by Sam Starbuck
The New Year's party, held in the cafe with all the chairs and tables pushed back, was less formal than the Straw Bear and it really was a time for the adults – food, talking, company with which to welcome another year. There were usually one or two fights, of course, because there was also plenty to drink, but nothing ever came of them and usually being tossed in the snow by the rest of us was good for a quick, sobering cool-off.
That third year in Low Ferry, Lucas's first, Carmen and Ron had apparently gone a little stir-crazy and distracted themselves by decorating. The rafters were hung with all kinds of bizarre streamers and banners, and the windows were covered in glass-paint proclaiming, in messy unprofessional hand, a Happy New Year to all. The extra unused tables and chairs had been stacked in a careful pyramid in one corner before being strung with about a million tree-lights, and there was so much food.
Clearly they hadn't been the only ones who were bored in the deep winter, either. There were roasted chickens, kettles of stew and soup, eight or nine kinds of meat pie, casseroles, one glorious soufflé, breads galore, bean dips and cheese and home-baked crackers, potatoes in every imaginable way, cakes and cookies, ice cream, some unidentifiable fried things...
"Brings a sort of tear to your eye, doesn't it?" Charles asked, as I stood contemplating the food in awe. "Watch the onion casserole, that'll really do it."
"It's not just me, is it? There wasn't this much last year?" I asked.
"Oh, yes there was, you've just forgotten. Come through to the back; that's where the real party is, and a nip will do you good."
Charles and I collected two heaping plates of food and carried them outside, where a dozen other hand-picked guests were drinking in the little loading yard behind the cafe. They swooped down on our plates and took whatever looked good, then pressed a stoneware mug into my hands with the promise of alcohol as soon as they could locate a bottle.
It's a very clear memory, that one: the scavenged chairs and benches in the snow, the uneven light, a crowd of men and women sitting around and talking with their breath freezing in the air as they sipped from their mugs. It was quieter than inside and, while cold, it was a good place to have a drink, smoke a cigarette, and gossip. Someone finally dumped the last of a bottle of whiskey into my mug.
"Last glass! Married by this time next year!" Charles announced. "Come on, Christopher, we all know it's well past time."
"He has his eye on that Friendly woman," someone said.
"Nothing of the kind," I answered cheerfully, knowing that anger would only make them certain of it. "She won't settle and I won't roam. She's much better off finding some – ugh, this is awful," I interrupted myself, having tasted the whiskey in my mug.
"Yes. It was very cheap," agreed Charles gravely. The others laughed. A shadow moved behind someone's shoulder, and Lucas leaned forward into the little circle of light, his face oddly sharp-edged against the dark.
"We've been playing a game with it," he said, smiling at me.
"Hello, Lucas!" I said, pleased to see him. "What game?"
"Favorites!" Paula crowed.
"How do you play that?" I asked.
"What's your favorite thing, Christopher?" Lucas said, by way of an answer. His face was a little flushed from the alcohol; he seemed more relaxed than usual, even if he was hiding behind most of the crowd.
"Reading," I answered him. One of the men nearby snorted with laughter.
"After books," Lucas pressed.
"I don't know. What kind of a game is this?" I asked.
"He hasn't had enough to drink," Charles said, tipping my mug up so that I was forced to either drink or spill the alcohol on my boots.
"I like trains," I said, when I had swallowed and the heat in my stomach subsided a little.
"Trains?" came the demand from all sides.
"Why shouldn't I like trains? You disqualified reading as an answer. In fact, I like reading on trains," I said. "Especially subway trains."
"Never been on a subway," Jacob said thoughtfully, as he opened a new bottle of alcohol. "Noisy, aren't they?"
"Not once you're on them," I objected. They all looked skeptical. "You asked, and I told you."
"Why?" Lucas inquired.
"Why what, why trains?" I asked. Jacob leaned forward and refilled my mug.
"Yes," Lucas said.
"What's wrong with trains? You always know where you're going, and if you go to the wrong place you get off and walk across the platform and you can get on a new train to take you back the way you came. In the city, trains are a straight line between two points. They have maps, and all you have to know is the map. Do you know," I said, sipping from my mug and warming to my captive audience, "Do you know that my entire knowledge of the city is based on El stations? The whole city is just...circles, to me, going outward from train stations. In my head. I know the whole city that way."
"To trains," Charles said, raising his mug.
"Trains and certainty," Lucas agreed.
"I'm starving," I added, and ducked inside again to fill another plate, having gotten almost nothing from the first one. Then I got distracted, of course – it was nice to stop and speak with people, nice to be able to eat and drink and roam a little. When the whole town assembled, things fitted together differently. You could see how people had changed – who'd gotten bald, who'd lost weight, who was seeing each other and who wasn't anymore. Everyone said hello. People talked and sang, danced and ate.
