by Craig Larsen
Nick was overcome by the depth of her emotion. He ran his fingers through her long blond hair. “But I saw you, Liz,” he said. “Last night, you went to the dance with Sam.”
They had held hands before. But Nick had never been brave enough to kiss her. He liked the way she was leaning into him now. He could feel the swell of her young breasts against his chest. She lifted herself onto her toes, raising her mouth toward his. He could smell her hair.
She crushed her lips against his. His face became wet with her tears. Her fingernails dug into his back. Her hair caught in his mouth. “I’m sorry,” she kept saying. “I don’t want Sam. I want you.”
The ambush took Nick by surprise. Sam had hidden himself behind the birch trees on the front lawn. As Nick headed back home, he leapt out and grabbed hold of Nick’s jacket and slung him backward. The ground was icy, and Nick’s feet slipped underneath him. His back slammed into the side of a tree. Sam grabbed him by his wrists, pinning him. The bark tore into his skin, and the shock of the sudden violence left him winded. He tried to fight back, but Sam was taller and stronger. Nick was barely able to remain on his feet. Sam’s fist landed on his face. He began to fall, but his brother held him up, hitting him again and again, until Nick, at sixteen, his face bruised and bloody, collapsed to the ground, his cheeks wet with blood and tears.
When Sam leaned down toward him, Nick thought that his brother was going to pick him back up. Instead, Sam placed a knee onto his chest and pinned him, then wrapped his hands around Nick’s neck. Nick looked up at him, unable to resist, unable to comprehend, as his brother dug his thumbs into his windpipe and squeezed, choking him. Strangling him. Nick panicked. It felt as if he might suffocate. Still, Sam didn’t let go of him. Not until Nick began to black out. Not until Nick understood that his brother was holding his life in his hands.
“Stay away from her,” Sam growled. “You hear me?” At last, he let Nick go. “Stay the hell away from her.”
Nick swiveled away from Sara, moving without thinking. He was aware of the strength radiating from his arms. An exultant sense of satisfaction shot like a jolt through his body the instant his hands connected with the tweed of the sandy-haired man’s jacket. His fingers tightened around the fabric until the cloth ripped. Nick pulled the man to him, then shoved him backward hard, and the man went sprawling, tumbling into his own parked car before he had time to react.
Sara’s face whitened with shock. She raised a hand to her mouth as Nick leapt onto the man, yanking him up from the ground by the lapels of his jacket and shoving him against the side of his car. The parking lot was filled with the two men’s raspy breathing and the scrape of their footsteps, but neither man uttered a word.
“Hey,” the man’s young date said. “Hey, stop. Stop!”
Nick had the man by the throat, the other hand pressed like a staple into his chest, pinning him to the side of his car. The man’s windpipe felt soft in his hand. The flesh of his neck offered no resistance. Nick’s teeth were clamped together, and the expression on his face didn’t change even when the man began to gasp and then choke.
“Nick, please,” Sara said, trying to separate the two men. Her hands were tugging Nick’s shoulders. “Don’t, Nick. Please, you’ll kill him.”
Slowly, Nick became aware of Sara’s hands pulling at him. He gave the man a final shove, then released him, allowing him to collapse. His girlfriend bent to the man’s side, looking up at Nick in disbelief.
“Come on,” Sara said. She led Nick into the shadows. “Let’s get out of here.”
They were safely on the ferry, Seattle rising up from the dark black plane of the water, before Nick understood what he had done.
When they reached the ferry landing in Seattle, Nick was certain that Sara would make her escape. His hands were still tingling with the sensation of the tweed fabric ripping beneath his fingers as he grabbed the man’s jacket. His jaw hurt. Perhaps the man had taken a swing at him, Nick couldn’t remember. Sara’s voice was still ringing in his ears. Don’t, Nick. Please, you’ll kill him. He had frightened her. He had let the man get to him. His temper had gotten the better of him, and no doubt he had scared the hell out of Sara. As he descended the gangway to the dock, downcast, watching her feet, mesmerized by the light step of the Gucci pumps she was wearing, he prepared himself for her good-bye.
