Dead of Winter

by Gerri Brightwell

  Of all things, Fisher told her to go ahead and hire her goddamn nephew. That was when he thought it’d get Ada off his back, before he knew Lyle and his creepy, sideways way of looking at you, or the snaky charm he turns on for Ada. And she falls for it. Now here she is, tailgating some poor fucker in a sedan through the ice fog, and veering into the slow lane to pass him when the turn to the hardware store’s coming up, and she swerves out in front of a cop—a cop!—to make the turn in time. Fisher wills the cop to pull her over—that’ll teach her!—but the cop doesn’t do a thing.

  Just as well. Has Fisher forgotten? She’s a spiteful woman. She probably thinks he stole Brian’s bag and would have found a way to mention it to the cop. So sorry, Officer, I’m all upset. You see, my step-son—well, I was just over at his trailer and noticed some property I’m sure isn’t his, and he acted kinda strange. . .

  The thought of it so riles him up that his jaw tightens and his teeth hurt. He pulls up behind her so hard that his car skids a little. He’s close enough to see her outline through the back window of the pickup, and to focus his hate on the narrow shape of her head with its ridiculous handle of a pony tail sticking out, when she turns to watch the traffic rush by.

  Something catches his eye. He glances to his right. The cop, staring at him. Fear rushes through him like cold water. Does it show on his face? He turns away—too quickly? Maybe. He looks out the windshield at his headlights glaring off the strawberry red of Ada’s truck and won’t let himself move until, he realizes, that’s going to look suspicious, because who sits behind the wheel without moving? So he reaches down to the radio and presses the channel buttons just for something to do. When he looks back up, the lane beside him is empty. Up ahead the bloody eyes of taillights are vanishing into the ice fog.

  His T-shirt’s sticking to his armpits. His bowels ache, like he needs to take a dump, right now. He closes his eyes. Get a grip, he tells himself. Be better than that.

  After all, Ada’s spiteful, she’s heartless, but she’s not stupid. She needs him. Isn’t that why she didn’t put up a fight when he refused to let her drive him into town? And when he refuses to do more than unload the supplies into the motel lobby, what’s she going to do? She’s like a parasite: if it kills its host, it’s done for. She’ll be mad at him, but she’s got something she can hold over him. That bag: oh yeah, she’ll remind him she knows he’s hidden it, but she won’t push too hard, not yet, or it’ll all be over. And by the time she does make her move, he’ll have gotten rid of it and there won’t be a thing she can do.

  The green left-turn arrow lights up. The exhaust from Ada’s pickup floods over his windshield and he follows the angry gleam of her taillights through the intersection and into the parking lot of the hardware store.

  14

  HERE ARE THE jobs that Fisher has done at the Alaska Travel-Inn since his dad and Ada bought it: unplugged bathroom drains thick with hair, washed vomit off walls, broken open the doors of rooms in which drunk or dead guests were lying in bed and had been for two or three days, hauled reeking mattresses into the pickup to dump at the transfer station, dug bullets out of walls and filled the holes with spackle once the police had finished looking the place over, steam-cleaned the carpet of a room in which a young man had hanged himself (Dotty the cleaner wouldn’t set foot over the threshold, and no wonder, the stink of piss and shit was gagging), picked up syringes from under beds, replaced mirrors that had been smashed or scratched with obscenities, unblocked toilets clogged with diapers, or turds so big you’d think they’d been left by a different, massive species. That’s not all. He’s replaced carpets and windows, painted walls, grouted tiles, rewired shot wiring, and learned how to install toilets and washbasins, because there’s only so much they can take before they crack irreparably.

  You’d think that Fisher, with all the skills he’s picked up, would set himself up as a handyman, like the guy he’s seen driving around town with Stan the Handy-Man painted on the side of his van. And he did, years ago, when he was married to Janice. But now every time he sees that van he thinks, Poor fucker, because being handy is about the worst thing you can imagine. All the shit comes your way. Worse than that, your friends and family call you up to fix things, and replace things, and unblock things, then look betrayed when you hand them a bill. Other people, the ones you don’t know, forget to tell you they’ve poured Drano down the bathtub and when you pump it out it’s all over you, or they watch over your shoulder then say something like, Hell, I coulda done that myself or Christ Almighty, fifty dollars when it only took fifteen minutes? No wonder he went back to driving.

