Dark in there … and it stayed that way, because when I flipped the light switch nothing happened. Electricity must have been turned off for the winter. I fumbled out of my damp, smelly wrappings, dried myself with a towel hanging from one of the racks. Kept rubbing my body until the skin began to prickle. Then I encased myself in the dry blanket. But still tremors racked me, set my teeth to clacking like old bones being shaken in a box.
It wasn’t until I started to put on the slipper-socks that I realized two toes on my left foot had no feeling. Neither did the tip of the little finger on my left hand. Frostbite? I hurried into the bedroom, over to the window, and opened one of the shutters partway to let in some light. Tiny dead-white patches on the finger and both toes, each surrounded by painful reddened areas. Fine, great. I seemed to remember that the best thing for frostbite was to soak the affected parts in hot water. That sent me back into the bathroom. But when I twisted the hot water tap, not a drop came out of it. The cold water tap was just as dry. The owners must have shut the water off for the winter too.
Was the propane stove in the kitchen hooked up? If so I could melt a pan full of snow, get hot water that way. But it would mean getting dressed, going out in the storm again to collect the snow, and I just wasn’t up to that. I was afraid to reexpose myself to that freezing cold.
I opened the medicine cabinet above the sink, pawed through its contents looking for burn ointment. There wasn’t any, and it was just as well, because now I remembered that you weren’t supposed to put that kind of stuff on frostbite. Keep the bitten areas warm, that was the next best thing to soaking in hot water. The cabinet did yield two other items I needed, though: a bottle of aspirin and a bottle of Dristan cold capsules.
I pulled on the slipper-socks. In the bedroom I rummaged through bureau drawers looking for a pair of gloves that would fit me. Didn’t find any there, but there were some old fur-lined ones in a drawer inside the wardrobe. The glove fit snugly on my left hand but not so snugly that I couldn’t bend the fingers.
I glanced over at the nightstand, where I’d set the bottles of aspirin and cold capsules. I couldn’t swallow any of the medicine dry; even chewed up it would lodge against the fiery constriction in my throat. Maybe there was something to drink in the main room or in the kitchen … preferably something alcoholic. I hated the taste of whiskey, thanks to my old man, but two or three stiff jolts would help warm me. And whiskey was also good for frostbite, because it dilated the blood vessels.
Out to the main room—walking better now, the left leg responding stiffly. No wet bar or liquor cabinet or wheeled bar cart; I even lifted up some of the dust covers to make sure. A tall, shallow redwood cabinet on one wall caught my eye, and not because I thought there might be liquor in it. I moved over to tug at its doors. Locked. Check it later, tomorrow. No time for that kind of work now.
The kitchen again. The cold back there, the wind and random flakes skirling in through the broken window and along the areaway, raised goosebumps on my skin, set up a fresh series of tremors. I drew on the right glove, then made a rapid search of cupboards, the standing cabinet, the refrigerator. Nothing to drink in any of them. I shuffled into the larder, probed among a thin supply of cans and cartons and jars. On a shelf near the bottom, my hand closed around a bottle with a familiar shape . . wine? I took it out to where I could see it more clearly. Wine, all right—a heavy Sonoma County red. Not as good as whiskey but it would have to do.
I got the foil wrapping off the neck. Screw top. Good. I took a tumbler from one of the cupboards, transported it and the wine to the bedroom. Poured the glass full, choked down a third of it with four aspirin and four Dristan capsules, drank the rest in quick little gulps. The heat of it spread immediately, took away some of the chill and eased the trembling. The alcohol went straight to my head: Within seconds I was woozy and I had to sit on the bed.
Lie down, I thought. You’re dead on your feet, it won’t be long before you pass out.
I got up long enough to toss sheets, pillows, other blankets from the wardrobe to the bed, then crawled under the pile, still wearing the slipper-socks and the gloves. Poured wine, drank it, then tugged sheets and blankets around and under me until I was completely covered, wrapped up like a bug in a cocoon. Pretty soon I didn’t feel the cold anymore. The last of the chill gradually went away and then the shaking quit altogether. And at last the warmth and the wine and the medicine combined with exhaustion to drag me down toward unconsciousness.
