Deep Winter

by Samuel W. Gailey

  I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I wish I could take it back.

  Scott looked over at Skeeter and wanted to speak up about something else that nagged at him—that maybe Danny didn’t do it. Scott didn’t get the chance.

  Skeeter saw it first. He saw someone loping along in the woods. Staggering, really. A big figure stumbling through the brush.

  “On your left,” Skeeter whispered to his brother.

  Scott looked in the direction his brother was motioning and saw someone large and hulking lurching among the trees. They both moved in the same direction with their rifles brought up on the ready. They worked their way through some thick brush, trying their best to make as little noise as possible. When they got within a hundred feet, they saw a large man from the back, partially obscured by low-hanging limbs covered with snow. The man stumbled forward, dropped to the ground, then struggled back to his feet.

  Scott shouldered his rifle, got the target in his scope, right in the middle of the broad shoulders. His finger wrapped around the trigger’s cold steel.

  “I got ’im,” Scott whispered to his brother.

  Danny

  The sun had slid behind the clouds, and the temperature dropped fast. It was spitting snow again, and by the looks of the darkening sky it was going to snow for a while.

  Danny trudged along in the woods but kept sight of the road to his left. He wanted to keep it in view, knowing that the road would bring him back to town. His arms hung loose at his sides. The stock of the gun was cold as ice, but Danny kept it gripped tightly in his fist. Something told him to. His vision had started to blur before it began to snow, but it was even worse now. The sky, the trees, even his own feet were fuzzy shapes. It was like he was staring through a fogged-up window.

  He hurt all over. His fingers and toes were throbbing from frostbite. His head pounding. Every heartbeat sent a shot of pain into his brain. It felt as if his head might split open like an egg dropped onto the floor. He had given up trying to keep his tongue in his mouth. He let it hang out like a panting dog’s on a hot August day. His eyes were heavy. His lids wanted to close and stay closed.

  Danny had never felt so tired. The kind of tired that made your body ache everywhere. Maybe he was dying and this is what it felt like. He had always been scared of dying. Of just going away and never coming back. Of having his body being buried under the ground, where the worms and bugs would get to it. He knew that when he died, according to the churchgoing folks in town, he would see his mama and papa again. That would be nice. They were up there with God, but Danny wasn’t so sure about God. He was supposed to be the one that made everything and brought everybody up to heaven when they died, but nobody Danny knew had ever actually seen heaven or God. And it seemed like everybody who went to church was afraid of dying, too. That just didn’t make sense to Danny. If heaven was so special and God so great, why was everybody afraid of dying?

  Danny knew that if he stopped to rest, he might not get back up again. And Mrs. Bennett needed him. If he didn’t get help, she might die, and maybe she wasn’t ready to go to heaven either. Besides, enough folks had died already because of him, and he didn’t want someone else dying because he was too tired or too scared. Mrs. Bennett was nothing but good and kind to him, and he was determined not to let her down.

  The sky was getting darker. Danny looked up and hoped that he would make it back to town before dark.

  Come this way, Danny.

  Danny stopped and looked deeper into the woods. The blurry outline of the three-legged deer stood in between some trees. Its tail twitched, and Danny was pretty sure she was staring at him.

  “I don’t want to get lost in the woods. The road leads back to town.”

  It’ll take too long that way, Danny. Besides, there’s someone in the woods who can help you.

  “Who?”

  I’ll take you to him.

  “Are you sure?”

  The three-legged deer didn’t answer. She turned and limped deeper into the woods. Danny watched her fuzzy shape disappear behind the trees and wasn’t sure what to do. He looked down at his fist that gripped the rifle—it was white-knuckled from holding it for so long and so tight. He switched hands, then began to follow after the deer.

  Danny sure hoped that the three-legged deer was right.

  It is the right thing, Danny. You know that. Follow the deer. She knows the way.

  For the first time, Danny thought the voice in his head kinda sounded like his own.