  Ada and his dad have never paid Fisher. Before he moved out, he could see the logic of it: he was earning his keep. After he moved out—well, by then his dad was in a wheelchair and could barely walk because he’d grown so huge, his legs like sides of beef, his belly a great balloon balanced on his lap. After a whole week of one job after another at the motel and Ada cooking Fisher and Jan dinner to say thank you, Jan handed Ada the bill for all that work. Ada tore it to pieces right there and then, and Jan balled up her napkin, threw it onto her plate of spaghetti, and told Fisher if he ever set foot in the motel again she’d leave him.

  What could he do? To make up for doing unpaid jobs for Ada on the quiet, he took extra work so that he and Jan could pay their rent, and their health insurance, and afford all the things they needed for the baby when Janice got pregnant, and in the end Jan still left and Ada never has a good word to say about him.

  As for Lyle, you’d think the sun shone out of his ass, which is funny because he was doing time for assault and petty larceny before he came north. Not that Ada ever mentioned it. Sometimes there are advantages to being a cabbie. Over the years, a number of ex-cons have driven for Bear Cabs, hard-mouthed guys, soul-chilling bastards, some of them. But there’ve been those who’ve felt friendly toward Fisher, who’ve sat with him on a quiet mid-morning until a call came through, who’d say kind of off-handed, That guy working at your folks’ motel? I knew him inside down in Seattle and he’s one mean mother-fucker. You tell your folks to watch their backs, OK?

  Sometimes Fisher wonders if Lyle has it so easy because Ada’s scared of him. She damn well should be, he thinks.

  The hardware store’s squintingly bright. It’s a world within a world, its ceiling so high and its shelves piled with sleek white toilets still in their packaging, and bathtubs stacked on their sides like massive handholds, and way up beneath the roof a small bird darting between the beams and singing out for others of its kind.

  Ada’s waiting for him with a low, long cart. Not that she’s going to push it. She steps away and gives him a nod. “See if you can at least keep up with me driving that thing.” She turns on her heel and takes off across the store. Fisher has to wrestle it along on stiff wheels that want to turn forever left.

  This place depresses him at the best of times. All those rolls of flooring made to look like tiling, the cheap-as-shit towel rings—maybe it’d be different if he was picking up material for his barely-begun house, but what this place makes him think of is hours wasted at the motel. Fitting stain-resistant rug to replace carpeting so foul no steam-cleaning can save it. Prying off smashed shower tiles. Replacing washbasins cracked open like tea cups, or doors staved in like meringues, or having Ada pull her lips to one side at the sight of the grouting he’s just finished then telling him it’s not neat enough and for Chrissakes, can’t he do a better job covering up the hole in the wall?

  At least there’s this about shopping here with Ada: there’s no dallying around while she makes up her mind. She’s bought the same paint so many times she can point out the shade to Fisher, and tell him how many cans, knows to buy turps and masking tape, and which pattern of linoleum for the bathrooms. Then she quick-walks down the aisle toward the checkout while Fisher struggles to load a roll of flooring onto the cart. Already he’s sweating. He heaves that cart along on its wheels that
twitch and veer to the side, leaning his whole weight against it, his shoulder straining from the effort. Halfway down the aisle he snatches off his hat and wipes his face with it, then crams it into his pocket. Ada’s gone, standing in line most likely. The cart handle’s warm and greasy, and he rubs his hands down his coat to rid himself of the feel of it. A young man walks past him in a red apron tied so slackly it’s hardly tied at all, his pants low and loose, his heels scraping along the concrete floor. It takes Fisher only a moment, then it hits him: Frisbee. Bree’s friend Frisbee, working here, and Fisher calls out, “Hey!”