I didn’t fight it; I was safe enough here. The snowfall would have obliterated most of my tracks by now, and without them to make somebody curious, no one but the owners would have any reason to come here; and why would they show up in the middle of a near blizzard? Sleep was what I needed most right now—the rest of today and tonight, a dozen hours at least. With that much rest, with the self-doctoring I had done and would keep doing, I should be well enough to travel again tomorrow morning….
* * *
The Third Day
* * *
I didn’t go anywhere in the morning. Or at any time during that day. I was not even able to get out of bed for more than a couple of minutes until late afternoon, almost twenty-four hours after I first lay down.
The first time I woke up, it was pitch dark outside and I was sweaty, feverish, so weak and achy that I could barely lift up to pour more wine, shake out more aspirin and cold capsules; and swallowing was a torment. The second time I woke up, morning light had seeped in through the window shutters and I felt marginally better: still sweaty and feverish, with a headache from the wine, but my throat was less sore and I wasn’t quite as weak or stiff. I got up to use the toilet, and thought about staying up, getting dressed, but I didn’t try to do it. The storm had blown itself out during the night, and the sun had put in an appearance; but it was still cold and windy. Going out into that wind and wading through the snowdrifts in my condition would have been suicidal. So I took more medicine, with just enough wine to wash it down, and rewrapped myself in the blankets and slept again, fitfully and with jumbled dreams. And when I woke up the third time I was drenched in sweat, the headache was gone, there was that broken-fever feel in my body when I moved, and I was wolf-hungry.
Yesterday’s battle with the elements hadn’t damaged my watch; the time was 3:35. I lay there for a minute or so, listening to the wind beat at the cabin walls, watching my breath come out in round white puffs. Then I sat up, took the glove off my left hand to examine the little finger. The tiny patch of frostbite was still there but it hadn’t spread and the skin around it looked less inflamed; and when I touched the tip I had feeling in it again. I put the glove back on, drew the slipper-sock off my left foot. The two frostbitten toes looked better, too, though the top edge of one was still numb.
I swallowed two more aspirin and two more Dristan with the last of the wine. Swung out of bed, stood up on legs that creaked and ached dully but seemed to work well enough. The wardrobe provided a thin turtleneck sweater, the lumberman’s shirt, and a pair of faded and patched Levi’s. Tight fit on all of them, but not so tight that my movements were restricted.
My own clothes, the ones I had worn for more than three months, were bunched up on the floor where I’d dropped them. I remembered the journal pages and bent to the overcoat, reached a hand into the pocket. They were still there, damp and crumpled. I pulled them out, saw that the writing was still legible, if a little smeary, and spread them out individually on the floor to dry. The only other thing I wanted from those clothes was my wallet and keys. He’d let me keep those, and why not? He’d expected to bury them along with my corpse. I had no idea how much money the wallet contained, so I counted it. Sixty-nine dollars. Not much, but enough to get me by if I was careful. I ought to be able to use my credit cards for most things I would need, without anyone recognizing my name. My disappearance had likely been publicized statewide, because of its bizarre nature, but there wouldn’t have been any media mention for at least a couple of months, and people have sh
ort memories.
I set the wallet on the bureau, threw a blanket around my shoulders for added warmth, and went out into the kitchen. The wind wasn’t as sharp today, blowing in along the areaway, and it wasn’t bringing in any snow. But it had brought in plenty during the past twenty-four hours: There was a long white carpet on most of the areaway floor and halfway across the kitchen.
The propane stove wasn’t hooked up, and there was no way to hook it up; it didn’t contain a tank, nor was there a tank in the larder or anywhere else that I looked. Cold food, then. The larder yielded two cans of sardines, a can of mixed vegetables, another of peaches, and a second bottle of red wine. I found a can opener in one of the drawers, took it and the other stuff into the bedroom, and sat on the bed to fill the hole in my belly.
