Cold Quiet Country

by Clayton Lindemuth

  I prop Liz’s rifle against the porch and head for the sled at the back. It starts on a single pull. The feisty snowmobile jumps with the slightest gas, easily spinning the track through a turn. I park next to the basement entrance, a sloped, six-foot door covered in snow like the surrounding yard. The engine rumbles to a stop and I look across the lake and back to the basement door and back to the lake.

  I move to the corner of the house and look across the porch to the woods by the road. That darkness at the edge of the trees…it’s still there. Bigger. A car joined by a second vehicle.

  Liz approaches on one of the green Skiroules. Either Cal or Jordan rode it to his death. I think of Fay Haudesert and how alone she’s going to feel come the end of the day—her solitude the reaping of what she sowed by knowing what her man was doing under her roof and never stopping it.

  Liz kills the motor and says, “What are you looking at?”

  “I was thinking. Who’d you come here with?”

  “Link.”

  “Link…Sunday?”

  “My brother. That’s none of your concern.”

  She jumps from the snowmobile, circles the house. It’s no use now, of course. They’re out there waiting.

  Which corpse is her brother? Her disregard spurs my imagination. Have I managed to execute another young man who thought his sister’s welfare was none of his concern?

  How did Liz wind up with this murderous posse?

  I look at the basement entrance. Another snowmobile rumbles closer, this time from the rear of the house. Liz heads for the lake and at the last minute banks a semicircle turn. The headlight bounces and cuts through the flurries. Liz holds the motor wide-open as she races closer and at the last instant cuts left and then right and slides to a stop. The skis rest against the stone foundation. She jumps from the sled and strides around the house.

  Liz retrieves the remaining machines and parks them. I dig through the snow on the sloped basement door. As she approaches on the last, I flag her and greet her with her rifle and prevent her from parking with the sled’s nose to the wall.

  “What?” she yells above the motor.

  I draw a line across my throat. She hits the kill switch.

  I offer the rifle to her. “Get out of here. Go home.”

  She crosses her arms.

  “I don’t want you here,” I say. “There’s going to be a lot of trouble soon, and if you stay you’ll be part of it.”

  “Where’s Gwen?”

  “In the woods, straight back from the Haudesert house. Across the field. I’m sure the sheriff and his men have found her by now. We only made it a mile.”

  “What happened?”

  I shove the rifle to her and this time she accepts. I step away. “Go! Get out of here.”

  She eyes me for a few seconds before placing the rifle lengthwise on the seat. She starts the engine again. I return to cleaning snow from the sloped door. All but uncovered, I brush snow from the latch, revealing a lock. I try it, quickly, though I can see it is secure. Behind me, the snowmobile idles. Half-expecting her to have the rifle trained on my back, I turn.

  She sits.

  “Go!”

  “I’m not leaving until I know what happened to her.”

  I pull the revolver from my holster and Liz’s eyes widen. I kneel, place the barrel to the lock, sideways so the bullet will pass through to the dirt on the side of the basement entrance. I pull the trigger and the lock blows open. I flip the latch, holster my weapon, and open the basement.

  “This is how it happened,” I say, and begin with Burt dragging me across the field by my feet to kill me.

  * * *

  To my right, set back two hundred yards off the road, sits the Coates house.

  My old friend Coates wouldn’t mind that murderous bastard G’Wain squatting in his house, but Coates was a doctor and a churchman. A man of lifelong poor judgment.

  The barn burned long ago, so now the estate is a dingy house looking like a piss spot in a blanket of snow. A two-story piss spot with smoke pouring out the chimney. Snowed-in footprints go from the driveway to the house.

  I’m in the Bronco, parked in front of Travis’s car. He gets out, fights through the snow to my window, and I wave him around to the passenger side and he gets in. He claps the snow from his feet and rubs his hands by the heater vent. To the right, trees obscure my view of the house.

  “Roosevelt’s in trouble,” he says.

  “How long you been here?”

  Travis gives a sheepish look that doesn’t fit his square face. “Twenty, thirty minutes. I cleaned Mrs. Whitmore’s steps and came out on a quick patrol.”

