Dead of Winter

by Gerri Brightwell

  Snow’s stuck to Fisher’s face, his neck. It’s got into his boots and squeaks as he shifts his weight to step back. Someone’s behind him. Al. He hears, “Stop right there, fucker, or I’ll shoot you in the head.” Then Al lifts his voice, calls out to Lyle, “C’mon now, you can finish him off later. Brian’s here someplace.”

  Lyle turns and his face catches the moonlight. One eye’s swollen, the other furious. “Don’t be a fuckhead, Al, he’s gone. Fucking gone!”

  Al steps forward with a cigarette between his lips, then he leans into the flame of his lighter. “What the fuck?”

  “How’d he get here? Fly?”

  Al lets smoke drift from his mouth and looks about him, slowly, like he’s taking stock: there’s the cab Fisher drove, there’s his own pickup, there’s an old car with a thick crust of snow over it.

  Already Lyle’s climbing the couple of steps to the porch, and the door’s squealing open, and it’s dark inside like a space where a tooth used to be. “Get it now, fuckhead?” he yells. “Mikey here must’ve warned him!”

  Fisher barely has time to taste his fear before Al shoves him hard up the steps, holds the bitingly cold end of the gun against his neck. As soon as he walks inside the cabin, Fisher catches the smell of grilled meat, the pissy stink of old beer, feels the warmth of the place swamp him. Al’s right behind him. Together they stumble through the darkness, knocking against a table, a chair, Al cussing under his breath. A rasp, then a wavering light falls across the cabin: Al has his lighter held high. From the beam hangs a lamp and Lyle unhooks it, shoves it at Al, who sucks hard on his cigarette then fiddles and cusses some more over it, pumping it hard, then holding a flame to the mantle.

  The room bursts into light. The cabin’s barely twenty feet by fifteen, dishes and pots on a shelf in a corner by a plastic bowl tilted up to dry, a barrel of a woodstove against the far wall where longjohns and socks and felt boot liners hang from nails, a narrow bed with a pillow and blankets on it.

  “Frisk him,” Lyle snaps at Al. Al shoves Fisher against the wall. He bats at the legs of his pants, squeezes the bulky pockets of his parka then plunges his hand in. He pulls out the new pocketknife. For a moment he looks at it, then he drops it to the floor and stamps on it with his heel. The plastic casing splinters and the short blade and tiny fork, the nail file, all its miniature tools splay out. With another stamp they come apart, and Al kicks the pieces to one side. “Piece of shit.”

  Lyle turns toward Fisher. His skin looks thin, like a dying creature’s. “You better know where Brian’s at or you’re a dead man. Freezing to death’d be too easy this time. You understand?”

  “You took my phone—how could I call anyone?”

  With his left hand Lyle reaches for something on the windowsill and holds it up. A hunting knife. The end of the blade’s curved like a claw, meant for severing joints and sinews, for slicing apart muscle, and it shines wetly as Lyle comes close, his head tilted against his eye that’s swollen shut, his lips tight, his arm dangling all wrong.

  But Lyle’s good eye slides off to the side and no wonder. The churning of an engine rough from the cold, and the three of them stand perfectly still in the hissing light of the lamp. Then Lyle says softly, “Gotcha.”

  What must Jim Jensen make of two strange vehicles pulled up in his driveway, one of them a cab, of all the freaky things, with its back window shot out and its wing mirror hanging loose? No wonder the engine churns away outside. There’s no sound of a door slamming, no hollow crunch of boots across the porch, because Jim Jensen must be staring out his windshield and considering what to do.

  Lyle snaps, “Kill the lamp, Al.”

  “What?”

  “Lamp.”

  Al lays the gun on the table and reaches up. He turns the knob and shrinks the flame to nothing just as Lyle’s left hand snatches up the gun. Lyle hisses, “Take the fucking knife. Slice his throat if you have to.”

  “That’s my gun.”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  “Fuck you.” But Al takes the knife from the table and twists it in the glare of the headlights coming through the thin curtains. He walks softly toward Fisher and holds the blade against his cheek. It’s icy from lying on the windowsill.

