Cold Quiet Country

by Clayton Lindemuth

  Gale G’Wain, you better damn hope you get away.

  Not thirty feet from the tire tracks I debate what the boy was thinking when he took Gwen into all that snow. Where was he going? I’ve hunted these woods and though the trees give some protection from the wind, and a copse of ponderosa might seem snug compared to a field, the air is still twenty degrees. Unless Gale has some kind of lodge out there, they’re lost. And every second I waste wondering what a boy in a dead panic was thinking, the smaller the chance Gwen will survive.

  I cross the edge of the field and question the wisdom of a seventy-two-year-old walking into a blizzard with a half-pound of jerky and day’s worth of tobacco. Gwen keeps me going. The air is cold, but once a fella gets walkin’ it could drop another twenty degrees and it won’t bother him. A good heavy coat—and all of a sudden I realize Gwen’s got no coat. I just turned away her mother and all I took was the sweater, and part of me is already thinking in the back of my head that it isn’t going to matter, and I quiet that voice and turn back. Follow my steps to the tire tracks and then the widow’s footprints to the house. Winded by tobacco smoke, I rap my corncob pipe on the porch post. The cherry falls and there isn’t even a sizzle as it plunges into the snow.

  Fay Haudesert opens the door, and her face is lit like she expects me to tell her something she hasn’t heard.

  “Let me take her coat,” I say.

  “Of course. I’ll just pack a couple of things. Some food for her.” Her eyes are fixed on my pocket and she steps to me.

  “Just the coat,” I say, and spot it draped over a chair.

  “What’s that?” she says. All at once she’s up close, pulling her daughter’s shoelace from my pocket, and when she holds the shoe in her hands, it’s like a wave of tears has nothing left to hold it from breaking loose. Her chin puckers.

  “I’m going to find Gwen.” I lift the girl’s coat from the chair, and take her shoe from her mother’s hands. Back out the door and close it before Fay Haudesert reveals any more of her horror.

  I’m careful negotiating the steps. There’s three, but no rail, and it’s different going down than going up. On snow. The latest is an icy powder, not so much flakes as beads. I’m on the last step and the crunch of tires pulls my attention and I look to a sedan spinning up the driveway, fishtailing, plowing through a plot of unbroken snow. The motor races and the sound is distant though the car is only a dozen yards away.

  My heel catches an ice patch and I drop six inches just like that, and slip on the packed snow of the path to the barn. I land on my ass and sit as Burt’s mother, Margot Haudesert, explodes out of the car and hurries toward the Bronco.

  “Margot! No!”

  She spins. The wind blows her hair, still red, and she still doesn’t wear a hat. Her dress is too thin; her legs show through even as it flaps about them, and it is easy to remember them in the summer, bare, with water streaming from her sodden hair. It’s always easy to remember when she was Margot Swann.

  She stares at me with a passion that is not love. She turns, closes the remaining distance to the barn.

  Sager opens the Bronco door as Margot glides closer. He spreads his arms and steps toward her but she’s not yet to the Bronco and races around the other side.

  Fay Haudesert emerges from the house with a paper bag in hand, sees her mother-in-law and touches my shoulder as she passes me. My ass radiates pain through my back and legs, and there is no way to know, right now, what I’ll feel like standing. I twist partway to my side and press against the steps; as I bend my stove-up back, my legs decide they’re okay, and after twenty seconds of struggle, I’m on my feet. I take to the snow and break a new path.

  Margot is in the barn and a caterwaul cuts through the wind. She’s seen her only son.

  The sound does something to Sager; he clutches his belly, wobbles a few steps and vomits over the edge of the dirt tractor ramp where the Bronco is parked.

  Margot wails again. I stop halfway to the barn.

  Is this what I want to do, while Gwen is lost without her coat? With frostbitten hands and feet? I pivot to the field and in no time the wind erases Margot Haudesert’s sobs.

  CHAPTER NINE

  A boy had come to work at the farm. Gwen first thought he was a runaway from a poor household in some neighboring county, some mongrel who’d thumbed a hundred-mile ride and now hoped to find a place to work long enough to earn a meal. He was ragged. Gangly, and even more awkward in voice than body. He stood in the kitchen watching her with hunger in his stare, and said Burt had told him she’d put some food together for him so he could go to the barn and work it off. From his look, he needed the nourishment just to get back to the barn.

