Cold Quiet Country

by Clayton Lindemuth

  Burt looked to her, and I tugged again at the handle sticking from my leg.

  “You just go back a couple feet and turn away,” Burt said. “You don’t need to see this.”

  “Can’t you give me this one thing?” Gwen said. “Can’t you let me go with him? I did what you said. I kept my mouth—”

  “You shut up!” He pointed at her with the blade. “Shut your damn mouth.”

  She wiped her eyes and backed from the edge of the loft. I looked away. On my own again, like every other day. All night I’d been tangled in her limbs and hair and it was a feeling like no other. Pairing up was a metaphysical thing. An illusory thing.

  I couldn’t run. Couldn’t fight him.

  “You know the devil’s waiting for you, Burt. You can’t do that to your own blood and not go to hell for it. No amount of church on Sunday will absolve you. You’ll be seventy years old with white hair and quaking hands and you’ll be on your knees saying Lord! Lord! And He’ll say He doesn’t know you.”

  “Then I won’t waste my time on church.” He stepped closer. I kicked back. He lunged behind me, wrapped one arm under my armpit and across my chest, and lifted me. I felt his belly behind my head, and I knew what was coming. He wanted to feel my blood on his forearms. He squeezed his arm so tight I couldn’t breathe, and raised the blade. “You see that? See the dried blood and hair?”

  Gwen ran to the loft edge with a pitchfork in her outstretched arm. She halted, teetered at the edge.

  Burt whispered, “I don’t know if you’re worth this knife, since it split a trophy buck’s gut and sawed his meat to cubes. But what am I going to do?”

  He drew the knife to my throat.

  I opened my mouth but couldn’t speak.

  “You got anything smart to say now?” His mouth was at my ear. He hadn’t seen Gwen. He pressed the blade into my skin.

  Gwen stepped back from the edge. Pleaded silently, as if I could save myself. Then she closed her eyes and seemed to burgeon with light and confidence as if drawing from her source of visions and music. She opened her eyes, a preternatural calm flowing from her.

  I relaxed.

  She nodded.

  I blinked an affirmation.

  She stepped back two steps, lunged forward, and hurled the pitchfork with magnificent speed and flawless aim.

  I threw my head to the side. My knees buckled. The blade scraped over my jaw. Burt froze—maybe he didn’t see Gwen at all—and in a split second the pitchfork tines parted my hair. The fork struck Burt’s neck and the force knocked both of us backward.

  The tines hummed.

  I rolled sideways and Burt bucked and wiggled. His arm slapped the barn floor and his throat gurgled but no words came. He kept backhanding the planks and his head flopped, rapping the pitchfork handle to the boards.

  He grabbed the handle as if to pull it free and go on with killing me, but his strength failed. He smacked the floor with his other hand. His eyes bulged.

  I wheezed and Gwen raced down the ladder. The pain in my leg was like every nerve in my body was scrunched into a ball and lit on fire. And the boys, Cal and Jordan, had to be coming. They had to have heard the commotion. They’d be on us with guns any second.

  “Gwen!” She ran to me and I said, “We got to go before your brothers come!”

  “I’m sorry!” she said.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry!”

  “You saved me.”

  “Oh God!” She hugged me. Her eyes were wild. “What do we do?”

  I grabbed her hand and struggled to the barn door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The men on snowmobiles circle the house.

  With the .308 scope, I track the pistol-waving rider on the green Skiroule. I could blow his head off—just like a squirrel on the run, or a bird on the fly—except when I stand before the Lord having to admit responsibility for a man’s death, I want it to be a matter of not having had a choice. It’s incumbent on the moral man to bend as much as he can while the idiot avails himself of the facts. I don’t want the fellow I shot to be up there with the Lord filling His ear with nonsense.

  But is a clean conscience a luxury?

  I let the man on the Skiroule pass through my sights because he wears a ski mask and I don’t know if it is Cal or Jordan or someone else I’ll be killing. But this whole situation is starting to torque my sense of right and wrong. This whole setup is about intimidation. Swarming over the house on growling sleds, waving guns, firing a shot into the window…

  Who the hell do they think they are?

