Cold Quiet Country

by Clayton Lindemuth

  Instead Liz Sunday steps to the glass and holds a flaming wand to the curtain. I don’t give a shit for the communist’s house, but these kids have a habit of burning bodies. Three sandwiches and a half-thermos of coffee, I’m feeling my oats. I run. Maybe too fast, without thinking.

  The door is open. I come straight at it and the picture resolves. The man on the floor is Sunday. Got a puddle of brain noodles all around his shoulders.

  G’Wain’s on the far side of the kitchen, turned to the side, got a pistol in his holster and his hand hanging loose. Gunslinger holds a lump of cheese while the house burns. Twenty feet out, I stop and line the sights on his head. I squeeze the trigger. My Smith & Wesson jumps and Liz Sunday steps into view. She drops the burning paper. She lifts her open hands to her chest. Panic pales her face. I shift left. Fire again.

  G’Wain spins. Ducks away.

  I shot the damned girl. I shot that big-titted Liz.

  I follow my Smith & Wesson barrel to the door. The flames chew both curtains and lick at the ceiling. I see Liz’s knees and wonder if she’d gotten down on them, would any of this have been any different?

  “You don’t have time for a gunfight, Gale! Put the rifle on the floor and come outside. This is the law speaking.”

  I fire again, into the flames.

  * * *

  Liz fell toward the hallway. The front door remains open. I glance at her father as if he lifted his dead pistol-arm and shot her, but the blast came from outside. I jump back. Another shot cracks by and I see the muzzle flash.

  Bittersmith.

  I reel back, lose my balance. He would have had me, but Liz stepped in his way. He’s waiting. He’s been after me all day, and I’ve been after him six months. His path is maddeningly direct and mine is woven between the lives of girls and perverts. He’s biding his time until I check Liz. I choke on smoke. Flames curl from wall to ceiling and leap at the other wall. Orange spreads exponentially. Everywhere. I fire my pistol through the open doorway.

  “I’m coming for you, boy!”

  “You’ll feel at home!”

  I fire again and step closer to Liz. Fire again. I kneel beside her, take in the pool of blood, the glaze on her motionless eyes, the stillness of her chest. She’s gone, and though I don’t know if she’s going to heaven or hell I wish for a moment I had time to eulogize her. She didn’t choose to be bad.

  Bittersmith fires through the door and the kitchen window shatters. “You’re going to die in that fire, ’less you come out now!”

  I can barely hear him above the roaring flames.

  “I’ll take you to the station. We’ll talk!”

  “You into boys too, you prick?”

  I continue firing and lurch to the hallway where the fire hasn’t yet ignited everything into a swirling orange maelstrom. The hallway feels like an august afternoon, but it will soon be hell. I point the pistol back toward the door, squeeze the trigger, feel an impotent click on my fingertip. I chuck the pistol and duck below heavy smoke.

  Bittersmith would be a fool to wait at the front of the house. There are doors end of the hall on the left and right, and one on each side. Each is closed. I don’t know which is escape and which is Bittersmith.

  I grab a broom leaning in the corner, hang my coat over the handle. Crouched low, I open the first door on my left and ease the silhouette-maker into the opening. Bittersmith does not shoot. Fire broils my back. I close the door, open the opposite, a bathroom, and flames lurch closer. I shift the broom and coat into the doorway. No response. I cough like to exhale three organs. I slam the door. At the end of the hallway, I throw open the door on the left. Mucus and spit hang from my jaw. My eyes burn and no amount of blinking soothes them. I shift the broom, but before it enters the opening a window shatters and a firearm barks.

  “I got you covered! You’re going to die, you murdering son of a whore!”

  I swing the door closed. Grab my coat and rush back down the hall toward the kitchen. The fire halts my advance. The heat is unbearable. I reverse to the bathroom, burst through the door, crawl inside. Another shot zips above me. I toss my coat into the bathtub and turn on the water. It splashes for five seconds and my coat is soaked. I drape it over my head, toss water to my face, my pants.

