WINTER LAND
AN ORIGINAL SHORT STORY
By David Heilbroner
The animal leapt from the roadside brush and into the Volvo wagon's
twin cones of light. Its brown haunches flashed for an instant, frozen
as if by a strobe light. A single white-rimmed eye cocked back, open wide
with terror in the moment before the body made contact with the oncoming
vehicle, flesh against steel, bone broken by machine. The rack of antlers
rose and disappeared from view, sending a shudder through the chassis and
swinging the car halfway across the narrow roadway. Franklin and Hope Winter
watched the whirl of events from behind their windshield. Franklin clutched
the wheel. Hope gripped the dashboard.
That evening they had been to a dinner party with friends five miles
away in the small, white-clapboard town of Thetford, Vermont. The hosts
were the Valkenbergs, a couple who, like the Winters, had retired from
the city to the dream of an antique farmhouse.
By eleven they had polished off two bottles of Bordeaux and started
in on the Courvoisier, but Franklin insisted on black coffee before the
drive home.
"Ever the careful lawyer," joked Art Valkenberg, who had just
poured a second round of brandies.
"Ex-lawyer," Hope corrected.
"I thought there was no such thing," said Art's wife.
"Once you get the taste for blood," Art quipped. "Even
after sixty. Eh, Frank?"
Franklin smiled impatiently. He was a tall man possessed of a strong
physique that added some force to a boyish face, which was surmounted by
a nest of thinning silver hair and inset with eyes that never seemed at
rest. He held up both hands, pleaded guilty as charged, and nodded to his
wife.
Hope Winter finished her drink and apologized with a smile that they
were indeed up well past their bedtime. She leaned her head against Franklin's
shoulder as they exchanged air-kisses and handshakes with their hosts at
the door.
The twenty-minute ride back from the Valkenbergs was as quiet as the
dinner had been jovial. Franklin was absorbed in driving. Night had closed
in and turned the evening's rain to crystalline patches as treacherous
as oil slicks. Hope kept her head down, pressing a damp paper towel to
a wine stain on a yellow cashmere sweater she'd worn for the first time.
The last words spoken before the impact were Hope's: Maybe some salt would
help. Then came the brown-and-white flash, a banshee wail of tires, and
the shivering spin.
For nearly half a minute afterward, the couple sat silent, staring at
the dark stretch of two-lane road bordered by bare-limbed maple trees,
the carcass of the deer partly hidden by the Volvo's front fender.
"I think I'm all right," Franklin said, patting his arms in
a show of self-examination. "How about you?"
"Just a little shaken up is all."
Franklin paused, uncertain, and turned on the interior light. Hope's
crisply made-up and well-formed features looked almost white, like a Kabuki
mask. Her eyes were red and her hands, with their varied gold rings and
wrist ornaments, trembled visibly.
"You're sure, dear? My heart's racing."
Hope's red mouth trembled as she answered, "I'm just fine."
"Well, anyway, my God, that poor creature. And poor us, too. We're
lucky we didn't go smack, right through the windshield."
"I suppose it came at you too fast. Was that what happened, Frank?
You didn't see the deer in time?"
"I certainly didn't want to hit it, if that's what you mean."
"Don't be defensive, dear." Hope lifted herself to see past
the car hood. Her blonde hair was dusted with gray and was pulled back
from temples that were latticed with blue veins. "Do you think we
can get around him? He's a huge buck."
"A stag, dear. He's a stag. But first let's see if we even can
get out of here."
Franklin turned the ignition key. He could feel the adrenaline still
pumping his heart and making his hands tingle as if the nerve endings were
all firing at once. An unencouraging noise came from the engine, a repetitive
scraping sound, but when he shifted to reverse and applied the pedal the
car began moving. Hope turned off the overhead light and settled herself
in her seat.
As they pulled back, the form of the deer revealed itself, its antlered
head stretching well beyond the double yellow line. A faint cloud of mist
hovered over the body, lit like a halo in the headlamp chiaroscuro.
"Do you think we should call the highway patrol?" Hope suggested.
"Highway patrol?" Franklin stopped and let the car idle.
"You're supposed to report these things, aren't you?"
"I tell you what. I'll go see if the deer's still alive. If he
is, then we'll go get a vet, or more likely a farmer with a .22 to put
him out of his misery."
"That's awful."
"It's humane, dear."
"I know I shouldn't say it, but I wish you'd be more careful driving,"
Hope said. "You're always in such a rush."
Franklin detected a slight slur to her speech, a sign of stress or maybe
the alcohol. "You just relax."
When Franklin stepped outside, the cold stung his face like nettles.