  Engines mutter on the other side of the house. The sound drifts from all around, and one by one the motors go silent until a final snowmobile engine runs and it too sputters to a stop.

  All is silent. Crouching beside the lake-facing, shot-out window, I smell sweet exhaust fumes. In my mind’s eye, I see them hiding behind trees. Low-crawling to the house, pushing rifles through snow.

  A window crashes and a rifle sounds. I scrunch lower. Glass tinkles to the kitchen counter—on the other side of the house. I peek to the window; no one’s on this side. I leave the rifle and scramble across the living room, slipping in the deputy’s jellied blood. Scramble up the stairs and enter the first room on the right. I stand beside the window and peer steeply to the ground.

  Thirty feet from the house, a man hides behind a tree. From the angle of his rifle, he’s the one who shot into the house. Ready to take my life when he doesn’t know what he knows? So self-sure he’s ready to kill? Wrong and all? Why doesn’t he call me out, if he intends to take me into custody?

  Fuck him.

  I cross the room, down the hall and slip into the last room. At the window, the angle gives me a clear field to the man’s head. A ski-masked orb that, darker, might resemble a growth on the tree trunk. Without raising the window, I lift the rifle, check the load, and rest the muzzle against the glass.

  How much will the angle throw off my picture? I don’t know.

  I’ll shoot twice.

  The man swings his rifle to another window, to his right, and fires. I pull the trigger, but the safety is on. I flip the lever. Another villain, somewhere, fires into the house.

  One at a time, boys.

  Half his head is above my front sight post. Safety off. Exhale nice and easy. Lungs empty, I squeeze.

  The rifle bucks. The window shatters. I slam the bolt open and closed and aim again. The man’s body is prone and jiggling and it looks like a water balloon of red paint broke in the snow. I fire again into his torso and duck from the window. A bullet shatters the top pane and glass shards pepper my cheek. The shot came from my left. I look again—must have been a shotgun to have taken so much glass. I leave the rifle, and limp down the hall to the bedroom I visited first.

  New rifle in hand, I swoop below the window and scan the snowy lawn for my enemy with the shotgun from the other side. He stands behind a tree, barely exposed. Looks like a shadow, an obscene six-foot cancer on the side of the tree trunk.

  I’ll chip him out. I aim for the tree edge, head-high, and fire.

  The window crashes and the man lurches away. He dances with his hand at his face, rifle at his side, while I cycle another shell. I aim again while he moves. His keeps finding the same right limit, like a birthday candle on a spinning cake, only his motions are more erratic. I wait, and time my shot.

  A bullet crashes into the room. Quick, I exhale. Fire.

  He drops.

  Fuck him too.

  Shots sound from several weapons at once. I drop to the floor as the wall puffs plaster and the doorjamb splinters. I don’t know where they’re coming from—I didn’t see anyone else hiding, but there are plenty of trees.

  Downstairs, the front door bursts open. Clomping footsteps. I count shots outside, subtract dead men…there is only one inside. The rifle fire outside continues; lead chips at the walls. Glass breaks. Rifle resting on my outstretched arms, sweeping broken glass with my elbows, I slither across t
he floor and into the hallway. Five feet ahead is the stairs. Below, unseen, the invader is at the foot. Has his rifle trained on the space above me, no doubt. He knows the room from which I fired.

  My advantage fades with each moment I allow my adversary’s eyes to adjust. The Lord favors the bold? I shift forward, ever quiet, my rifle inches above the hardwood floor. I straighten the barrel before reaching the stairwell, and press close to the right wall.

  “I know you’re up there, Gale!”

  It’s Cal.

  “Hey, asshole!” He fires and the ceiling showers dust and plaster chips. Before he cycles another round I squirm forward, point the barrel over the edge. No time for sights. I point. Fire. Cal staggers sideways. He’s still got his rifle—he’s lifting it. I winged him. I flip the lever action rifle open and closed as Cal draws his rifle to me.

  He never cycled a fresh shell into the chamber. He doesn’t know it.

  “Put the rifle down, Cal.”