  “Well, you don’t have to worry about a thing. Sheriff Odum’s on his way.” I’m silent and he reads it like an invitation. His eyes shift. He’s nervous.

  “Fenny said Odum was tied up at Haudesert’s,” Travis says. “As for Roosevelt, I’ve heard quite a few shots, not counting that one right after you pulled up. And a man’s been moving snowmobiles to the other side of the house. There’s foot tracks up the driveway to the house—old tracks. Like Roosevelt parked at the drive and walked up. Smoke spouting out the chimney since I came. I scouted up the road and found Roosevelt’s car run clear over the ditch and into the woods, like the pedal was pressed to the floor. The snow’s tore up and the car’s sunk in it like he spun the tires after he was stuck.”

  I nod.

  “Then, a set of tracks go straight into the woods.”

  I tamp my pipe with tobacco. Wait for Travis. He says nothing more. “What’s that tell you?”

  “Roosevelt’s in trouble. But that’s not why. I got here and there were six snowmobiles out front and on the side, and a whole mess of shooting.”

  “Hard to see why Roosevelt parked at the drive, walked to the house, came back to wreck his car, and returned through the woods to help the bad guy in a shootout against the militia.”

  Travis shakes his head. “I think Roosevelt went up and got himself killed. The killer tried a getaway and wrecked the car. These others? Most likely they followed our killer’s tracks across the lake.”

  “You’ll be sheriff one day,” I say. “If you put a plan together.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Gwen and I hurried across the field. I paid attention to the knife sticking from my leg and she rushed me forward. We’d crossed a quarter-mile and the agony was so bad I stopped. She came back to me and I noticed she favored one leg and was missing a shoe. It was hard to think. Her foot already had to be frostbitten, but she tramped along without complaint. I looked back the way we came and no one was coming after us. I had no coat, and she had no shoe.

  “Pull this out,” I said.

  She came to me. I fell on the field and she put one knee on each side of the knife handle, and pulled it straight, but it wouldn’t come. Finally she rocked side to side and the pain brought black borders tight on my field of vision. Torture came in dark waves and I leaned back into the snow, and I was unconscious for I don’t know how long. When I came to, she was rubbing her foot between her hands.

  “We’ve got to go back,” I said.

  “We can’t. Cal and Jordan’ll kill you.”

  She got to her feet and braced to help me up.

  “Wait,” I said. “Where’s the knife?”

  She had it in her front pocket, the blade out.

  “You shouldn’t carry it like that,” I said.

  I cut my pant leg above the knee, all the way around, and pulled it over my foot. We were only a few miles from town. If we went as fast as possible, we could get her into shelter and her foot warm. I wiggled closer to Gwen. “Let me work on you for a minute.”

  I brushed the snow from her and found her socks were thin and almost worn through at the heel. I clasped her feet and for the first time since waking in the loft, shivered. We were in the open field with nothing to stop the wind. My hands were numb. I slipped my pant leg over her foot and then removed it, folded it on itself to double its t
hickness, and slipped it over again. Cloth covered beyond her ankle; all I could ask. I cut a strip from my pant leg and tied her toe closed, and another to cinch the makeshift boot at her ankle.

  I rubbed her foot a moment.

  “It’s already warm,” she said.

  “Let’s hurry.”

  * * *

  As I tell Liz my story, I lead her into the basement through the sloped wall door and search in the dim light for the inevitable boards that will be held in reserve. I’ve worked for enough farmers to know there isn’t a single one that doesn’t have a ramp to get his wheelbarrow or lawn mower or antique motorcycle out of the basement. Doctor Coates is no different. He’s got three two-by-tens stacked vertically on the side of the steps so they don’t warp under their own weight. Liz helps me position them on the steps. I use a railroad tie—apparently kept by the doctor for the same purpose—to support the ends of the boards on the last step so the door can be closed with the ramp in place.