The overhanging branches obscured all the stars and the woods seemed lost
in shadow except for the first rank of trees above the thorn and huckleberry
bushes spiking the embankment.
He walked around the front of the station wagon and stood in his red
checkered field coat, hands dug into his pockets. A mainline Boston trusts
and estates practice had not prepared him for the physical challenges of
country life, but by dint of his natural physicality, he found himself
drawn to chores and tasks around the house. His father, after all, had
been a contractor in Newton, and Franklin could still recall those large,
spatulate hands, hard from physical work and rough as sandpaper.
To Hope's dismay, ever since they'd arrived in Vermont, Franklin returned
each afternoon to her lovingly decorated home-the dominant motif being
English floral chintz offset against distressed American primitive antiques
and Oriental rugs-with paint stains on his trousers, cuts on his hands,
and smelling generally of sweat. "It keeps me young," he would
say and then disappear into the shower.
Franklin stared down at the body. A pool of blood had collected beneath
a brown-and-white ear. How elegant a creature lay there, immobile, alive
one moment, gone the next. A being utterly unlike those rat-gray does who
nibbled at their yew bushes. Only, he was clearly dead. That black nose
neither moved nor emitted clouds of warm breath. The tawny nap of fur over
the rib cage lay motionless. The white-throated neck appeared twisted out
of line and the large, round eye that moments earlier had stared at Franklin
with a look of unholy terror receded behind a mucous glaze.
The stag measured probably six feet from hooves to head and he was lean,
no more than a foot across, and weighed perhaps a hundred and fifty pounds.
His antlers formed an elaborate crown, while his legs were so finely tapered
Franklin thought he might have been able to snap a femur in two with his
bare hands, now strong from twelve months of country life. It seemed wrong
for a creature like that to die in some pointless accident, a violation
of some fundamental natural order.
Franklin went down on one knee, aware that his good trousers were getting
stained with blood and dirty ice. He placed a palm on the white chest.
The fur felt warm and thick and yielding. His hand traveled up along the
long neck, over the muscles to the place where horn melded mysteriously
into the skull. He lifted the head, tested its weight, and examined the
gnarled surface of the antlers, like old olive wood. He scarcely noticed
a sluice of blood drain onto his sleeve.
A short, impatient blat from the car horn cut above the steady scrape
of the engine. Franklin glanced up and saw Hope's oval face and round eyes
watching him from behind the headlight flare. Her hand waved in circles
for him to get on with it.
Moments later, Franklin leaned in through the driver's-side window.
"Oh, my," Hope exclaimed. "Do you know you're covered
with blood?"
Franklin glanced at the damp patch on his sleeve. "Well, I had
to see if he had a pulse. And the answer is no. So I'm going to lash him
to the hood."
"What?" Hope's eyes widened, arching the pencil lines that
took the place of eyebrows.
"He's heavy but all I've got to do is slide him up over the sidewalls."
Franklin smiled as he added, "And this time I promise to drive more
carefully."
"You don't just want to drag him into the woods?"
"Hope, the skin will be beautiful on the living room floor, or
slung on the back of the sofa. And then there's the venison."
Hope's face fell slack. "You know that deer probably carries lice
and Lyme ticks and worms."
"Nonsense."
Hope turned toward the windshield.
"I don't want that dead thing in our house."
"I won't bring it in until it's stripped, tanned, and cured. Turns
out I've just been reading about the process. Quite a coincidence, really."
"Really," she said softly, almost to herself.
"Anyway, the underbrush is so thick, I don't think I could get
him in there even if I wanted to."
Hope's eyes darted across Franklin's face, searching for something to
latch onto. Finally, she laughed. "Well, I'm too tired to argue about
it now. Just for goodness' sake, don't hurt your back."
"It'll keep me young."
Franklin watched the electronic window rise up. Hope reached for the
radio then drew her coat around her shoulders.
Half an hour later, Franklin pulled into their dirt drive. He immediately
began working the knots and coiling rope. Hope pecked her husband on the
cheek and said she'd be glad to be left out of the entire process. When
she looked back from the kitchen door, she saw Franklin spreading a tarp
on the ground to receive the carcass.
Inside, Hope fixed her usual nightcap, a cup of chamomile tea spiked
with a dose of bourbon. She still felt on edge from the collision, so she
opened her clutch purse and swallowed a Valium. Climbing the stairs to
their bedroom, she found herself wishing her husband had shown a little
more sensitivity. It was an ugly thing, that deer. Bore the taint of death.
But that was Franklin, carried away with his projects.
Upstairs, she dropped her sweater into an oversized English porcelain
sink and turned on the brass faucets. The wine stain leaked into the water.
