Haints Stay

by Colin Winnette

  Neither of them was in any condition to cook a meal, so they ate what was left of the bread with salt and stoked the fire and huddled together. Bird’s hand was well-worn and bloody. Mary’s hands were blistered and ready to pop. She rinsed the wounds with cool water, and bandaged each. It snowed steadily on outside. For the first time since they’d left home, they slept soundly through the night.

  They woke to find the village covered in several feet of snow, with more of it still in the air. The rows Bird had set out were unidentifiable. The hole, on which they had worked so tirelessly, was filled now with snow and marked only by the snow-capped mound of dirt at its side.

  The snow stayed with them for days. They dug out the store of logs lining the back of the building with the kitchen, and stacked them inside to thaw and dry. Most would not burn at first, but those that did warmed and worked to dry the others. They made more bread. Bird practiced with the pistol, although Mary insisted he do so upstairs. The sound of it startled her, but no matter of fussing or demanding would stop him.

  He was closing off to her. He seemed distracted and uncomfortable. He would end what might have become a perfectly good conversation by refusing to answer with more than a single word.

  “Do you think we might develop some land, when the snow stops ?”

  “No.”

  “Would you like a family some day ? Do you believe this town could restore itself ? If we help, maybe ? Do you think we could keep this town in some kind of decent shape, for when more people come ? When the town grows again ?”

  To this, he said nothing. He was watching out the window. The snow was burying them. It wouldn’t stay forever. They could dig themselves out and get back to work. They had only a few more days of this. A week at most. They were not trapped. They were not in danger. They had only to wait.

  The infant would not stop screaming. She had no milk for it, no liquid with which to feed it. Only a few scraps of food and the snow she could melt in her hands for drinking. She chewed a bit of dried beef and tried to spit it into the baby’s mouth, but it would not accept it. She rode on through the night and put the sun at her back as it began to rise. The horse was flagging. She was flagging. The baby was screaming and screaming and screaming. She did not know this baby. She did not have the body warmth to keep it alive. She did not know the man she had killed. From what she could tell, everyone from the town was dead. Everyone except for Mary and Bird. And they needed her. She had to survive for them and find her way back. She rode until the horse began to falter. She pushed it a bit farther and it finally bent its front knees and brought her down into the snow. The baby fell from her. It disappeared into several feet of snow without a sound, like a twig into a canyon. But then it began to scream again. The horse’s hocks gave then and she was suddenly in the snow and thanking the heavens that the horse had not crushed her. The child would not stop screaming. She had made a poor decision, coming out here. She had put herself at risk and the child was no better off. She had pursued the man unthinkingly and brought herself to this low point. There was no way of anticipating the snowfall. Now the snow would fall and it would keep falling and falling, as the baby kept screaming and screaming.

  It was difficult to move. She wasn’t pinned, but was bound up by her clothing and finding it hard to lift or turn. She dropped to her side, into the snow and shook her sleeves back from her wrists, opening up the space around her elbows. Snow poured in, wedged itself between her coat and dress, and began to melt. She lifted herself onto an elbow and rose. She separated herself from the horse. It turned onto its side, obviously disliking the snow but without the strength to rise and shake it from its hair. She shook what she could from her arms and torso and lifted the baby from its pocket of snow. She removed a crude knife from the few belongings she’d taken from the man she’d killed. She plunged the knife into the belly of the horse and brought it down. The horse screamed and thrashed and landed a blow to her side, likely cracking a rib. She rose and opened the animal, releasing a pocket of steam. Blood and slick innards she could not identify spilled onto the snow for a moment but then seemed to reach an equilibrium and come to rest. The horse protested then, but only for a moment before going still. She wrapped herself around the infant and squeezed whatever parts of herself she could into the horse’s husk. Everything from her waist up was still exposed. Her legs were slick and sliding out. Nothing would stay put. She warmed slightly, but not for long. Her pants were wet now. There was nothing to set her heels upon. Nothing that would hold her. Only the snow and the meat and the hard bits she slid from. The baby was still screaming. She couldn’t think, so she didn’t try to.

  Brooke started thinking about love once the snow began to fall. He’d met his wife during a brutal snowstorm, many years ago. The circumstances weren’t far from those of his current situation. He’d left the riders he was with. He’d struck out on his own. They were getting a reputation, and with that came a sense of obligation to this or that, and they started spending more time deciding who they were going to hunt down and how than actually getting after it. It wasn’t a bitter parting, but a necessary one. Hunting or no, they took the desert paths when they could. Slept in caves or alongside springs. It was by riding with these men that he had learned how to best survive the situation in which he’d currently found himself. He knew it well. Even if life did not repeat itself, there were certainly echoes that rang out forever. He had no doubt that he could survive out here for as long as it would take him to find the next place to be. There was water. Some plants. He didn’t need much. It wasn’t fun, and he was losing weight like a broken bucket drains water, but he could keep it all going if he had to.

