Shackles (9 page)

I’ve been sick the past three days. Bad cold or flu, maybe even a touch of pneumonia. Fever, chills, aching in all my joints, weakness, nausea. I couldn’t do much of anything except lie on the cot, swaddled in my overcoat and both blankets, the heater turned all the way up, and drift in and out of sleep and a kind of delirium. Made myself get up once the first day to use the bathroom, fell down on the way back and couldn’t stand up, could not stand up, and had to crawl the rest of the way to the cot. Vomited on the floor later on because I was too weak even to try for the bathroom. Didn’t eat anything the first day, took a little soup and some tea the second morning that I threw back up, took more soup and tea the second night that stayed down. Yesterday I managed to hold solid food in my stomach again—about half a can of macaroni and cheese.

Once, during the worst of it, I dreamed that I was outside the cabin, running through the snowdrifts, laughing, free, and woke up feeling so shattered to find myself still shackled that I had to fight to keep from breaking down. Dreamed another time that Kerry and I were in bed, her bed, lying with our arms around each other after making love, and then she got up and went away and didn’t come back, didn’t come back, didn’t come back, and I searched everywhere for her but she was gone and I knew I would never see her again. That dream nearly unmanned me too.

Bad, very bad, those three days. The worst so far.

But whatever virus had hold of me, it seems to have weakened and let go. I woke up drenched in sweat and feeling that heavy, different kind of body ache that tells you a fever has finally broken and your body is rebuilding its defenses. Woke up feeling hungry, too, always a good sign. I was able to get up and move around, go through most of my morning routine—everything but the exercises—without too much difficulty. I ate a whole can of Chef Boyardee ravioli, a whole can of corn, a whole can of peaches in heavy, syrup. No sense in conserving rations today or tomorrow. I’ve got to regain my strength, guard against a relapse. Another viral bout like this one, at my age and with poor nourishment and no medication of any kind, and I might not survive it.

I’ve got to make a decision about the heater. Keep it on most of today, and run the risk of those old coils burning out from overuse? Or shut it off and keep it off until after dark, when the cold gets even worse, and run the risk of more sickness? It’ll be bitter cold in here without it; snowing again today, and the temperature must be well below freezing outside. But those coils have begun to ping loudly every now and then, as if in protest, and I’m afraid they won’t last with continuous use. Twice yesterday I shut the thing off for ten to fifteen minutes when the pinging got loud, and the coils seemed all right again when I switched it back on. The periods between the loud pings are decreasing, though … starting to do it again right now. It could give out any time.

All right, then, I
have
to shut it down for at least part of today. The risk of pneumonia isn’t as great as the risk of freezing to death, which could happen to me if the heater quits working. The coats and blankets, the hot coffee and tea just aren’t enough protection.

This afternoon I read over the pages I wrote on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. And they made me uneasy, they scared me more than a little.

Rambling stuff, only half coherent, like the scribblings of a borderline lunatic. I’ve been trying to tell myself it was the virus already at work inside me, creating a sort of waking delirium, but that won’t wash. The truth is, I
was
a little crazy those two days. No longer in complete control.

There’s an explanation for it. The loneliness, the pain, missing Kerry, missing normalcy, a buildup of self-pity—all of that magnified by the holidays. That’s why, statistically, there are more suicides during the Christmas season than at any other time of the year. Still, I can’t use that as an excuse. I am not a statistic, I am not just anyone—I’m me. If I give in to the pressure I’ll lose control again, and if that happens I might not be able to regain it. And then I
wouldn’t
be me any longer, would I?

I saw a deer this morning while I was standing at the window looking at the new day—the first living thing I’ve seen in four weeks.

It came down out of the trees higher up—just movement at first, flashes of dark brown and white until it reached level ground. Then, slowly, it ventured out into the open, and I saw that it was a big, white-tailed, six-point buck. His eye had picked out a patch of grass near the shed, where the thin snowpack has melted away. The weather has been sunny the past two days, and warm enough to turn the snow slushy, to reveal patches of earth in places where there is no shade.

I watched the buck nibble at the grass. Every now and then he would raise his head, keen the air, as if aware that he was being watched. Once he seemed to look straight at me and I stood very still, even though I was pretty sure he couldn’t see me behind the window glass. He couldn’t smell me, in any case, so he wasn’t afraid. He stayed there feeding for fifteen minutes or so, and I stood motionless all that time, watching him.