Her hand finding his as they touched solid ground came as a complete surprise. He looked into her eyes, then found himself lost once again in the warmth of her kiss. Passion coursed through him with the same intense violence the fight had caused just an hour before.
“I’m so turned on right now,” Sara said. Her voice was a siren’s song in his ear, soft and melodious and seductive. “I want you so much.”
Nick understood that this was happening too fast. They hardly knew one another. All Sara had seen of him so far was a sullen, repressed young man, unable to bridle his fury. But even as this thought passed through his mind, Nick realized that, as elegant and refined as she was, Sara had another side, too. He had to have her. He had to make love to her right here, right now.
He leaned down, and when their mouths met, he bit her lip. His fingers dug into her flesh. He had to restrain himself from holding her so hard that he would hurt her. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Sara stepped up onto her toes, pushing herself against him, finding his lips once again with her own. “No,” she said. “I want you. I want you like that, too.”
Nick looked around the empty parking lot. They hadn’t driven to the landing, and this late in the year there were no taxis at the stand. “We’ll have to walk.”
“I can’t wait, Nick.”
“What?”
Sara broke away from him, then took him by the hand. The sound of her pumps on the pavement was nearly drowned out by the guttural roar of the ferry’s huge diesel engine. Nick let himself be led across the dark parking lot. “Over there,” she said. She was peering across the landing, and when the wind blew she reached up to pull a few loose strands of silvery blond hair from her mouth. “At the Two A.M. Club. We’ll go into the restroom.”
Looking back on that night, it wasn’t the thrill of sex with Sara for the first time that Nick would remember. It wasn’t the fear of discovery, either, or the knocking on the locked door after they’d been inside the restroom for ten minutes. It was the music. That’s what Nick remembered. The music playing inside the club, muffled through the metal door. The Police. “I’ll Be Wrapped Around Your Finger.” Bob Marley. “No Woman, No Cry.” The Killers. “Romeo and Juliet.” Sara’s skin was cool and smooth against his. Her hands undressed him. His fingers got tangled in her hair. The music played, and slowly she made love to him. So goddamned slowly. The music played, and there was no one else in the world, nothing else but Sara. Her mouth was on his body. She was naked in front of him. Tall and thin and naked inside the dirty restroom. Kissing him softly. Licking him slowly, so goddamned slowly, until the air turned into snow.
PART 2
chapter 8
The air was laden with snow.
The small lake near their house in Wisconsin had frozen over. Just after dawn, the morning still dark as night, Nick and Sam stared out the window, trying to read the low, stained sky, listening to the radio for the list of school cancellations. When Braxton Middle School was announced, Nick climbed back into bed and pulled the covers snugly around him.
Sam was three years Nick’s senior, and at thirteen he was substantially older. He rousted his younger brother from bed and threw him his jeans, boots, and a sweater, bundled up in a loose but heavy wad. The buckle from his belt hit Nick sharply on the cheek, and for a couple of seconds he considered getting angry with his brother. At last, surrendering, he followed Sam into the kitchen.
Their parents had left for work already. With the roads covered in snow and ice, their father had had to leave the house at five-thirty to get to his job at the power plant, before the kids were even awake. Their mother had to leave with him if she wa
nted a ride. They only had the one car, a beaten-up old Chevrolet Impala.
Skating was Sam’s idea. Nick wanted to run out of the house and play, but Sam slowed him down. He jerked him back by the arm and kept him inside while he made sandwiches and packed lunch bags. Then he made sure their skates were tied together by their laces and that Nick remembered his gloves. The two brothers left the house with their skates slung over the handles of their hockey sticks at eight-thirty, the sky still dark, heavy snow still falling, heading determinedly in the direction of Lake Issewa. By car it was a ten-minute drive without snow on the ground. On a day like today, the boys would be walking the better part of an hour.
Tossing their boots next to a tree, they jumped onto the thick, chalky ice, the dull blades of their cheap skates digging deep, powdery tracks into its slightly soft surface. They passed a hockey puck back and forth, shouting excitedly as they raced one another across the lake.