I thought of Lucas, joking about the horrible secrets of small towns, but all I saw were ordinary people, in their everyday clothes, working to get by and dancing in the meantime. Maybe it hadn't been our best year, and maybe some people weren't there who had been the year before, but we did the best we could to look after each other and there'd be time to worry about everything else soon enough. On New Year's Eve, everyone ate well and everyone had big dreams.
At about a quarter to midnight it was getting a little stuffy in the cafe, and I thought some fresh air might do me good before the count-down to the new year. The loading yard was emptying as people came inside, and I passed Lucas as I pushed through to the back. He grinned and handed me the half-full mug he'd been holding.
There certainly didn't seem to be anyone outside when I walked out, leaving the door open a crack behind me. I stood in the darkness and took a sip from the mug, inhaling, enjoying the momentary silence. I almost closed my eyes, but at the last second I caught movement – a shadow near the wall, behind a scrubby little tree covered in snow. I looked closer as my eyes adjusted, and that was when I solved the mystery of the Great Bank Love Triangle. Two-thirds of it, anyway.
Nolan and Michael were standing under the tree, fingers twined together, heads bent very close – kissing in the quiet cold. I gaped for a minute and tried to turn and retreat, to give them their privacy, but of course I chose that minute to slip on a patch of wet snow and tumble backwards, arms flailing, the mug shattering against the wall as it flew out of my fingers.
"Who's there?" Nolan called, as I tried to push myself up on slick ice. There was a hiss from Michael – "shut up!" – and one from Nolan – "Don't be an idiot!" – and then Nolan was emerging from the shadows. When he saw me, flat on my back on the ice, a comical look of panic appeared on his face.
"Aw, Jesus, I think we killed him again," he said, running over to kneel next to me. I gave up trying to push myself to my feet and turned my head.
"I'm not dead, I tripped and fell," I said. "Help me up already."
"Well, thank god for small favors," Michael grunted, crouching on my other side and offering me a hand. I took it and hauled myself up, Nolan supporting my other shoulder and dusting snow off my coat.
"Thanks," I muttered, swiping at the snow on the seat of my pants.
"Are you okay?" Nolan asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine, I was just – " I looked up then, guiltily, and both young men were watching me.
"Glad you're okay," Michael said conversationally. "You can't have seen anyt
hing very clearly before you tripped and fell, huh?"
"Michael," Nolan began warningly, but Michael held up a hand.
"And you wouldn't want to trip and fall again because you were trying to tell someone about anything you did think you'd seen, would you?" he continued.
I stared at him for a minute and then burst into laughter.
"Oh, lord," I said. "Michael, are you threatening me?"
"Apparently not very," he replied, face falling.
"No, it's fine, don't worry," I said, looking between them. Nolan looked worried, but Michael looked terrified. "Boys, honestly. I know I talk a lot, but I know when to keep my mouth shut."
I grinned at Michael and wrapped one hand around the back of his neck, shaking lightly. "I guess you aren't as bothered by the gossip that's out there now as you would be by this, huh?"
"It's nobody's business," Michael said, shrugging out of my grip.
"Relax. I don't care," I answered.
"Lots of people do," Nolan murmured.
"Well, they're fools."
"We're moving to Chicago," Michael blurted. "Soon as I help my dad with the spring crop."
"And there will be fools in Chicago, I promise you," I answered. "Still, you might have a point. Tell you what, come by the shop in a few days. I'll get you some guidebooks," I said. Nolan gave me a strained, grateful smile. "All right?"
Nolan nodded. Michael didn't.
"Michael, all right?" I asked. He narrowed his eyes and glanced at Nolan.
"All right," he said.
"Good. So. Let's go in, it's almost midnight," I said, opening the door and stepping inside. "They're going to think you were dunking me in the snowbank – HEY, WHAT'S THE TIME?" I called across the crowd.
Most of the eyes were on the cafe's single clock – not perhaps the best timepiece in history, but at least one they could all agree on. I looked around for Lucas but didn't see him; after a few seconds I was swept up in counting-down to the New Year and the melee of inappropriate affection that usually follows things like that.
I glanced around and saw Nolan and Michael drifting casually to opposite sides of the room. Young men moving on, moving up – moving to Chicago in the spring, where there was a little more acceptance and a lot more people, and if someone saw you holding hands it wasn't all that likely they'd even know who you were.
It's hard to find a place you fit, sometimes. I felt oddly grateful for mine.
