The Winter People

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  I leaned cautiously out over my barricade and felt that strange sense of power which height can give. All the lake lay stretched beneath me. Halfway down the opposite shore I could see the McIntyre house, and on the level meadow below it the bonfire’s mounting flames. In the darkening afternoon the fire bloomed a deeper scarlet from moment to moment. Small figures moved about the central mass—like the tiny Walpurgisnacht figures of Glynis Chandler’s painting.

  With the glasses to my eyes I could even make out individuals. None of the Chandlers were there, but I could see Pandora, small and plump in rather tight-fitting trousers and bulky sweater. Trent was there too, rounding the fire with spare, efficient movements. I did not know the guests and their children, but there was a busy air of anticipation over the scene. An anticipation I could not share.

  I glanced over my shoulder and saw the spreading colors of the sunset—bars of crimson, gold, deep saffron—merging far up the sky into pale azure.

  No one could possibly see me here in the shadow of my rock. I stepped from behind the parapet onto a high ledge from which I could have a still better view down the lake. My toe struck loose rock, and for an instant my heart was in my throat as a great slab of shale broke away and went crashing down the steep slope, striking the base at the bottom, then leaping outward in a thousand pieces to fall into the lake. But there was no one there to be harmed. In the circle of my glasses nothing moved, no one walked along the path.

  I raised the binoculars and searched the far end of the lake, where Gray Rocks Inn faded slowly into the shadow of woods all around. There were lights in some of the windows, and I supposed that Pandora had been using the inn’s kitchen and refrigerators for her picnic preparations. Somehow my eyes were drawn toward the small window of the office. When the glasses found it, my heart jumped again. The entire space burned a fiery red—alive with scarlet flames. This was how Glynis must have seen it in her picture.

  But it was only the sunset, surely, touching one window after another to crimson. Light colored the face of the inn and fell across the lawn that sloped toward the water, while all else was lost in shadow. The sight was dramatic and beautiful.

  As I watched, a human figure strode suddenly into view. Keith had stepped out of the woods and was crossing the space that led around the inn to the entrance side. For once he carried no rifle, but he moved with almost furtive speed, as though he did not want to linger and be seen. In a moment he was out of sight. If he had been sent down there on some innocent errand by his grandmother, he would not move like that. I did not like the furtiveness, but there was nothing I could do from this distance.

  The headlights of a car loomed along the road that curved above the opposite shore. I watched it pull up to a parking area near the McIntyre house. The door opened and Colton got out, went around to help Nomi out with her parcels. Together they walked toward the bonfire, but Glen and Glynis did not appear, and I wondered where the twins were. Was Glen looking for me? Had he given me a thought? Probably not, I told myself, and tasted bitterness in my mouth.

  How they reached the party did not matter to me now, but what did matter was that Keith was at the far end of the lake alone. If I hurried down from this high place and followed the shore, I would still have light enough to show me to the inn. Once I reached it I would be between Keith and the bonfire to which he must, presumably, return.

  Climbing down from the pinnacles of Gray Rocks was harder than going up. I slung the binoculars on their strap about my neck to leave my hands free and went down backwards, as I had seen Glen do, feeling cautiously behind me with each foot, a step at a time.

  Once I was down I scrambled to the shore of the lake and found the path I had so often followed. It grew more difficult underfoot in the quick winter dusk. Already the sunset was no more than a faint memory of color in the darkening sky. Nevertheless, I walked as fast as I was able—yet walked carefully too, watchful for unfamiliar patches across the path, patches of leaves that might turn treacherously into a trap.

  I was nearly opposite the bonfire now. I could hear its crackle and roar, see its sparks spitting high into the air. That section of the shore was clear, with no woods around to catch, and the ground was still wet from the snowstorm of last week, so it was safe again. Children ran about shouting and laughing, and adults were busy getting wieners ready to toast, parceling out buns. On ahead the inn was dark, and I wondered if I had only imagined lights in its windows. What I’d thought was electricity might have been merely the earlier gleam of the sunset.

