33
WHEN I woke up, I didn’t hear the wind. The clock read 10:00 A.M. Orson was breathing heavily, and though I shook him, he wouldn’t stir.
It had grown uncomfortably hot inside the car, so I shut the vents. I turned the windshield wipers on, and they knocked off a wedge of snow. The sun shone into the front seat with eye-splitting brilliance.
The snow depth had risen above the hood, and as I stared out across the white desert, I saw only an occasional tangle of mature sagebrush poking up through the snow. The sky was orchid blue.
I saw a white ridge several miles ahead, and I wondered if it was the same one that rose behind the cabin and the shed.
Watching my brother sleep in the passenger seat, I felt a knot swell in my stomach. Bastard. I’d dreamed about Willard Bass making me take it. The rage lingered, festering in my gut, and the more I shunned it, the more it swelled. He should not have done that to me.
"Orson, wake up!" I slapped his face, and his eyes opened.
"Oh my," he mumbled, sitting up. "There’s three feet on the ground." Orson cracked his neck. "Roll down my window." A clump of snow fell onto Orson’s lap as the glass lowered into the door. "I see the cabin," he said.
"Where?"
"Two black specks on the horizon."
I squinted through the passenger window. "Are you sure that’s it?"
"There isn’t another structure within fifteen miles."
"How far is it?"
"A mile or two."
I reached into the backseat, grabbed an armful of clothes from the suitcases, and dropped them on the console between Orson and me. "I’m gonna let you out of the cuffs till we reach the cabin."
"We’re going now?" he asked, incredulous. "There’s no way we’ll make it."
"Orson, we can see it. We got less than a quarter of a tank of gas left. That’s not enough for another night of heat, and what if there’s another storm coming? We’re going."
"Any of these clothes waterproof?"
"No."
"Then forget it. That ice will saturate cotton, and it’ll take us several hours at least to reach the cabin in snow this deep. Ever heard of frostbite?"
"I’ll risk it. I’m not staying in this car another night with you."
I dug the handcuff key out of my pocket.
"I’m sorry I told you about Willard," he said. "Andy?"
"What?"
"You gonna forget again?"
"Don’t say another fucking word to me."
The snow came up just shy of my waist. I’d never walked in snow so deep that each step required you to expend the energy of a toddler climbing a staircase. I made Orson walk several yards ahead of me, and, just as he’d predicted, we hadn’t taken fifty awkward steps before the ice began to soak through the layers of my khakis and sweatpants. We’d gone a quarter of a mile when the initial icy burn set in above my knees, like a swarm of needles poking in and out of my raw red skin. It hurt to walk. It hurt to stand still, and by the time we’d hiked a mile through the snow, even my eyes burned from the sunny crystal glare. I wondered how I could possibly reach that minuscule black dot, which still seemed a fixture on the horizon.
Orson trudged on at his tireless gait, showing no sign of pain or fatigue. The burning in my legs had grown so unendurable that my forehead broke out into a cold sweat.
"Hold up!" I shouted, and Orson stopped. He was twenty feet ahead, bundled up in two T-shirts, a sweater, a sweatshirt, and a black leather jacket. His legs appeared bulky beneath the long johns, sweatpants, and jeans I’d given him from Walter’s suitcase.
"What’s wrong?" he asked.
"I just need a breather."
After a moment, I lifted my grocery-filled suitcase up over my head, and we continued on. My legs and feet turned numb shortly thereafter, so I battled only the stinging in my eyes. The sole relief came from closing my eyes, but I couldn’t shut them long enough to quell the pain while Orson walked uncuffed ahead of me.
With the cabin three football fields away, my legs were spectacularly numb. I kept thinking of that medical definition I’d found for snow blindness while doing research for Blue Murder — a sunburn directly on the cornea. It watered my eyes just to think of it, and I fixated on locking Orson into that spare bedroom and falling asleep under his fleece blanket in the soothing darkness of the cabin.
Orson glanced back at me, and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed it before. He wore my sunglasses. Did you swipe them from the top of the dashboard while we dressed for this snow trek? I was going to scream at him to stop, but I thought, Fuck it, we’re almost there.
Even when squinting, I couldn’t adequately shield my eyes from the glare, so I let them close entirely, and it felt wonderful. I’m just going to shut them for a moment, I thought, moving clumsily and blindly now through the snow.
After six gargantuan steps, I opened my eyes to check on Orson.
He was gone.
Dropping the suitcase, I took the Glock out of my waistband and looked in every direction — nothing but smooth unending snow, which drifted randomly in gentle mounds.
"Orson!" I screamed. My voice cracked and echoed across the blinding white expanse. "Orson!" No sound, not even wind. Trying to follow his tracks through the snow, my eyes watered, and the salt in the tears exacerbated the sting.
I sensed suddenly that someone was running up behind me, and I spun around and pointed the gun back in the direction of the car. The snow sparkled, pristine and empty. Fear tickled my loins. The white Lexus, half-buried and camouflaged in snow, existed now only as a silver glimmer in the distance. Sunlight struck the speck of its windshield like a flake of mica.
He’s out there, I thought, turning back toward the cabin. He’s lying in the snow, and all I have to do is follow his footprints. I saw where they ended less than fifty feet ahead.
"Stand up!" I shouted. "I won’t shoot you, Orson! Come on! Don’t do this!"
Nothing moved. I grabbed up the suitcase, and I had taken three steps, when something occurred to me. Kneeling down in the snow, I hollowed out a sufficient space to sit. With my leather-gloved hands, I attempted to tunnel into the thirty-six-inch wall of snow, and, to my horror, succeeded. During the storm, the wind had compressed the snowpack, so now I could shovel out a passageway, which barely exceeded one foot in height and two feet in width, while keeping the surface above intact. In essence, a man could tunnel unseen under the snow.
I stood up, becoming colder now through my torso. The footprints ahead of me meant nothing. Even as I reached the end of Orson’s tracks and saw the suitcase he’d left behind, I knew that he could be anywhere in the immediate vicinity, hiding, waiting just two feet below the surface.
Dropping the suitcase again, I sprinted off into the snow, running in slowly expanding circles and screaming at my brother to show himself. I ran myself dizzy and finally collapsed on top of our suitcases, back again where Orson’s tracks had terminated.
On the cusp of blindness, I feared that the numbness in my legs masked tremendous pain, which warmth would soon unthaw. The Glock in my hands was useless, and conceding that for the moment he held the advantage, I came to my feet and bounded on through virgin powder toward the cabin.
34
REACHING into the side pocket of my frozen khakis, I took the key that Orson had promised me would unlock the front door. Punching it through the icebound keyhole, I turned the key. The door opened; hauling the suitcases behind me, I entered the cabin.
I wagered that no one had been here in months. There was an unpalatable scent in the air, as if I’d climbed into an attic or a crawl space. My effete vision made the interior of the cabin dusky. I staggered across the stone floor so I could look out the window that faced south, the direction from which we’d come. Though late in the afternoon, the sun blazed as it descended over the bluff. Nothing moved in the sprawl of dazzling white, and I took comfort in knowing that were he to approach the cabin now, I would undoubtedly see him.