  Lyle’s nothing more than a shadow pulling back the edge of the curtain with the gun and peering out. His holds the gun awkwardly and uses the same hand to wipe the frost from the glass. Then comes the sound of his breath, a little fast, and a creak of the floor as he shifts his weight. But just as he dips his head toward the gun, as though it’s a rifle and he needs to aim carefully, the door bursts open. There’s no one there, just the dazzle of headlights. Lyle wheels around. His face is all knotted up. From a few yards away a shaky voice calls out, “Who’s there? What’s going on?”

  A tension inside Fisher comes loose because here she is, safe after all, and he’s found her, but the relief won’t fit into his chest. Al’s breath’s in his face, his arm hooks around Fisher’s neck so that the blade’s biting into the soft skin beneath his chin. Lyle’s lurching toward them, Lyle with a fierce look in his good eye made all the fiercer by a wicked joy. He spits, “Tell our friends to come in, Mikey.”

  Dread pools in Fisher’s belly. No, he thinks, no fucking way. He sucks in a breath, the air already cold, colder than the blade against his neck, and he yells, “Jim! Get out of here!” His words come out ragged. He wrenches himself to one side, feels the blade slip over his skin and he swings his arm. The knife flashes through the air and he kicks, hard as he can, into Al’s groin. A shot—from Lyle, he thinks—and another, then a click, but he’s falling and hits the floor so hard his bones bend, he’d swear, and his organs flatten themselves, and it’s all he can do to open his eyes and stare between the table legs toward the doorway. Ice fog’s boiling into the cabin but there, sharp against the brilliance of the headlights, is the unmistakable outline of a shotgun barrel. A man barks out, “Quit f-fighting or I’m gonna shoot you all stone dead.”

  41

  JIM JENSEN’S NOT the man Fisher remembers. That Jim Jensen was a slack-shouldered, paunchy bird of a man with chicken-bone fingers and a flushed look to his face, a man whose tan Carhartt’s were so covered with stains from where he’d wiped his hands on his thighs that they looked like maps of unknown continents, and whose beard was so thin it barely covered the livid marks on his face, either acne or sores or something worse. That Jim Jensen had stood with his door open only a couple of inches while Fisher told him over and over that his wife was in labor, that he’d trained as a goddamn EMT, hadn’t he, and he had to come help. That Jim had tried to shut the door in Fisher’s face but he’d jammed his shoulder into the gap and yelled, “You come or I’ll fucking kill you, you bastard.” He must have sounded wild because Jim Jensen came out and let Fisher hurry him along the dirt track through the trees to the cabin. He’d done nothing much but tell Fisher to help ease out the baby, to wait for the afterbirth, to cut the umbilical cord, and the whole time he’d looked anywhere but at Jan with her tuft of brown pubic hair dark against her skin and blood smeared over her thighs, and as soon as Bree’d been wrapped in a blanket he’d taken off without a word.

  And now, here’s Jim Jensen bellowing into the hollow space of his own cabin, a broad man whose weight looks carelessly slung onto him, hanging from his shoulders and his ribs and the bones of his face, as though he could shrug it all off if he wanted. But it’s Jim Jensen all right: that same slight stutter when he yelled, “Quit f-fighting,” that slouching way about him as he steps across the threshold with the shotgun sweeping the room. He says, “Light the lamp,” and it’s Bree who comes to the table, who pulls a box of matches out of the table drawer and lights it like she’s done it before. The glow unfolds across the cabin, and Jim kicks the door shut.

  His beard’s long and matted now, his parka patched with duct tape. His red hat has earflaps that give him a dumb-dog look, but h
is eyes are everywhere—on Al curled up on the floor by the wall, on Fisher standing by the kitchen counter—but they settle on Lyle, and Lyle gives him a sly grin because he’s got the handgun aimed at Jim’s chest. Lyle says, “Drop the gun, motherfucker, or I’ll shoot you.”

  Jim hefts the shotgun higher. “I’ll take my chances.”

  From the table Bree’s watching. Fisher’s shocked how fragile she looks, her cheekbones curved and delicate like pieces of broken shell, her lips pale, her eyes distant beneath the ragged line of her bangs. This is the first time in months he’s seen her without makeup, he realizes. His little girl. He doesn’t recognize the hat she’s wearing, a black ugly thing too big for her, nor the dull blue coat. She must have left in one helluva hurry. Horrified at what she’d done to Brian. But that jerk deserved it, Fisher tells himself: for fuck’s sake, he was naked in her bathroom.

