Snowbound

Sixteen

Wearing warm old clothes and a pair of fur-lined boots, the Reverend Peter Keyes left his cottage at the rear of the All Faiths Church at one thirty to do his daily shopping.

He was not as deeply concerned about the pass slide as some of the other valley residents, although it would prevent him from spending Christmas afternoon and evening with his relatives in Soda Grove. Coming so close to Yuletide, it was of course an unfortunate thing; but no one had been killed or injured, for which thanks could be given, and the Reverend Mr. Keyes was not one to question an act of God in any circumstance. For all the inconvenience to his friends and neighbors and to himself, it was nonetheless the season of joy and charity and great faith: the celebration of the birthday of Jesus Christ.

The Reverend Mr. Keyes walked along the side of the church, beneath the three slender, obelisk-shaped windows and the sharply pitched alpine roof with its squared, four-windowed belfry and tall steeple at the rear: a simple frame church which, he felt, suited perfectly the simple life of those who made the Sierra their home. As he started toward the street, he noticed a medium-sized, unfamiliar man standing at the signboard adjacent to the front walk, reading the arrangement of glassed-in plastic letters which told of the coming Sunday services.

The minister altered his path and approached the stranger-no doubt one of the San Francisco businessmen he had heard were staying at Mule Deer Lake. Perhaps, since the man was reading the signboard, he was thinking of attending services; the prospect, if true, was a pleasing one.

When the newcomer heard the Reverend Mr. Keyes’ steps in the snow, he turned. Very dark, he was, almost sooty-looking, with a hard cast to his face and a feral, overbright quality to his eyes. But the minister well knew how deceiving appearances could be, and as he reached the man, he smiled and extended his hand. “Good afternoon. I’m Reverend Peter Keyes, the pastor of All Faiths Church.”

“Charley Adams is my name,” Kubion said. He took the proffered hand. “Nice to meet you, Reverend.”

“I noticed you reading the signboard, Mr. Adams. May I ask if you’ll be joining our congregation on Sunday?”

“Well, I just might do that, all right.”

“We’ll be more than pleased to have you.”

“There’s only one service, I see.”

“Yes-at noon. The village is really too small to make more than one feasible during the winter, although we have two throughout the summer season.”

Kubion glanced at the church. “Are the doors open now?”

“Oh, of course. They’re seldom locked.”

“I’d like to step inside for a minute, if I could.”

“Certainly, please do.”

Kubion nodded a parting and moved away along the front walk. The Reverend Mr. Keyes watched him climb the five front steps and enter the church and then smiled gently to himself. Appearances were indeed misleading; Charley Adams was an agreeable sort of person-and no doubt a good and devout, if somewhat diffident, Christian.

He thought Kubion had gone into the church to pray.

John Tribucci was alone in the Sport Shop, stocking shelves in the tobacco section, when the dark stranger came in at two o’clock.

“Something I can do for you?” Tribucci asked pleasantly.

“Well, maybe there is,” Kubion said. “I was wondering if you’ve got any snowmobiles in stock.”

“Snowmobiles?” Tribucci managed to conceal his surprise. “Why, yes, as a matter of fact we do-just one. It was given to us on consignment by a chain sporting goods outlet in the county seat.”

“Be okay if I looked at it?”

“Sure.” He led Kubion around to the rear of the store, where the machine sat in the center of a small display of skis, snowshoes, and ice skates. It resembled a two-seat scooter mounted on skis and wide roller treads-black chassis, white cowl, red and white trim. “It’s a Harley Davidson, fast and durable. Plenty of features: dual headlights, eighteen-inch molded track, shock-dampened steering, ski-mounted hydraulic shocks. Engine is twenty-three horsepower, good enough for cross-country slogging, and one of the quietest on the market.”

“How much gas will it hold?”

“It has a six-gallon tank.”

“Okay-what does it sell for?”

“A little better than fifteen hundred, plus tax. That’s a good price for the quality, considering what some of the bigger mobiles cost these days.”

Kubion frowned. “I didn’t know they ran anywhere near that much,” he said. “This the only one in the valley?”

Tribucci said dryly, “You mean, does anybody own an older model they might want to sell for a few hundred?”

“Yeah, I guess that’s what I mean.”

