Snowbound

Four

Restlessly pacing the living room, smoking her fifteenth cigarette of the day, Rebecca was intensely aware of the metronomic ticking of the antique pendulum clock on one wall. Ordinarily she did not even hear the familiar tempo, but today, this afternoon, now, it seemed to have grown in volume with its marking of each passing second, so that it filled the room and hammered at her consciousness and at her nerves in the manner of a steadily dripping faucet.

Twenty till four, the clock hands said.

The cigarette tasted raw and noxious, and she turned to the coffee table and jabbed it out in the cloissone tray. I can’t go on with this passive waiting any longer, she thought. I’ve got to find out where Matt is and why he hasn’t come home.

When Martin Donnelly had telephoned her the previous evening-she’d been in bed at the time, thinking about the curiously intimate encounter with Zachary Cain; that he was a man tortured by a personal crisis greater than her own and that she had selfishly misjudged him-Rebecca had unhesitatingly accepted Donnelly’s account of a fallen tree likely stranding Matt overnight at the lake. There was no reason to doubt Martin’s word-he was a scrupulously honest man-and no reason to suspect anything wrong.

But when Matt did not return this morning or call as he always did when legitimately or illegitimately detained somewhere, she had experienced a vague presentiment of things being not quite right. There was little to support such a foreboding, other than the fact that a team of men should certainly have been able to clear the road of a down tree by midmorning, but it had nagged at her until, finally, she had gone to the telephone with the intention of calling the Donnelly home. The phone had not been working-lines down someplace probably, it happened occasionally during the winter months-and that, she told herself, was obviously the reason Matt hadn’t called. Everything was quite normal, otherwise. After all, what could happen in a snowbound little place like Hidden Valley?

And yet At eleven forty, with Matt still not home, Rebecca had briefly considered going to church. But then she thought that Matt would never think of setting foot inside All Faiths Church on Sunday unless he had dressed for the occasion in his best suit and tie and shirt and shoes. Since he hadn’t come home to change, it was axiomatic he wouldn’t be in church-and was then, supposedly, still out at the lake. Too, formal religious observance had been destroyed for her some time ago by Matt’s hypocrisy: seeing him in fervent, righteous prayer on those Sundays when she knew he had lain with another woman the previous night; she continued occasionally to accompany him when he insisted and for the hollow sake of appearance, but while she still believed in God, actively worshiping Him had been and was impossible. And so she remained in the house, busying herself with prosaic chores, waiting.

One thirty had come. No Matt. She’d tried the phone again, and it was still out of order. Two o’clock. Three. Three thirty. The premonition of wrongness had steadily amplified until, now, it made further waiting unconscionable. Perhaps it was only a case of too much imagination-the making-mountains-out-of-molehills syndrome-and there was some simple and innocuous reason why Matt hadn’t returned; but she had to find out, she had to know.

Rebecca went into the hall and opened the door of the coat closet. Boots, hat, parka, mittens. She would, she thought, go to the Tribuccis first. They would know about the fallen tree business, and if there was more to it than that, if they weren’t aware of his whereabouts, John or Vince would drive her out to Mule Deer Lake so she could talk to Martin Donnelly. Quickly she buttoned her parka and then opened the front door and hurried outside.

She was halfway across the front yard when Sid Markham’s old pickup pulled into the drive and the dark, smiling stranger stepped out to confront her…

Beneath the lean-to which ran the full rear width of his cabin, Cain stood at a round, flat, tablelike stump and used a hatchet to split halved pine logs into kindling. The logs were stacked evenly along the rear wall, several cords of them flecked with icy snow; the area covered by the long, shake roof was otherwise bare. He worked mechanically, breath puffing white and hazy, and the thudding, splintering sounds he made reverberated hollowly in the brittle late-afternoon stillness.

Inside him, with an intensity that had mounted throughout the day, guilt fought with memories and despair grappled with rebirthing personal need.

