“You’ll have to figure that out amongst yourselves. In terms of the split.”
“We’ll handle the technicalities,” Krebs said. “You heading back out?”
“I’m going to wait this storm out myself,” Shelton said. “Then maybe head into town in the truck.”
“You got a lead?”
“Too early to tell,” Shelton said, and cut his phone off.
Shelton thought it wise to keep Krebs ill informed. He might be in cahoots with the Mexicans for all Shelton knew, and even if he wasn’t it was a better deployment of his resources to keep him in the hills. Krebs wouldn’t do him a damn bit of good in town, and if they did find Jenna with Hector, as Shelton suspected they would, why would he want Krebs riding his coattails for the reward money that didn’t actually exist?
He looked over at Kayla on the floor and she was so lovely and still. He got down on his knees beside her and ran his fingers through her hair and then rested his head next to hers on the carpet.
The Talking Heads were still on the stereo, which came as a surprise to Shelton. How had he not noticed it before? He’d been sitting in the house for twenty minutes, probably heard the song five times, and was just now realizing it was there? Shelton supposed it was the nitrous and the general stresses of the situation. His mind was elsewhere, literally.
And what was there to do about it now, with him so comfortable on the floor and the stereo so far away? Shelton closed his eyes and vaguely understood that he was about to fall asleep.
Chapter Nine
I don’t know how long we slept in that shanty, but the storm had eased and I felt rested when I woke. I drank some water and Portis forced me to eat a plug of jerky, which I hoped was venison but tasted like a smaller game I did not need specifics on. We packed up and were gone.
There was some gray light above the hills as we left the ice—Portis in the lead and me trailing behind with Jenna babbling in her papoose. The snow was piled high on the pine boughs and the woods were still beneath the fresh powder as we walked back into the trees. I was glad to see Portis had wrapped an old T-shirt around his wound, though I doubted he’d bothered to clean it with the whiskey. Baby steps, I thought.
“It’s pretty,” I said. “But I swear I am never coming back up on this hill.”
“This hill is cursed,” said Portis. “There isn’t a doubt.”
“You’re the one that lives here.”
“I don’t so much live as I do exist.”
“That’s deep.”
“I wish it were,” he said.
The Packer stove had given me my feet back. They were snug inside the wool socks and I stepped on them freely and without pain. I had been warmed all the way through by our time in the shanty but now that the cold had returned it was damn blunt about it. Like it hurt even worse because I was still so near to the alternative.
“How long was I out?” I said. “In the shanty?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can’t you tell it by the way the snow falls or something? By the way the light slants? Mountain man that you are.”
“Of course I could,” he said. “But what does it matter? Time don’t move in a straight line up in these hills. It sort of wiggles around and folds back on itself. There’s no way to put a number to it.”
“Whatever that means,” I said.
“It means what it means,” he said. “It ain’t a riddle.”
“I’m just curious what time it is?” I said.
“Roughly, nine in the A.M,” he said.
“I guess we’re not making breakfast,” I said.
“I did not factor in frostbite and another dumping of snow into my calculations.”
I looked at Jenna sleeping and was heartened by her calm and the soft touch of color in her cheeks. For the first time since I found her I had a solid feeling inside, like we were actually going to get her to the hospital.
“How far to the truck?” I said.
“A mile or so.”
“That’s not bad.”
“It won’t feel like any mile you’ve ever walked. I can promise you that.”
“It’s tough walking,” I said. “But it can’t be but so bad.”
“We’re going uphill the whole way,” he said.
“It doesn’t seem like it.”
“It’s a gradual incline.”
“That’s good,” I said. “Gradual is good.”
“You say potato,” said Portis.
I could see him swaying a little as he stepped, but I figured it was from the labor as much as the drunkenness. Portis had been walking drunk near his entire life. Portis always said the key to walking drunk was to try and walk crooked.
Up ahead I watched as a swarm of chickadees broke from a jack pine, scattering tiny mists of snow as they searched out neighboring trees. And that’s the thing about Cutler—it’s a hard place, but sometimes it’s so damn pretty you don’t know what to do with it all. Portis drank from his whiskey bottle and I trailed behind him.
I tried to lose myself in the rhythm of the march. I tried to remain focused on how good my feet felt and to be grateful for their return. I was feeling better about our situation, that much was true, but it was hard to hold on to that feeling when the cold started to creep back in.
I had never considered myself the adventuresome type, and this entire ordeal had only confirmed that fact. You will not find me in any of those mud races, or leaping from a perfectly good airplane to prove some vague point about the human spirit. I do not relish risk or seek thrills and cannot understand people who pay their good money to endanger and punish themselves. You got to have it made to even think like that, to walk around feeling like your life needs a few more challenges thrown in.
I wish they had a website for such people. Rich folks with a bunch of crackpot energy. People like me could post help-wanted ads and then the adrenaline junkies could do something of actual value with their foolishness. I mean, why run through some mud you put there on purpose when you could come to Cutler and rescue a baby from the drug-ravaged farmhouse of a fucking lunatic?
