Northern Lights

by Nora Roberts

  "And when it clears?"

  She moved her shoulder, then rolled away. Rising, she walked naked to the closet, the firelight playing over her white skin and that flashy spread of red wings, before she pulled out a thick flannel robe. "Maybe you'll give me a call, and if I'm around, you could bring me out a pizza."

  She pulled on the robe, smiled as she belted it. "I'll give you a really good tip."

  Seven

  The first flakes fell as he drove back to town. Fat and soft, they didn't look particularly threatening. In fact, he found them picturesque. They reminded him of the snows of his childhood, the ones that fell during the night and kept falling in the morning, so when you looked out your bedroom window, excitement sizzled in your blood.

  No school!

  It made him smile to think of it, to remember the days when snow was a thrill instead of a burden or a hazard. Maybe it would pay him to bring some of that childhood awe back inside himself.

  To look around, see those oceans and rivers of white and consider the possibilities. He was learning to snowshoe, so maybe he'd learn to ski. Cross-country skiing might be interesting. Besides, he'd lost too much weight over the last few months. That sort of exercise, added to the regular meals that were always being put in front of him, would help build him back up again.

  Maybe he'd buy one of those Ski-doo things and race around in the snow for the hell of it. Have some fun, for Christ's sake. And he'd see some of the countryside from something other than a car.

  He paused to watch a small herd of deer wind their way through the trees to his left. Their coats were shaggy and dark against snow that came to their knees. If deer had knees.

  It was a whole new world for the city boy, he decided, whose rural adventures until now had consisted of a couple of summer camping trips to western Maryland.

  He parked in front of the station, remembered to plug his engine block heater into the outlet, then watched Otto and Pete string a knotted rope line along the sidewalk about waist high. Pulling his thick gloves back on, he walked over to join them.

  "What's going on here?"

  "Rope guide," Otto said, and wound it around a lamppost.

  "For?"

  "Man can lose himself a foot out the door in a whiteout."

  "Doesn't look that bad." Nate glanced out at the street and missed the look Otto and Pete exchanged. "How much are they calling for?"

  "Could get four feet."

  Nate turned back sharply. "You're shitting me."

  "Wind's coming with, so drifts could be two, three times that." There was obvious pleasure in Otto's tone as he worked the rope. "This ain't Lower 48 snow."

  He thought of Baltimore, and how six inches of the white stuff could slow the city to a crawl. "I want these parked vehicles off the street and the snow removal equipment checked."

  "People mostly leave their cars where they sit," Pete told him. "Dig them out after."

  Nate considered following the when-in-Rome theory, then shook his head. They were paying him to establish order, so by God, he'd establish some order.

  "Get them off the street. Anything still parked on this route in an hour gets towed. Alaska or Lower 48, it's still four feet of snow on the street. Until we're clear, we're on call twenty-four/seven. None of us leave the station without a two-way. What's the policy on out-of-towners?"

  Otto scratched his chin. "Isn't any."

  "We'll have Peach go down the list, contact all of them. We make arrangements for shelter for anyone who wants to come in."

  This time, he caught the exchanged glance. Peter smiled gently. "Nobody's going to."

  "Maybe not, but they'll have a choice." He thought of Meg, six miles out and essentially cut off. She wouldn't budge, that much he already knew of her. "How much of this rope do we have?"

  "Plenty. People generally string their own guides."

  "We'll make sure of it." He went inside to put Peach to work.

  It took him an hour to organize procedure, and another ten minutes to deal with Carrie Hawbaker when she blew in with her digital camera. Unlike her husband, she seemed sharp and brisk, merely waving at him to go on about what he was doing so she could get candids.

  He let her snap her pictures and talked to Peach about the in-progress snow emergency plans. He didn't have time to worry about it or to think about how his interview with Max had gone.

  "Did you contact everyone outside of town?" he asked Peach.

  "Twelve more to go."

  "Anyone heading in?"

  "Not so far." She ticked off her list. "People live out, Nate, because they like it out."

