Hans.
The bastard. I’d have killed him.
He ain’t here, Hans. How could he be? The kid didn’t see him here, he saw him in the kitchen.
Hans didn’t seem to be listening.
Jorge was wrong. He ain’t here at all. He sure ain’t here. He couldn’t be.
Hans grabbed up the shovel like he was going to swing it and jumped up. He looked at me so awful I forgot how indifferent I was.
We got to think of what to do, Pa said. The tunnel won’t work.
Hans didn’t look at Pa. He would only look at me.
We can go home, Pa said. We can go home or we can chance crossing behind the bank.
Hans slowly put the shovel down. He started dragging up the narrow track to the barn.
Let’s go home, Hans, I said. Come on, let’s go home.
I can’t go home, he said in a low flat voice as he passed us.
Pa sighed and I felt like I was dead.
Part Three
I
Pedersen’s horse was in the barn. Pa kept her quiet. He rubbed his hand along her flank. He laid his head upon her neck and whispered in her ear. She shook herself and nickered. Big Hans opened the door a crack and peeked out. He motioned to Pa to hush the horse but Pa was in the stall. I asked Hans if he saw anything and Hans shook his head. I warned Pa about the bucket. He had the horse settled down. There was something that looked like sponges in the bucket. If they was sponges, they was hard. Hans turned from the door to rub his eyes. He leaned back against the wall.
Then Pa came and looked out the crack.
Don’t look like anybody’s to home.
Big Hans had the hiccups. Under his breath he swore and hiccuped.
Pa grunted.
Now the horse was quiet and we were breathing careful and if the wind had picked up we couldn’t hear it or any snow it drove. It was warmer in the barn and the little light there was was soft on hay and wood. We were safe from the sun and it felt good to use the eyes on quiet tools and leather. I leaned like Hans against the wall and put my gun in my belt. It felt good to have emptied that hand. My face burned and I was very drowsy. I could dig a hole in the hay. Even if there were rats, I would sleep with them in it. Everything was still in the barn. Tools and harness hung from the walls, and pails and bags and burlap rested on the floor. Nothing shifted in the straw or moved in hay. The horse stood easy. And Hans and I rested up against the wall, Hans sucking in his breath and holding it, and we waited for Pa, who didn’t make a sound. Only the line of sun that snuck under him and lay along the floor and came up white and dangerous to the pail seemed a living thing.
Don’t look like it, Pa said finally. Never can tell.
Now who will go, I thought. It isn’t far. Then it’ll be over. It’s just across the yard. It isn’t any farther than the walk behind the drift. There’s only windows watching. If he’s been, he’s gone, and nothing’s there to hurt.
He’s gone.
Maybe, Jorge. But if he came on that brown horse you stumbled on, why didn’t he take this mare of Pedersen’s when he left?
Jesus, Hans whispered. He’s here.
Could be in the barn, we’d never see him.
Hans hiccuped. Pa laughed softly.
Damn you, said Big Hans.
Thought I’d rid you of them hics.
Let me look, I said.
He must be gone, I thought. It’s such a little way. He must be gone. He never came. It isn’t far but who will go across? I saw the house by squinting hard. The nearer part, the dining room, came toward us. The porch was on the left and farther off. You could cross to the nearer wall and under the windows edge around. He might see you from the porch window. But he’d gone. Yet I didn’t want to go across that little winded space of snow to find it out.
I wished Big Hans would stop. I was counting the spaces. It was comfortable behind my back except for that. There was a long silence while he held his breath and afterwards we waited.
The wind was rising by the snowman. There were long blue shadows by the snowman now. The eastern sky was clear. Snow sifted slowly to the porch past the snowman. An icicle hung from the nose of the pump. There were no tracks anywhere. I asked did they see the snowman and I heard Pa grunt. Snow went waist-high to the snowman. The wind had blown from his face his eyes. A silent chimney was an empty house.
There ain’t nobody there, I said.
Hans had hiccups again so I ran out.