  That night when Burt left Gwen’s room, she rolled to her side and pulled her pillow against her breast. She saw Gale’s clumsy smile. His clumsy innocence.

  Neither Gwen nor her school friend Liz Sunday had shared the details of her travails with the other, yet each understood the bruises, tear-swollen cheeks, and bloodshot morning eyes. They were scrunched in the second seat of the school bus, leaning conspiratorially close. They’d ridden in the same seat for a year, always tucked below the high-backed tops, knees curled into the seatback in front. They’d held their voices low and painted hopeful pictures of escape. Such musings were irresistible. They’d fantasized about running away to Mexico, or Hollywood, or some random Iowa crossroads. Anywhere. They’d pretend to be sisters. They’d expropriate enough money from their fathers—except neither of their fathers likely had that much cash.

  However, as late summer became fall and Gwen began noting little things—the way Gale’s Adam’s apple moved when he sang Amazing Grace, for instance—she dampened her runaway conversations with Liz. At the same time, Liz became more and more frantic to continue them. Her eyes seemed to be shrinking into black beads that disclosed nothing, ready to flash into any kind of wildness.

  “I’ll get away, someday,” Liz said. “Tell me about this Gale G’Wain again. What does he look like?”

  “He’s got red hair, like mine, and his joints are too big. But he works from sunup to down and never says anything but ‘thank you’ and ‘that tasted real good, thank you.’”

  “Does he like you?”

  “I don’t know if he likes anything but food.”

  Gwen closed her eyes for a moment. She didn’t add that Gale attended church with the Haudeserts, when they went. Or that when singing, his sweet voice never stumbled in search of words, even when flipping pages in the hymnal. She didn’t mention the way he seemed to pull the lyrics directly from the crucifix behind the pastor, from which his eyes never strayed. “He likes food,” Gwen said. “Food and God.”

  “If you don’t run away with him,” Liz said, “I will.”

  * * *

  The comment wore on Gwen for a month.

  Burt sat at the supper table, brooding as if he looked upon Gale from under a rock. Gale didn’t seem to notice, but instead studied dishes of potatoes and meatloaf. He took the place that had been Cal’s. Jordan fell into the next chair.

  Gwen watched. She imagined a smaller table, a smaller kitchen, with only her and Gale taking seats.

  Normally Gwen would fill her father’s plate and then proceed around the table. Instead, she hoisted Gale’s, carried it back to the other side and filled it. Passing the plate to him, Gwen retracted it at the last moment. “You look like you could do with an extra piece of meatloaf.”

  She doubled his portion.

  Below the table, Burt touched the bare skin of her leg. Gwen stepped sideways. Burt’s face pointed toward Gale, and his lines were taut. Gwen lifted her father’s plate and dropped a slab of meatloaf and a scoop of potatoes. A couple spoonfuls of carrots.

  Burt’s hand crawled higher. Gwen’s mother had been washing dishes used in meal preparation, but the clatter and rattle had died several seconds ago. Gwen faced the sink. Her mother watched with humiliated eyes set above lips like a crack in concrete.

  Gwen s
tepped away from Burt. Her mother leaned against the counter and looked off through the window.

  “Time to eat, Fay,” Burt said, without turning. “Come sit down.”

  “I’ve lost my appetite.”

  Gwen filled another plate and sat to the right of her mother’s empty chair.

  Burt bowed his head. “Good Lord, we thank you for this food. And do something about the price of corn, would ya?”

  “Amen,” Jordan said.

  Gwen watched Gale. He waited for everyone else to lift a utensil before deciding on his fork, and upon Burt’s first spoonful of mashed potatoes, shoveled a quarter slice of meatloaf into his mouth. Gwen watched his jaw work, the muscles at the hinge, the bobbing of his Adam’s apple. He was a queer boy, the way he mixed carrots and potatoes. Oblivious to all save what he ate, as if fearful it might leap from his plate and be forever lost.