  Liz finds a two-gallon metal fuel can in the basement and we use it to drain the gasoline-oil mixed fuel from one of the snowmobiles’ tanks and fill the sled I parked next to the basement entrance. With the tank full, we fill the can again and strap it to the metal floor in the gap between the seat and the engine mounts. I reload a rifle from upstairs and slip it into a two-foot leather scabbard riveted to a box built below the seat and shove a box of bullets into a storage compartment behind the taillight. Last, I drag the duffel from the wall by the front door, down the stairwell to the basement, and leave it against the wall by the ramp.

  In the phraseology of war novels, this might be an expeditionary assault snowmobile.

  Liz starts the sled, drives toward the lake and back to the house, then eases into the basement. She putts down the ramp and kills the engine. Together we slide the nose back toward the exit.

  The final touch is a few armloads of snow over the ramp. Liz will not leave, or let me, until I finish my story. Yet I sense that like the night she visited me at Haynes’s, another motive lurks between her words and deeds.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “What are you thinking, Sheriff?” Travis says. His face is earnest, looking for answers.

  “Did you follow the trail from Roosevelt’s cruiser?”

  “No. I radioed and waited for your call. That’s when Fenny told me about Odum being sheriff now.”

  “So you did nothing.”

  “I wasn’t supposed to be here…and I didn’t know…”

  “What?”

  “Didn’t know if you had something else in mind. Some other plan.”

  Travis is smart. Maybe learned in the Army to avoid leading his leader. But him thinking I’m working some kind of plan means everybody else’ll think the same. I’m sitting here debating how to look like I’m doing right when all I want is to murder Gale G’Wain.

  “Go back to Roosevelt’s vehicle. Follow the tracks until you’re sure they go to Coates’s place. It’s going to take a few minutes until your new sheriff gets here. He’ll need to know beyond a shadow of a doubt whether Roosevelt’s in that house, or whether he’s one more body, out in that.”

  Travis opens the door. Wind blasts inside and snow scatters across the dash.

  “One more thing, Travis. Things are in a flux now. You might think on what kind of opportunity presents in situations like this.”

  He holds my look a long minute and nods like he’s only barely aware.

  He’ll figure it out.

  Travis closes the door and tramps to his car. Spins tires and swerves around the Bronco. In a moment, I’m alone with the trees and the empty cold between them. Alone with a killer two hundred yards away.

  Twenty years ago, I’d have walked up to that house and come back with a prisoner or a body. But now, after a blowjob, heart attack, and a mediocre lay, all I got left is my wits. Seventy years of wiliness.

  I lift the radio. “Fenny—”

  “Sheriff?”

  “Send Sager out here. Tell him to bring two aught-sixes.”

  “Odum’s already issued that command.”

  “Brilliant.”

  Travis’s taillights disappear ahead. I don’t know if it’s from snow obscuring visibility or if he’s already at the bend.

  I pull Fay Haudesert’s photo of G’Wain from my pocket. It’s gotten damp and the lower corner has a purple hue. His face is skinny now, Fay said. Skinny like mine. Skinny like I remember him a couple months back at the grocery, nebbing in my affairs, watching sly from the end of the aisle.

  The red-haired vagabond—I don’t know if I ever asked her name. Back then, I was like a rancher naming cattle. Why bother when there was so many and I had my brand on each ass?

  Nineteen-fifty-one—and Gale is now twenty, and raised at the Monroe Youth Home.

  I’ll look any fact in the face. I got kids all over this town; some know me and some don’t. Burt wasn’t the first or the last. It’s why we’re here: there’s nothing before and nothing after, so why shouldn’t I enjoy women? I’ve never skirted the truth, but I don’t think Gale is mine. It’s a damn sight different thing killing a man with a pitchfork—stabbing a sixteen-year-old girl—and womanizing. Totally different.

  Hell.

  The sun’s close to the horizon. Already the shadows are like a carpet being pulled over the trees and fields. I grab binoculars, open the door, stand by the hood. Look through naked trees. Can’t see much, but the house windows are dark. Now and again I taste wood smoke from the chimney.

  It’s good to stamp my feet and get the blood moving.

