Before we could eat dinner, we would have to step outside in our boots and measure the snow with a yardstick. And that would bring full circle one of the routines that I enjoyed so much: put him to bed, wake him, take him out to marvel at the snow. In the summer, there had been other routines, but they had been just as good as this one.
Downstairs, Connie was sitting by the fireplace where she had put a match to some well-dried birch logs. The sight of her warmed me as the fire could never do. She was a slender but shapely blonde who had celebrated her thirtieth birthday the week before but who might have passed for a teenager without makeup. She was not really beautiful in any conventional sense. She did not resemble a fashion model or a movie star. She had too many freckles for that. Her mouth was much too wide and her nose a little too long for classic beauty. Yet every feature was in harmony with every other feature in her gentle face, and the overall effect was immensely sensuous and appealing.
Her best feature was her eyes which were enormous, round, and blue. They were the wide-open, innocent, curious eyes of a fawn. She always looked as if she had just been startled; she was not capable of that sultry, heavy-eyed look that most men found sexy. But that was fine with me. Her beauty was all the better because it was unique and approachable.
I sat down on the couch beside her, put my arm around her, and accepted the drink she had poured for me. It was cold, bitter, very refreshing.
"That's some son you've raised," I said.
"You've raised him too."
"I don't take credit where it isn't due," I said.
After all, I had been in the army for two years, eighteen long months in Southeast Asia. And after that, for more than two years, there had been that gray-walled hospital room where Toby had been allowed to visit only twice, and after that I'd spent another eight months in a private sanitarium
"Don't be so hard on yourself," she said. She leaned her head against my shoulder. Her pale hair spilled like a fan of golden feathers across my chest. I could feel the pulse throbbing in her temple.
We stayed like that for a while: working at our drinks and watching the fire and not saying anything at all. When I first got out of the hospital, we didn't talk much because neither of us knew quite what to say.
I felt terribly guilty about having withdrawn from them and from my responsibilities to them that I was embarrassed about suddenly moving in as an equal member of the family. She hadn't known what to say, for she had been desperately afraid of saying something, anything, that might send me back into my quasicatatonic trance. Hesitantly, fumblingly, we had eventually found our way back to each other. And then there was a time when we could say whatever we chose, a time in which we talked too much and made up for lost years-or perhaps we were afraid that if we didn't say it all now, share it now, immediately, we would have no chance to say it in the future. In the last two months we had settled into a third stage in which we were again sure of each other, as we had been before I went away to war and came back not myself. We didn't feel, as we had, that it was necessary for us to jabber at each other in order to stave off the silences. We were comfortable with long pauses, reveries So: the fire, the drinks, her hair, her quick heartbeat, her hand curling in mine.
And then for no apparent reason-except, perhaps, that it was all too good; I was still frightened of things being too good and therefore having nowhere to go but down again-I thought of the odd tracks in the snow. I told her about them, but with detachment, as if I were talking about something I had read in a magazine.
She said, "What do you think made them?"
"I haven't any idea."
"Maybe you could find it in one of those books in the den. A drawing or photograph just like what you saw."
"I hadn't thought of that," I said. "I'll check it out after dinner." The den was furnished with a shelf of books on woodlore, hunting, rifle care and other "manly" subjects in addition to its studded leather furniture.
"Whatever it is-could it be dangerous?"
"No, no."
"I don't mean dangerous for us-but maybe for a little guy like Toby."
"I don't think so," I said. "It didn't seem to have claws-though it must be fairly large. Toby mentioned a bird. I can't imagine what kind of bird, but I guess it might be that."
"The largest birds around here are pheasants," she said. "And those tracks sound too big for pheasants."
"Much too big," I said.
"Maybe we shouldn't let Toby go outside by himself until we know what we've got on our hands."
I finished my drink and put the glass on the coffee table. "Well, if the books don't give me a clue, I'll call Sam Caldwell and see if he can put me on the right track. If Sam's never seen anything like them, then they're just figments of our imaginations."
Sam was seventy years old, but he still operated his sporting goods store on the square in Barley. He hunted and fished through every legal season, for every breed of creature natural to New England. The way his face was weathered-cut across with a hundred lines and deeply tanned by sun and wind- he even looked like a piece of the forest.
As happened often lately, our admiration for the crackling fire swiftly metamorphosed into admiration for each other, and we began some playful necking. The playfulness gave way to real interest: the kisses grew longer, the embraces firmer. Certain that Toby would be asleep for another hour or so, I had just begun to get really serious with her when she drew back a bit and cocked her head, listening.
I said, "What is it?"
"Ssshh!
When my heartbeat subsided and my breathing was somewhat less stentorian than it had been, I could hear it too: the whinnying cries of the horses "Just the nags."
"I wonder what's wrong with them?"
"They know that we're sitting in here getting lovey, and they're jealous. That's all it is. They think we ought to be out there grooming them."
"I'm serious."
I sighed. "Horses sometimes get spooked for no good reason at all." I tried to embrace her again.
She was still intent upon listening to the horses, and she shushed me and held me off.
I said, "I know I locked the barn doors-so it can't be that the wind is bothering them."
"What about the heaters?"
"They've been switched on since the last week of October," I said. "I never touch them."
"You're certain?"
"Of course."
"Well Maybe the heaters have broken down, and the barn's gotten cold."
Reluctantly I let go of her and leaned away from her. "You want me to see about it?"
"Would you?"
"Right away," I said, punctuating it with a well delivered sigh of regret.
"I'm sorry, Don," she said, her gazelle eyes wide and blue and absolutely stunning. "But I can't be happy I can't feel romantic if those poor horses are out there freezing."
I got up. "Neither can
I," I admitted. Their squeals were really pitiful. "Though I'd have given it a good try."
"I'll get your coat."
"And my scarf and gloves and stocking cap and frostbite medicine," I said.
She gave me one last smile to keep me warm in the snowstorm. It wasn't the sort of smile most men got from their wives: it was much too seductive for that, too smoky and sultry, not in the least bit domestic.
Five minutes later she huddled in the unheated, glass-enclosed sun porch while I pulled on my boots and zipped them up. As I was about to leave she grabbed me by one arm and pulled me down and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek.
"When I come back from psychoanalyzing the horses," I warned her, "I'm going to chase you around and around the living room sofa until I catch you."
"In a fair race you won't catch me."
"Then I'll cheat."
"Toby will be waking up in half an hour or so," she said, using one slender hand to push her blond hair behind her right ear. "I'm afraid we've lost the opportunity."