“I’m afraid not. The only other mobile in Hidden Valley is one my brother owns, and it’s a Harley similar to this one-last year’s model. He’d be willing to sell it, I think, but I doubt if he’d take less than a thousand.”

“Still pretty stiff,” Kubion said, and shook his head. Then, in a self-conscious way, he laughed. “You’re probably wondering why all the sudden interest in a snowmobile.”

“Well-yes,” Tribucci admitted. “With the valley being snowbound, it’s not exactly the time people think of winter sports.”

“Winter sports didn’t have anything to do with it; being snowbound is the reason. See, this friend of mine and me-we’re staying out at Mule Deer Lake, you probably know that-we’re expected back in San Francisco for Christmas. So we got to thinking last night that we could split the cost of a snowmobile and use it to get to one of the towns in the area, where we could rent a car. But we didn’t figure the things to be so expensive; we just can’t afford that kind of money for something we might not even use again.”

Tribucci said, “You could get to Coldville all right in a mobile, swinging east by northeast; it’s rough country, fifteen miles of it, but with a map and the mobile’s compass and fair weather it could be done safely enough. Still, you’d have to have quite a bit of knowledge of mountain country like this.”

“Couldn’t we walk out, too, the same way?”

“You could, but I wouldn’t advise trying it. That’s a hell of a trek on snowshoes-and if a storm hits, you’d freeze to death.”

“No shorter way to do it, like going over or around those pass cliffs and then picking up the county road into Soda Grove?”

Tribucci shook his head. “The upper approaches to both cliffs, where the trees thin out, are made up of snow-and ice-covered talus and walls and pinnacles of granite. To the west the terrain drops sharply and there are gullies and declivities filled with drifts of loose snow-you must have noticed coming in how deep and wide the canyon is on the other side of the pass. To the east, you’ve got a long series of smaller ridges and more deep snow pockets.”

Kubion said, “And I guess it would be dangerous to try scrambling over the slide itself?”

“Suicidal is the word. That mass may seem like a solid pack, but it isn’t. You couldn’t scale this end, and even if you could, your weight on all that imbalanced, down-slanted snow and rock would start a shifting and resettling that’d bury you in seconds. That’s why the clearing process is such a slow and methodical one.” Tribucci paused. “About the only practical way you could get out of Hidden Valley immediately is by helicopter, assuming the weather holds. But unless your leaving is a definite emergency, I wouldn’t count on it. The county only has one chopper, and there are priorities.”

“Then I guess we’re stuck good and proper, and we’ll just have to make the best of it. Sorry to take up your time.”

“Not at all.”

When Kubion had gone, Tribucci resumed stocking the tobacco shelves. It would have meant a not inconsiderable profit if he’d been able to sell the mobile, and with the baby due so soon, the money would have been more than welcome. But then, he hadn’t really expected to make the sale from the first-not under the present circumstances and having correctly assumed the reason for the dark man’s sudden interest.

City people, he thought, have the damnedest ideas…

Kubion spent another hour in the village-mainly at the foot of the east slope, beyond Alpine Street, where the telephone and power lines stretched downward into Hidden Valley-and then drove back to Mule Deer Lake. He parked the car in the cabin garage and went inside and directly up to his bedroom.

The dull ache in his temples and forehead was still with him, no better and no worse than it had been the previous day. Last night he had dreamed of spiders again, the same dream, the same ugly black spiders with their redly gaping mouths. But he hadn’t thought of these things at all; his mind had been focused for the past twenty-four hours on the theoretical score-attacking it with a vengeance, just as if it were the real thing.

He sat on the rumpled bed and took one of the thin brown marijuana cigarettes from the tin on the nightstand. Leaning back against the headboard, he lit the stick and sucked slowly on it, holding the mawkish smoke deep in his lungs. When the joint was ash against his fingers, he could feel the lift, he could feel his thoughts coming clear and sharp. Then he began putting it all together, everything he had learned from the valley and topographical maps and everything he had found out in the village today.

And he knew it could be done.

The knowledge excited him, stimulated him. It could be done, all right, it actually could be done with just three men. Still a few details to be worked out, still a few angles to consider, but he had the basics completely assembled. It hadn’t been much of a problem, not nearly as much a one as he’d first thought; the fact that the valley was snowbound was what made it all so simple.

