by Scott Smith
I hesitated there, wavering between the twin sins of comfort and pride. In the end it was pride and the thought of Lou's snickering that carried the day. With something bordering on revulsion, I watched myself climb up over the bank and set off through the snow, hurrying lest they get too far ahead.
THE SNOW was shin deep in the woods, and there were things hidden beneath its smooth surface -- the trunks of fallen trees, stones, broken branches, holes, and stumps -- which made the going much harder than I'd anticipated. Lou led the way, spry, scurrying ratlike between the trees, as if he were being chased. I followed directly in his tracks, and Jacob brought up the rear, a good ways behind us, his face turning a brilliant pink, just a shade lighter than his jacket, with the effort of moving his huge body forward through the snow.
The dog's barking didn't seem to get any closer.
We continued on like this for about fifteen minutes. Then the trees suddenly thinned, and the land dropped away before us into a wide, shallow bowl, as if, millions of years before, a giant meteorite had landed there, carving out its impression in the earth. Parallel lines of stunted, sickly looking trees transversed the hollow -- they were apple trees, the remains of Bernard Anders's orchard.
Lou and I stopped on the edge of the bowl to wait for Jacob. We didn't talk; we were both out of breath. Jacob shouted something through the trees at us, then laughed, but neither of us understood him. I scanned the orchard for the dog, following his paw prints with my eyes. They disappeared in the distance beneath the trees.
"He's not in there," I said.
Lou listened to the dog's barking. It still seemed very far away. "No," he agreed. "He isn't."
I made a complete circle of the horizon with my eyes, taking in both the orchard and the woods behind us. The only thing moving for as far as I could see was Jacob, working his way aggressively through the snow. He still had another fifty yards to go and was progressing at a pathetically slow rate. His jacket was unzipped, and even at that distance I could hear the tortured sound of his breathing. He was using his rifle like a cane, digging its butt into the snow and pulling himself forward by its barrel. Behind him, he'd cut a wide swath of deep, messy tracks, so that it looked as if he'd been dragged through the woods against his will, struggling and kicking the entire way.
By the time he reached us, he was soaked with sweat, his skin actually steaming. Lou and I stood there watching him try to catch his breath.
"Christ," he said, gasping, "I wish we'd brought something to drink." He took off his glasses and wiped them on his jacket, squinting down at the ground as if he half-expected to find a pitcher of water sitting there in the snow.
Lou waved his hand in the air like a magician, snapped his fingers over the right-hand pocket of his jacket, then reached in and pulled out a can of beer. He popped its top, slurped the foam from the lid, and, smiling, offered it to Jacob.
"Always be prepared," he said.
Jacob gulped twice at it, pausing in between to catch his breath. When he finished, he returned the can to Lou. Lou took a long, slow swallow, his head tilted back, his Adam's apple sliding up and down the wall of his throat like a piston. Then he held the can out toward me. It was a Budweiser; I could smell its sweetish scent.
I shook my head, shivering. I'd started to sweat hiking through the snow, and now, standing still, my damp skin was becoming chilled. The muscles in my legs were trembling and jumping.
"Come on," he said. "Have a sip. It won't hurt you."
"I don't want any, Lou. I'm not thirsty."
"Sure you are," he prodded. "You're sweating, aren't you?"
I was about to decline again, this time more forcefully, when Jacob interrupted us.
"Is that a plane?" he asked.
Both Lou and I glanced into the sky, searching the low clouds for movement, ears keyed for the hum of an engine, before realizing that he was pointing down into the orchard. We followed his finger to the very center of the bowl, and there, nestled among the rows of stunted apple trees, hidden almost completely by its covering of snow, was indeed a tiny single-engine airplane.
LOU AND I reached it first, side by side.
The plane was resting perfectly flat on its belly, as if it were a toy and a giant hand had reached down out of the sky to set it there, snug beneath the branches of the trees. There were remarkably few signs of damage. Its propeller was twisted out of shape, its left wing was bent back a bit, tearing a tiny hole in the fuselage, but the land itself was relatively unmarked; there were no upturned trees, no jagged, black gashes in the earth to reveal its path of impact.