  But Keith was there—and I must hurry. I had not seen him come back along either shore, so he must be there.

  Now I made such speed that I nearly ran into Glynis and Glen as they came down the hill from High Towers. I halted just in time and drew back behind the trunk of a big sycamore near the water’s edge. Together they plunged down the hill, hand in hand; laughing. Glynis wore her burnt orange parka jacket, with the furry hood thrown back to leave her face white in the dusk, with her short hair making wisps of shadow about her head. Glen was bareheaded too, wearing his favorite quilted jacket and dark trousers.

  When they reached the bank Glen sprang down to the ice and held up his hands to Glynis. She took them and went down like a dancer, vaulting lightly, gracefully. As I watched, they set off across the ice, sometimes sliding purposely, sometimes slipping and catching at each other, noisy and exuberant as two children. If ever tragedy had touched Gray Rocks Lake, they were not remembering it tonight.

  They would not look back and see me—all their attention was on the goal of that soaring fire ahead. I left the shelter of my tree and hurried again, running now, trying not to stumble. I could no longer be sure whether Keith was still there. In the darkness he could have slipped away in any direction.

  It took me another five minutes to reach the inn. Everything was quiet. The sunset had faded, leaving the windows blank and empty of light, except for one window at the far end which showed the leaping flames of the bonfire in its black depths. No boy stepped out of the shadows to confront me. No one answered when I called his name. I had missed him after all.

  I might as well go on to the bonfire and see if he was there. That was still the one thing that drove me—the need to talk to Keith, to persuade him to listen to me and understand the dreadful harm he had done. I knew I snatched at a futile straw, because the boy was so wholly and devotedly under Glynis’s influence. He would probably laugh at me, or give me one of his surly looks and turn indifferently away. Yet I had to try. I had no other choice.

  The walking was easier on this side of the lake, due to less brush and a more gently sloping shoreline. I could hear the laughter and the shouting and see the flames leaping high into the air, sending streamers of sparks out over the lake. The opaque surface of ice glowed pink in a semicircle around the fire, but there was little wind tonight and the flames burned tall as if they would reach to the stars. All around the area of intense light shadows hung black and impenetrable. Within the lighted area a score of figures moved about.

  Glen saw me first and came toward me so quickly that for just a moment my heart leaped with hope. We met at some distance from the bonfire, but there was no loving greeting in his eyes or in his words.

  “Where were you?” he said. “Nomi searched the house for you before she left with Colton. We all thought it would look better if you arrived with the family.”

  “I went for a walk,” I said in a low voice. “I didn’t think anyone would miss me.”

  Glynis was behind him, just at his shoulder. “She’s feeling sorry for herself again. She’s sulking because you won’t listen to her lies about me. Why don’t you tell her to go back to the house and leave us alone? We were having a lovely time until she came. Why don’t you tell her?”

  “Because I want her to stay,” Glen said. “I want her to stay and put up a front for once. Let’s see you smile, Dina. Let’s see you pretend that you’re an ecstatically happy bride.”

  I turned away from t
he bright mockery of his eyes. “How can I be happy when you won’t listen to me?” I said helplessly.

  Glynis was baiting too, and enjoying it. “There—you see! She’s back to her old tune again—listen-to-me-listen-to-me!”

  “Why did you come over if you’re only going to be lugubrious and sorry for yourself?” Glen demanded.

  I felt like an insect caught on a pin. No matter which way I twisted, they pricked at me again and again. I looked about a bit wildly, not for help because there would be none, but seeking for some avenue of escape. And I saw the boy. He stood a little way off, watching us with eyes wide in his shadowed face. Flame light played over him and his mouth was a wry twist of suspicion. He looked like a wild thing suddenly halted in his tracks because he had scented a predator. With all of his being he watched and listened.

  “I came to see Keith!” I cried. “I want to talk to him. I want—”

  But the boy faded away into the throng about the bonfire as I spoke, and Glynis took me by the arm and shook me roughly.