Kubion lit a second stick of pot and smoked it, working out the details carefully. Time passed-and he had it all then. the entire operation from beginning to end. Nothing left unconsidered, no flaws in the progression. All of it neat, clear, workable.

Darkness settled outside and came into the room in slow, lengthening shadows; and with it came the letdown. The stimulation vanished; an empty flatness replaced it. He became aware of the dull throbbing in his head, and he could feel his nerves pulling taut again. He tried a third stick of grass, but this time it did nothing for him. The sudden downer was heavy and oppressive, and he knew the reason for it; sitting there on the bed, he knew exactly what was the matter.

He’d figured the score, and it could be done, and they couldn’t do it.

From the beginning it had been nothing more than a mental exercise, something to occupy his mind for a while. But he couldn’t forget it, now that he’d figured it; there would be nothing to do, nothing to focus on, and the pain in his head, and the spiders, the black red hungry spiders, and the blowoff that would surely come, the violence; he couldn’t forget the score even though it was useless thinking about it further. Frustration now, and the pain centering behind his eyes, pulsing, pulsing…

Rapping on his door. He jerked slightly, irritably, at the interruption and called out, “What the hell is it?”

“Supper’s ready, Earl,” Brodie’s voice said from outside.

“I don’t want any goddamn supper, leave me alone.”

Silence. Then, “All right, Earl.”

“All right, all right, all right. ”

Kubion stretched out full length on the bed. The room was completely dark now, and cold, and he put one of the blankets over him. It can be done, he thought, we can do it, go over it again and keep going over it, make it even more solid, cancel some of the risks but there are too many of them but the hicks keep money in fruit jars sometimes but they can identify us but a whole valley but this is safe ground but it can be done…

The spiders came.

They came out of the darkness, big ones, big black ones, crawling over the floor and up onto the bed. One of them crept upward along his leg, mouth opened redly, hungry mouth, saliva dripping, he could feel the saliva dripping like hot slime through the blanket and through his clothes and onto his naked flesh. No! but the room was filled with them now, coming for him, one on his arm, one on his chest, one on his neck, black and red and feather-legged with their hungry devouring mouths, get away from me, get away from me!

He screamed, and screamed again, and woke up, and came off the bed in a convulsive jump. He stood shivering in the darkness, and the spiders were gone; it had been the dream again and the spiders were gone. Or-were they? What was that, there in the dark corner? Something moving, something crawling. Spider! No, they were gone, mind playing tricks, no spiders here, no spiders, but something was crawling, he could see it crawling there…

He squeezed his eyes shut, nothing there, and slitted them open again, nothing there, nothing there. Think about the score, remember the score that can be done, that we can’t do, that can be done. He could not keep his hands quiet; his body was soaked in sweat. The pain in his head was raging now, he could feel himself losing control, his thoughts were wrapped in a gray floating mist and he wanted to smash something, kill something, kill the spiders, the filthy spiders crawling there in the dark corner, and he ran to the corner and killed one spider, and killed a second, and twisted panting toward the bed and suddenly they were all around him, scurrying over the walls and floor and furnishings, they were real and they were after him and all the pain in his head the pain and the spiders coming the red black hungry spiders coming the spiders the He stopped shaking.

The pain went away.

The spiders went away.

Just like that, as if a bubble had burst inside him, it all went away, and he was calm again. He stood still for a moment, until his breathing returned to normal, and then bathed sweat from his face and walked slowly to the bed. Sitting on the edge of it, he switched on the lamp and looked around the room.

Good-bye, spiders, he thought, good-bye forever because you’re not coming back, I’m not going to let you come back.

And he began to laugh.

He laughed for a long time, tears streaming down his cheeks, drool overflowing the corners of his mouth, stitches in his belly and both sides. Then, just as suddenly, the laughter cut off, and his head came up, and he sat staring straight ahead, lips still stretched in a wetly fixed grin. His eyes were brightly feverish, glowing like round black stones daubed with phosphorescent paint.

He was thinking about the score again, the score, the big big big big score. Oh, there was no question about it now, oh no question; there had never been any question.

It could be done-and they were going to do it.