  Taggart

  His shirt was pretty well soaked through with sweat, and the wind had him shivering without his jacket. It wasn’t just the cold that had him shaking—his body wanted another fix as well. He kept plodding forward, one step at a time. His legs and feet were ready to give out from under him—he’d put some serious mileage on his body for the last few hours. Taggart stared down at his watch—an old Sector watch that the wife had given him on their tenth wedding anniversary. Almost five o’clock. Seven hours without a drink. He knew. He’d been counting the hours.

  All he could see were trees in every direction. He swatted at a low-hanging tree limb, and a blanket of snow powder shook off and fell onto his face and neck. As the cold touched his skin, he found that he didn’t feel the anger or any form of loathing against the wilderness he stood in anymore. All that hostility got swept away with the wind that just wouldn’t let up.

  Part of him wanted to sit down and rest; the other part of him wanted to keep walking. With every new step, he felt a little more clarity seeping in. He had probably been walking in circles for the last seven hours. Just like his life for the last twenty years—walking in circles. But all this—the lack of sleep, the hours of hiking, and the absence of booze—had brought with it a distorted sense of lucidity.

  The coyote had not only spared his life but had given him something as well. A simple, primitive message. He didn’t want to die. Didn’t want to give up on this life just yet. Maybe it could be fixed. Others had done it before him, and others would do it after.

  He stopped in his tracks as his movement scared up a white-tailed jackrabbit, and the animal bounded up and over drifts of snow and fallen trees with easy grace and little effort. He heard its paws thumping on the snow, and the sound grew softer as the jackrabbit slipped deeper into the trees.

  When he started walking again, his boots got tangled up with each other. He stumbled, almost fell, but caught himself against a tree that was as big around as he was. His body craved rest, his mind some sleep, but if he stopped now, he’d never get himself moving again. Can’t fall asleep out here. He’d end up sleeping through the night and freezing to death.

  Muscles burning and bones aching, Taggart kept forward momentum.

  From all his reading over the years, Taggart knew a little bit about Native American vision quests and Inuit peoples participating in sensory-deprivation rituals—long periods of walking in mountainous areas with no food or water, the body needing some sleep. He knew that he still had booze coursing through his system and that his spirituality paled in comparison to most, but somehow he seemed to be inching his way out from the dark cloud he’d been walking under for far too long.

  If he could somehow find his way out of these woods, he convinced himself that he could find his way out of his addiction.

  Get me out of these woods and I’ll change. I swear I’ll change. Just get me out.

  Scott Knolls

  Scott held his breath, tried to check his heart rate. One eye pressed closed, the other shoved to the scope of the rifle. The figure in the snow moved in the opposite direction, getting smaller but still within range. He adjusted his shot, just slightly. Moved the crosshairs right below the man’s left shoulder blade—a direct path to the heart.

  He heard Skeeter breathing beside him. Smelled the chewing tobacco on his breath.

  Snow dropped down more heavily from the gray sky, dangerou
sly close to obscuring the target.

  “Want me to take the shot?” Skeeter whispered.

  Scott tensed up at the question. His brother didn’t mean for it to sound threatening, but Scott knew he had only a few seconds before he lost his shot. He grunted a no and gripped the rifle a little tighter. His finger tried to ease back the trigger, just like he’d done it a thousand times before—before when he was firing at game.

  “Gonna lose him,” Skeeter whispered again.

  Scott heard the strap of Skeeter’s rifle rattle and knew that his brother was lining up a shot. If he didn’t take the shot, Skeeter would do what he couldn’t. A few inches lay between fatal and nonfatal. Just a few inches of skin separated vital organs from a flesh wound. He didn’t care so much about the ramifications with the law in killing Danny—murder was murder. It was other ramifications he just couldn’t wrap his head around—taking a man down.

  Skeeter’s breath quickened. Scott had only a few seconds to decide.