  He nodded. "Contact them anyway. Then I want you to go on home and call me when you get there."

  Her pudgy cheeks popped out with her smile. "Aren't you the mother hen."

  "Public safety is my life."

  "And chirpier than you've been." She took the pencil out of her bun, wagged it at him. "It's good to see."

  "I guess a blizzard brings out my inner songbird."

  He glanced toward the door, amazed when it opened again. Didn't anyone in Lunacy stay home in a snowstorm?

  Hopp fluffed at her hair. "Pouring in now," she announced. "Heard you're clearing cars off the street, chief."

  "Snow plow'll be doing the first sweep of the mains shortly."

  "It's going to take a lot of sweeps."

  "I guess it will."

  She nodded. "You got a minute?"

  "Just about." He gestured toward his office. "You should be home, mayor. If we get that four feet, you'll be wading in it up to your armpits."

  "I'm short, but I'm hardy, and if I don't get out and about a bit during a storm, I get cabin fever. It's January, Ignatious. We expect to get hammered."

  "Regardless, it's five above, dark as the inside of a dead dog, and we're already heading toward the first foot, with winds gusting at thirty-five."

  "Keeping your finger on the pulse."

  "Lunacy Radio." He gestured toward the portable on his counter. "They promise to broadcast twenty-four hours a day while it blows."

  "Always do. Speaking about media—"

  "I gave the interview. Carrie took the pictures."

  "And you're still pissed off." She bobbed her head at him. "Town gets its first official police department and brings in a chief from the Outside. It's news, Ignatious."

  "No argument there."

  "You were tap-dancing around Max."

  "It was actually more of a two-step. I just learned how."

  "Whatever the choreography, I stopped the dancing. And my method of doing so crossed a line.

  I apologize for it."

  "Accepted."

  When she held out her hand to shake on it, he surprised her by giving it a friendly squeeze.

  "Go home, Hopp."

  "I'll say the same."

  "Can't do it. First I get to live out a childhood dream. I'm going riding on a snowplow."

  * * *

  Every breath was like inhaling splinters of ice. Those same splinters managed to spear around his goggles and into his eyes. Every inch of his body was double or triple wrapped, and he was still breathlessly cold.

  It didn't seem real, any of it. The outrageous wind, the ear-pounding V engine of the snowplow, the white wall the headlights could barely penetrate. Now and then he could see the glow of a lamp against a window, but most of the world had fined down to the half a foot of light jittering in front of the canary-yellow blade.

  He didn't attempt conversation. He didn't think Bing wanted to talk to him anyway, but the noise made the subject moot.

  He had to admit, Bing handled the machine with the precision and delicacy of a surgeon. It wasn't the swipe and dump Nate had expected. There were routes and disposal sites, curbside excavations, driveway detours, all executed in near whiteout conditions and at a speed that had Nate, continually, swallowing a protesting yelp.

  He had no doubt Bing would love to hear him shriek like a girl, and so he gritted his teeth against a
ny sound that could be mistaken as such.

  After dumping another load, Bing took the brown bottle he'd wedged under the seat, unscrewed the cap and took a long pull. The smell that blew into Nate's face was potent enough to make his eyes water.

  Since they were sitting, contemplating the growing mountain of snow, Nate decided to risk a comment.

  "I heard alcohol lowers body temperature," he shouted.

  "Fucking propaganda." To prove it, Bing took another pull from the bottle.

  Considering they were alone in the dark, in a blizzard, and that Bing outweighed him by around seventy pounds and would, Nate was sure, like nothing better than to bury him in the mountain of removed snow until his cold, dead body was found in the spring thaw, he decided not to argue the point. Or mention the law against carrying open containers of alcohol in a vehicle or the dangers of drinking while operating heavy machinery.

  Bing turned his massive shoulders. Nate could see nothing but his eyes, squinting between watch cap and scarf. "See for yourself." He shoved the bottle into Nate's hand.