Lou and I circled the wreck, neither of us approaching close enough to touch it. The plane was surprisingly small, no bigger really than Jacob's truck, and there was something fragile about it: it seemed far too tiny to support the weight of a man in the air.
Jacob came slowly down into the orchard. The snow had settled more deeply here, and he looked like he was wading or shuffling toward us on his knees. Off in the distance, Mary Beth continued sporadically to bark.
"Jesus," Lou said. "Look at all these birds."
At first I didn't see them -- they were so still in the trees -- but then suddenly, as soon as I saw one, they all seemed to jump out at me. They were everywhere, filling the entire orchard, hundreds and hundreds of black crows perched motionless on the dark, bare branches of the apple trees.
Lou packed some snow into a ball and tossed it at one of them. Three crows lifted into the air, completed a slow half circle over the plane, and settled with a soft fluttering onto a neighboring tree. One of them cawed, once, and the sound of it echoed off the shallow sides of the bowl.
"It's fucking spooky," Lou said, shivering.
Jacob came up, huffing and puffing. His jacket was still unbuttoned, his shirttails hanging out. He took a few seconds to catch his breath.
"Anybody inside?" he asked.
Neither of us answered him. I hadn't even thought about it, but of course there had to be someone inside -- a pilot, dead. I stared uneasily at the plane. Lou threw another snowball at the crows.
"You haven't checked?" Jacob asked.
He handed his rifle to Lou and lumbered up to the plane. There was a door in its side, just behind the damaged wing. He grabbed its handle and gave it a tug. The plane made a loud creaking sound, metal pushing against metal, and the door swung open about five inches, then stopped. Jacob tugged again, putting his weight into it, and got another inch and a half. Then he grabbed the edge of the door with both hands and pulled so hard that the whole plane rocked back and forth, dislodging its shell of snow, revealing the shiny silver metal beneath, but not moving the door at all.
Emboldened by his aggressiveness, I approached the plane more closely. I tried peering in through the windshield but could make nothing out. The glass was spiderwebbed with a tiny, intricate matrix of cracks and frosted over with a thick sheet of ice.
Jacob kept tugging at the door. When he stopped, his breath was coming hard and fast again.
Lou stood a little ways off. He looked like a sentry, with Jacob's rifle cradled in his arms. "It's jammed, I guess," he said. He sounded relieved.
Jacob peered in through the crack he'd made, then pulled his head back.
"Well?" Lou asked.
Jacob shook his head. "Too dark. One of you'll have to go in and check it out." He took off his glasses and wiped at his face with his hand.
"Hank's the smallest," Lou said quickly. "He'll fit the easiest." He winked at Jacob, then grinned toward me.
"I'm smaller than you?"
He patted his little stomach, the beginning of his paunch. "You're thinner. That's what counts."
I looked toward Jacob for help but immediately saw that there'd be none forthcoming. He had a toothy smile on his face, his dimples cutting into his cheeks.
"What do you think, Jacob?" Lou asked.
Jacob started a little laugh but then stopped. "I can't imagine you fitting, Lou," he said seriously. "Not with that gut
of yours." They both turned to look at me, straight-faced.
"Why go in at all?" I asked. "What's the point?"
Lou started to grin. A handful of crows flapped heavily into the air, changing trees. It seemed like the whole flock was watching us.
"Why not just get the dog," I said, "then go into town and report this?"
"You scared, Hank?" Lou asked. He shifted the rifle from one arm to the other.
I watched myself cave in, disgusted by the spectacle. I heard a voice in my mind very clearly analyzing the situation, saying I was acting like a teenager, doing something pointless, even foolish, to prove my courage to these two men, neither of whom I respected. The voice went on and on, reasonable, rational, and I listened to it, agreeing with everything it had to say, while I strode angrily around the plane to its open door.