I was getting a little loopy out there in the woods, thinking about how we could turn the whole thing into a race. I pictured a bunch of those X Games, Lance Armstrong types milling around Shelton’s porch with their heart-rate monitors and protein shakes. I was cracking myself up good—imagining the Sandra Bullock moms in numbered running tights—when I heard the sleds in the distance and stopped cold.
There was more than one this time, but they sounded far away and muted—like flies buzzing in a windowpane.
“Do you hear them?” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “I hear them.”
“It sounds like two.”
“Yeah,” he said. “It does.”
“Where are they?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Somewhere across the river.”
I hurried to catch up to Portis and yanked on his coat to get him to stop walking. I figured that if we could hear them, they might be able to hear us, say if they stopped their sleds all of a sudden. It didn’t seem to make much sense to stand there hollering at each other up and down the hill.
“Do you think it’s him?” I said.
“Probably,” Portis said. “Probably Shelton and one of those retrobates that run with his uncle.”
“Shouldn’t we be hiding or something?”
“I already told you they’re across the river.”
“They sound pretty close to me.”
“Well,” he said. “They ain’t.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because there’s no way to get a sled back here, which I already explained.”
“Still,” I said. “I feel like we should do something.”
“There isn’t nothing to do.”
“Shouldn’t we at least move off the trail?”
“You’re welcome to leave what’s left of this trail,” he said. “But I think I’ll keep going this way.”
“Well,” he said. “You go right on being nervous and not liking it. Let me know if it changes anything.”
“What’s wrong with you?” I said.
“Nothing’s wrong with me.”
“Then why are you being so testy?”
“Am I being testy? I’m sorry, Percy. As your cruise director I deeply regret any momentary discomfort my tone may have caused you.”
“Why do you continue to be an asshole?” I said. “When it’s so clearly unnecessary?”
“Why do you continue to question my authority?” he said. “Why do you continue to question my knowledge of these hills and their inner workings?”
“I think its fine to discuss things,” I said. “You don’t have to take it all so personal.”
“There is nothing personal about it. I know what I am doing and so I am walking on this trail and you are making me stop to explain things, as if to a child. I find it irritating that I have to parse everything so that it may be understood.”
“You used to be nicer, you know?”
“And you used to be quieter,” he said. “You used to be a sweet little girl, with ribbons in her hair. You used to be uncorrupted by feministic aggressions.”
“I don’t even know what that means. You sound like a babbling fool, Portis.”
“And I believe I’ve sustained quite enough of your character assassination in these past hours,” he said. “I’ve grown tired of your subterfuge.”
“Whatever.”
“Whatever is right,” he said.
He stomped off down the trail and I gave him some distance. I did not let him leave my sight, but he was far enough away that I was spared his huffing and puffing—his dramatic exhales of whiskey-drenched breath.
We made the rest of our walk in nearly that exact same terse silence. I could feel the burn in my butt and thighs and was under some considerable strain but only shook my head and kept walking when Portis asked if I wanted him to take the baby.
Jenna was as calm as she could be. She mostly lay there and blew spit bubbles, almost as if she knew I was upset and kept quiet out of consideration. She was the type of baby that I thought might be capable of exactly that sort of wisdom and kindness.
The buzzing came in and out but eventually I told myself Portis was right and almost talked myself into ignoring it altogether. I thought about Carletta and the summer and why I was out there in the hills to begin with. I remembered how she told me it never snowed in South Carolina.
“I remember it once or twice,” she had said. “But it never stuck. Everybody ran outside to catch the flakes on their tongues and acted crazy.”
We were at the kitchen table again, eating scrambled eggs and buttered toast. Carletta had a cigarette burning between her fingers while she pushed her coffee mug in little circles.
“There were hurricanes, though,” she said. “Hugo was a bad one, but I was gone by the time it hit. I left not a month before.”
“I saw pictures of those houses they build up on stilts,” I said. “The ones on the beach.”
“That’s to keep out the flooding,” she said.
“It seems crazy. To live in a house like that. Like any wind could just come up and blow you away. Especially with the storms.”
“I expect they’re as safe as anything else,” she said. “You don’t hardly even notice them when you live there. They’ve just always been there, so you don’t even think about it.”
“Is your cousin Veronica’s house up on stilts?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and knocked some ash onto her empty plate. “I never asked her.”
“I hope not,” I said. “I don’t know if I could sleep in a house on stilts.”
“We’ll camp out on the beach if you want,” she said. “We’ll sleep right there in the dunes one night.”
“That sounds nice.”
“It’s as beautiful as anything,” she said. “You should see the stars out above a Carolina beach.”
Like I said, I never really believed we would make it to South Carolina, but six months later I was traipsing through the north hills because I still thought we might make it back to that kitchen.
Up ahead, Portis had finally stopped walking and pointed to a clearing just down the trail.
“Scutter’s Point,” he said.
“Thank God,” I said.
“Don’t thank God,” he said. “Thank me.”
