Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories

by Sharyn McCrumb

  “You remember Kay? Young blond fellow. Drinking buddy of yours. He’s been gone since midwinter.”

  The bloodshot eyes rolled, and the old man gave a grunt that was more smell than sound. I took it to be a yes.

  “He hitched a child’s sled onto the back of a white sleigh, and it sped away with him. The word around town is that he drowned-only his body hasn’t turned up. Or maybe the wolves got him.” I could taste salt on my tongue. “Not that it matters,” I whispered.

  The old derelict wet his lips, and warmed up his throat with a rheumy cough. I fished a coin out of my pocket and handed it to him. “Get something for that cough,” I muttered, knowing what he would prescribe.

  “I know the white sleigh,” he rasped. “I wish it had been me.”

  “You know it?”

  “Ar-they call her the Snow Queen.” He flashed a gap-toothed smile. “She brings the white powder to town. Ar. Kay would like that. White powder lasts longer than this stuff.” He dug in his overcoat pocket for the nearly empty bottle, and waved it at me. “And it’s the only thing that would take the hurt away. You know about the crack, do you?”

  I shook my head. “I knew Kay was in trouble. I never cared what kind of trouble. If I couldn’t help him, what did it matter?”

  “The crack. That wasn’t the Snow Queen’s doing. They do say it’s mirror glass from heaven. Trolls built a magic mirror that made everything ugly. Took it up into the clouds so that they could distort the whole world at once. Got to laughing so hard they dropped the mirror. Shattered to earth in a million tiny pieces. Crack of the mirror. They do say.”

  “Sounds like my grandmother’s tales,” I said. It was a lot prettier than the truth.

  “They say if the mirror crack gets into your eye, then you see everything as ugly and misshapen. Worse if it gets into your heart. Then your heart freezes, and you don’t feel anything ever at all. From the look of him, I’d say that Kay has got a piece in his eye and his heart. And nothing would make the coldness pass, except what the Snow Queen has-that perfect white powder that makes you dream when you’re awake. He won’t be leaving her, not while there’s snow from her to ease his pain.”

  I hadn’t realized that it was this bad. But maybe, I told myself, he’s just sick, and then maybe he can be cured. Maybe I can get him past the craving for the white powder. I knew that I was going to try. “Where do I find the Snow Queen?” I asked the old man.

  He pointed to a boat tied up at the dock. “Follow the river,” he said. “She could be anywhere that people need dreams or a way to get out of the cold. Give her my love.”

  “You’re better off without her,” I told him. “You’re better off than Kay.”

  There wasn’t much to keep me in town. I had needed an excuse to get out of there for a long time. Too many memories. Too many people who thought they knew me. It took less than a day to tidy things up so that I could leave, and there wasn’t anybody I wanted to say goodbye to. So I left. Looking for Kay was as good a reason as any.

  I spent most of the summer working as a gardener on an estate in the country. The old lady who owned the place was a dear, and she’d wanted me to stay on, but the roses kept reminding me of Kay, and finally one day I told her I had to move on. I had enough money by then to get to the big city, where movies are made. That’s where they sell dreams, I figured. That’s where the Snow Queen would feel at home.

  I got into the city in the early autumn, and since I didn’t know anybody and had no place in particular to go, I just started walking around, looking at all the big houses, and all the flowers on the well-tended lawns. A gardener could always get a job here, I thought. It was always summer. I stopped to talk to one guy in shabby work clothes who was busy weeding a rose bed near the sidewalk.

  “New in town, huh?” He was dark, and he didn’t speak the language very well, but we managed to communicate, part smiles and gestures, and what words we knew in each other’s tongue.

  “I’m looking for a man,” I said.

  He grinned. “That-or a job. Aren’t they all?”

  I shook my head. “Not any man. One in particular, from back home. I think he’s in trouble. I think he has a problem with… um… with snow. Know what I mean?”

  “A lot of that in this town,” said the gardener. By now I was helping him weed the rose bed, so he was more inclined to be chatty. “He hooked on snow-why you bothering?”

