I couldn’t see the furnace but it was dead. Its coals were cold, I knew. The broken window held a rainbow and put a colored pattern on the floor. Once the wind ran through it and a snowflake turned. The stairs went into darkness. If a crack of light came down the steps, I guessed I had to shoot. I fumbled for my gun. Then I noticed the fruit cellar and the closed door where the Pedersens were.
Would they be dead already? Sure they’d be. Everybody was but me. More or less. Big Hans, of course, wasn’t really, unless the fellow had caught up with him, howling and running. But Big Hans had gone away a coward. I knew that. It was almost better he was alive and the snow had him. I didn’t have his magazines but I remembered how they looked, puffed in their bras.
The door was wood with a wooden bar. I slipped the bar off easily but the door itself was stuck. It shouldn’t have stuck but it was stuck — stuck at the top. I tried to see the top by standing on tiptoe, but I couldn’t bend my toes well and kept toppling to the side. Got no business sticking, I thought. There’s no reason for that. I pulled again, very hard. A chip fell as it shuddered open. Wedged. Why? It had a bar. It was even darker in the fruit cellar and the air had a musty earthen smell.
Maybe they were curled up like the kid was when he dropped. Maybe they had frost on their clothes, and stiff hair. What color would their noses be? Would I dare to tweak them? Say. If the old lady was dead I’d peek at her crotch. I wasn’t any Hans to rub them. Big Hans had run. The snow had him. There wasn’t any kettle, any stove, down here. Before you did a thing like that, you’d want to be sure. I thought of how the sponges in the bucket had got hard.
I went back behind the boxes and hid and watched the stairs. The chip was orange in the pattern of light. He’d heard me when I broke the glass or when the door shook free or when the wedge fell down. He was waiting behind the door at the top of the stairs. All I had to do was come up. He was waiting. All this time. He waited while we stood in the barn. He waited for pa with his arms full of gun to come out. He took no chances and he waited.
I knew I couldn’t wait. I knew I’d have to try to get back out. There he’d be waiting too. I’d sit slowly in the snow like pa. That’d be a shame, a special shame after all I’d gone through, because I was on the edge of something wonderful, I felt it trembling in me strangely, in the part of me that flew high and calmly looked down on my stiff heap of clothing. Oh what pa’d forgot. We could have used the shovel. I’d have found the bottle with it. With it we’d have gone on home. By the stove I’d come to myself again. By it I’d be warm again. But as I thought about it, it didn’t appeal to me any more. I didn’t want to come to myself that way again. No. I was glad he’d forgot the shovel. But he was… he was waiting. Pa always said that he could wait; that Pedersen never could. But pa and me, we couldn’t — only Hans stayed back while we came out, while all the time the real waiter waited. He knew I couldn’t wait. He knew I’d freeze.
Maybe the Pedersens were just asleep. Have to be sure the old man wasn’t watching. What a thing. Pa pretended sleep. Could he pretend death too? She wasn’t much. Fat. Gray. But a crotch is a crotch. The light in the window paled. The sky I could see was smoky. The bits of broken glass had glimmered out. I heard the wind. Snow by the window rose. From a beam a cobweb swung stiffly like a net of wire. Flakes followed one another in and disappeared. I counted desperately three, eleven, twenty-five. One lit beside me. Maybe the Pedersens were just asleep. I went to the door again and looked in. Little rows of lights lay on the glasses and the jars. I felt the floor with my foot. I thought suddenly of snakes. I pushed my feet along. I got to every corner but the floor was empty. Really it was a relief. I went back and hid behind the boxes. The wind was coming now, with snow, the glass glinting in unexpected places. The dead tops of roofing nails in an open keg glowed white. Oh for the love of god. Above me in the house I heard a door slam sharply. He was finished with waiting.
The kid for killing his family must freeze.
The stair was railless and steep. It seemed to stagger in the air. Thank god the treads were tight, and didn’t creak. Darkness swept under me. Terror of height. But I was only climbing with my sled under my arm. In a minute I’d shoot from the roof edge and rush down the steep drift, snow smoke behind me. I clung to the stair, stretched out. Fallen into space I’d float around a dark star. Not the calendar for March. Maybe they would find me in the spring, hanging from this stairway like a wintering cocoon.
I crawled up slowly and pushed the door open. The kitchen wallpaper had flowerpots on it, green and very big. Out of every one a great red flower grew. I began laughing. I liked the wallpaper. I loved it; it was mine; I felt the green pots and traced the huge flower that stuck out of it, laughing. To the left of the door at the head of the stair was a window that looked out on the back porch. I saw the wind hurrying snow off toward the snowman. Down the length of it the sky and all its light was lead and all the snow was ashy. Across the porch were footprints, deep and precise.
I was on the edge of celebration but I remembered in time and scooted in a closet, hunkering down between brooms, throwing my arms across my eyes. Down a long green hill there was a line of sheep. It had been my favorite picture in a book I’d had when I was eight. There were no people in it.
I’d been mad and pa had laughed. I’d had it since my birthday in the spring. Then he’d hid it. It was when we had the privy in the back. God, it was cold in there, dark beneath. I found it in the privy torn apart and on the freezing soggy floor in leaves. And down the hole I saw floating curly sheep. There was even ice. I’d been seized, and was rolling and kicking. Pa had struck himself and laughed. I only saved a red-cheeked fat-faced boy in blue I didn’t like. The cow was torn. Ma’d said I’d get another one someday. For a while, every day, even though the snow was piled and the sky dead and the winter wind was blowing, I watched for my aunt to come again and bring me a book like my ma’d said she would. She never came.
And I almost had Hans’s magazines.
But he might come again. Yet he’d not chase me home, not now, no. By god, the calendar was clean, the lines sharp and clear, the colors bright and gay, and there were eights on the ice and red mouths singing and the snow belonged to me and the high sky too, burningly handsome, fiercely blue. But he might. He was quick.
If it was warmer I couldn’t tell but it wasn’t as damp as by the boxes and I could smell soap. There was light in the kitchen. It came through the crack I’d left in the closet door to comfort me. But the light was fading. Through the crack I could see the sink, now milky. Flakes began to slide out of the sky and rub their corners off on the pane before they were caught by the wind again and blown away. In the gray I couldn’t see them. Then they would come — suddenly — from it, like chaff from grain, and brush the window while the wind eddied. Something black was bobbing. It was deep in the gray where the snow was. It bounced queerly and then it went. The black stocking cap, I thought.