  It was clean. Or clean enough, their parting. They’d stopped for water and Brooke told one of the men he was thinking of riding off and trying to see if the rumors were true about making money digging in the earth. There were stories all the time about men finding a life’s fortune in rocks or oil, just under the sand, or in their own backyards. He figured he would take a stab at it. Ride out a bit and see what he could find.

  “So you’re done here ?” said the man.

  Brooke could not picture his face.

  “I think so,” he said, or something equally plain.

  And that was that. The man Brooke could not remember went to the water to fill his canteen like every other man, and Brooke rode on. He had no interest at all in digging in the dirt, but it was time to get away. Going off on your own was enough like greed to be made sense of and not resented. These men understood greed. They even liked it, provided it did not interfere with a plan. Some of the most pleasurable exchanges they had over the campfire were about all the rotten things they’d done, or all that had gone wrong, in pursuit of a dollar or two, or a woman, or both.

  Brooke had been full of stories then, full of the lives of all those men. He’d felt as if he’d lived one hundred lives. Walking up and down along this desert creek now, it was hard to distinguish this from that, or to remember who said what or how any story ended or began. There was a lot of middle. A lot of in between. The edges of each tale were worn and indistinguishable.

  He remembered that one man was able to escape a hanging because the sheriff who had captured him left the cell unlocked. How such a thing could have happened, or what the man had done after, Brooke had no sense of. He remembered picturing the man’s hand as it came down upon the cell door to rest, and the door just squeaking open then, and all the joy and surprise the man must have felt realizing that he had back his freedom.

  Many of the men at his side had lost their families. Most to violence, a few to disease. Some to their own bad habits of drinking or gambling. Brooke’s head was filled with images of outfits, gangs, marauders, riding right up to a ranch’s front door and taking everything they pleased then destroying the rest. That was just the way of things. They themselves weren’t so different. Between each of the towns was pure wilderness, and what came bearing down upon civilization was beyond imagination, for most.
He’d seen plenty, but he was still capable of surprise. He was not hardened to a measure of awe and respect for what the wilderness was capable of producing. Snow was bearing down upon him. Snow was obscuring the rocks and shrubs and horizon. The stream was still undeniably at his side, but if the snow kept up it would freeze and get buried with the rest. Brooke was now of the mind that once a thing began there was no use in expecting it to end any place short of total devastation. The first few flakes of snow signaled an impending snowstorm, regardless of how the sky looked. He was to be severed from and discarded by the world. Here and now, he would meet his quiet end.

  Or so he’d expected. And then she’d appeared, on the horizon, moving slowly toward him. He hadn’t even realized that he was collapsed until she was at his side and encouraging him to sit up, to drink and open his eyes. She was weeping as if it moved her to see him like this. As if she’d known him. She had something sick within her. Her eyes were not warm, but nearly white, like those of a fish. She twisted water from the ends of her sleeves and the tail of her shirt and washed his face and the inside of his mouth. Her touch was not loving, not yet, but was confident and familiar, as if she’d made a life of rescuing half-dead men from the wilderness.

  “Are you lost ?” she said.

  She held him in her lap. The snow fell steadily.

  He nodded.

  “I am lost too,” she said.

  He nodded. When he woke, she had his back propped against her front. His legs were in the snow, sunk to the bottom and greeting the sand down below them. She had spread out a blanket beneath her. It dipped toward the center where she sat, and was slowly filling with snow. You could not see the sky. Only the sun and the thick, broken snow, as if it were falling directly from heaven. The wind picked up and moved the snow around and then it seemed to be coming directly from the earth, spiraling up and around and holding them there.

  “You fell asleep,” she said.

  He nodded.

  It was more than likely that he had died. That this woman was an angel or some creature made entirely of death. He could hardly feel how cold it looked. He could not make sense of where he’d been and where he was now.

  “It wasn’t snowing only a few days before,” he said.

  “It was not snowing when I set out,” she said.

  “What were you after ?” he said.

  “A baby,” she said.

  “Whose baby ?” he said.

  “I do not know,” she said.

  He did not press her anymore. He wanted her to continue, but was not sure when her sickness would expose itself. There was something wrong in her, and he did not want to face it. He had no defenses and was enjoying her warmth and company.

  “Are you married ?” he said.

  “I was,” she said.

  She leaned into him, to warm or to quiet him. Her hair smelled rotten, like death and sweat. Her fingernails were stained through with crud. She had dirt in the cracks of her knuckles. Scratches on her face and neck. Something about her was incredibly beautiful to him.

  “You’ve been through hell,” he said, and she did not respond.

  When the windows were fully covered, there was no clear way to determine the weather. They knew it was cold, so they knew that the snow had not melted and was not melting. They knew they were running low on logs and chairs and tables for the fire. They were not running low on food, and water could be made from the snow easily enough. They had a small pouch of bullets that Bird had acquired from the homes he’d broken into when retrieving the bodies. So he did not fire the gun when he practiced his aim. He merely practiced keeping the pistol steady. His single arm extended, he would shut an eye and attach the barrel of his gun to some small item on the room’s far wall. He would hold steady, count to see how long he held, and begin again every time the barrel shifted or his breath drew him out of alignment. Mary did not much like the game, and told him so repeatedly. But he did not stop.