  “You’ve been persecuting my son! He told me about the way you’ve been looking for him, wanting to pin him down—all because you’ve some notion that he might help you with your lies. But he won’t, he won’t!”

  “How could he?” Glen snapped.

  I’d had enough of the baiting and tormenting. I turned on him fiercely. “He could if he wanted to because he knows very well that his mother is to blame for what happened to the alabaster head. Once I can get near him, talk to him, when Glynis isn’t there on guard over her young—”

  Glen’s slap came so suddenly and so hard across my cheek that I stumbled backward and nearly fell. Glynis put her hand on his arm at once.

  “Hey—take it easy! This isn’t the time for a public show. Why don’t you leave, Dina? Leave for New York! Why don’t you go back to the house right now and pack your things? You can’t be looking forward to Christmas with us, and—”

  I turned away from them both and ran without thought, without heeding my direction—anywhere, to be out of the sound of their hateful voices, out of sight of the twin malice in their faces. A clump of trees at the edge of the lake stopped me. I stepped gratefully into shadow and went through to the other side where the icy lake spread away at my feet and there was a big flat rock I could step out upon—a platform with ice crusting around its edges.

  There in the starlight, with the bonfire only a flickering through the trees and the laughing shouts part of another world, I put my face in my hands and wept. I had no weapons to fight the evil that hemmed me in. I had no assuagement for the pain of lost love in my heart. There was in me only a great bewilderment and sorrow and pain. To weep was to release it a little, but the tears came on without stopping and deep sobs began to wrench me.

  The hands that touched my shoulders were gentle. They were not Glen’s hands. I turned to look up into Trent’s face, shadowy in the starlight, though I knew the intense blue of his eyes. But this I could not bear either. Gentleness, tenderness, would undo me completely.

  “Listen to me, Bernardina,” he said. “Stop your sobbing and listen to me. Do you remember one afternoon a long time ago? A rainy afternoon in California when I found you lying on your face in wet grass, crying your heart out for another sorrow?”

  I gulped myself into silence and listened, nodding.

  “You thought you would die of grief that day. You thought you couldn’t bear a life from which your father was gone. Do you remember that?”

  Again I could only nod.

  “Yet, you lived, and you found courage. Time passed and the pain eased, as it always does. Now you can think of him happily, lovingly, without the intense sorrow you felt then. It will be like that again. You’ll face the mistake of your marriage—because it is a mistake, my dear—and you’ll go on to better, happier things.”

  I wasn’t capable of being comforted then. I could think only of the minute before me, the immediate happenings around me.

  “Glen slapped me,” I said.

  “I know. I saw him. And I had to hold onto myself to keep from taking a hand and making everything worse. By this time you must know that you can’t stay in the same house with Glynis. If there’s still any chance for your marriage, it has to be away from Gray Rocks, away from Glynis.”

  I couldn’t answer him. He didn’t know it all. He didn’t know what his own son had done in setting Glen against me. I could only raise my wet face to him, still lost in what was immediate, remembering that once he had comforted me long ago, aching for anything that would help me now and make the inner pain stop. Trent bent toward me. He cupped my face in his, and I think his kiss would have been gentle, reassuring. But Glynis’s voice broke in upon us, striking through the darkness with its husky overtones.

  “There!” she cried. “You see what I mean, Glen. Now isn’t this a tender scene?”

  Trent bent his head and kissed me roughly, angrily—then turned to face them. Glynis almost danced around us in her delight—because everything was going her way. Everything she had done to break up my marriage was bearing fruit, and she must have thought this the best thing of all. Tonight in her burnt orange jacket, she was like a flame herself, catching all reflected light—an exultant, triumphant flame.

  Glen did not lift a hand, but his tone was cold, deadly. “Yes, I do see what you mean. Glynis has told me about you, Dina—about how you were in love with this man a few years ago, and how you’ve never got over loving him. What happened out there in California? What really happened between you two?”