Portis’s Ranger was snow-buried, but parked right where he said it would be. He hurried ahead, tossed his snowshoes in the truck bed, and snapped his rifle into the rack on the rear window. He wiped the piled snow from the driver’s-side door, then climbed inside to start her up. I stood and listened as the engine heaved and wheezed and I swear I didn’t draw a breath until it finally caught and turned over. Then Portis jumped out and waved me over.
“Never a doubt,” he said, and went to work the windows with his ice scraper.
He cleared my side first and told me the heat was pumping. I got in the truck with Jenna, but left the door open to ask him if he wanted me to drive. I knew it would piss him off but it had to be said. If nothing else, I had to try.
He stopped scraping and looked at me and shook his head.
“Shit,” he said.
“I’m just saying,” I said. “You’ve been drinking.”
“You want to ride in this truck at all, I would suggest you shut up and sit in the passenger seat with that baby.”
“It was just a question,” I said.
“And I have given you an answer,” he said, and kicked my door shut.
Portis chipped ice and when the air turned warm I held Jenna close to the vents to soak up the heat. I was worried Portis was pissed for real, which might affect his driving, but then he dropped to one knee and played some air guitar with the scraper. I couldn’t help but bust out laughing. He was as glad as I was to be getting the hell out of the north hills. To finally get Jenna to safety.
“Crazy ass,” I said, when he got in.
“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe that’s right.”
“This heat feels good.”
“You ain’t kidding,” he said.
“How far to the main road?”
“Not very,” he said, and dropped the truck into gear.
We pushed through the snow and I was surprised by how little drift there was. I was going to ask Portis about it, but realized it would only lead to a lecture on how his keen instinct and knowledge of the hills had directed him to park exactly where he had. How he’d had the foresight not to bury himself beneath a foot of snow by parking on a slope.
In truth, Portis probably had no idea the truck was going to clear the trail until the second we pushed onto Grain Road in a spray of powder. I couldn’t have cared less. We were out of the goddamn woods. I was so happy I decided not to mention the swell of heat I felt on Jenna’s forehead, and the way it flashed against my palm like fever.
Chapter Ten
Shelton didn’t know how long he slept on the floor with Kayla, but he woke in a panic for having slept at all. He looked outside and the sky was still gray above Jackson Lake, but it was no longer snowing. He’d lost precious time and didn’t even bother to slip Kayla another V before heading out. He just took a piss and hurried for the truck with his nitrous tank and party balloons.
He started his Silverado and then cleared the windshield with a push broom he had on the porch. The truck was parked in a little rut and when he got back in the cab he started to rock her out. He tapped the gas and shifted into reverse, then tapped the gas and shifted forward. Gas, reverse. Gas, forward. Gas, reverse, and he was out! It was an art form, really.
He crossed the lake and then took Grain Road out of the hills to Highway 31, where he turned toward town and drove along Lake Michigan, his Silverado swaying a little in the wind off the bay.
He wished it were somebody else that had crossed him and stole Jenna. Anybody
but Little Hector. Shelton thought he had a good relationship with the Mexicans, and particularly the hardworking Hector Valquez. Hector was a good kid, and he had reliably moved Shelton’s methamphetamines to his friends and family, his familia, by the quarter gram.
Frankly, Shelton preferred Hector to the spoiled shitty white kids he sometimes had occasion to work with. Hector didn’t complain, didn’t peddle as much in excuses. And even as mad as Shelton was, as violently angry as he felt, he knew that beneath that rage was no small amount of hurt. He’d trusted the little spic, and he was not above suffering the pain of that betrayal.
He passed the cement plant, still in the throes of its theatrical decay along the shore, and Shoreline Estates, the trailer park home of his youth. Then the highway bent around town and he could see the sleepy downtown and the steeple of the Methodist church. He could see the softly lit homes on the snowy streets and remembered when they had everything decked out for Christmas and Cutler looked like a little train-set village in the snow.
But he was not headed for the quaint part of town. Shelton was headed a little farther south, where the highway hit Detroit Street and ran smack into East Cutler.
East Cutler had always been the wrong side of the tracks, a small-town slum with the good sense to remain in a state of despair and impoverished shame until the Mexicans moved in and scared everybody shitless with their willingness to work. Even the criminal among them seemed poised for ascent.
Hector himself was using his drug money to pay for a few classes at the community college. Hector was after an Associate’s in Business, whatever that was, and Shelton had sort of considered him an inspiration until he broke into his house and stole Jenna.
Hector lived on the corner of Detroit and Emmett Street, and Shelton pulled over on the curb a half block from his front stoop. Shelton shut his lights off and let the truck idle as the neighborhood spread out leaden gray around him. Four blocks of deteriorating row houses and everything was buttoned up and still, darker somehow than even the sky. Shelton noticed there wasn’t a single light on around him and figured a transformer must have blown. Transformers in East Cutler always gave out in a storm, and sometimes for no reason at all. Nobody cared, except for the Mexicans.
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