. I focused on the cut on his forehead. “Head

feel okay?”

“I’m fine, Russell. I can’t believe this…this

place. It’s terrific. And warm. I can feel my toes

again.”

I was coming to realize that our arms were

around each other, my right and his left under

each other’s heads, my left on his chest and his

right on my hip.

“Thank you, Russell,” he said with gentleness

and kindness in his eyes—eyes that stared deep

into me. “For everything you did.”

I nodded a curt response, my throat having

grown dry. Despite our still desperate circum-

stances all I could think about was that I was sud-

denly feeling inappropriately aroused. Hard to

disguise. Damn male anatomy!

Our noses touched.

Our lips came close and touched. I could feel

his hand move a little further down my side, from

hip to thigh. We kissed lightly.

“You’re welcome,” I croaked. Oh shit, oh shit,

oh shit, were the only intelligible thoughts that

came to mind.

Anthony Bidulka — 379

Quiet.

I grinned and pulled myself into a sitting position.

“Time to get up?” he asked innocently.

“I’m just gonna go check things out.” I could-

n’t lay there with him any longer. For many rea-

sons—most of which were unclear to me but

shouldn’t have been. I only knew it was time to

get out. I carefully shifted to a crouching position,

mindful not to disturb the roof of our lodging and

rearranged the horse blanket around Jared who

watched me with wide, untelling eyes. “Stay

warm,” were my wise parting words.

Like a series of identical pale grey postage stamps,

the windows were frosted over but letting in even

more light than they had the previous night when

we’d arrived. Everything else appeared

unchanged. The stalls, the cream separator, the

rolls of wire; all still there. I don’t know what I

expected. Maybe an espresso machine, toasted

bagels, a pile of fuzzy blankets and a snow blow-

er? But there was
something
different. I just could-

n’t put my finger on it. I made my way to the

malefic door I’d battled the night before. I leaned

my head against it listening for sounds of the

storm. That was it. That was what was different.

No wind. No howling, no rattling rafters, no roof

preparing for flight. Was the storm over? I pulled

on the door and met with resistance. Oh shit! Not

again! I could guess what the problem was. I’d

dug away the snow to let us in, but it had contin-

ued snowing and obviously piled up again mak-

380 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t

ing the door immovable once more. But this time

we were inside and I wouldn’t be able to get to the

snow to shovel it away.

Freaked at the thought of being locked in, I

grasped the door again and pulled with all my

might. It yielded so easily I stumbled into a heap

on the floor. Recovering quickly I pulled it shut

again to keep the cold out, leaving a space only

big enough to stick my face through. There was

good news and bad news. The good news was

that indeed the storm had abated. The bad news

was that it had apparently obliterated the rest of

the world leaving only this barn in the middle of

a blaring white void. Either that or everything was

covered in snow.

“What do you see?” I heard the voice from

behind me.

I pulled my head back into the barn and turned

around to see Jared, swathed in the horse blanket.

“You should be in bed,” I told him.

He chuckled lightly. “I think I need to walk

around a bit, get rid of the kinks. So what’s out

there?”

Again I felt a sense of gratitude to see my

friend up and about, clear-eyed and rosy-cheeked

and well. “Take a look for yourself.”

I stepped aside and let Jared take his turn with

his head out the door.

“What do you think?” he asked when he fin-

ished perusing our surroundings and pulled

closed the door. “Any ideas on what to do now?”

“Well, I think I’m going to go out and take a

look around, get a sense of where we are.”

Anthony Bidulka — 381

“I’ll go with you.”

“No, you should stay as warm as possible.