At eleven-thirty, the sun broke through the clouds, turning the day brilliantly, impossibly white. Nick’s skates got caught in an arcing track, and he nearly lost his balance. He squinted in the blinding light, leaning on his hockey stick, raising his eyes upward. The sky hadn’t turned blue. The clouds had simply thinned, and the sun lit them brightly from behind, like the shell of a lightbulb.
When Nick lowered his eyes again, he had the impression that he couldn’t see. The entire landscape had become a two-dimensional plane, a blank piece of paper. Nick felt a spurt of panic. He understood even as it was happening that the emotion was irrational, but he couldn’t control it. He hadn’t been keeping track of time or where he was skating, and he wondered if he had gotten separated from Sam. He scanned the lake for his brother, relieved when he caught sight of him. Dressed in blue jeans and a red sweater, Sam stood starkly out from the desolate background, a solitary figure drawn on an empty canvas.
Nick’s relief was short-lived. Nick noticed that they weren’t alone on the lake. Clothed entirely in black, with a gray muffler wrapped around his neck and a stubbly beard as dense as a smear of charcoal, the stranger could have been a hole in the ice. There was something about him that Nick didn’t like. He felt shivers run down his spine. The man was standing out on the middle of the frozen lake without skates. Nick watched him until he realized that the man was looking back at him. Then he turned away.
By noon, the burst of sunlight had dimmed. The boys were sitting on the stone wall edging the southern boundary of the lake, eating the sandwiches that Sam had packed for them that morning. Snow was falling again. Nick’s teeth chattered a little. He had tumbled not far from where they were sitting, where the ice was so thin that he could see through its surface to the murky green water underneath, and when he had gotten up his jeans had been soaked through. He had hardly noticed while continuing to skate, but now that he was sitting unmoving, eating, Nick realized how cold he was. Still, his only thought was to finish his sandwich and to get back out on the lake again. It was Sam who suggested that they head home. He didn’t like how ominous the sky was getting. The wind was whipping up, and with the snow even their shouts had become muffled, as though they were trying to make themselves heard through the fabric of a heavy, wet blanket.
“You boys live around here?”
Neither of them had heard the stranger approach, and they both swiveled their heads toward the man dressed in black at the same time.
“You have any more of them sandwiches?” the stranger asked when neither responded to his first question.
Something was wrong about the man. He was dressed in an elegant coat, and the scarf around his neck was as soft as cashmere. He was wearing black leather gloves, nothing like the nylon and polyester ones men like their father would wear. The man’s face, though, was a ravaged mess. His hair was shaggy and greasy, and his skin was drawn. His eyelids were swollen above his brown, empty eyes. He gave off a strange mixture of scents: the rich smell of expensive wool and leather, then the raw, sour smell of cheap whisky. Nick understood without being able to articulate the observation that the man was wearing stolen clothes.
“We only made enough for ourselves,” Sam said.
“You live around here?” the man asked a second time. He looked up from the boys to survey the landscape, as though he might be looking for a house nearby. Nick realized how menacing the sky had become and how hard the wind was blowing. His legs were all at once icy cold. His lips had become purple, and his teeth chattered loudly.
“Just over there, by that road,” Sam lied.
The man continued looking past the brothers. “I don’t see no road,” he said at last.
“It’s hard to see in the snow,” Sam said.
The stranger’s countenance changed. Nick realized that his eyes had become the eyes of a predator. When he took a step toward them, Sam leapt from the wall onto the ice. The dark sheet cracked beneath his weight.
“Come on, Nick!”
Nick understood that he was supposed to be scared. Still, he held onto the remains of his sandwich in his gloved hand as he pushed off the wall to join his brother. He hadn’t appreciated yet that they were going to have to run. He became aware of the half-eaten pieces of bread and bologna from Sam’s sandwich scattered at his brother’s feet.
“You boys don’t have to be skerred,” the man said. He was moving toward them now, and there was no mistaking the intent in his dead eyes. Nick was too young to put the danger into words, but he understood it nonetheless.
Sam shoved Nick hard. “Go!” His voice was urgent, but Nick didn’t move. “Go!” Sam said again, shouting this time. “Run!”