  “You killed my pap.”

  “I didn’t kill anyone.”

  “You son of a bitch.” He clings to the wall with one hand and points the rifle with the other.

  His hand tightens, as if squeezing an unready trigger. He looks at his hand.

  “I didn’t kill your father, Cal. Go on. Call off your boys.”

  Cal slaps the bolt open.

  I can’t get a sight picture in the half-light, but my barrel points to his face.

  Cal shoves the bolt home. Raises the rifle…

  Fuck him.

  Cal’s head snaps back and red spatters the wall. He drops.

  A fusillade opens. Sounds like every remaining window shatters. Bullets zing. I drop to my knees. The fire comes from all angles, but there’s only three shooters, so which side of the house is unrepresented? I close my eyes. More shots ring out. Two come from the lake side and one from the front.

  I shuffle to the last room on the opposite side of the hallway. From the floor, I glance out the broken window to frozen tree crowns. Sporadic shots splinter the wood. I approach from the side so that first the lake and then the drifted snow comes into view. Footprints betray where a man left the cover of one tree to find it behind another.

  The other? Twenty yards away, working his way closer as he fumbles shells into his rifle’s internal magazine.

  I aim. Fuck him.

  A near-instant response from the man on this side of the house zips past my ear. He’s smarter than the rest. Maybe this is Jordan, the family genius. Another bullet rips through the window molding. He waits for me to show myself. I slip to the hallway, shove the rifle across the other bedroom floor and go to the stairwell. Slither down the steps face first.

  I avoid Cal’s corpse and cross the living room. The fire is low. I grab the rifle leaning against the wall and stand a dozen feet back from the window, studying the snow outside. The tracks. The shadows behind trees.

  My adversary hides. Fine. From the sound of the rifle fire there’s a man out front with nothing to protect him. I switch to the kitchen and peer from the window’s bottom corner.

  There’s nothing out there but a red Bolens snowmobile. The sled’s track cuts through unbroken snow, and no footprints lead away. The sled’s rider must be crouching behind the seat.

  The gas tank is under the hood, at the nose.

  I glance out the window to my left, then right—to the living room window. Jordan’s out there, somewhere.

  I aim at the tip of the snowmobile and fire through the window. Glass sprays to the porch. Nothing happens—but what did I expect, shooting through fiberglass and plastic? I check the lake-facing window again. Cycle the spent shell from the chamber. Loaded and cocked, I take my time aligning my sights to the leaf spring on the closest ski.

  I fire.

  Lead clangs on steel—but why am I playing games, trying to start a fire?

  I aim below the seat and fire. Through the track, and fire. Through the hood again, and fire. Through the track twice more. Whoever hid behind rubber and foam and bogey wheels is dead or bleeds from big, deep holes.

  Fuck him. I eject the spent cartridge and cycle what should be the last round into the chamber.

  “You killed my father.”

  I whirl. A ski-masked face peers from behind rifle sights, aimed through the window across the living room. He must stand on the deputy’s corpse, or close to it.

  “Jordan?”

  “You killed him in cold blood—after he took you in. Gave you a job, ’cause he pitied you.”

  “That’s not how it happened, Jordan.”

  Keeping the rifle aimed with his trigger hand and arm, he removes his ski mask. “That’s a load of shit. You was pissed he wouldn’t let you take Gwen away. Girl that age has no use marrying. Must be a pervert to think so. Is that you, Gale?”

  “Your daddy was screwing her.”

  “What’d you say?”

  “You heard me. And you knew it the whole time.”

  “Bullshit.”

  I glance at the entry to the kitchen and the country hutch standing flush to the jamb. In all, maybe enough to slow a bullet.

  I’ve got one shot left in the chamber.

  “Warn’t enough that you left my father choking on blood. Where’s Gwen? Where’d you leave her?”

  His eyes flit across the room. He leans from the window and glances to his right, to the red Bolens snowmobile.

  “Who rode the Bolens?” I say.

  “You wouldn’t know him.”

  “He needs your help, Jordan. He’s bleeding.”

  “Where’s Gwen? Only one set of tracks across the lake. You leave her in the woods?”