  I slip to the edge where forest meets field and stand behind an ash. Rest against it and smell the bitter bark. The house is still, save the smoke rolling out the stone chimney. Wind lifts a swirl of snow from the roof. Light flickers through the kitchen window. I should announce the law with a bullet, but a pistol at two hundred yards in the wind—I’d be as likely to take him out with a stiff fart.

  Other side of the house is a bank, and beyond, the lake. Sizable trees grow along the slope—enough to provide cover even on a moonlit night.

  The ash I’m standing behind is at the corner of a stretch of woods that runs to a pasture. Tree cover will get a rifle within fifty yards of the house, and at a good angle to put bullets into both the living room and kitchen. And through the front door.

  Still, this is going to come down to a face-to-face.

  Static bursts through the Bronco’s radio. Prob’ly Fenny. I head back. Should have gotten a bite to eat instead of bending Fenny. I’ve gone a day on two eggs and a handful of jerky.

  I pack my pipe as I walk. Reach inside the Bronco. “Fenny. That you a second ago?”

  “Sager and Odum both is about there.”

  “All right.”

  I climb inside, turn the radio volume down, and kill the Bronco’s engine. The wind whistles across the roof but sounds far off.

  I locked the redheaded vagabond back up when I was done with her. Told the judge she was exemplary and asked him to go easy. She was a wild one, and I’d have liked to keep her around, maybe cultivate something regular. Low-class women can hump. But she disappeared after I cut her loose. The address she’d given was made up. The street was real but the numbers wasn’t. One fine quinny, though.

  She could have moved anywhere. Could have run off to Monroe, most likely. They got the population to absorb a trampy woman. I suppose a baby given up for the orphanage could find his way back to Bittersmith.

  Ahead, lights cut through the falling snow and then blink out, leaving a black form slowly approaching. Travis parks a few yards ahead of the Bronco’s nose and gets out. Comes to my window. I roll it down. He’s flushed.

  “The tracks go to the house,” he says.

  “You learn to shoot in the Army?”

  “Before the Army.”

  “Never killed a man, though?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “Come in the Bronc a minute.” I start the engine and crank the heat. He cli
mbs into the seat and claps his boots. Brings in his legs and the snow sticks all the way to his knees.

  “How far’d you track him?”

  “The woods end at a pasture closed off with barbed wire. From there it was only two hundred yards to the house.”

  “Get a good look? You’d have been facing the front porch?”

  “That’s right. It was dark inside. The tracks and the smoke says he’s there.”

  “See anything else?”

  Travis hesitates. “There’s a mess of snowmobiles parked on the back slope, far side of the house.”

  “That so?” I think a minute. “How do we know it isn’t Roosevelt in the house, roasting wieners? Maybe called a friend or six over to help him with the suspect?”

  “We don’t know. Either the men that rode the sleds are in the house, working Gale G’wain over, or they’re dead.”

  “Why would they send one man outside to move all the sleds to the back of the house?”

  The heater gets toasty and I crack my window. Travis removes his gloves and rubs his hands above the vent. He keeps his eyes straight ahead. “They wouldn’t. But if it was just G’Wain, and he knew we were coming…”

  “Uh-huh. So. You give any thought to your future?” I say. “Because you’re about to face a man with a body count of, what? Eight armed men? In ten hours? You may as well be going up against God himself. Body count like that.”

  The question hangs. Finally Travis meets my stare. “What angle you workin’, Sheriff?”

  “No angle. I’m done. Odum’s got the sheriff’s badge.”

  “How’s that going to work out?”

  “Depends on facts we don’t have. I’m curious. Your daddy could have pushed your name with the town council. You two didn’t have a falling-out?”

  “It’s a matter of experience. What town has a twenty-six-year-old sheriff?”

  “How far you going to go in life only doing what’s been done? Or what other folks say is okay?”

  “That’s been your guiding principle?”

  “This is an easy town to sheriff. Crime wave is two cars with bad taillights in a single day. Only two suspicious deaths in forty years. Only one, really, seein’ as how they died at the same time. Now, I’ve gotten square in a man’s face and told him about life in Bittersmith. I’ve suggested different men might examine their hearts and think hard if they want to spend their time in a peace-loving town. And that’s something like doing more than other folks say can be done.”