Cold Heart

by Chandler McGrew

  “I'll leave when I'm ready.”

  “Jim says the police department offered to put you back on limited duty.”

  “A desk job.”

  “A desk job might be what you need.”

  “Don't patronize me.”

  “I'm not patronizing. I'm trying to be a friend.”

  “If you're my friend, then tell me why you're giving up on yourself.”

  “Is this an argument?”

  “Sure,” she said, smiling. “Let's argue. Now tell me why you're not working. You used to love your work.”

  “I did,” he agreed. “I don't anymore. I need something I can lock onto. I just don't have any idea what it might be right now.”

  “Why do you want something else?”

  “Because a psychologist has to tell the truth. And the truth doesn't set you free. Not anymore. The truth will kill you.”

  His face had a hard edge she'd never seen before; his eyes stared out at something in the distance she couldn't see. “I used to think that people cared about one another. Now I don't. Is that explanation enough?”

  She laid her hand on his arm. “I care about you. You care about me. Jim cares about both of us. He loves us. You know that.”

  “Yeah. There's Jim.”

  “Knock it off,” she said. “You're turning maudlin in your youth.”

  “Two cripples,” he said, turning at last to smile at her. “And we can't even heal each other.”

  “You need to get back on your horse.”

  “So do you.”

  “No,” she said. “Not yet.”

  “Well,” said Damon, rising. “We sit here talking of horses and Jim does all the work.”

  She watched him saunter out to the corral and she wondered what she had missed in the conversation. Damon's wounds seemed as deep as her own but, like her, he didn't want to discuss them. Maybe their friendship was more hindrance than help. They were so accustomed to each other's long silences that neither of them could open up and release their grief in front of the other. And in a strange way, Damon's feelings irritated Micky. They intruded on her pain. How dare he be enduring his own pangs when she was the one who had suffered?

  She picked up the Glock and went back into the house as the first raindrops splattered on the patio.

  “You got a letter from Damon,” Jim shouted from the hall.

  Micky rushed to meet him. Jim wore a cockeyed smile, holding the envelope out at arm's length, teasing.

  “Give it to me!”

  “Thought you didn't miss him.”

  She and Damon had continued their fight that final day and it had gone from hurtful banter to something darker. Something that had never risen between them before. It was as if their feelings for each other were forcing them apart. Damon walked out and she hadn't heard a word from him in six months.

  She snatched the letter from Jim's hands and ripped it open.

  Mick,

  I know you're sorry for everything you said to hurt me. I'm sure you're abject. (Look it up.) So I'm writing to tell you that all is well.

  Better than well.

  I think I found what I was looking for. And you won't believe where.

  Alaska.

  A friend of a friend had a brother who knew an old man who used to live way up in the mountains. The friend talked me into renting the old man's cabin here for a couple of weeks. The weeks ran into months. I ended up buying the cabin. Now I'm thinking of staying here.

  Alaska? God's Icebox? you're saying to yourself.

  But McRay's the most gorgeous spot on earth. Moose the size of elephants wander around here like they own the place. (I guess they do, come to think of it.)

  I would have called. But I was too embarrassed. I'm sorry we fought. I've had a long time to sit all alone and think about just what that fight meant. Being alone sucks. You're the only real friend I've ever had.

  I know you, Mick. I've been thinking a lot about this, so listen up and see what kind of mind reader I am.

  You aren't back to work. Are you?

  You're still living with Jim. Right?

  You say you're better but you know you're not.

  How am I doing?

  Mick, come see me. Get off your ass and just do it. I'm not joking.

  I'll call.

  Love, Damon

  Micky glanced over the letter at Jim.

  “You've been talking to him,” she scolded.

  Jim smiled. “He told me not to tell you he'd called.”

  “Alaska?”

  “Pretty damned cold, I guess.”

  “Pretty damned crazy,” said Micky, slipping the letter back into the envelope. She headed back into the house.