  Jordan cleared his throat, flicked his eyes to Burt. Gwen turned. Burt had been watching her. No one moved save Gale, who devoured his victuals with relentless concentration.

  Glass shattered at the sink. Gwen twisted in her chair as Fay stalked away, crushing shards of a broken glass under her feet. She held one hand in the other and blood dripped from both. Burt turned back to the table, and a forkful of loaf that had been arrested in midair continued to his mouth.

  Gwen trailed her mother to the bathroom; found the door closed. She tapped.

  “Ma?”

  Nothing.

  “Ma?”

  “Go away.”

  “I’m opening the door. Ma?”

  “Don’t.”

  Guinevere tried the knob. It was locked. “Unlock the door so I can help you.”

  Silence.

  “Please?”

  “Let her tend herself,” Burt said.

  The lock clicked from inside and Gwen twisted the knob, peered around the corner. A trail of red drops led from the door to the sink. Fay stood with her hand in the basin, her face flushed and her eyes lined with water. Her shoulders shook but no sound issued.

  Gwen closed the door, approached. Blood covered her mother’s hand, the bottom of the bowl.

  Gwen placed her palm on her mother’s back. With her other hand, she twisted the faucet knob. “Run cold water on it.”

  “It’s nothing.” Mother wiped her cheek on her shoulder and kept her face angled away. Her hands shook. “It’s a small cut. Just needs a Band-Aid.”

  Gwen steadied her mother’s bleeding index finger under the water. “Does it sting?”

  “A little.”

  “You see what he’s doing, right? You see it, Mother?”

  “I’ll get this. Just a little old Band-Aid.”

  “Why did you hate Grandpa? Grandma?”

  “Stop, Gwen. Please stop.”

  “Because of what he did to you? And because your mother knew, and did nothing?”

  “Please…”

  “How can you be so weak?”

  “You don’t know—”

  Gwen released her mother’s hand.

  Mother stopped shaking, and Gwen found her eyes in the mirror. They dipped, and Mother said, “I’ve got this. Go back to supper.”

  * * *

  Liz had been late to start school in the fall. This morning, weeks into the school year, she carried a new blankness, a dazed shock that eclipsed the wounds that had fed the girls’ silent commiseration. After much hesitation, Gwen leaned across the aisle between their schoolroom desks, and tossed a note onto Liz’s open textbook.

  Liz read the note.

  She looked down at her blouse, muffled a shriek with her hands, covered her bosom with her elbows, and ran from the room. Boys and girls twittered.

  Gwen snatched the note off her desk and raced after Liz.

  Mister Fitzsimons glanced up from his lectern. Alarm flashed across his face. “Girls!”

  Gwen closed the door. She followed Liz into the restroom. Cornered Liz and pulled her hands from her chest. “How do we make them stop?” Gwen said.

  “I don’t know.” Liz blinked away spaced-out tears.

  Gwen gathered toilet paper into a ball. “Can you squeeze it out?”

  “It’s going to stain,” Liz choked. Her face was red, her eyebrows dimpled. Mucus dripped from her nose and tears fell from her cheeks and she coughed.

  “It won’t stain,” Gwen said. “It’s only…milk?” Gwen pressed the ball of toilet paper to Liz’s leftward wet spot and wiped. She tossed the paper to the trash and put her arm across Liz’s shoulder.

  “Everybody saw,” Liz said.

  “No one saw.”

  “Mister Fitzsimons gawked at my boobs.”

  “He’s a boob gawker. Yours, mine. Everything’s going to be fine. And if he says a word, I’ll kill him.”

  Liz smiled, and it was repugnant, almost. Her face was red and her eyes bloodshot and far-off, and the white spots on her forehead were still there, and here was this silly simper on her face while the dark circles at her nipples expanded. She was interested in talk about killing. Dare Gwen go farther?

  “I’ve killed two so far.”

  Liz glanced beyond Gwen to the entrance. It was a doorless restroom, privacy provided by two ninety-degree turns. Voices easily echoed into the hallway. Liz canted her head sideways; her face betrayed credulity and candor. “Two? Tell me how.”