Nick hesitated a moment longer, but when his brother began to skate, he at last dropped his sandwich and pushed his legs forward on the ice, digging his blades into the soft surface as forcefully as he could. Panic rose in his chest as Sam pulled ahead of him. He could hear the stranger’s slippery footsteps right behind him, and the rasp of his ragged breath. The man was gaining on him.
“Wait, Sam,” he cried. He was choking for air, barely able to make a sound. “Wait up, Sam!”
In seeming slow motion his skate got caught in a deep rut in the ice. His right foot was yanked away from him. His knee torqued, whipping him around and knocking him off balance. He tried his best to catch himself, but even as he struggled he knew that he was going to fall. His hands hit the ice first, then his knees and his elbows and his chin. The metallic scrape of his skates catching the ice and the cacophony of his tumble crashed around him as he skidded to a rough stop on the unforgiving surface of the frozen lake. His mouth was full of snow. “Sam!”
The ice turned red in front of him as he shouted, and his lips felt warm and tasted briny. A bloody stain leached across the ice. The man was just behind him, nearly on top of him. Nick writhed on the ice, preparing himself to resist, certain that the man would catch him and kidnap him and that he would never see his parents again.
“Sam!”
Nick’s eyes were squeezed closed when Sam’s hands grasped his shoulders. When he opened them again, the rusty blades of Sam’s skates were glinting just next to his eyes. “Get up!” his brother was saying, yanking his arm. “Come on, Nick. Get up!” When their eyes connected, time stopped for a split second. Nick wasn’t aware of Sam’s hands hoisting him from the ice. You’re my brother. The words passed unspoken through his mind. Thank God you’re my brother. “Come on. Run, Nick. You’re going to have to run.”
Nick rose to his knees, then, scrambling, was back up on his skates. The left lace had come loose and the skate wobbled on his foot, but he pushed off anyway, propelling himself forward. He imagined that Sam was next to him. A few moments later, though, the sounds of flight resolved into nothing more than his own panicked breathing and slicing strokes. He realized that he was fleeing alone. He shifted his skates sharply to the left and, with a fizz of shaved ice, slid to a short, controlled stop. He was dizzy, so nauseous that he thought he would throw up. Sam was still standing in the same place where he had fallen, waitin
g for the man to catch up to him. He glanced over his shoulder at Nick. “Run, Nick,” he shouted. “Run!”
“Come with me,” Nick replied weakly. He couldn’t understand what his brother was doing. He couldn’t fathom the sacrifice. The man reached Sam before Nick could think what to do next. He felt himself burst into frightened tears, powerless to protect his brother from the approaching violence.
Just as the man reached Sam, the ice broke. The two of them plummeted into the water together. Sam had time to shout for help before his head went under the water. “Nick!”
His brother’s voice ripped through Nick’s body with the force of lightning, and Nick skated as fast as he could, back in the direction he had come, back toward Sam.
Nick didn’t remember much after that. Sam told him, though, that he had skated right to the edge of the hole in the ice and, lying down, had pulled his older brother out of the water. The next thing that Nick remembered was stopping at the side of the lake to lace his boots back on.
Shaking uncontrollably, Sam was peeling off his wet jacket and shirt. Nick took in his brother’s bluish skin, then quickly tore off his own jacket and sweater and gave them to his brother to wear. Nick noticed that Sam’s face was twisted with fear. “We’ve got to go, Nick,” he said. Nick had the impression that his brother was barely seeing him. He watched as a wad of mucus stretched from his nostrils, then slid down his face.
Collecting his things into his arms, Sam took a few halting steps away from the lake. Nick held his elbow, keeping his brother from losing his footing in the slippery snow as they climbed the embankment. Once they reached the road, the two brothers ran the rest of the way home, their skates digging into their ribs, their hockey sticks gripped in their frozen hands.
Nick woke Sam late that night, holding the lens of a flashlight against Sam’s mattress, shaking him on his arm. Sam awoke in a cold sweat and yelped, then saw his brother’s face in the eerie reddish glow emanating from the flashlight. “What?” he said. “What is it?”