  His extended arm that clutched the forestock of the rifle dipped down an inch or so, and he squeezed the trigger.

  Taggart

  He heard a pop, then felt a sharp sting chew at his side. The force of impact spun him around like a dancer. Blood sprayed against the perfect white, decorating the snow in a perfect circle. Taggart clutched at the wound, felt the warmth spread from inside him, then sank to his knees in the snow and fell face-first onto the ground. The cold felt strangely refreshing on his skin.

  The sound of running footsteps drew near. Taggart applied pressure to the hole in his side and waited—waited for help to finally arrive.

  Sokowski

  The old bastard had a bunch of liquor after all, and Sokowski found it in the cabinet above the stove. They didn’t drink whiskey, but that was okay. They had a bottle of vodka, one of rum, couple bottles of wine, but Sokowski went straight for the bottle of tequila. Virgin bottle of Jose Cuervo Gold. Still sealed. Sokowski put an end to that.

  He drank nearly a quarter of it while standing in the middle of the kitchen. It tasted pretty sweet going down, but the violent urge to vomit hit him fast. He leaned over and retched out the contents of his stomach onto the kitchen floor in three violent heaves. After he spit out the last of the chunks from his mouth, he decided to drink some milk from the refrigerator. He gulped some of that down to coat his stomach, then tried a few more pulls on the tequila bottle. He waited to see if his stomach would reject it again, but it appeared that the booze would stay down this time.

  The burn in his side from the bullet wound throbbed red hot. It felt like his skin was on fire. Sokowski glanced down at the damage—blood gurgled from the hole in his flesh, dark and thick, and spilled down his shirt and ran halfway down his denim jeans.

  Gotta stop the bleeding some. Stupid fucking Carl.

  Sokowski reached back into the liquor cabinet and grabbed the bottle of vodka. He didn’t want to waste any more tequila. He spun off the cap and poured it onto the gaping wound.

  It stung like a son of a bitch. Like a hundred fucking bee stings. He bent over and clutched at his side, dropping the vodka bottle to the floor, where it popped and shattered. Sokowski took a moment to let the pain ease off. He leaned against the kitchen counter and waited for the tequila to get to his brain—not fast enough—so he reached for the Jose Cuervo and sucked on the bottle again. After an agonizing minute, the pain began to slowly drift away.

  He looked around at the Bennetts’ perfect little kitchen. Glass canisters of flour, sugar, and ground coffee lined up nice and neat on the counter, a toaster polished up like it had never been used, a bread box and a cookie jar. Sokowski stared at the drapes hung over the window above the sink, then at the tablecloth that covered a small kitchen table—they had matching patterns of pheasants in flight with hunters crouched behind a tree, aiming a gun at the birds.

  “Goddamn.”

  Sokowski staggered back into the living room on feet that felt like cinder blocks. The old bitch was gone. If the retard took her with him, they wouldn’t be too hard to find. He wanted to finish this—had to finish it. A few loose ends to deal with first, and then he would hop in his truck and never look back at this shithole of a town. Head up to Canada and start over. The border was about a four-hour drive. He’d be across it and free of this shit before Lester or the cops knew he was even out of town. Sokowski would have no problem smoking with and selling weed to the Canucks—that would be just fine by him.

  He glanced over at Carl’s body and took another pull on the tequila, then spit down on his corpse.

  Stupid asshole.

  The overwhelming urge to shit hit him like a boot to the stomach. He didn’t know where the bathroom was and didn’t really care. He just unbuckled his pants, squatted down, and emptied himself onto the carpet and didn’t bother to wipe. Blood leaked from the puckered hole in his side and rolled down his naked ass and puddled onto the carpet next to his pile of waste.

  Christ. My fingerprints are everywhere. The thought made him laugh out loud, sounding like the caw of a damn crow.

  He stood back up and buckled his pants, then retrieved his rifle. He noticed the old man’s rifle and picked that one up as well. He limped to the front door and peered back at the room one last time.