  I shrugged. “We go back a-ways, I guess. And he’s-well, he was an okay guy once. Tall, blond hair, good features, and a smile that could melt a glacier. Once upon a time.”

  The gardener narrowed his eyes and looked up at nothing, the way people do when they’re thinking. After a moment he said, “This guy-does he talk like you?”

  “I guess so. We’re Danish. From the same town, even.”

  He looked at me closely. “Danish…” Then he snapped his fingers and grinned. “Girl, I know that fellow you’re looking for! But I got some bad news for you-you ain’t gonna get him back.”

  I wiped rose dirt on my jeans. “I just want to know that he’s all right,” I mumbled.

  “Oh, he’s better than all right. He’s in high cotton. He’s on the road to rich and famous. See, there’s a movie princess in this town, getting ready to shoot the biggest-budget picture anybody’s seen around here in a month of Sundays, and she was looking for a leading man. Not just anybody, mind you. She had to have a fellow who talked as good as he looked. Well, that’s not something easy to find in anybody, male or female. But they had auditions. For days, girl. Every beach bum and pool shark in this town showed up at the gate, ready to take a shot at the part. Most of them talked pretty big to the newspapers. Pretty big to the interviewers. But as soon as they stood beside Miss Movie Princess, and the cameras were rolling, they started sounding like scarecrows. She was about ready to give up, when all of a sudden this guy talks his way past the guards, without even so much as a handwritten résumé. ‘It must be boring to wait in line,’ he told the receptionist, and he smiled at her, and she forgot to call Security. I got a lady friend, works for the Movie Princess, so I get all the news firsthand, you know what I’m saying?”

  I nodded. “Most of it,” I said. “Listen-this guy-was he tall and blond? Regular features?”

  “Oh, he was a hunk, all right. And he talked just like you do.”

  “It’s Kay!” I said. “I know it is. Look, I have to see him.”

  “Well, the thing is, he got more than just the part in the movie. He got the girl, too. So now he’s living up in the mansion with Miss Movie Princess, and my lady friend says it looks like it’s going to be permanent.”

  “I have to know if it’s him,” I said. “Please-he’s like-he’s like my brother.”

  The gardener believed that-more than I did. “All right,” he said. “Let me talk to my lady friend, see what I can do. They’d never let you in the gate, dressed like that, and with no official business to bring you there. But we might be able to get you up the back stairway to see him. I got a key to the servants’ entrance.”

  He took me back to the gardener’s office, and fixed me something to eat. Then I helped him with the bedding plants while we waited for dusk. That evening we went up to the mansion in the hills, in through the back garden, and through the unlocked kitchen door. I just want to see that he’s all right, I kept telling myself. Maybe he’s happy now. Maybe he’s settled down, stopped the drinking. Maybe he’s got his smile back, like in the old days, before it became a sneer. If I see that he’s all right, I can go home, I thought.

  At least, I’d know for sure.

  I didn’t notice much about the house. It was big, and the grounds around it were kept as perfectly as a window box, but it didn’t make me feel anything. I wondered if living in a land without seasons would be as boring as a long dream. I don’t have to stay, I told myself.

  “In there.” My new friend had stopped and shined his flashlight at a white-and-gold door. The bedroom. “You’re on your own fro
m here on out, girl,” he whispered, handing me the light. Soundlessly, he faded back into the darkness of the hallway.

  I waited until his footsteps died away, and then I twisted the doorknob, slowly, as soundlessly as I could. Another minute passed before I eased inside. I could hear the regular breathing of the sleepers in the room. In the moonlight from the open window I could see two large pillars in the center of the room, and on either side of the pillars were white-and-gold water beds in the shape of lilies. I crept closer to one of the beds. Long blond hair streamed across the pillar, but the bare back and shoulders were muscular. Surely it was Kay. I switched on the flashlight, and let the light play over the features of the sleeping man.

  “What the hell!” He sat up, shouting in alarm.

  It wasn’t him.

