The beard trim took me ten minutes. I spent another couple scraping off edge-stubble with the razor to even it out. There was a comb in the wardrobe, and I used that to work the snarls out of my hair. Then I trimmed it as best I could. There was nothing I could do about its filthiness, except to cover my head with a cap or hat when I left here. There had to be some kind of headgear in the cabin.
When I was finished I looked… what? Less frightening, less like a man who had suffered through ninety days of hell. Reasonably normal as long as you didn’t look closely at the eyes. But there was nothing I could do about them, either, not externally.
The afternoon light was beginning to thin and fade. I closed the shutters against a battalion of shadows creeping among the white-clad trees outside. My legs had begun to ache again, and the scratchiness was back in my throat, and I was starting to feel the cold through all the things I wore. Almost time to get back into bed, drink a little more wine, sleep for another few hours. But not quite yet. There was still something I wanted to do first.
Among the utensils in one of the kitchen drawers was a big, thick-bladed butcher knife; I got that and took it into the main room, to the redwood cabinet I had noticed yesterday. The lock on the cabinet doors was the kind you could loid with a credit card. Using the knife I had it sprung and the doors open in fifteen seconds. Gun cabinet, just as I had thought. Enough rack space for four rifles or shotguns, but the only weapon of that type it contained was a Kodiak bolt-action center-fire rifle. On the shelf at the bottom were three boxes of ammunition, two for the rifle and one for a.22 handgun. The piece that the.22 cartridges fitted was on the shelf too, wrapped in chamois cloth: a High-Standard Sentinel revolver, short-barreled, lightweight, with a nine-round cylinder capacity. Not much of a weapon, really, except at close range-and even then it wouldn’t have much stopping power. I broke it open, spun the empty cylinder, checked the sights and the hammer and trigger action, peered inside the barrel. At least it was clean and seemed to be in smooth working order.
I hesitated for a moment, with the gun balanced in the palm of my hand. But only for a moment. I had to have a weapon and this one was available-and deadly enough. What difference did it make if I added the theft of a handgun to the theft of food and clothing, to breaking and entering and unlawful occupation of a premises? There had been a time, not so very long ago, when any sort of illegal activity had gone against my grain. But it didn’t seem to matter much now. Principles, ethics, were for men whose lives had not been turned upside down, who had not spent three months chained to the wall of a mountain cabin.
I took the revolver and the box of cartridges into the bedroom, and loaded each chamber before I undressed and got back into bed. The thought of the.22 there on the nightstand, loaded, ready, waiting, was another kind of medicine to help me sleep and make me well again.
The Fourth Day
MORNING
It was a few minutes past nine when I finished writing the note, the last thing I had to do before leaving.
I anchored it down on the kitchen table with a can of creamed corn, so it wouldn’t blow off and maybe get overlooked. Six lines written on a torn-off piece of paper sack with a marking pen I’d found, addressed to the A-frame’s owners, Tom and Elsie Carder, whose names and Stockton address I’d gotten from an old letter in the pocket of a woman’s Windbreaker. Six lines that apologized anonymously for breaking in, for the damage I’d done and the things I’d taken; that promised I would make restitution before the end of the summer. Six lines that meant what they said.
I wrote them because I had been wrong yesterday, when I’d said to myself that breaking the law no longer mattered to me, that principles and ethics were for men whose lives had not been turned upside down. The truth was, I hadn’t lost any of my respect for the law, nor any of the principles by which I had always lived. The ordeal I had been through hadn’t done that to me, and what I intended to do in the name of justice wouldn’t do it to me either. There was a fine line here, such a fine line: You could kill someone who had wronged you terribly, you could compromise your principles that much and still be able to live with yourself; but if you compromised them completely, if you threw all your beliefs and ideals out the window, then you also threw out your humanity and you were no better than the man who had wronged you or all the outlaws you had done battle with over the years.
This understanding came to me earlier today, when I gathered up the journal pages and my eye fell on one of those I’d written about my old man:… vowing to myself that I would not be like my old man, I would not, I would not drink whiskey and I would not steal and cheat… I’m reasonably honest, I don’t willingly inflict pain on those I care about or on any decent human being. Whatever else I am, whatever my shortcomings, I am not my old man’s son.
And I’m not. The words gave me a jolt for that reason. I will soon take the law into my own hands, yes; I believe I have a right to do that under the circumstances. But at the same time I still do not believe in stealing and cheating and willingly inflicting pain on anyone except a mortal enemy, and I never will, and I must never do any of those things except under extreme duress and then only if I’m prepared to pay the price.
I am not my old man’s son.
I went down the areaway, out through the rear doors onto the snow-crusted platform porch. The sky was mostly clear today, mottled here and there with pale puffs and streaks of cloud, and the wind was little more than a murmur. Sunlight glittered off the snow surfaces, made a prism of an icicle hanging from one of the pitched eaves. The temperature had warmed considerably, but the air still had a wintry bite. I had bundled myself up like a child from head to foot: woolen cap pulled down over my ears, woolen muffler, the fur-lined gloves, turtleneck sweater and lumberman’s shirt and faded Levi’s, a padded bush jacket that came down to thigh level, three pairs of socks, and a pair of heavy, high-top hiking boots. My wallet and the journal pages were in pants pockets; the.22 Sentinel revolver was in the zippered right pocket of the bush jacket.
I still wasn’t feeling all that well, but I thought I could travel all right as long as I didn’t tumble into any more snowbanks and the weather stayed clear. I had spent too many days cooped up inside the cabin walls to want to endure another one here. I needed movement, I needed to get out of these mountains and back to the kind of environment I understood. I needed to begin the hunt.
Getting through the snowpack from the porch to the woods was slow, hard work. Once I was in among the trees, though, the drifts weren’t as deep and I could make better time. Even so, it took me twenty minutes to reach the road, angling away from the A-frame so I could come out of the trees where they made a thick border close to the road. That way my tracks would be less conspicuous.
A snowplow crew hadn’t been along here recently; there were a couple of inches of slushy, tire-rutted snow on the road surface. I managed to jump out into one of the near ruts and stayed in one or another as I set off downhill, slapping clinging particles of snow off my pants and jacket. Anyone who cared to look closely could see where I’d come from, but maybe nobody would care. In any case, if I encountered anybody I had a story worked out to explain what I was doing tramping around this wilderness on foot.
The wet snow in the ruts was slippery and I had to keep my head down and pick my way along. Just as well, because the sun hurt my eyes whenever its glare penetrated the tree branches and reflected off snow. The morning had a hushed, crackling quality, so that each little sound seemed magnified. But I had gone about a third of a mile, past two more snow-blocked access drives, before I heard the one sound I was listening for.