Jacob stepped back to give me room. I stuck my head inside the doorway, let my eyes adjust to the darkness. It seemed even tinier inside than it had outside. The air felt warm, and humid, too, like in a greenhouse. It gave me an eerie feeling. A thin stream of light entered from the tear in the fuselage and shot across the cabin's darkened interior, like a weak flashlight beam, forming a tiny crescent moon against the opposite wall. The rear of the plane was almost completely dark, but it appeared to be empty, a bare metal floor growing narrower and narrower the farther back it went. Just inside the doorway was a large duffel bag lying on its side. If I'd reached in with my hand, I could've grabbed it and dragged it out.
Toward the front, I could see two seats, gray with the light filtering in through the ice-covered windshield. One of them was empty, but there was a man's body slouched in the other, his head resting against the control panel.
I pulled my head out of the doorway.
"I can see him from here."
Jacob and Lou stared at me. "Is he dead?" Jacob asked.
I shrugged. "We haven't had snow since Tuesday, so he's been out here for at least two days."
"You aren't going to check?" Lou asked.
"Let's just get the dog," I said impatiently. I didn't want to go into the plane. It seemed stupid of them to make me.
"I think we ought to check." Lou grinned.
"Come on, Lou. Cut the crap. He can't be alive."
"Two days isn't that long," Jacob said. "I've heard of people surviving stuff longer than that."
"Especially in the cold," Lou agreed. "It's like keeping food in the refrigerator."
I waited for the wink, but it didn't come.
"Just go in and check him out," Jacob said. "What's the big deal?"
I frowned, feeling trapped. I stuck my head back inside the plane for a second, then pulled it out again. "Can you at least scrape the ice off the windshield?" I asked Jacob.
He gave a deep, theatrical sigh, more for Lou's benefit than mine, but nevertheless shuffled off toward the front of the plane.
I started to squeeze my way in through the doorway. I turned sideways and slipped my head and shoulders inside, but when I got to my chest, the opening seemed suddenly to tighten, gripping me like a hand. I tried to pull back, only to find that my jacket and shirt were snagged. They bunched up under my armpits, exposing the skin above my pants to the cold air.
Jacob's bulk darkened the windshield, and I heard him start to scrape at the ice with his glove. I watched, waiting for it to get lighter, but nothing happened. He started to pound -- dull, heavy thuds that echoed through the plane's fuselage like a heartbeat.
I exhaled as far as possible and lunged forward. The doorway's grip moved from my sternum to just above my navel. I was about to try again, thinking that one more push would do it, that I could get in, examine the dead pilot, and get out as quickly as possible, when I saw a curious thing. The pilot appeared to be moving. His head, resting against the dashboard, seemed to be shaking ever so slightly back and forth.
"Hey," I whispered. "Hey, buddy. You all right?" My voice echoed off the plane's metal walls.
Jacob continued to pound against the glass. Thump. Thump. Thump.
"Hey," I said, louder, slapping the fuselage with my glove.
I heard Lou move closer in the snow behind me.
"What?" he asked.
Jacob's hand went thump, thump, thump.
The pilot's head was motionless, and suddenly I wasn't so sure. I tried to squeeze forward. Jacob stopped pounding.
"Tell him I can't get it off," he yelled.
"He's stuck," Lou said gleefully. "Look at this."
I felt his hands grab me just above the waist. His fingers dug in, a rough attempt at tickling. I kicked out with my right leg, hitting air, and lost my footing in the snow. The doorway's grip held me up. Lou's and Jacob's laughter came filtering inside, muted and far away.
"You do it," Lou said to Jacob.
I was pushing and pulling now, not even sure which way I wanted to go, just trying to get free, my feet digging into the snow outside, the weight of my body rocking the plane, when there was a sudden flash of movement up front.
I couldn't tell what it was at first. There was the sense of the pilot's head being tossed to the side, then something exploding upward, rising and pounding frantically against the inside of the windshield. Not exactly pounding, I realized slowly, but fluttering. It was a bird, a large black crow, like the ones sitting in the apple trees outside.