  I can’t escape the premonition that I’m going to die in this fire. For the first time, I want to curse God. For putting me here, for giving me this mission and abandoning me in flames. I want to blaspheme; I want to say I’m on my own; I want to relinquish my faith as God has forsaken me. But biting my tongue brings clarity. I am not evil. I must not quit.

  I’ll continue on my own and meet up with God later.

  The flames have overtaken the hallway. Smoke pours into the bathroom. A bullet smashes through the window—rips my coat, creases my skin—and flames advance in an orange-black tornado.

  My heart thuds. I see Guinevere. Red-faced. Ashamed and broken. I see hair stuck to her temple with tears. I leap into the hallway and for a split second my face is cool from damp air. I feel relief. This isn’t hot—

  And then every inch of my body screams. I can’t breathe. Each step is a battle. I crash into the table. Trip on Sunday’s dead shoulders. My lungs are about to burst and my face feels about to ignite. I reach the front door and gulp brittle air. I’m steaming and dripping and expecting a bullet. The porch is dry. Breathing air is like biting ice. I hurry toward the barn over melted snow and mottled grass. I have to get cover before Bittersmith circles to the front of the house. How much time before he thinks of the barn?

  The light is on in the top bay. I rush inside as a bullet smacks into a timber at my side. I have a minute. Maybe two.

  In the center of the barn hangs a recently slaughtered hog. The carcass is hoisted high, as if Sunday feared roving animals. The blood that has dripped to the floor will surely bring coyotes. I glance at the workbench on the right side of the bay, below a hayloft, and thrill at recognizing the tools of slaughter—a bell scraper, hooks, knives—but they are useless. No small handgun like Burt Haudesert used, no grease pencil to draw the X.

  I search the other tools. There’s a scythe on nails, a rake, a pitchfork. I study it. A pry bar—I could pull up a floorboard. I spin, look around. Haylofts above. If I could climb I could topple a dozen bales on Bittersmith. But he’ll arrive in a minute. There’s a hay chute a dozen feet away for a quick drop to the lower level. Back to the bench. Ropes, a set of tire chains. Screwdrivers and even a rusted chisel. Vise grips.

  I feel like Judas looking at a tree over a cliff, and wonder if the best way to meet up with God is to get it over with.

  * * *

  That fuckin’ redheaded squirt jailbroke the house and made it to the barn. If he takes off through the snow, I’ll hound him to hell.

  The barn’s got a yellow bulb shining sharp against darkness that covers the farm, the fields, the hill. The door is part open. I walk until I can see inside. G’Wain stands below the light. His face is pale. His hands hang at his sides and from the bottom of the slope, I can’t see what’s in them. He sees me and nods like he wants a palaver.

  I stop and reload my Smith & Wesson. My fingers are cold. My arms are heavy. I drop a shell and leave it in the snow. Finished, I keep the pistol in my right hand. I face the barn and walk, but glance side to side. It wasn’t a mile from here that Burt met his end, and Gwen too, back in the woods.

  I climb the slope. Gale’s hands are empty. As if reading my mind he rotates his wrists and shows me palms. Probably has a pistol tucked behind his back. His eyes are steady and the bulb overhead makes his brow sharp as a ploughshare.

  I point my Smith & Wesson. It’s over for Gale G’Wain.

  “You raped my mother.”

  I pull back the hammer.

  “Nineteen fifty-one. She was just passing through.”

  “Oh, you want a conversation? Bodies all over. Gwen. Burt. Deputies and militiamen. Even shot the town Commie. Now you’re too chickenshit to face the music.”

&nb
sp; “You raped my mother.”

  He’s too cool. “Turn around. Let me see your back.”

  Keeping his left foot planted and his arms away from his body, he pivots. He favors his leg and one arm shakes. No pistol stowed at his back; no knife. Nothing.

  “Put your arms down. Turn around.”

  He drops his arms and faces me.

  I ought to shoot him. Lord knows I ought to blow his head off. It’d be an abrogation of duty to let him live. I hold the gun on him and my hand wavers. My arm is lead. I squeeze slow and try to time it so the sights are on Gale when the pistol goes off.

  Nothing doing. My Smith & Wesson jumps, but Gale G’Wain don’t.