  Jim followed her. The living room was wide with a highbeamed ceiling. Buttery morning sunlight shone through the windows. Navajo rugs covered the tile floor and wood furniture gleamed darkly against the stucco walls. Micky dropped into a leather recliner, the letter in her lap.

  “You need to do something.” Jim sat on an ottoman at her feet.

  “Alaska? What the hell is he doing in Alaska? Analyzing Eskimos?”

  “Getting away from other people's problems for a while maybe.”

  “You think that's what I need? Alaska's not going to help me.”

  He shrugged. “You've moped long enough, girl. Grief is good. In its time. But what you have now isn't grief. It's a sickness.”

  “How can you say that?” After all she'd been through? How dare he?

  “I can say it because it's true. Because I care about you. And because I'm getting old and I'm not going to be here forever. You can live here as long as you like. You know everything I have is going to you. But you can't hide here. Not anymore, Micky.”

  She couldn't believe it. Of all the people in the world that she trusted, Jim, she'd believed, would never betray her.

  Now he was kicking her out?

  Sending her to some wilderness?

  “Alaska? Are you nuts too?”

  “You're sick, Micky, and you won't get help. You don't listen to me or to Damon or your friends on the police force. You won't even talk to a doctor. You're always so damned determined you can handle everything. Micky Ascherfeld is too God-a-mighty tough to need help. Maybe you got that from me. If you did, then I'm sorry.”

  “I just need a little more time.”

  “Jesus Christ,” said Jim, shaking his head. “Listen to yourself. I swear you make me want to slap you.”

  She couldn't believe what she was hearing. Jim had never lifted a hand to her, even during the worst of her teenage years.

  He rose to his feet. “Damon's going to call. Talk to him. At least do that.”

  She nodded, shaken by Jim's seriousness.

  But when he stopped in the doorway his face had softened.

  “He sounds a lot better than when he left,” he said. “I don't know what magic he found up there. But magic is what you need too.”

  “I need more than magic,” she whispered after Jim had gone.

  But the idea bubbled in her head all morning.

  She had kept her problem to herself after her parents’ murder. Even Wade had not been allowed to intrude on her grief beyond being there to comfort her in the night. Now Wade was gone but nothing had changed except the depth of her despair.

  No one could help her before.

  No one could help her now.

  The phone rang and she waited for Jim to answer it as usual. But after eight rings she picked it up.

  “Jim's out of the house,” said Damon.

  “You arranged that?”

  “Cunning?”

  “Machiavellian.” It was like Damon. He had a way of getting what he wanted.

  “How are you?” she asked.

  “I'm fine.”

  “I liked your letter.”

  “Come see me.”

  “And live in an igloo?”

  He laughed. “It's not like that at all. More like Switzerland. Without the assholes running around
waking you up with those damned ten-foot horns all the time. Seriously though, Micky, you'd love it here.”

  “Freeze my ass off.”

  “Nah. It's weird. Not like Texas cold at all. You get used to it fast and you'll love the snow. You wouldn't believe what I've been doing.”

  “So tell me.”

  “Well, everybody here is holed up for the winter now. But I have been learning to pan for gold.”

  “Be serious.”

  “I am serious. There's an old-timer and a couple of middleaged hippies here who pull the stuff right out of the streams. I've even filed my own claim. Like John Wayne in North to Alaska.”

  “Unbelievable.”

  “I love it here.”

  “You sound good.”

  “I am good.”

  “Who's this old-timer?”

  “Aaron McRay,” said Damon.

  “Like the town?”

  “Named after him. He lives way up by himself at the head of Sgagamash Creek. The story is he's spent most of his life poking around looking for a Lost Dutchman mine in the valley here. But you can't get anything out of Aaron. He's a real hermit. Hates everybody. But he's got a cabin for rent.”

  “Why does he have two cabins?”

  “You'd have to meet the old coot. He moved out of his cabin down by the store and built another one so far up in the canyon light only comes in once a year probably. He doesn't much like people.”

  “So you're going to get rich,” she said.