God, he was a beautiful animal. How can anyone kill an animal like that, shoot it down for sport? I don’t care what arguments hunters use, it isn’t right to take an innocent life like that,
any
innocent life, unless there is no other choice—and then it should be done with the most profound regret. Life, most life, is too precious. That deer’s was so precious to me this morning that I felt an aching sense of loss when he finally finished feeding, turned, bounded away into the trees, and was gone from
my
life, probably forever.

But he left me with something, too: fresh hope. For one thing, he is a symbol of freedom. For another thing, he came on the second day of the new year, and what is a new year but a new beginning?

An omen, then. A symbol and an omen.

I am going to survive this winter just as that deer will survive it. I
know
that now. I have no doubt of it.

The radio has quit working. No sound, not even a hum, when I switched it on this morning. I thought it was the batteries at first and put in the replacement set, but it still doesn’t work. Must be a blown transistor or tube or something.

It’s not as much of a loss as it might have been two or three weeks ago. I can get by without it now. If I need conversation or music in here, I’ll create it myself.

After all, don’t psychologists say that talking to yourself is one way of validating your own existence, reassuring yourself that you’re still alive and kicking?

Thought for the day:

For weeks before all of this happened, ever since that ugly case involving the Purcell family, I contemplated retirement. Talked it over with Kerry, and she was all for it—provided, she said, I was sure I wouldn’t grow bored and discontented. Not me, I said. Detective work is no longer the be-all and end-all of my life, I said. I can find plenty of things to do, I said, plenty of ways to occupy my time. Bored? Discontented? No way.

Well, bullshit.

What is
this
if not a kind of forced retirement? This filling up of my days with endless routine, marking time until the Grim Reaper shows up? No purpose in my existence here other than survival; no purpose in retirement, either, other than survival of a somewhat less painful variety. I’m miserable now, confined to this room by chains I can see, feel, hear slithering along the floor whenever I move. If I were home, retired, rattling around my empty flat all day, wouldn’t I be just as miserable in the long run? And just as chained? Invisible chains, sure, much longer than this one and allowing me much more freedom of movement, but still confining in their own way?

I’m a detective, dammit. That is not only what I am, it’s
who
I
am. I hate the business, I hate the things I see, the people I have to deal with, the actions I’m sometimes forced to take. But hey, who says you have to love your job to be good at it, to take satisfaction from it, to need it to give meaning and fulfillment to your life? I’d wither up and die in the chains of retirement, just as I’ll wither up and die if I don’t escape from
these
chains. I know that now. I should have known it all along.

When I get out of here, I am not going to retire. I am going straight back into harness. Find the mad dog first, and then resume my duties at the agency and keep right on working until, God willing, I die in bed at the age of ninety after successfully completing one last case.

Retirement is hell, so to hell with retirement.

The stench in here is bad and getting worse by the day. Garbage is part of it, but the worst part of it is me.

I’ve filled up two of the cardboard cartons with empty cans and cookie and cracker wrappers. At first I didn’t bother to rinse out the cans before I dumped them into the cartons; but then the food remnants began to rot and smell, and I had to spend part of a day cleaning them out with soapy water. Now I rinse each can thoroughly as I use it. Still, the accumulation of them and of the microscopic food particles that I wasn’t able to wash away have gradually built up a sour odor. The odor in one of the cartons got so bad that I pushed it out into the middle of the room, to the full extension of the chain, and then skidded it over to the far side of the room. If this were spring or summer, I would have ants and maybe mice and rats to deal with on top of everything else.

But the real problem is my body odor and my clothing and the two blankets. Washing out my shirt and underwear and socks once a week, using nothing but a bar of hand soap, doesn’t do much to get rid of the soaked-in sweat smell. Sponge baths don’t do much to cleanse my body, either. I’m afraid to wash my hair, matted and greasy as it is, because of the threat of another bad cold, of pneumonia. And there’s nothing I can do about the blankets or the cot or my coats or my trousers.

All of this is as much an indignity as the rest of it. I’ve been turned into a filthy, rank-smelling bum—I have been made unclean.

I hate him for that, too. As if I needed any more fuel to keep the hate burning high and hot, like a fire on the edge of my soul.