  It didn't seem like the moment to mention he wasn't much of a drinker. More politic, he decided, and companionable to take a slug. When he did, his head exploded and his throat and stomach lining burned to cinders.

  "Merciful Mother of God."

  He choked and, when he inhaled, swallowed shards of flame rather than ice. Through the ringing in his ears he could hear laughing. Unless the sound was the howl of some giant, maniacal wolf.

  "What the fucking fuck is that?" He continued to wheeze while tears streamed out of his eyes and froze on his face. "Battery acid? Plutonium? Liquid fire of hell?"

  Bing took the bottle back, took a chug and capped it. "Horse turd whiskey."

  "Oh perfect."

  "Man can't handle his whiskey ain't no man."

  "If that's the criteria, I'll be a woman."

  "I'll take you back, Mary. Done all can be done for now."

  "Praise the tiny Baby Jesus."

  There was a crinkling of the skin around Bing's eyes that could have indicated a smile. He reversed, turned around. "I got twenty in the pool says you'll be packing your bag before the end of the month."

  Nate sat still, his throat burning, eyes stinging, his feet like icebergs despite two pair of thermal socks and boots. "Who holds the pool?"

  "Skinny Jim, works the bar at The Lodge."

  Nate merely nodded.

  He didn't know where Bing got his sense of direction but decided the man could've guided Magellan.

  He zipped the machine along in the blinding snow and arrowed it straight to the curb at The Lodge.

  Nate's knees and ankles wept when he jumped down. The snow on the sidewalk reached those frozen knees, and the wind blew it rudely in his face as he gripped the rope guide and pulled himself toward the door.

  The heat inside was almost painful. Clint Black rolled out of the juke and replaced the humming in his ears. There were a dozen people seated at the bar or at tables, drinking, eating, holding conversations as if the wrath of God wasn't blowing on the other side of the door.

  Lunatics, he thought. Every one of them.

  He wanted coffee—blistering hot—and red meat. He'd cheerfully eat it raw.

  He nodded as people called out to him and was fighting with snaps and zippers when Charlene hurried over to him.

  "Why you poor thing! You must be frozen solid. Let me help you with that coat."

  "I've got it. I—"

  "Your fingers will be all stiff."

  It was too weird, too surreal, to have the mother of the woman he'd bedded that afternoon undoing his snow-coated parka.

  "I've got it, Charlene. Could use some coffee though. Appreciate that."

  "I'll get it for you myself, right away." She patted his cold cheek. "You just sit right down."

  But when he'd managed to strip off everything but his shirt and pants, he walked to the bar. He pulled out his wallet, signaled to the man they called Skinny Jim. "Here's a hundred," he said in a voice loud enough to carry. "Put it in the pool. It says I'm staying."

  He stuck his wallet back in his pocket, then sat beside John. "Professor."

  "Chief."

  Nate angled his head to read the title of the current book. "Cannery Row. Good one. Thanks, Charlene."

  "Don't you mention it." She set his coffee down. "We've got a nice stew tonight. Warm you right up. Unless you want me to take care of that for you."

  "Stew would be great. Have you got rooms if some of these people need to stay here tonight?"

  "We always got room at The Lodge. I'll dish you up that stew."

  Nate swiveled on his stool, sipping coffee as he checked the room. Someone had plugged an old Springsteen into the juke, and The Boss was singing about his glory days while pool balls thudded into pockets. He recognized all the faces—regulars, people he saw nearly every night.

  He couldn't see the pool players from his angle but made out the voices. The Mackie brothers.

  "Any of these people going to get drunk, then try to get home?" he asked John.

  "Mackies might, but Charlene would talk them out of it. Most will clear out in an hour or so, and the die-hards will still be here in the morning."

  "Which camp would you be?"

  "That depends on you." John lifted his beer.

  "Meaning?"

  "If you take Charlene up on her offer, I'll be heading on up to my room alone. If you don't, I'll be heading up to hers."

  "I'm just here for the stew."

  "Then I'll be staying in her room tonight."