When I was done I opened the shutters over the bathroom window to let some light in there. The cabin had been virtually invisible from the road, so there didn’t seem to be any risk in that. It took me a while—two minutes or so—to work up enough courage to face myself in the mirror, but it had to be done and so I did it.
Christ! Wild tangle of beard and hair, both gone grayer than I remembered, almost white in spots; unhealthy grayish pallor, sunken eyes with things shining in them that I didn’t want to see, refused to focus on. The whole of the face had a partially collapsed aspect from all the weight I’d lost, as if some of the skull structure itself had eroded away. It struck me that I could reach up and take a handful of my features, bunch them up in my fingers the way you can grasp and bunch up an animal’s fur.
I clutched at the sink, staring at the face in the glass, and the hate welled up in me until I was bloated with it. I had to turn away before long. I felt that if I didn’t turn away I would continue to swell until the hate burst out of me like pus out of an overripe boil.
I stood with my back to the glass until I had myself under control again, my emotions screwed down under a tight lid. Then I opened the medicine cabinet and took out the cuticle scissors and safety razor I had seen in there yesterday. I made myself look in the mirror again—at the beard and hair this time, only those. I couldn’t leave here with either one as wild as it was. And because it would be painful to try to do a complete shave without water, my only choice with the beard was to trim it to a respectable size and shape. Keeping the facial hair was probably a good idea anyway. Combined with how leaned down I was, it made an effective disguise. For all I knew a disguise would be beneficial when I went a-hunting.
The beard trim took me ten minutes. I spent another couple scraping off edge-stubble with the razor to even it out. There was a comb in the wardrobe, and I used that to work the snarls out of my hair. Then I trimmed it as best I could. There was nothing I could do about its filthiness, except to cover my head with a cap or hat when I left here. There had to be some kind of headgear in the cabin.
When I was finished I looked … what? Less frightening, less like a man who had suffered through ninety days of hell. Reasonably normal as long as you didn’t look closely at the eyes. But there was nothing I could do about them, either, not externally.
The afternoon light was beginning to thin and fade. I closed the shutters against a battalion of shadows creeping among the white-clad trees outside. My legs had begun to ache again, and the scratchiness was back in my throat, and I was starting to feel the cold through all the things I wore. Almost time to get back into bed, drink a little more wine, sleep for another few hours. But not quite yet. There was still something I wanted to do first.
Among the utensils in one of the kitchen drawers was a big, thick-bladed butcher knife; I got that and took it into the main room, to the redwood cabinet I had noticed yesterday. The lock on the cabinet doors was the kind you could loid with a credit card. Using the knife I had it sprung and the doors open in fifteen seconds. Gun cabinet, just as I had thought. Enough rack space for four rifles or shotguns, but the only weapon of that type it contained was a Kodiak bolt-action center-fire rifle. On the shelf at the bottom were three boxes of ammunition, two for the rifle and one for a .22 handgun. The piece that the .22 cartridges fitted was on the shelf too, wrapped in chamois cloth: a High-Standard Sentinel revolver, short-barreled, lightweight, with a nine-round cylinder capacity. Not much of a weapon, really, except at close range—and even then it wouldn’t have much stopping power. I broke it open, spun the empty cylinder, checked the sights and the hammer and trigger action, peered inside the barrel. At least it was clean and seemed to be in smooth working order.
I hesitated for a moment, with the gun balanced in the palm of my hand. But only for a moment. I had to have a weapon and this one was available—and deadly enough. What difference did it make if I added the theft of a handgun to the theft of food and clothing, to breaking and entering and unlawful occupation of a premises? There had been a time, not so very long ago, when any sort of illegal activity had gone against my grain. But it didn’t seem to matter much now. Principles, ethics, were for men whose lives had not been turned upside down, who had not spent three months chained to the wall of a mountain cabin.