  The Movie Princess was screaming, too, now, and she had set off the alarm that would bring her security guards into the room. Suddenly everything was noise and lights, like a very bad dream.

  I lost it.

  I sat down on the bed and began to cry, for the hopelessness of it all, and because I was so tired of noise and lights and a world without seasons. The Movie Princess, seeing that I wasn’t a crazed admirer, told her guards to wait outside in the hall, and she and the man asked me what I was looking for. When I heard the blond man speak, I realized that he was from Minnesota. “Close but no fjord, my gardener friend,” I thought. I guess we all sound alike to outsiders.

  I told them about Kay’s disappearance, and about my need to find the Snow Queen, which appalled them, because they were not into that sort of lifestyle, but they agreed that my purpose was noble, since I was trying to save a friend from the clutches of the powder dreams. They gave me money and jewelry to help me on my trip, and the Movie Lady insisted that I put on one of her dresses, and take her wheels, as she called them, to speed me on my way. They didn’t have any advice for me about where to look, but they told me to stay cool. A funny wish, I thought, from people who choose to live where it is always hotter than copper pennies on a woodstove.

  I sped away through the night, not really knowing where I was going, and wondering who to ask about the Snow Queen. I found myself going down streets that were darker and narrower, until I no longer knew which way I was going and which way I had come. I came to a stop to think about what to do next-and then the decision was no longer mine to make.

  A shouting, screaming mob of people surrounded me, and hauled me out of the vehicle.

  “She’s wearing gold!” one of them shouted.

  A dozen hands pawed at my throat and my wrists. I struggled to throw a punch, to kick at my attackers, but I was powerless in the grip of the mob. They pinned my arms behind my back and stuffed a dirty handkerchief in my mouth. I watched them dismantle the wheels of the Movie Princess until it was an unrecognizable hulk in the dark alley. The crowd began fighting among themselves for my money and for the jewelry the Princess had given me. I figured I wasn’t going to live much longer, but nobody would come looking for me.

  A large woman ambled over to me and peered into my face. “She like a little fat lamb,” the woman said. I stared at the stubble beneath her chin, hoping to distract myself from her dead eyes. “She look good enough to eat-don’tcha, baby?” She pulled a hunting knife from the folds of her skirt and began running her finger along the blade.

  I struggled harder to break free from my captors but it was no use. All I managed to do was spit out the gag. I swore in Danish: “Pis og lort!”

  “Iddn’t she cute? She just say ‘Peace, O Lord!’-Never had anybody pray before.”

  I didn’t give her a Danish lesson. Let her think I was praying. Maybe it would help. She edged closer to me, the knife wavering at my throat. I had closed my eyes, wondering if I should have chosen prayer, when suddenly the fat woman drew back and screamed.

  I opened my eyes and saw that a small brown girl had jumped on the woman’s back and was biting her ear. The woman began to swing around, waving the knife, and swearing. “Get down, you devil of a child! What you want to do that for?”

  “Give her to me!” said the girl. “I want her. She can give me her fancy clothes and her rings, and she can sleep with me in my bed!”

  The men began to laugh and nudge each other. The fat woman shook her head, but her daughter bit her ear again, and she screamed, and everyone laughed even harder. “She’s playing with her cub!” somebody said.

  The small brown girl got her way. They bundled us into her set of wheels, and we took off through a maze of streets, all neon and no stars. The girl was about my height, but stronger, with nut-brown skin, big dark eyes, and white wolf teeth. “She won’t kill you as long as I want you!” she told me. “Are you a movie princess?”

  “No. I’m looking for somebody.”

  The dark girl cocked her head. “You lookin’ for somebody? Down here? At this time of night? Girl, you were lookin’ for Trouble, and you sure enough found him. You ain’t goin’ nowhere, but at least you’re safe with me. I won’t let nobody hurt you. And if I get mad at you, why I’ll just kill you myself. So you don’t have to worry about none of the rest of them. You want a drink?”