  “Adios, motherfuckers.”

  And he staggered out of the house.

  Lester

  Lester dreamed that he was having breakfast with Bonnie. She had whipped up a whole stack of buttermilk pancakes with fresh blueberries, a pile of bacon, and homemade hash browns. The house smelled like a taste of heaven. The kitchen looked different but kinda the same. The table and chairs were the same—made of hickory wood from a shop down in Dushore. Same stove and refrigerator. The same cookie jar perched on the edge of the counter that he visited a few times a day. But there were no pictures or calendars of cats. No cat figurines. No cat magnets on the fridge. No four-legged critters winding between his legs, purring and screeching out their high-pitched meow. Not a single cat in the whole goddamned house.

  Lester knew he must be dreaming.

  Bonnie poured him a fresh cup of coffee and smiled down at him. She looked the same but was prettier than ever. Younger, too. She looked like she did when Lester still had a full head of hair.

  He didn’t say anything. Just smiled back at her. Sometimes saying nothing was a whole lot better than saying something that didn’t mean nothing. The sound of children’s laughter came from somewhere outside the house. Lester looked out the kitchen window, and it wasn’t snowing one bit. The sun was shining in all its glory, and it looked to be a beautiful day.

  Bonnie put two more breakfast plates down. She filled two juice glasses with fresh-squeezed OJ—nice and pulpy the way he liked it—and glanced toward the back door. She opened her mouth and called out, but no sound came from her mouth. Her lips moved, and she was definitely saying something, except Lester couldn’t hear anything but the sound of a strong-blowing wind. He hadn’t noticed the steady howl of wind till now.

  Bonnie smiled as the back door swung open, and the kitchen was immediately bathed with bright, intense sunlight. Lester had to shield his eyes from the blinding light and he squinted at two silhouettes of small children framed in the doorway. As the children ran toward him and leaped onto his lap, the wind picked up and stung at his face. Then Lester woke up.

  His eyes fluttered open. The wind was snapping at his face and neck. His back and head felt cold. Above him the sky was a checkerboard of black and white cumulus clouds. He still remembered learning that word, “cumulus,” back in the tenth grade. Always stuck with him. His tenth-grade science teacher, Mr. Salsman, would be proud.

  A major storm front was moving in. Lester stared up at the sky and watched the clouds fold into one another and move along at a snail’s pace as the remnants of his dream still tickled at his brain. He noticed the snow-covered tree limbs that hung above and knew
that he wasn’t dreaming anymore, and he sure wasn’t at home.

  He tried to sit up, but the whole left side of his body felt numb. Lester knew that it wasn’t the cold or frostbite. He knew what it was.

  “Hell.” He rested his head back on the ground again. He stayed there and didn’t panic—wasn’t exactly the panicking type. He needed to figure out how bad his condition was. If he got himself all worked up, it would just make matters that much worse.

  He tried to lift both arms toward the sky. The right side moved up just as his brain had ordered, but the left side went up a little ways, a few inches off the ground, and that was about the extent of it.

  He smacked and licked at his lips to get the feel of them. “All right, Lester, just what are you gonna do now?” It felt mighty strange to talk to himself, especially out loud, but his voice sounded clear and he didn’t slur any. That was a good sign at least.

  Once again he tried to sit up. He hadn’t attempted a sit-up since he was growing the short and curly ones down below his belt buckle in the seventh grade. He managed to get his right hand under him and push himself to a sitting position after a few attempts. It was a long struggle that took well over a minute or two, but he managed. He sat in the snow and tried to catch his breath.

  The forest stood quiet around him. The call of the coonhounds was gone. The wind blew steadily, causing creaks and groans from the trees. Dead brown leaves that stubbornly hung on to branches flapped and rattled like tiny dancers above him. Large snowflakes floated down, ending their long journey from the storm clouds. It was peaceful. So damn peaceful.