  Maybe the guy doesn’t hear him. He doesn’t stop, and Fisher abandons the cart and runs after him, calling out, “You’re Frisbee, aren’t you? Wait up,” and only then does the guy turn around.

  His hair’s a flat black and falls across one eye. The other gazes at Fisher with a steady look that could mean anything from distaste to loathing. Even for someone who lives in the sub-arctic, his skin’s an uncanny white, his lips as lifeless as the edges of a pie crust waiting to be pinched closed.

  The name tag pinned to his apron says, “I’m Wayne and I can help!”

  Now they’re face-to-face, Fisher’s courage fails him. His voice shrinks down his throat. “My daughter, Bree: you know her, don’t you?”

  The guy seems to think it over then touches his hair with the flat of one hand. “You her dad?”

  Fisher nods.

  “Yeah, think I’ve seen you pick her up a couple times. Something like that.” Then he waits, and it must seem like Fisher’s about to say something, the way he licks his lips and takes in a breath. But he doesn’t say a word and Frisbee nods a couple of times as though something’s passed between them, then says, “Catch you later, dude,” and walks away.

  Fisher follows him. “Have you seen her? Since yesterday?” Frisbee turns and his eye narrows just enough to make Fisher rush on: “She’s taken off. She left a couple messages saying she wanted me to come get her, but I don’t know where she is.”

  Frisbee’s mouth twists to one side. “Her mom’s taken her down to Anchorage, you know, before school starts back up. Didn’t she tell you?”

  “She didn’t go, and now I can’t find her.”

  Frisbee tilts his head a little. “Well, I can’t help you, dude. I thought she was out of town.”

  “I just want to know who she could be staying with. You know, close friends.”

  Frisbee’s face hardens. “No idea,” he says, and he strides away down the aisle.

  Fisher hurries after him saying, “Listen: when she called she sounded real scared. I need to know she’s OK.”

  Eventually Frisbee slows down. “Hey, she’ll get hold of you when she wants, right?”

  “Her step-dad—he was going ape-shit over something. That’s what she said.”

  Frisbee stops. “Now there’s a real jerk,” and he lets out a half-laugh. “But I guess you know that, huhn?”

  Fisher nods back at him. “First class jerk, yeah. So I need to find her, because this wasn’t like he’d just grounded her or something. It sounded way worse than that, and now she’s taken off.”

  Frisbee’s face closes in on itself and he turns toward the display of blinds at the end of the aisle. “Of course,” he says, “these are gonna last you. Worth the extra cost if you ask me.”

  A man in a red apron, his head as bare and shiny as a wet pebble, calls out to Fisher, “That your cart back there, sir?”

  “Sure is.”

  He strides up to them and gives Fisher a wide smile. “Wayne here looking after you, is he? Let me know if you need anything else, all right?” then he claps Frisbee on the shoulder and hurries off.

  Fisher and Frisbee bend their heads toward the slats of vinyl until the guy’s out of sight. Frisbee says, “Her ex is working at the Stop-n-Go on Airport.”

  Fisher nods like he knew Bree had an ex. “The one opposite the movie theater?”

  “Yeah. He’ll know—they’re still pretty close. Maybe she’s staying with him,” and he shrugs. “Used to work the morning shift, maybe still does. Guess he could be there right now.”

  “OK,” says Fisher, “and hey, thanks.” He takes off at a half-run, the cart left at an angle across the aisle and his red hat close by, dropped and lost for good.

  He doesn’t give Ada a second thought. Maybe she spots him rushing off and thinks he’s headed to the bathroom, or maybe she’s looking the wrong way and doesn’t see him barge out through the automatic doors and into that savage cold where he checks his pockets for his hat. Gone. No way is he going back for it. Instead he pulls up his hood and takes off across the parking lot.

  On the highway the traffic’s heavy, but Fisher’s heart’s full of hope. He dips and swerves around other vehicles with the heater on high and the radio blaring. Even the ache in his head hardly bothers him.