  “Didn’t anyone tell you how to get them to stop leaking?”

  Liz unbuttoned her blouse. “Look what they said to do.” She pulled a flaccid, pale leaf from the cup of her bra. “Cabbage. The nurse said this would dry me up.”

  “Can’t you press the milk out?”

  “You’re not supposed to. You make more.”

  The bell rang. In seconds, the restroom would swirl with girls crowding in front of the mirror. Waiting outside a stall.

  Gwen took Liz’s hands. Hurried her into a stall and swung the door as giggles and gossip rushed closer. She wrapped the half-undressed Liz in her arms and shushed her. Gwen waited for the light pressure of Liz’s hands on her back, her side, anywhere. Liz let her arms hang. “You have to tell me how you did it,” Liz whispered into Gwen’s ear.

  “I’ll go to the nurse for some pads,” Gwen said. “It’ll be okay.”

  They waited three minutes until the traffic cleared. Gwen listened to the silence and rubbed Liz’s shoulder, and when she was sure the restroom was empty and the next class had begun, she said, “I’ll go now.”

  “You said you killed two people. I want to know.”

  The bell rang.

  “The first was my grandfather. I was in bed. I saw his face, and heard music that sounded like dozens of singing bullfrogs. Grandfather looked past me like he saw the Devil. And I didn’t do anything—”

  “It was a dream?”

  “No. I was awake. Wide awake.”

  “That’s all?”

  “The next morning my mother said he’d died overnight.”

  “You saw his face and heard music, and then he died.” Liz pulled away. “You fucking lied.”

  “No! Listen. The next was my grandmother. It was the same thing; I was in bed and…and I was upset, a little, and I saw her.”

  “Why were you upset?”

  “I can’t talk about it. It’s too complicated to say, here. It’s…”

  “Worse than this?” Liz cupped her shoulders and her breasts, still exposed on their cabbage leaves, swelled.

  “Depends,” Gwen said, “on who the father is.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve got to go to the nurse. Stay here and I’ll be right back.”

  Liz frowned, tilted her head.

  Gwen unlocked the stall door and slipped through, quickly scanned the restroom, and rushed to Mrs. Reynolds, the school nurse.

  Nurse Reynolds stood eight feet tall, was blade-of-grass slender, and wore her gray hair in a bun. Her face was all smile and spectacles, and from Gwen’s posture, she immediately diagnosed the problem. She mouthed, “Pad?” and Gwen nodded.

&
nbsp; As Reynolds turned, Gwen said, “Two, please.”

  Reynolds stopped.

  “Another girl…”

  In a moment Nurse Reynolds returned with a pair of maxi pads in a discretely flamboyant pink plastic bag. “Do you have more at home?”

  “I’m fine. I just forgot. Thank you.”

  Moments later Gwen stood in the restroom. “Liz?”

  The toilet flushed and after a second the stall door opened and Liz stood there, arms crossed at her bosom. Gwen slipped into the stall with her, gave her a pad, and opened the other. Liz applied each inside her bra, and threw the cabbage leaves to the floor behind the toilet. Liz buttoned her blouse. “I can’t go to class like this.”

  “I’ll go back and get our stuff. It’s seventh period. We’ll walk home.”

  Again Gwen set out. Fitzsimons had left the classroom door ajar. She looked inside and saw someone had secured her and Liz’s purses and books by the window. She would have to walk in front of the study hall students. Juniors.

  Gwen opened the door. Fitzsimons stood and hurried to her. “Is everything good with Liz? And you? What was the matter?”

  “It was a…it was—”

  “A female matter?”

  Gwen nodded. She peered closer at Fitzsimons, a man with, what? An English name? He looked like a Russian Ichabod Crane. His hair was jet black and always needed cut, and his features were blunt like God had cut them out of granite and quit before rounding the angles. His chin was covered in a beard like Lenin wore, and if any man would be sensitive to a brooding gray girl with a communist father…

  “Would you allow me to get our things?” Gwen said. “She’s not well and I’m staying with her.”

  “Right over here.”

  He crossed the room and the juniors snickered. Gwen stood at the corner.

  Fitzsimons returned with both purses and an armload of books.