  Bree’s holding onto the back of the chair so tightly that Fisher could swear it’s trembling. She doesn’t take her eyes off Lyle. He’s stepping forward with that handgun raised. “Brian Armstrong. Tell me where he is, or I’ll blow your fucking head off.”

  Jim blinks. “Brian? What the hell?” Now he glances at Fisher. “What’s this all about?”

  Lyle’s got a swagger to his walk as he comes closer, never mind that one arm’s hanging useless and his shoulder’s sloped at an unnatural angle. He leans against the table, so close to Bree that she recoils into the corner between the woodstove and the bed. She half-stumbles, half-sits on a stack of cut logs. On the wall above her hangs Jim’s long underwear.

  Lyle swings the gun after her. “Then maybe you know, ugly girl. Why don’t you tell me so I don’t put a bullet in your brain?”

  Jim’s lips part like he’s about to say something. Instead he lets out a laugh and cradles the butt of the shotgun against his shoulder. “You dumbass, coming in here like you’ve got a right to, when you don’t know shit.” He licks his lips. “Go on—shoot.”

  In that instant Fisher’s in motion. He’s coming at Lyle without thinking, feet paddling against the floor, hands outstretched, his head jutting forward like a man struggling against the pull of a river. The air’s so dense it won’t let him through fast enough, and he’s too late, surely he’s too late. There’s Lyle’s twisting the gun toward him, and the dark hole the bullet’s going to come bursting through is pointing at his face. He throws himself at Lyle with his eyes shut against the thought of what that bullet will do to him.

  Only, the shot doesn’t come. Instead one hand glances off Lyle’s chest, and the edge of the table catches him on the thigh, just above the cut, and the wound smarts ferociously. As for Lyle, he staggers back against the plyboard counter. A bowl rattles, a glass tumbles over and falls to the floor but doesn’t break. The gun’s still in his hand, and he pushes himself straight again.

  Jim says, “Might as well drop it, seeing’s as it’s empty, you stupid f-fuck.”

  Fisher’s got one hand clamped over his thigh. Through the denim comes the warm seep of blood. He looks over at Bree. She’s covered her face with her hands but she’s not crying. Fisher says softly, “You OK?” She stares out over the dark mounds of her gloves. Her head jerks with each breath, and she doesn’t say a word.

  Jim rocks a little from one foot to the other, tilts his head back. “One of you’d better tell me what’s going on.” He glances from where Lyle’s got his back against the counter, to Al still tucked into himself on the floor.

  Lyle weighs the gun in his hand, smirking. “You’re a friend of Brian Armstrong, right?”

  Jim’s face closes up. “I’m asking the goddamn questions. Tell me what the hell’s going on.”

  Lyle licks his lips with a tongue as pointed and quick as a lizard’s. “See, Brian’s managed to piss some people off.”

  “You?”

  Lyle gives a shrug. “Yeah, me and a few thousand other people.”

  “Say what?”

  “Heard of the Alaska Citizens Guard?”

  A flicker crosses Jim’s face. “Those guys who dress up in uniform and play at being soldiers? Oh yeah, I’ve heard of them. What the hell did Armstrong do? Sell them some land at the bottom of a lake?” He snorts.

  Lyle’s got one hand lifted and he presses down on the air, a strange gesture. “Oh no,” he says softly, “nothing like that.”

  Fisher thinks how odd it is that Lyle comes toward Jim, keeps coming even when Jim barks at him, “You stop right there or I’ll shoot your goddamn balls off.”

  “You wouldn’t want to do that. See, there are thousands of us and we’ve pledged to stand together.”

  “Thousands? You people make me laugh. How many really? A dozen? Half dozen?”

  “Numbers like you wouldn’t believe. When the time comes, no one’s going to stand in our way.”

  Now Jim’s grinning. “

  When the time comes? F-for what? We talking world domination, or you just gonna hole up someplace with your buddy who doesn’t wanna pay his taxes, and wait f-for the f-feds to come blast you out?”

  Lyle’s mouth’s gone hard. He reaches up to the lamp that’s gently hissing and sends it swinging. Its light gapes and yaws across the cabin. “You don’t want to talk that way, not if you want a long and quiet life.”

  “You threatening me, you dumb f-fuck? Who the hell’s holding the gun?” He lets out a snort of a laugh.