I took the revolver and the box of cartridges into the bedroom, and loaded each chamber before I undressed and got back into bed. The thought of the .22 there on the nightstand, loaded, ready, waiting, was another kind of medicine to help me sleep and make me well again.
* * *
The Fourth Day
* * *
MORNING
It was a few minutes past nine when I finished writing the note, the last thing I had to do before leaving.
I anchored it down on the kitchen table with a can of creamed corn, so it wouldn’t blow off and maybe get overlooked. Six lines written on a torn-off piece of paper sack with a marking pen I’d found, addressed to the A-frame’s owners, Tom and Elsie Carder, whose names and Stockton address I’d gotten from an old letter in the pocket of a woman’s Windbreaker. Six lines that apologized anonymously for breaking in, for the damage I’d done and the things I’d taken; that promised I would make restitution before the end of the summer. Six lines that meant what they said.
I wrote them because I had been wrong yesterday, when I’d said to myself that breaking the law no longer mattered to me, that principles and ethics were for men whose lives had not been turned upside down. The truth was, I hadn’t lost any of my respect for the law, nor any of the principles by which I had always lived. The ordeal I had been through hadn’t done that to me, and what I intended to do in the name of justice wouldn’t do it to me either. There was a fine line here, such a fine line: You could kill someone who had wronged you terribly, you could compromise your principles that much and still be able to live with yourself; but if you compromised them completely, if you threw all your beliefs and ideals out the window, then you also threw out your humanity and you were no better than the man who had wronged you or all the outlaws you had done battle with over the years.
This understanding came to me earlier today, when I gathered up the journal pages and my eye fell on one of those I’d written about my old man: … vowing to myself that I would not be like my old man, I would not, I would not drink whiskey and I would not steal and cheat … I’m reasonably honest, I don’t willingly inflict pain on those I care about or on any decent human being. Whatever else I am, whatever my shortcomings, I am not my old man’s son.
And I’m not. The words gave me a jolt for that reason. I will soon take the law into my own hands, yes; I believe I have a right to do that under the circumstances. But at the same time I still do not believe in stealing and cheating and willingly inflicting pain on anyone except a mortal enemy, and I never will, and I must never do any of those things except under extreme duress and then only if I’m prepared to pay the price.
I am not my old man’s son.
I went down the areaway, out through the rear doors onto the snow-crusted platform porch. The sky was mostly clear today, mottled here and there with pale puffs and streaks of cloud, and the wind was little more than a murmur. Sunlight glitt
ered off the snow surfaces, made a prism of an icicle hanging from one of the pitched eaves. The temperature had warmed considerably, but the air still had a wintry bite. I had bundled myself up like a child from head to foot: woolen cap pulled down over my ears, woolen muffler, the fur-lined gloves, turtleneck sweater and lumberman’s shirt and faded Levi’s, a padded bush jacket that came down to thigh level, three pairs of socks, and a pair of heavy, high-top hiking boots. My wallet and the journal pages were in pants pockets; the .22 Sentinel revolver was in the zippered right pocket of the bush jacket.
I still wasn’t feeling all that well, but I thought I could travel all right as long as I didn’t tumble into any more snowbanks and the weather stayed clear. I had spent too many days cooped up inside the cabin walls to want to endure another one here. I needed movement, I needed to get out of these mountains and back to the kind of environment I understood. I needed to begin the hunt.
Getting through the snowpack from the porch to the woods was slow, hard work. Once I was in among the trees, though, the drifts weren’t as deep and I could make better time. Even so, it took me twenty minutes to reach the road, angling away from the A-frame so I could come out of the trees where they made a thick border close to the road. That way my tracks would be less conspicuous.
A snowplow crew hadn’t been along here recently; there were a couple of inches of slushy, tire-rutted snow on the road surface. I managed to jump out into one of the near ruts and stayed in one or another as I set off downhill, slapping clinging particles of snow off my pants and jacket. Anyone who cared to look closely could see where I’d come from, but maybe nobody would care. In any case, if I encountered anybody I had a story worked out to explain what I was doing tramping around this wilderness on foot.
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