I ran to the dining room wall and put my back flat against it, pushing hard. Now I saw clouds in the western sky. The wind was rising. It was okay for Hans and Pa to come. I would walk around the corner. I would walk around the wall. The porch was there. The snowman was alone beside it.
All clear, I shouted, walking easily away.
Pa came carefully from the barn with his arms around his gun. He walked slow to be brave but I was standing in the open and I smiled.
Pa sat hugging his knees as I heard the gun, and Hans screamed. Pa’s gun stood up. I backed against the house. My god, I thought, he’s real.
I want a drink.
I held the house. The snow’d been driven up against it.
I want a drink. He motioned with his hand to me.
Shut up. Shut up. I shook my head. Shut up. Shut up and die, I thought.
I want a drink, I’m dry, Pa said.
Pa bumped when I heard the gun again. He seemed to point his hand at me. My fingers slipped along the boards. I tried to dig them in but my back slipped down. Hopelessly I closed my eyes. I knew I’d hear the gun again though rabbits don’t. Silently he’d come. My back slipped. Rabbits, though, are hard to hit the way they jump around. But prairie dogs, like pa, they sit. I felt snowflakes against my face, crumbling as they struck. He’d shoot me, by god. Was pa’s head tipped? Don’t look. I felt snowflakes falling softly against my face, breaking. The glare was painful, closing the slit in my eyes. That crack in pa’s face must be awful dry. Don’t look. Yes… the wind was rising… faster flakes.
2
When I was so cold I didn’t care I crawled to the south side of the house and broke a casement window with the gun I had forgot I had and climbed down into the basement ripping my jacket on the glass. My ankles hurt so I huddled there in the dark corner places and in the cold moldy places by boxes. Immediately I went to sleep.
I thought it was right away I woke though the light through the window was red. He put them down the cellar, I remembered. But I stayed where I was, so cold I seemed apart from myself, and wondered if everything had been working to get me in this cellar as a trade for the kid he’d missed. Well, he was sudden. The Pedersen kid — maybe he’d been a message of some sort. No, I liked better the idea that we’d been prisoners exchanged. I was back in my own country. No, it was more like I’d been given a country. A new blank land. More and more, while we’d been coming, I’d been slipping out of myself, pushed out by the cold maybe. Anyway I had a queer head, sear-eyed and bleary, everywhere ribboned. Well, he was quick and quiet. The rabbit simply stumbled. Tomatoes were unfeeling when they froze. I thought of the softness of the tunnel, the mark of the blade in the snow. Suppose the snow was a hundred feet deep. Down and down. A blue-white cave, the blue darkening. Then tunnels off of it like the branches of trees. And fine rooms. Was it February by now? I remembered a movie where the months had blown from the calendar like leaves. Girls in red peek-a-boo BVDs were skiing out of sight. Silence of the tunnel. In and in. Stairs. Wide tall stairs. And balconies. Windows of ice and sweet green light. Ah. There would still be snow in February. Here I go off of the barn, the runners hissing. I am tilting dangerously but I coast on anyway. Now to the trough, the swift snow trough, and the Pedersen kid floating chest down. They were all drowned in the snow now, weren’t they? Well more or less, weren’t they? The kid for killing his family. But what about me? Must freeze. But I would leave ahead of that, that was the nice thing, I was already going. Yes. Funny. I was something to run my hands over, feeling for its hurts, like there were worn places in leather, rust and rot in screws and boards I had to find, and the places were hard to reach and the fingers in my gloves were stiff and their ends were sore. My nose was running. Mostly interesting. Funny. There was a cramp in my leg that must have made me wake. Distantly I felt the soft points of my shoulders in my jacket, the heavy line of my cap around my forehead, and on the hard floor my harder feet, and to my chest my hugged-tight knees. I felt them but I felt them differently… like the pressure of a bolt through steel or the cinch of leather harness or the squeeze of wood by wood in floors… like the twist and pinch, the painful yield of tender tight together wheels, and swollen bars, and in deep winter springs.