  He explored the second floor and found magazines and adventure books in a trunk beneath one of the beds. He brought them down with the thread from before. He taught himself to thread a needle with a single hand, using his knees and wetting the string with his mouth to keep it stable and pointed. He believed this would help him with his aim, in the long run. He asked Mary to read the magazines and adventure books aloud to him.

  “Men are not like that,” said Bird.

  “You do not know all the men in the world,” said Mary.

  “Women are not like that,” said Bird.

  “With that,” said Mary, “I can agree.”

  Bird began to work on his speed. He tucked the pistol into a pocket and withdrew it as quickly as possible. Often, it fell. Once, it went off. Snow came in through the fresh hole in the window. Mary took the gun and unloaded it. She demanded the bullets from his pouch. They were getting along as well as they ever had.

  Mary did not like the books at first. She said they lacked the right kind of description, and they did not conclude in a high-minded way. But while Bird was practicing with his pistol, she had little else to do other than read and reread them. She was not interested in pistols. She was not willing to cook any more than he was, and so they prepared nothing more than they had to. She did not like to explore upstairs. She tinkered at the piano, but produced no sounds that pleased her. It needed tuning. She had never been a pianist, and now it made her think too much of Martha, and of how long they had been there, and of how long they could be stuck. But they were not stuck, it was important to remember. They could tunnel out. They would tunnel out. Or the snow would melt. We will not die like this, she told herself.

  “Do you think, when Martha returns, she’ll be able to find us ?”

  “She’s not coming back,” said Bird.

  “But do you think we’re buried so far now that it looks only like a desert of snow ? Can you even see the town as you approach ?”

  “How much snow could there be ?”

  “We are covered,” she said, “and who knows how high it goes ?”

  “It cannot go on forever,” said Bird. “It has to stop somewhere.”

  He withdrew his pistol and held it steady. He placed it back behind his belt. He withdrew his pistol and held it steady. He placed it back behind his belt.

  “Do you think the bodies will be as we left them ?”

  “No,” he said.

  “You’ve grown cold,” she said.

  “There is snow everywhere,” he said.

  “Do you love me like a husband loves a wife ?” she said.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “I feel like we are supposed to become husband and wife,” she said.

  “Why ?”

  “Because we are here together and alone together and we get along and there is no one else.”

  “There will be others someday,” he said.

  “Do you really think so ?” she said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I will be happy to see them,” she said.

  “I won’t,” he said. “But I’ll be ready.”

  It went on like this for longer than either of them realized. It was always dark, always cold. The fire gave them just enough heat and light to get by, but they didn’t allow themselves much more than that. There was no knowing how long they would have to keep it going.

  They had no way of knowing for sure, which day the snow stopped. But suddenly water was running in through the hole in the window, and seeping in through the cracks in the wood and where the building’s joints were not flush or tight. It kept on like this and they soon realized that the snow was melting without pause. Which meant the sun was out. Which meant the days and nights were warming. Suddenly, the whole room would creak when Bird traveled up the stairs, so Mary made him promise to stop.

  “All this snow came and held us here,” she said, “and now it’s going.”

  She was smiling.

  He nodded.

  They slept on the two remaining tables to keep out of th
e damp. The floor was soggy. Their clothes would not dry. Their time in the building with the kitchen was nearly up.

  Bird was the first to dig out, but only slightly. The snow outside was mere slush piled high, and little canals ran the water out into the wilderness around them. In every direction you could hear the sound of water running. He imagined himself a gunslinger, running the water out of town. He was able to get the door open, but not without letting in a considerable amount of slush. He was able then to dig a few inches out onto the porch. The snow level was near the roof now, but crumbling. Disappearing. Hightailing it. He took to the stairs though he had promised not to do so. He looked out the windows and could see the tops of trees again. He could see the tall rocks in the distance. He could smell the air the sun had touched. He could feel the sun as it broke through the glass. He followed its beam around the room. He wanted to get a sunburn. That was his goal. A sunburn on his single exposed arm. Or on his face and neck. He could feel it cooking him. He heard a fly buzzing at the window and almost burst into tears.

  “We are nearly out,” said Mary.

  “Nearly,” said Bird.

  “What will we do ?”

  “We’ll leave,” he said.

  “Where will we go ?”

  “We.”

  “I will go where you go,” said Mary.

  “I’m going to follow the trail that brought us here.”

  “That will lead us home,” she said.

  “I will keep following it, on past the ranch where I was nursed, and I will hunt down the men who put me there.”

  “John killed that thing,” said Mary.

  “Not that thing,” said Bird.

  “Then what ?”

  “The men who killed my family,” said Bird.

  “Are you out of your wits ? You’re acting stranger than I’ve yet seen you act.”

  “I’m clear-headed,” said Bird, “and I’ve a simple plan that will guide me through the next period of my life.”

  “A murderous plan ?”