  Closer. I won’t miss with the barrel at his forehead. I cross the threshold into the barn and the sounds change but the air is still crisp. Between us is the hitch-end of a rusted harrow, a Frisbee-sized dribble of blood from a suspended hog, and a foot away, a long clump of hay from a busted bale.

  He stares like a judge. I step closer. Glance up at the hog.

  He’s killed half of Bittersmith and thinks he’s going to turn himself in? Something ain’t right. G’Wain shifts and I look at his legs, his boots, and the rope below his left heel. He watches my eyes. The rope runs from his foot and disappears under the workbench. Seems to reemerge at the joist above, and stretches across the trusses, and concludes at the hog dangling in the air between us.

  I snort, can’t help it. He thinks he’s my son, but any boy of mine would know better than to try to use a hog for a deadfall.

  “I ain’t your father.”

  He’s silent.

  “You said I had your mother and that’s even odds. But you surely didn’t come out of it.”

  G’Wain’s a scrappy little son of a bitch, and the wounds…he’s got a limp just standing there. Stiff like he’s full of bullet holes and it’s all he can do to keep from falling over. Yet he stands. He’s tough—I’ll hand him that—but he ain’t clever enough to be my blood. Rope out in the open. A hog!

  I keep the pistol sights steady on his head and a memory seizes me, cotton candy smells and all, in a single flash. I watch his feet. The rope. I want to prolong this for just a moment. I want to study his face.

  “I remember as a boy my father took me to the fair in Monroe. I was walking in front of him, and another man was coming. There was plenty of room on both sides, see? But he was coming straight for me. I shifted out his way and he didn’t even look down. I didn’t see half of it, but my father didn’t step aside. He knocked that man on his ass. And after the brouhaha, Dad cuffed the back of my head like to raise a knot a calf could suck on. Spun me around and grabbed my neck. He said, ‘Never step out of another man’s way. Make him knock you aside. The day’ll come when he can’t.’”

  G’Wain studies me. “So we’ve got shitty fathers in common.”

  I fire again. He stares. I miss.

  G’Wain looks at the floor, then to his right, at a stack of bales. “How many have you raped? Did you count? Because I don’t think it was just my mother.”

  I shift my pistol and step closer.

  “I’ve been thinking what it must be like,” he says. “You see something you want and you take it. Have you ever had to admit what you’ve done?”

  “I’ve lawed this town forty goddamn years!”

  “Whose laws?”

  “Mine!”

  “You’re a ravager with a badge living in a town of cowards. None of them have the guts to meet your eye and you think their fear gives you impunity. But I’m calling you out. You raped my mother.”

  I fire again. This one nicks his arm.

  He lurches back but keeps his left foot planted on the rope.

  I’m mad enough to piss blood. “There wasn’t a single damn woman didn’t want it. You wasn’t there! Who the fuck are you to question me?”

  “Your son.”

  “You’re not!”

  I’m going to put a bullet in his head. I lurch forward, stop inches shy of the hog. He was goading me. It was an act.

  The harrow blocks me on the right. Looking up at the hog, I step around its path and into a mess of straw—and my leg drops. I fall and my legs wishbone—big snap in my thigh—one leg sideways on the barn floor and the other hangs down below. My gun hand slaps a plank and my Smith & Wesson clatters away.

  A full five seconds of shock pass and then my groin feels completely ripped out. Never such pain…There was no board… He pulled up the board and covered it with hay…

  G’Wain smirks. He lifts his foot from the rope and the rope don’t move. I follow his gaze to the hog, swinging above. They’re not connected.

  I strain for the pistol but I’ve got coffee and sandwiches wanting to scoot out the way they came in.

  “You—”

  He steps closer. “What?”

  “You deceived me.”

  “Yeah.”

  I laugh. I can’t help it. My nuts feel like the inside of a pin cushion and I swear my boot is filled with blood—but this skinny clothesline of a boy just put a hurt on me. Out-clevered me. I laugh. “You got me.”