  “It isn't about the money,” said Damon.

  “So what is it about?”

  “It's hard to explain. Like I said, I have my own claim now. That kind of does something to you. Looking for the gold. Finding it.”

  She shook her head, smiling. If there was gold on his claim, then God help it. Damon never gave up on anything he set his mind to.

  “And Marty and I are working on something,” he said.

  “Marty?”

  “One of the miners. Marty and Stan. Wild pair.”

  “Break a leg,” she said. “Or whatever you're supposed to say to a gold miner.”

  “Come up,” he said. “This valley will make you better, Mick. The place is medicine.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Really?”

  “Maybe,” she repeated firmly.

  “That other cabin is sitting empty. Just downstream from mine.”

  “I'll think about it.”

  “Say yes. Just for a visit.”

  “Yes. Just for a visit.” She stared at the phone, wondering what had gotten into her. “I need to talk to Jim, though.”

  “I'll call again tomorrow.”

  By the time she hung up the phone she knew she was going and, in the end, she went.

  She climbed onto the plane in Houston with the temperature outside hovering at eighty-five. The weather channel in the airport bar said snow for most of Alaska.

  The landing in Anchorage was calm after a perfect flight over the mountains. The city was blanketed in white, surrounded by an ice-blue wilderness that looked as though an entire continent of malcontents could vanish into it and never be heard from again. The gray waters of Cook Inlet wove through the feet of the peaks. Beyond the outskirts of the city, there was little to prove the hand of man had ever touched the land.

  When she stepped outside the airport, the below-zero temperature instantly burned her throat and stole her breath away. A friendly check-in agent had told her that there were no roads into McRay or anywhere remotely near it. He directed her to a local flying service, where she met Zeke Rasmussen.

  Yes, Zeke told her, he could fly her into McRay. What in the devil's name did she want to do in McRay?

  “Visit a friend.”

  Zeke laughed. Another crazy from outside. Outside, Micky quickly learned, was anywhere but Alaska. The other states— excluding Hawaii, which Alaskans considered more or less a half sister—were referred to condescendingly as the Lower Forty-Eight.

  Zeke flew her into McRay in a big twin-engined Cessna. He informed her that the pink glow on the horizon was a snowstorm blowing in. A lot of snow. Micky couldn't understand how there could be much more. The ground below them looked like it would buckle under the weight of the towering drifts. If it snowed again, she was convinced the razor peaks would disappear and the entire state would become one soft white blanket. They roared over the Kuskokwim range, the arctic wind whipping the plane like dust in front of a broom.

  Dropping through the high mountain pass, Zeke pointed below at a tiny puff of smoke and said, “That's McRay.”

  Beneath the plane, small clearings dotted the thick forest, which grew almost to the edge of the river. Tin roofs and tiny smoking chimneys betrayed the presence of cabins hidden in the woods. Suddenly they were over the impossibly short dirt strip.

  But Zeke put the plane down on the runway with only a single bump. They coasted to a halt at the end of the strip and Zeke jumped out while the props were still spinning. He tossed wooden chocks under the wheels and unceremoniously pitched Micky's trunk and backpack onto the ground. Micky tightened the wolf-ruff parka around her face and pulled on her heavy mittens.

  “Where's the terminal?”

  “The what?” Zeke laughed.

  “Where do I go?” she asked. The light was fading and the mountains seemed like something out of the remote, savage past. Zeke glanced anxiously over his shoulder toward the approaching storm.

  “Where's your friend?” he shouted, over the plane's engines and the buffeting wind.

  “I have no idea!” She stamped her feet, already chilled despite her winter boots.

  Zeke nodded toward a track that twisted through the spruce trees at the end of the short runway. “Look for smoke.”

  He had to go, he told her. He couldn't get caught in the storm. He had only an hour of daylight left. She watched his plane disappear into the darkening clouds, listening as the wind drowned out the retreating engines.

  And just like that, she was alone.