He had had a recurring dream last night, so sharply vivid that it had half awakened him three or four times and had left him, when dawn finally came and ended all sleep, feeling weak and shaken. In the dream he was walking alone on a huge, sere plain, under a copper-colored sky. Far ahead of him he saw that the withered grass gave way to a stretch of bright green, and he went toward it and recognized as he approached that someone was standing just beyond the separation line between green and brown. The someone was one-half of himself-and he realized that there had only been half of him the entire time he’d been on the burned section of prairie, that he had been hopping on one leg instead of walking on two. Frightened, he stared with his single eye as though transfixed by his second eye.

And the other half of him said, with half a mouth, Why do you keep fighting me? Sooner or later we’re going to merge, you know that. We’re going to become whole again.

We can never be whole again, he said.

We can and we will. And when we are, we have to go back-back to architecture, back to San Francisco, back so we can pick up some of the pieces. It has to be that way; you can’t run away from me any longer.

You’re dead, do you hear me. You’re dead!

I’m alive, we’re alive. Listen, now, listen.

No.

Question: Would Angie have wanted you to do what you’ve done to us? Would Lindy and Steve, as young as they were, have wanted it?

That doesn’t matter. They’re gone, it doesn’t matter.

Yes it does, oh yes it does. Question: Why weren’t you able to suicide us? Wasn’t it because I stopped you? Wasn’t it because I, you, we want to go on living, after all?

Enough, I don’t want to hear any more.

Question: If you truly wanted to turn us into an alcoholic, moribund vegetable, why did you come to Hidden Valley-why did you choose to live among people-in the first place? Aren’t there hundreds of totally sequestered areas in this country where you could have become a literal hermit? Didn’t I stop you there, too, even though you were stronger then?

Shut up, shut up.

“You’re not stronger anymore, I’m stronger. The incident with Rebecca Hughes was more than a spilling over of words, it was me taking over at last, it was the beginning of the end of these past six months. You know that, why won’t you accept it?

I can’t. I won’t.

You can and you will. It’s inevitable. Come to me now, come to me and we’ll be whole again.

No!

He turned and tried to run, but with his single leg he could only hop; and the plain shimmered and suddenly became a quagmire that made accelerated motion impossible. Darkness took away the copper light of the sky, folding around him, and he could feel warm breath against the back of his neck-the other half of him pursuing, unimpeded by the boggy ground, coming closer, touching him then, touching him…

At this exact point he would come out of it-only to sink back into slumber and have it start all over again.

When Cain had gotten up at dawn, and the shaken feeling had passed, he tried not to think about the dream; but it was fixed in his mind, each detail as ineradicable as the stain of loneliness. He dressed and went into the kitchen and fried two eggs, and couldn’t eat them; poured bourbon into his coffee, and the smell of it gagged him. It was cold in the cabin, and he made a fire with the last of his kindling. The cold seemed to remain. He sat at the table by the window, chain-smoking, but the sitting began to gnaw at his nerves. Pacing did not help, and he thought of going for a walk and didn’t want to do that either.

Sunday, today was Sunday. And on Sundays he and Don Collins would go out to Sharp Park or Harding and play eighteen holes of golf. On Sundays he would watch that intricate war game known as professional football on television. On Sundays he would take Angie and the kids to Golden Gate Park, where they would eat a picnic lunch at Stow Lake and then visit the De Young Museum or the Steinhart Aquarium or the Japanese Tea Garden or the Morrison Planetarium. On Sundays Shivering, Cain got a broom from the closet and swept out all the rooms; emptied an overflow of garbage into the can outside; made the bed and straightened the bedroom; washed the bathroom sink and shower stall and walls and floor. In the front room again he put more wood on the fire-and was acutely aware of how incredibly still it could get in there, how sterile and empty the surroundings actually were. He found himself wishing that he had a radio, that he could listen to some music or the news; realized he had not heard a newscast or read a paper in all the months he had been in Hidden Valley; realized he did not know, except for snatches of disinterestedly overheard conversation between valley residents, what was happening anywhere in the world.