  We stopped at the curb in front of a ruined building. Some of the windows were boarded up, and some had the glass smashed from the frames, and birds flew in and out of the dark rooms. A sign on the double front doors said CONDEMNED, which was true enough, I thought. This was the place the gang called home. As they marched me into the building, lean snarling dogs clustered around us, but they did not bark. One looked up at me and growled in his throat.

  “You will sleep with me and my little pets tonight,” said the brown girl, patting the snarling dog. We went inside the derelict building. The gang had built a campfire on the marble floor of the entrance hall, and they were cooking their evening meal. I was given something greasy on a sort of pancake, and when I had eaten as much of it as I could, I was led upstairs and through a dark hall to the girl’s room. There was no furniture in the room, only a sleeping bag on the floor, and some straw. Holes had been punched in the walls of the room, and the windows were empty squares looking down on the lights of the city. Pigeons milled around on the floor, occasionally rising to sail out the glassless window, then drifting back in on the next puff of breeze.

  “These all belong to me,” said the girl. She reached out and grabbed a waddling pigeon from the floor, and thrust it into my face. “Kiss it.”

  I pulled away, and worked on the rope binding my hands.

  “The pigeons live in the hole in the wall,” she said, smoothing the bird’s feathers. “They come back at night. But I got to keep old Rudy tied up, or he’d run off for sure, wouldn’t you, Rudy?” She opened the connecting door to another empty room. A frightened boy shied away from her as she approached him, but he couldn’t go far because he was chained to the floor by a copper ring encircling his neck. His face and ragged clothes were caked with dirt. The dark girl drew her knife. “Rudy’s a special pet. I’m saving him. Every night I got to tickle him a little with my blade just to remind him what would happen if he tried to run.” She passed the knife gently across the boy’s throat. He struggled and kicked at her, but she laughed and turned away.

  “Are you going to sleep with that knife?” I asked her as she climbed into the sleeping bag.

  “I always sleep with the knife,” she said. “You never know what’s going to happen-do you, sunshine? Now why don’t you tell me a bedtime story? Tell me what you were doing out here all by yourself with no more protection than a pigeon got?”

  “If I tell you, will you untie me then?”

  She shook her head. “Make it good, and maybe I’ll untie you tomorrow.”

  I started telling her about Kay, and how he had hitched his sled to the sleigh of the Snow Queen. The dark girl laughed, and said in a sleepy voice, “Boy strung out on the powder. Sure is. I heard about buying a one-way ticket on an airline made of snow. Old song. Never heard it called hitching a ride onto a sleigh before. Guess
that’s what they mean by cul-tu-ral di-ver-si-ty.” Her voice trailed off into a slur of sounds. Soon her breathing became slow and even, and I knew she was asleep.

  “I’ve seen her,” said a soft voice in the darkness.

  It was the boy. I heard the rattle of his chain as he edged closer.

  “You can talk,” I said. Somehow I had thought he wasn’t quite right in the head, I guess. But he sounded okay-just scared to be talking with his tormentor so near.

  “Yeah, I can talk. I been around. After I ran away from home, I lived on the street for a while-until they got me and brought me here-I used to see her-the one you call the Snow Queen. She’d ride by every now and again, and there was always a good supply of that white powder on the street after she’d been around. Oh, yeah, the Snow Queen. I know her, for sure.”

  “But do you know where to find her?”

  “She got a place up in the hills. Couple of hours from here, where it’s so high up it stays cold. She likes the cold. Big white showplace in the mountains, all by itself. I never been there, but I heard talk. I could find it.”

  “I wish I could let you try.” I eased out of the sleeping bag and leaned back against the wall, listening to the pigeons cooing in the darkness, but I didn’t sleep. I thought about Kay.

  The next morning the dark girl crawled out of the sleeping bag. “I dreamed about that guy you talked about,” she said. “Dreamed he was sitting on ice somewhere, trying to spell some big word with a bunch of crooked pieces of glass. Kept trying and trying to spell that word, and he couldn’t do it. You believe in message dreams? I do. He’s in a bad way, all right. Yes, he surely is that.”