It came off the windshield and settled on the rear of the pilot's seat. I watched its head dart back and forth. Carefully, noiselessly, I tried to work my way backward out of the doorway. But then the bird was airborne again; it smacked once into the windshield, bounced off, and flew straight at me. I froze at the sight of it, simply watched it come, and only at the very last moment, just before it hit me, pulled my head down into my shoulders.
It struck me in the exact center of my forehead, hard, with what felt like its beak. I heard myself cry out -- a short, sharp, canine sound -- pulled back, then forward, somehow broke free from the doorway, and fell into the plane's interior. I landed on the duffel bag and didn't try to get up. The bird returned toward the front, bounced off the windshield, flew back toward the now open doorway, but veered to the right before reaching it, shooting up toward the jagged little hole in the fuselage. It perched there for a second, then wormed its way through like a rat and disappeared.
I heard Lou laugh. "Holy shit," he said. "A fucking bird. You see that, Jake?"
I touched my forehead. It was burning a little, and my glove came away bloody. I slid off the duffel bag, which was hard and angular, as if it were full of books, and sat down on the floor of the plane. A rectangle of light from the open doorway fell across my legs.
Jacob stuck his head inside, his body blocking the light.
"You see that bird?" he asked. I could tell he was smiling, even though I couldn't make out his face.
"It bit me."
"It bit you?" He didn't seem to believe me. He waited there a moment, then pulled his head away from the door. "The bird bit him," he said to Lou. Lou giggled.
Jacob darkened the doorway again. "You all right?"
I didn't respond. I was angry at both of them, felt that none of this would've happened if they hadn't pressured me into going inside. I moved in a crouch toward the front of the plane.
I could hear Lou's voice, faintly. "You think birds carry rabies or anything?"
Jacob didn't answer him.
The pilot was dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt. He was a small, thin man, young, in his twenties. I came up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder.
"You alive?" I whispered.
His arms hung down at his sides, his fingertips just barely brushing the floor. His hands were swollen, impossibly large, like inflated rubber gloves, their fingers curling slightly inward. His shirt sleeves were rolled up, and I could see the hair on his forearms, dark black against the ghostly whiteness of his skin. I grasped his shoulder and pulled him away from the dashboard. His head fell back heavily against the seat, and I flinched at the sight of it, jerking myse
lf up and banging my own head against the plane's low metal ceiling.
His eyes had been eaten out by the bird. Their dark sockets stared at me, his head rolling a bit to the right on his neck. The flesh around his eyes had been chewed completely away. I could see his cheekbones, white in the dim light, pale and translucent, like plastic. There was a bloody icicle coming out of his nose. It hung all the way down to the base of his chin.
I stepped back, fighting a surge of nausea. Yet even as I did so I felt myself strangely drawn forward. It was something like curiosity, but stronger: I felt an absurd desire to take off my gloves and touch the man's face. It was a powerful, morbid pull, and I had no name for it, but I fought it, taking another step back, then another, and by the time I made my fourth step, the feeling was gone, replaced only by revulsion. The pilot's face stared after me as I retreated toward the doorway. From a distance its expression looked beseeching, mournfully so, like a raccoon's.
"What the fuck're you doing?" Jacob asked. He was still in the doorway.
I didn't answer him. My heart was beating thickly in my temples. I stumbled against the duffel bag, turned and kicked it ahead of me toward the doorway. It was surprisingly heavy, as if it were full of dirt, and its weight brought back my initial wave of nausea.
"What's the matter?" Jacob asked. I shuffled toward him, pushing the bag across the floor. He backed away.
When I got to the door, I set my shoulder against it and -- using my increased leverage -- managed to creak it open another three inches. Jacob and Lou watched me, their faces curious, wavering between amusement and apprehension. The day seemed brighter than it had before, but it was just my eyes. I squeezed the duffel bag through the door, then followed it out into the snow.
"You're bleeding, Hank," Jacob said. He raised his hand to his own forehead, turned toward Lou. "That bird bit him."
Lou scrutinized my forehead. I could feel a little line of blood running down into my left eyebrow. It was cold against my skin.
"It ate out his eyes," I said.
Jacob and Lou stared blankly at me.