  “Way the snow’s blowing, I don’t know. She’ll be hard to find.”

  “Did you kill her?”

  “No.”

  “Liar! Just like you didn’t kill Pap?”

  In the low firelight, he hasn’t seen Cal’s body at the foot of the stairwell.

  I shift my weight from my bad knee to my good one. Press my strong foot against the wall. “There’s a whole lot of killing today that isn’t my fault. About the only way it could’ve been avoided is if I’d have said, ‘Okay, Burt. Go ahead and cut me up.’ Then things would’ve been ducky by you. That it?” I slip my hand forward on the stock, wrap my finger around the trigger.

  Jordan glares into my eyes.

  Rifle pointed at the ceiling, stock butt on the floor, I squeeze the trigger. The weapon bounces and roars. I shove off through the noise. I’m half across the opening and Jordan’s rifle flashes. A bullet rips through my left arm, spinning me against the bottom cupboards.

  Momentum carries me forward. I worm to the window on the far side of the kitchen, and a lever action .30-30. I try to reach with my wounded arm but it hangs. There’s no pain, yet. I swipe the .30-30 with my good hand. Jordan’s boots clomp on the front porch.

  He saw me leave the other rifle—he thinks I’m unarmed.

  I wiggle to the basement door and press my bloody arm to the paint so Jordan can make no mistake.

  Downstairs, the air is a wall of winter, but it’s the dead men around me that make me shiver. I killed the deputy after coming out of sleep and had no decision to make. Pulling the trigger wasn’t the result of cause and effect, knowledge and action, so much as mere effect. Action.

  But these other five on snowmobiles—their deaths resulted from volition. Will.

  I move slowly, unable to see. Jordan’s footsteps sound through the floor above and signal his progress into the kitchen. I ease another few steps. My arm is limp but I feel my fingers; I press to the banister. Sweat stands cold on my brow.

  “You can’t get away, Gale!”

  A shadow crosses the doorway.

  I cover the hammer with my entire hand and palm it back. Even still, the click rings. Half-cocked is no good. I press farther and it lodges all the way back. He must have heard.

  “I didn’t kill your father, Jordan. I didn’t like him, but I didn’t kill him.”

 
; “Liar!”

  “No! He was raping your sister!”

  “You goddamn liar!”

  “I was trying to save her. What the hell were you doing, living in the same house with all that going on? You saw it like I did—at the dinner table! Too chickenshit to help your own sister.”

  Jordan stands in the light, a silhouette of an angry man, arms raised as if to fight a shadow that moves lightning fast.

  “You knew, God damn you! God damn you! You saw him grab her legs at the kitchen table and you heard him walk the hallways at night. You damn sure saw the way she hid from him. You’d rather raise hell about the evils goin’ on half a country away than face the scourge in your own house.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “You made sure you didn’t know. She needed you!”

  I lift the rifle with one arm, nudge the stock tight to my shoulder. Press my cheek on the pad and align the rifle tube with the black orb that is Jordan’s head.

  Fuck him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Balls feel like two pounds of lead. I gotta squirt. Fenny scrunches her shoulders. She knows from my eyes that she’s about to get bent over.

  “Shouldn’t you be trying to see the doctor before you hit the floor one last time? And if you’re too stubborn for that, shouldn’t you be up at Coates’s place? I know Odum’s playing like he’s in charge, but couldn’t he use your help? Travis said—”

  “I heard Travis. I’ll be along. I’m working a different angle.”

  I unbuckle, still sitting on the edge of her desk. From here I can see the lot through the front window. In twenty-five years with Fenny, only was interrupted once. 1951. Only had one deputy, and he was at a car wreck on Nineteen. We had all the time in the world, until a vagabond wandered in. She was pretty in a rough way, clean body inside dirty clothes. Hair as red as the inside of a rotten grapefruit—and I’ve always appreciated reds. I stood there drilling Fenny’s backside while her face was against the desk. This young girl watched and came closer and swallowed like to clear her throat. Held her purse to her breast. Transfixed by meat. I reached to her and brought her in. Memories.