  When his phone rings he snatches it out of his pocket and checks who’s calling. Ada. He chucks it onto the seat beside him and follows a City Cab through the ice fog, all the way to Airport.

  15

  EVEN IF YOU were blind and walked into a convenience store without knowing it—how that could happen, Fisher hasn’t worked out—you’d recognize it by its odors: the muddiness of coffee left warming too long, the hot grease of wieners rolling beneath a heating lamp, the sugariness of candies and pastries, the bright translucent scent of floor cleaner. On a January morning this far north, when the outside world is frozen and dark and smells only of poorly combusted fuel, stepping into a convenience store is like stepping into spring: the onslaught of aromas, the packages colorful as flowers, the dispensers and signs all reds and blues, the buttery quality of the electric light, that delicious warmth that engulfs you. It’s no wonder Fisher stands just inside the entrance and rubs his cold head—of all the days to lose his hat—and blinks at it all before remembering himself and heading for the coffee pots by the checkout.

  He doesn’t let himself look at the cashiers, not yet. Instead he pours coffee into a cardboard cup and peels open a small container of cream that spits droplets over his fingers, and only when he’s emptied a couple of sachets of sugar into it and stirred it with a plastic stick does he glance up, as casually as he can. Two young men behind the counter. One of them’s in his late twenties, he’d guess, and with a beaky, hard look about him, his skin with the slight grayness of perpetual exhaustion, a tattoo showing above his collar, his ear a curtain rod of silver rings, and his hair shorn close to his head. The other’s tall and overweight, a droop-faced sack of a boy with flushed cheeks and dark hair brushed forward toward to his eyebrows and a resigned look about him. Christ, thinks Fisher, one of these guys is Bree’s ex? He takes a sip of his coffee, all creamy and sweet, then fixes a lid over the rim. He looks about him. Over by the back wall a guy’s loading bottles into a fridge, a curly-haired, narrow-shouldered kid with a rawness about his cheeks where he must only recently have begun shaving. Bingo, he thinks.

  Fisher carries his coffee over to him. “Hey,” he says, “I think you can help me—you know Bree Fisher, right?”

  The kid looks up and the skin between his eyes puckers. “Who?”

  “Bree Fisher. My daughter. Are you the one she used to date?”

  The kid’s face flares a livid red and he pulls two bottles of orange juice out of the box at his knees, holding them deftly between his fingers, then shoving them into their slot in the fridge. “No,” he says, and he’s already turned away, “not me.”

  There’s something so Fuck you in the way he goes back to stocking the fridge that Fisher leans closer. “I’m her dad and she called me to come pick her up last night. By the time I got there she’d gone and now I don’t know where she is.”

  “Can’t help you.”

  “I’m just looking for her, that’s all.”

  The kid looks up at him with watery eyes. “Man, I’ve never heard of
Bree Whatever-the-Fuck—let me alone, why don’t you, before I call the shift manager over?”

  Fisher lifts his free hand. “Whoa there,” he says, “I’m just looking for my daughter, is all. No need to freak out on me.”

  “Freak out on you?” the kid says. “Fuck, who the hell—”

  But Fisher’s walking away. His coffee slops around in the cup and the cup’s uncomfortably hot. Christ, he thinks, he should have slipped one of those cardboard belts onto it, but really—who needs coffee so hot you have to shield yourself from it?

  Just before the checkout there’s a stand of plastic-wrapped pastries. He bends to look at them, bear claws and danishes and cinnamon buns all wet-looking from too much glaze. You’d think he was having a hard time deciding what to eat, dithering, changing his mind, picking up a bearclaw and weighing it in his hand. But the whole time his eyes are darting up to the clerks working back-to-back at the checkout, from the fat teenager with his meaty hands that pick up bottles of soda and chocolate bars so slowly, so deliberately, you’d think he’d never seen such things before, to the guy behind him whose hands fly, whose fingers stab at the cash register like he’s working to music playing inside his head. The moment the second guy’s finished with his customer and called out a flat Have a good one, he leans over the newspaper spread on the counter in front of him.