  * * *

  Bittersmith wriggles back and forth. Sweat beads on his brow and his breath comes out like steam from a train, each blast followed by a prolonged, regenerative pause. He reaches for his pistol. I lift it.

  “So that story about your father. You blame him?”

  Bittersmith emits a long, gritty sigh. With one hand he tries to shift his topside leg closer to the hole he’s fallen into, but the bone is shattered. I can tell from the angle and blood.

  “Ah, shit. That’s homage. I don’t blame my father. That’s respect. You wouldn’t know a thing about that.”

  “No, I wouldn’t. You missed. Why didn’t you hit me?”

  He laughs. Pain—or hopelessness—makes him merry.

  “Didn’t want to.” He snorts back a laugh, then groans. “You want to pull me out of this mess, or push my leg straight so I can drop it down with the other?”

  I aim at his head. “Why didn’t you shoot to hit me?”

  He looks everywhere but at me. I believe I’m the first person to ever put his mind in a vise and twist the handle. I see the struggle in his eyes. The madness. Finally his gaze meets mine.

  I say, “I’m your son.”

  He chuckles. Coughs. “Fuck this hurts.”

  “You raped my mother. In ten seconds you’ll have to confess it to another.”

  “You got no fucking authority!”

  “No, I have a gun. Confess?”

  “Never.”

  I get down on both knees. I press the barrel to his temple.

  “NEVER!”

  I squeeze the trigger.

  * * *

  After a minute of looking at his dead face and not feeling any better about my life, his death, the day that has passed, or my prospects for the days that will follow, I kick his leg until it aligns and he drops through. The pressure from his ribs forces a final grunt from his mouth. It sounds lascivious. Horrific.

  Maybe he’ll fall all the way to hell.

  I’m tempted to find a horse blanket and nap in the loft. Maybe I’ll wake and find the day has been a nightmare and that Gwen and I escaped to Mexico.

  I see Gwen with more clarity, now. And Liz.

  Their situations made them consider self-preservation above all. Survival required them to use any available means to end their subjugation. Liz took it farther. She was ready to use her sex to trap me. It became a tool.

  Gwen started down that path and turned from it.

  Neither girl was bad, but only one was good. I loved her. How could Gwen have loved anybody? Or seen any man as anything other than a new instrument of oppression? The world presented Gwen a hard vision and she willed herself to see softness. Our romance began because of proximity, but she loved because she knew it was better than the hatred, anger and pain her father had visited upon her. She was strong enough to see beauty in an ugly world. She was an eminently lovable w
oman.

  I better leave.

  Sunday’s truck is out front, but the keys burned with Liz. There’s a snowmobile halfway to the house, but I won’t be able to steer it.

  And there is Bittersmith’s vehicle, parked out there somewhere.

  I find stairs. Bittersmith has fallen into a milking stall, and is bent harshly backward over one of the tubular steel dividers. The structure holds him with his head wound lower than his body. Blood trickles to the shit trough at the end of the stall.

  When I kicked his leg straight and he vanished through the floor, the image convinced me he might fall all the way to hell. That’s what he earned; he sowed his seeds and how many women suffered the harvest? But looking at him with his head bled out on the cement, his eyes blank, and his crotch saturated with blood…

  Now men will know fear.

  I fish keys from his pocket.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’d like to thank Julie, my wife, for honest help and ongoing support. Sometimes it isn’t easy to be interested in a new “greatest paragraph ever written”—especially an hour past bedtime—but you always were.

  Thank you to my mother and father, Georgina and Donald, for the exact life you gave me. I wouldn’t change a moment of it.

  Thank you to Cameron McClure, my agent, for your belief in Cold Quiet Country, for really getting it, and for making it so much better with your insights. And thank you for the title!

  To Guy Intoci, my editor; it’s a thrill seeing you make this book more crisper, clearer, stronger. Thank you.

  Thank you to Loren Fairman. This book wouldn’t exist without your encouragement and surgical criticism. Truly, you’re one in a million.

  There are a thousand people whose encouragement has kept me writing. Dan Youatt, Fatima Sharif, thank you. Oh, and Michel Rau. You said, “This sounds like a real book.” That was great.