  Lyle juts his chin forward a little. “Tell me where Brian is, and we’ll forget about all this.”

  “How the hell would I know where he’s at?”

  “See, here you are in his cabin and all . . .”

  Jim’s cheeks flush a deeper red and his eyes turn wet and small. “You’re dumber than you look. This is my cabin. His is down the next turn-off.”

  Lyle’s jaw pulls tight. He looks around him, at the table, at the door, his good eye swimming a little, his mind calculating, adjusting. “Well now,” he says at last. He hasn’t looked at Fisher and Fisher can’t help feeling that Lyle’s saving up his fury, that to look at him now would be to put a flame to the fuse too early. “That doesn’t matter, not in the long run,” and he wipes the back of his hand over his mouth. “You can still be of use. Take us to his cabin and we’ll leave you and your daughter in peace.”

  Jim’s face twitches in surprise. Lyle catches that flicker of muscle and skin and stops dead still. “Oh my, wrong again? Here I am in the wrong cabin. And that girl—not your daughter?” He licks his lips and moves his hand up his useless right arm. He’s thinking, his brow pulled down a little. “So if you’re not Dad, then . . .” and now he turns to Fisher, “you must be. How about that? Your pretty little girl went and grew up into this ugly bitch. Honey, I just didn’t recognize you.” He smiles and the furrows beside his nose deepen.

  Something in Fisher retreats, scrambling, as though he can hide inside himself. He takes a breath and the sound of it trembles. He wants to say something. He has to say something, to fend off Lyle. But what? Out of the corner of his eye he sees Bree turn away to the wall. Lyle says softly, “Well, how about that, you ashamed of him, is that it?”

  The lamp’s swinging only slightly now, like it’s caught in a draft. Jim settles the butt of the shotgun higher against his shoulder. “You’re starting to piss me off real bad. Get outta here. Go on, right now.”

  Lyle turns and he’s smiling. He lifts one hand, fluttering the fingers ridiculously, like some old-time dancer hamming it up. Jim stares at him and it’s like he’s trying to decide whether to shoot when Lyle jerks his head.

  It’s odd, that jerk. It’s like it’s yanked on some invisible mechanism that lets fly a blade of light, and that light knocks Jim Jensen back on his heels. His shotgun tips up and a crash of sound knocks a small hole right through the cabin roof. The gun slips out of his hands. It clatters to the floor and Jim stands unsteadily. It takes him a few seconds to notice the horn hand
le sticking out through his parka close to his heart. He touches it with his fingertips, trying to understand what it is, and what an effort it takes, because his breath saws in and out, loud enough for Fisher to hear above the ringing left by the blast.

  Lyle steps in front of Jim. His grin’s tight, his left hand up and his fingers dancing through the air again. “Oh yeah,” he says, “that’s right, watch the hand, watch the hand.” He snorts. “Not so bright, are you, asshole?”

  Jim coughs. Blood trickles out over his bottom lip and through his beard. His eyes are still on Lyle’s hand, and that hand shoves him full in the face. He tilts back against the wall like a felled tree then slumps to the ground.

  From behind the table, Al hauls himself to his feet. “Stupid fucker was pissing me off.”

  “Silent but deadly, that’s you, Al.”

  Al comes around the table and puts his foot on Jim’s chest. He’s bracing himself to pull out the knife when Lyle says, “Leave it.”

  “Hell no, that’s a good knife.”

  “Under the radar. Remember?”

  “Hey—for fuck’s sake. It’s gotta be worth a hundred bucks.” He wrenches it out and wipes the blade on Jim’s Carhartt’s. It leaves a glistening smear. Fisher’s looking at it when he catches Al staring over at him. “And he’s pissing me off too. Wasting our fucking time. The girl can take us to the cabin. We don’t need him.”

  Lyle doesn’t move. When at last he looks up, he touches his swollen eye and says almost lazily, “Slow down. We’ve got to think it through. Remember?” From his pocket he pulls a box of ammo and lays it on the table. He starts loading his gun, awkwardly, one-handedly, sliding in one bullet at a time like he’s got all the time in the world.

  Al’s cheeks quiver slightly. His mouth’s oddly small and pulled in. “All you chicken-shits just talk talk talk—I’m a sovereign citizen, we’re gonna secede from the Union, we’ve got ourselves a people’s army—well fuck. None of you does anything but talk. Except me.”