  Trent struck him then, and Glen went down under the blow, one hand to his jaw. Glynis would have flown at Trent, screeching with rage, but he pinned her arms to her sides and shook her until her head fell back and the screech died in her throat. She looked at him with frightened eyes and was still.

  “There’s a score to be evened between us for all the past damage you’ve done,” Trent said. “Perhaps you’d better remember that. I’ve let you off so far, but unless you undo the lies you’ve told your brother, you’ll have me to reckon with.” He flung her away from him against a tree and walked up the bank.

  Glynis righted herself and then dropped to her knees to croon tenderly over her brother. Glen was not hurt—only dazed—and he was sitting up, shaking his head a bit dizzily from side to side. I could not bear to watch. I felt as dazed and confused as though I had taken Trent’s blow myself. I stumbled back to the area of the bonfire, smoothing away the tears from my wet face, determined to govern myself—because I had not yet talked to Keith.

  The rest of the evening went by in a strange, unreal blur. I managed to eat a little of what was handed to me, I tried with another part of me that seemed a stranger to join in with the gaiety and laughter. But when it came to the Christmas carols, I could not sing. Everything was too mockingly wrong. Songs about a Holy Night and a little town in Bethlehem did not fit into something that was unholy. Glynis had drawn Glen completely back into her unholy alliance and there was no place for me in Glen’s life. Yet still, stubbornly, I had to try for the one thing I knew that I could do. I had to talk to Keith.

  I saw him now and then flitting in and out of the crowd about the fire. He did not seem to mix with his contemporaries, and I had once more the impression of a wildness that permitted him at times to converse with humans, but was always ready to send him bolting to the safety of his own hiding places. There was no chance at all to talk to him.

  Once during the evening Colton surprised everyone by announcing almost casually that he would sell Pandora the land she wanted on this side of the lake. Pandora was exuberant and they shook hands as though there had never been a rift between their families. Glen looked furious, but it was Glynis I watched, suspecting that this would make everything worse. Not even the crimson flames could brighten the look of dark jet in her eyes tonight, and I knew there were other tricks still to be played, and this time they might be fatal.

  Glen had joined the circle again, returning to it with Glyni
s at his side, and the flickering light did not pick out the mottling bruise along his jaw. Trent stayed away from them both, and away from me, yet I had a sense of his watchfulness, and was grateful for it. I was not wholly alone in my fight against those two.

  Glen did not come near me all evening until the time when everyone clasped hands and moved in a circle about the fire. This was the last ritual of the night, and this time I forced myself to sing with the others. Some remnant of courage and pride seeped back, and if Glen would take my hand for show, then I would put up a front too, and keep my misery to myself. I sang over the choking lump in my throat because the words of “Auld Lang Syne” had meaning for me. There were old acquaintances I missed tonight. Old loves long lost to me. My father. My mother—so remote and unreachable not only because of distance, but because she was old and ill. Trent, whom I’d lost long ago as a foolish young girl. And Glen—who was my husband. He clasped my right hand as we circled the fire, but his fingers were cold and I knew he held Glynis’s hand on the other side.

  Before the last cup of kindness was drunk, I had taken all I could bear. I broke out of the circling line and I think Glen scarcely noted my leaving because he was laughing with Glynis when I slipped away. But I did not know what cruel thing he might do if he caught me, so I ran off along the shoreline, to take the long way home around the lake. Out upon the ice I would be too conspicuous, too easily seen and followed.

  I could not bear it that tonight was Christmas Eve and tomorrow Christmas Day. No matter how lonely I had been in the past, I had never been so bitterly unhappy, with ho way to turn to assuage my pain, and seemingly no cure for it. Yet as I walked a saving anger began to return to me once more. I would not let myself down with endless self-pity. I had a right to be angry and sorrowful, if I wished, but I was not entirely beaten yet. What I was to do, I did not know, but I remembered Trent’s words, and in this quieter moment they came back to me comfortingly. Sorrow did lessen with time. Better days did come. All I need do was live through what was happening to me now and find a course of action that would take me out of this morass of misery.