Crime Machine

39

“WE’RE NEVER GOING TO GET TO THE HIGHWAY if you keep falling on your face,” Nikki said. The old man was floundering just ahead of her. The storm had abated somewhat, but the snow was still flying and sticking to Nikki’s eyelashes so that it was hard to see. And it was deep. Their snowshoes sank six inches and more into the top snow, making progress difficult for Nikki, let alone for an ancient geezer like Mr. Kreeger.

He staggered to one side, nearly toppled, but finally managed to right himself.

“The sooner I get you to that highway,” Nikki said, “the sooner I can get back and curl up in front of that fireplace.”

The old man turned to face her. “If we were really going to the highway, the obvious way to go would be the road. There’s a plough blade on the front of the Range Rover, you know.”

“I’m not old enough to drive.”

“I am.”

“We’re going this way.”

“Even on foot, the road would be faster.”

“For the last time, we can’t take the road. Papa will be coming back that way, and if he sees me helping you escape, it’ll be game over for both of us. Jack could come back that way too, and I don’t want to die, Mr. Kreeger, do you?”

Papa said the old man had to die but how she did it was up to her. So she had come up with this phony escape plan. There was no reason why the guy should die miserable. This way he would go out happy at least. He thinks he’s finally free and boom, she shoots him in the back of his head and puts him to sleep.

“When did your so-called Papa go out? I didn’t hear him leave.”

“You didn’t hear the fight? He booted Jack out and then he took off himself.”

“Uh-huh. Drove out into the blizzard, did he?”

“As a matter of fact, someone came to pick him up. Guy in a Jeep.”

The old man looked at her and shook his head in disgust.

“Yes, sir. They took off right after Jack did. Guess those Jeep tracks got covered pretty fast. I have no idea where they were going or when they might be coming back, but this is the first and likely only time I’m gonna be on my own with you, so would you please for Christ sake take advantage of it and keep your skinny butt moving? I thought old people were supposed to be wise.”

“That’s right. And young people are supposed to be innocent.”

“Okay, so we’re even.”

The old man kept looking at her. His face was thin, elongated, and his papery cheeks were blotchy from the cold. He put Nikki in mind of a rabbit, and she was about to yell at him to turn around when he finally did so. Turned and took a step through the snow, then another, wide-legged, duck-like.

“See, it’s not so bad,” Nikki said. “We’ll have you on that highway in no time. Someone’ll come by and pick you up.” She knew it didn’t really make sense. What possible reason could she have to send him safely into town? She’d made him solemnly promise that he’d wait a day before he called the police, but obviously he’d call them first thing. He must know Papa was at the house waiting for her to come back and announce she’d done it. Meanwhile she was terrified of bumping into Jack. Jack clearly inhabited the boundary line between the kind of craziness you can live with, and the kind you can’t.

The old man stopped. Even through his heavy parka she could see his shoulders heaving. He turned to her again.

“Dude, are you on crack? We have to keep moving. Or have you just not noticed we’re in the tail end of a blizzard?”

“How old are you, young lady?”

“I’ll be fourteen in February.”

“Fourteen in February.” He smiled, long rabbity teeth amid cheeks of high pink. “In February I’ll be seventy-six years old.”

“OMG, we have such a lot in common! Would you keep it moving, please.”

The old guy didn’t move, intent only upon her, the hunting rifle in her hands—in case she saw a pheasant for dinner, she’d told him. “That man isn’t your father.”

“Yes he is. In every way that counts, he is.”

“Raised you, did he? From the time you were a baby? Changed your diaper? Got you into school? Made you do your homework? Read to you at night? Taught you to read and write, and how to get along with people? Raised you like a dad?”

“Raised me, no. Rescued me, yes. I was one death-bound fuck-up, Mr. Kreeger, and Papa saved me from the solid brick wall I was smashing my head into.”

“You were living on the streets?”

“Anything bad you can imagine, I was doing it. Now get moving before I become hostile.”

“I wouldn’t call where you are right now rescued.”

“What?”

“I wouldn’t call the place where you find yourself right now being rescued.”

“You don’t know the place I was previously.”

“And I wouldn’t call Papa anything resembling a father.”

“You don’t know the man.”

“Have you looked in the bunkhouse, Nikki?”

“I had no reason to.”

“You mean you were told not to.”

“I don’t care what’s in the bunkhouse.”

“Not what—who. His name was Henry. He was an Indian—a First Nations person, though he always referred to himself as Indian. He’d be about forty-four, forty-five. Younger than your self-styled Papa by quite a bit. He was probably about your age when he discovered he was alcoholic. Just couldn’t let it go. He had some pain raging inside of him that only alcohol would stop. Imagine that. Only alcohol could stop it. But it also made it worse.”

“Uh-huh. And I’m supposed to care about this drunkard why?”

“Imagine having a constant pain. A burn, say—your skin feels like it’s on fire. Or maybe not so dramatic. You just feel that your heart is breaking. All the time, every day, for no reason—and the only time this pain stopped was when you were drunk. That was Henry’s life. It rendered him uncongenial and unemployable. It got him thrown off the reserve. It got him thrown in jail countless times. And all the time, that burn, that heartache. He got himself sober for a time. By some Herculean effort of will, he managed to do that. He even got himself married and got a job. The job didn’t last. The kind of work he could get never does. So he started drinking again. His wife left him.”

“A loser. What you’re describing’s a loser.”

“What I’m describing is a human being. Henry quit drinking. And no, it didn’t happen overnight. It took him many tries and many setbacks, many failures, but the man stopped drinking. Sober, Henry was good with his hands, a skilled carpenter. He did some work on the house. How I met him. He knew lots of things: electricity, plumbing, hunting, fishing. And he was a big reader. Liked books. Liked a good story. Liked a good joke. Nice sense of humour. Kinda dry.

“He came to work for me. Just doing whatever needed doing. I don’t pay him much—didn’t pay him much—but his rent was free and he liked the quiet. Liked the woods. I think maybe he even liked me. Seemed to, anyway. I asked him once what he did about all that pain, where it went, and he told me it never went anywhere. It was still there. Every day. He just didn’t do anything about it anymore. He just let it be, and sometimes he forgot about it. He had a hard life. Incomprehensibly hard to someone like me, a lucky person. But he found a way to smile now and again. A way to laugh. And he took pleasure in small things—making breakfast, hanging a door. In keeping an old man company. I can’t say he was a happy man, Henry, but he was a good man, and he thought that little bunkhouse was the finest place he’d ever lived. And now he’s lying dead in it with a bullet hole in his forehead because your so-called Papa preferred him that way. There was no reason for it, and that was the end of Henry’s life.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do. So do you.”

“The highway’s that way, Mr. Kreeger. Would you turn around, please?”

He turned and took exactly one step and stopped again and looked at her. “Is this really who you want to be?”

“What I am is not something I have any say over.”

“But what you do—what you do is under your control.”

“If you’ve got such a rosy view of life, why are you having such trouble believing anything I tell you? Just keep your head down and keep those snowshoes moving one step ahead of the other and we’ll get you to the highway safe and sound. I know, how about maybe we sing a little bit? You wouldn’t happen to know any snowshoeing-through-the-woods-type songs, would you? We sing those the rest of the way, we’ll keep warm and cheerful, and I can’t think of a better way to get us through, you know … whatever.”