There was the usual ten or fifteen minutes of jubilation, of course, followed by a sort of expectant feeling that nobody quite knew what to do with. I always think that secretly everyone wants to turn to their companions and ask, "What now?" before they make the hesitant decision to leave.
Plenty of people were headed for the hotel, preferring to sleep there rather than risk freezing to death on the walk home or crashing their cars on the road. As excellent as the cold was for sobering people up, there was no point in being reckless.
I helped get some of the more recalcitrant party-goers to the hotel and then turned back towards my shop, waving to others as they left the cafe and exchanging the usual lame jokes – seems like it's been a year since I've seen you and the rest.
When I finally reached my front walk, the cafe was turning out its lights, but the streetlamps were on and the snow almost glowed against the dark wood of my porch. The contrasts made the world seem flat, almost unreal, and the alcohol probably didn't help. I blame it all for not noticing anything unusual sooner.
By the time I saw the animal huddled on my porch step, I was so close to the door that I almost tripped over it. There was a yelp and a scrabble of claws on wood in the dark, and then there was a large furry shadow pressing itself up against the green door in surprise.
"Hey, now," I said unsteadily, pausing on the step and leaning forward, bracing myself on the railing-post. I peered into the darkness and held out my other hand. "What's there?"
I thought for a second it might have been a wolf, but they're pretty rare even in our part of the country. It was too big for a coyote, much too big for a raccoon or a possum. A dog, then – large, with long powerful legs and a wide chest. When he hesitantly nosed forward, the first thing I saw was a pair of luminous eyes set in two dark patches of fur with an almost comical pale stripe between them. A sled dog of some sort, with eyes that arctic blue.
"Hello," I said, turning my hand over for the animal to inspect, but he trotted past it and sat down facing me, nose barely half a foot from mine. He had short, bristling fur that was a uniform pastel gray on his back, blending into white on his legs and belly. The only dark patches were on his muzzle and around his eyes. "Who belongs to you, eh?"
He whined and backed away, staring so pointedly at the door that I laughed and opened it, waving him inside. Not even a dog bred for sledding should be out in the bitter cold of the new year's first night, and his owner was probably already asleep, unaware their dog had slipped away.
I'd left hot embers glowing in the bookshop fireplace and banked them with kindling; it was still warm enough on the lower floor that I shed my coat and hat, watching in amusement as the big, pale-gray dog trotted to the fireplace and threw himself down in front of it.
"Just as well; I don't want dog hair all over my bed," I said to him, leaving my boots next to the door. The upstairs was not quite so warm, but my bed was piled high with blankets and man invented flannel pajamas for nights like that.
I'll tell you a secret, because it's one I thought about a lot that night before I fell asleep. The real reason I like trains – and I could never have made the others understand this – is that they are the last common form of surrender granted to us in an age of self-determination. You can't control where a train goes or how fast it gets there. You can't even talk to the driver, like you can in a taxi. Your last conscious decision is to step on board, and the only decision you can make once you're on is the decision to get off again. Between those two events, you submit completely, and you're free from responsibility.
I wouldn't like to live my life without any choice, and the life I lived in Low Ferry was full of them, but in a small town you do lose a lot as well, like you do on a train. There are some things you just can't do, which is fine – but there are some things that it's dangerous to do, like Nolan and Michael's secret tryst.
Still, once in a while it's nice to have fewer choices, to give up a little bit of the burden. Sometimes I used to dream about the trains in Chicago. That night I did.
When I woke in the morning, at the dawn of the new year, it was several minutes before I thought of the dog downstairs. I had already put water on the stove to heat and cracked two eggs into a frying pan when I remembered my guest. Not wanting to burn the eggs, I finished cooking them before descending to the shop with a plate and a mug of tea, only to find the fire finally burnt out and the dog nowhere to be found.
Now, a full-grown sled dog does not simply vanish when placed in a small country bookstore. There are very few places for a dog of that size to hide, and I knew them all from the times when children had made the attempt. I checked the bathroom, the rear storage room, the cupboards under the counter, and the shadowy, dusty hollow under the stairs. The doors were unlocked but not open, and the windows were all latched.
I stood in the middle of the floor and rubbed my head in thought, eggs and tea forgotten. Finally I stepped into my boots without bothering to lace them, went outside, and stood at the edge of my porch.
There, in the fresh snow that had fallen sometime after midnight, were wide-spaced dog tracks. I glanced back at the door, then slowly stepped down into the snow and touched one of them. The bottom of the paw-print was smooth and hard, and when I tried to scoop up the snow a thin layer of clear, pure ice – like glass – cracked away and crumbled in my palm.