  It occurred to her then that she might die here on this landing strip and for all she knew it would be months before anyone found her. Maybe that was the one good thing that she had accomplished with this fool's errand. Maybe she was just going to freeze to death.

  Where the hell is Damon?

  Tire tracks that seemed too narrow for a Jeep or truck, meandered away into the trees.

  She squared her shoulders and scooped up her backpack. There was nothing she could do about the trunk. She glanced up at the mountains already buried in cloud and started hiking.

  Thirty yards into the trees a growling noise caught her attention and she froze. The Glock was stored away in the pack. But Zeke had informed her that the pistol was pretty much worthless where she was going, anyway. Nothing smaller than a.357 magnum had any chance of stopping a bear.

  The Honda four-wheeler cleared the cusp of the hill before she realized that what she was hearing wasn't in the least bearlike. It didn't dawn on her until later that no self-respecting, hibernating bear would be stupid enough to be out on a frigid day like this. The little vehicle looked like a cross between a motorcycle and a riding lawn mower but it bounced down the rough trail with the confidence of a mountain goat. The driver was going so fast that he couldn't stop and wheeled around Micky, coming to a halt facing back up the trail. Micky had a bewildered expression on her face when the driver flipped back his parka hood and offered a gloved hand. Micky reached across the handlebars and felt a small but powerful grip. She stared into the face and was surprised to discover the driver was a woman.

  “Rita Cabel,” said the driver, in a voice like steel wool. She had thick gray hair and bright blue eyes. Micky guessed her age at fifty but she might have been ten years older. When she climbed off the four-wheeler and tossed Micky's pack into the rear basket, she seemed closer to thirty. She moved with the easy grace of a younger woman.

  “Get on,” said Rita. “Unless you want to stay out here and freeze to death. Damon mentioned you'd
be coming. I knew he'd forget.”

  “He forgot me?”

  Rita laughed. “You must know how he gets if he's onto something. He and Marty cooked up some scheme to boil water in barrels and heat the ground around their claims by driving pipes into the ground and running steam through them.”

  Micky gave the woman a baffled look.

  “They're digging up gravel that way so they can have it ready to run through the sluices when the creek thaws in the spring,” said Rita.

  Rita drove Micky up to the cabin Damon had rented for her from Aaron McRay. The place was small but tidy. Rita's husband, Clive, had a fire going in the stove and coffee in the pot. Rita educated Micky in the intricacies of wood heat and how to tuck pieces of old blankets on all the windowsills and under the doors to keep as much of the draft out as possible. Then Rita and Clive said their good-byes with the promise of a tour of the town the next day.

  Micky locked the door behind them with the simple sliding latch. She listened to the giant hands of the wind, clawing at the eaves, trying to rip the roof off the cabin. She stared out into darkness so black that it was like being inside the middle of a giant squid and she shivered.

  But the cabin was snug, the kerosene lamplight reassuring, and the roof didn't sound as though it had any intention of losing its battle with the wind. She climbed up into the loft and found that the old feather bed, though smelling of dust, was clean and quite comfortable.

  She dug out the Glock, checked the chamber, and placed it beside her on the bed.

  And she wondered, yawning, just how much farther from anything she could possibly be. She fell asleep thinking of Wade.

  All the lanterns in the cabin burned brightly throughout that long arctic night.

  MCRAY, FOUR YEARS LATER MAY 2, 11:30 A.M.

  MICKY LEANED OVER THE rough-hewn table that was the centerpiece of her log cabin, concentration furrowing her brow. She wore heavy gloves. The custom-made soldering iron, even with its thick ash handle, was hot and she'd been burned before. She molded the lead strip around the irregular-shaped pieces of glass, delicately fitting the soft metal into the space between the panes and stopping to slip in a piece of local quartz, polished by hand.

  Her trademark.

  The piece had been commissioned by a buyer in Anchorage. Micky wasn't expected to turn out an exact replica of what the owner wanted—an overhead view of salmon spawning—but an artist's rendition, and that was what the owner was getting.