I need to talk to someone, he thought, like I talked to Rebecca Hughes last night. I need-I need…

He made a sandwich and forced himself to eat it. He could not think of anything else to do after that, and spent five minutes smoking six cigarettes and coughing up as much smoke as he exhaled normally before he remembered that there wasn’t any more kindling. He got the hatchet then and came around here to the lean-to and began splitting logs.

There was, now, enough kindling lying in the snow at his feet to last him for weeks.

Cain buried the hatchet blade in the stump, wiped perspiration from his forehead with one gloved hand. Take all this inside, come back and carry in more halved logs to stack by the fireplace; keep busy, keep finding things to do. Stooping, he gathered up an armful of the kindling; straightened again, turned, took two steps-and came to a standstill.

Rebecca Hughes and two men he did not recognize were standing in the falling snow just outside the lean-to.

Cain opened his mouth to speak, closed it when he saw that the darker of the men, positioned well apart, was grinning oddly and holding a gun. The other one had his arms down at his sides, fingers curled in against the palms. As still and pale as a piece of marble statuary, Rebecca looked at Cain with eyes that were wide circles of fear. A feeling of unreality fled through him, as though the three of them had been conjured up from his subconscious-a kind of snow mirage.

“Drop that wood and get over here,” Kubion said.

Cain found words, pushed them out. “Who are you? What’s going on here?”

“You’ll find out soon enough. Now shut up and do what you’re told.”

“What do you want with me, with Mrs. Hughes?”

“Get the fuck over here, I said!”

Cain sensed, incredulously, that the man would not hesitate to shoot him if he failed to comply; the feeling of unreality modulated into one of surreality. He let the kindling fall out of his arms in automatic reaction, walked forward stiffly and came out from under the roof and stopped again. Kubion’s eyes followed him, and when Cain stared into them he saw unmistakable dementia shining there. His stomach contracted, and a brassy taste came into his mouth; he could not seem to think clearly.

“That’s better, that’s fine,” Kubion said. “Now we go for a ride.”

He gestured with the gun, and the second man-tight-mouthed, sane-looking-prodded Rebecca’s shoulder. She moved forward, paused in front of Cain, and there was bewilderment commingled with the fright in her expression; she seemed to have no more idea than he of the two men’s motive or intent. Her dread was palpable; he could feel it as he could feel the knife-edge of the wind blowing along the cabin’s side wall, and a rush of anger took away some of his own confusion-caring anger, an emotion (like the brassiness in his mouth) he had not experienced in a great long time.

He did not want her to be hurt; he did not want to be hurt himself.

I don’t want to die, he thought almost detachedly. It’s true, I really don’t want to die…

“Step out!” Kubion yelled at them. “Move!”

Rebecca edged close to Cain as they trudged forward through the snow. He said in a low voice, “Are you all right? They haven’t hurt you?”

“No. No. But God, I-”

“Shut the hell up,” from behind them. “I don’t want to have to tell anybody again, you understand?”

Cain clamped his teeth together; Rebecca stared straight ahead, walking like a life-size windup toy. They went around to the front and across the yard to where an old Ford pickup was parked nose downhill on Lassen Drive. Brodie half circled it and got into the cab on the driver’s side, and Kubion came forward then and said, “Both of you now, woman in the middle.”

When Cain had pulled the door open Rebecca climbed awkwardly onto the front seat, drawing up a full twelve inches away from Brodie. The door slapped against Cain’s hip as he wedged in after her, then latched under the pressure of Kubion’s hand. Kubion swung onto the running board, over into the bed, and his face appeared in the broken-out rear window. He said to Brodie, “Nice and slow, Vic, you know how to do it.”

“Yeah,” Brodie said, and reached out to switch on the ignition.

Like a child huddling impersonally for warmth and support, Rebecca leaned against Cain with hip and thigh and shoulder and one breast-soft, yielding flesh through the parka she wore and despite the trembling tension in her. It was the first time he had been in physical contact with, conscious of, a woman’s body since Angie, and defensively he felt his muscles stiffen.

But he did not withdraw from her as the truck glided forward and down through the empty afternoon.