She changed into an embroidered flannel robe, pulled a quilt over her knees,
and opened a new translation of Proust's Swann's Way. On the bed stand,
beside her evening drink, stood an elaborate cloisonné frame displaying
a photo of a much younger Hope with her arm around a preteen girl, their
faces tanned and smiling. The cliffs of a Martha's Vineyard beach receded
behind the pair into the salt spray that melded into a layer of dust on
the glass.
Hope read until the sedative and the alcohol created a warm hum at the
core of her brain and the events of the evening settled into a more pleasing
configuration. Just one of her husband's whims was all. It would pass.
Eventually she put down the novel. The bedside clock read 12:40. She
drew back the lace curtains and saw with some satisfaction that the car
had been pulled into the garage and the drive was clear.
At 2 a.m. Hope woke and found Franklin's side of their double bed still
cold. She padded into the kitchen and faded up the track lighting. Copper
pots hung above a stainless steel stove and a polished cherry-wood floor.
It was a windowed kitchen, as were most of the rooms Hope had redesigned,
flooding the once dark and musty saltbox Colonial with sunlight and bringing
the Vermont landscape inside. But at night, the windows became mirrors
in which Hope saw herself reflected as if from so many eyes. She didn't
like the effect, especially when she was alone. Her legs and arms had shrunk
with age, her back become slightly stooped, the price of spending three
decades as an editor of travel books. The eyes also made her feel a tingle
of fear that came with isolation. No, she hadn't fully grasped the utter
solitude of country life when fantasizing about retirement from her Beacon
Hill townhouse, what with neighbors waving across the back lots and the
ubiquitous weekend gawkers out to stroll Boston Common.
"Frank?" she called. "Frank, are you here?"
With the cold outside, even the chirrup of crickets was absent. The
buzz of the electric wall clock filled her ears. She turned off the kitchen
light and the mirrors became windows again. A pair of lights glowed in
the void. One small bulb at the foot of their drive illuminated a sign
that read "Winterland." Hope had christened their home after
both themselves and Vermont's undulating, snow-coated landscapes. Like
milk, she used to say. A huge bottle of milk spilled over the countryside,
wrapping everything in a perfect white mantle. She had ordered the sign
when they'd moved in and already the wood had weathered silver, the gold
lettering peeled. She planned to have it redone in the spring.
The other light came from their barn window about two hundred yards
distant. A figure appeared to be moving inside but it was hard to trust
her eyes in this sleepy and lightheaded state.
Hope took a flashlight from the coat closet, slipped on a pair of duck
boots, and started across the field. The frozen grass crunched under her
feet as she approached the rust-colored barn. It was a two-story, post-and-beam
structure with a dirt floor. Hope considered it a forbidding place, the
rafters and roof boards partially consumed by powder-post beetles and daubed
with dormant wasp nests.
She gripped the wooden handle and the rickety door slid back. Hope drew
an audible breath as she surveyed the scene within.
Lit from below by a kerosene lantern, Franklin worked at flaying the
deer. Sweat and grease matted his arms, thinning strands of hair stuck
to his red scalp. He had stripped down to a T-shirt and slipped on a pair
of blue jeans he used for painting and other chores. In one hand he held
a Bowie knife, its blade shining with fat, the leather holster open and
dangling off a belt loop. With the other hand he was pulling back a flap
of deer hide from the animal's exposed skeleton, the chest gaping open
like some cavernous sex organ.
The deer itself hung upside down from a rope tossed over a rafter and
tied off to a large nail driven into a post, making an immense V at the
center of the barn that was repeated in shadow along the rear wall. A heap
of entrails steamed on the earthen floor.
"Frank, it's two o'clock in the morning."
"Really?" he said breathlessly. "Well, you have to skin
an animal while the body's warm and the hide's supple. It's harder than
I imagined, though."
Hope's gaze moved again to the deer. The exposed ribs glowed blue-white
through the striated muscle. Blood dripped out of the ragged incision and
was drying in a crust. She winced at the place where the rope entered and
exited the legs just behind the hooves.
"This looks like a charnel house." She tried to keep her voice
light but spoke to a wall.
"Well?" Franklin bobbed his head and laughed.
"I told you how I feel about this."
"Hope." Franklin lowered his arms and turned to look at his
wife. "The deer's already dead. He's not going to suffer any more
whether we bury him or skin him. I've even got half a mind to dry some
slices and make venison jerky."
"Not in my house you won't."
The vehemence in her voice surprised them both.
Hope's face had the pallor of approaching old age and her eyes, still
as bloodshot as they'd been in the car, glowed with anger.
"We can't have that, that corpse hanging here attracting vermin,"
she went on. "And, really, you with that knife. You look like Trapper
John or Paul Bunyan."
"At least they were heroes," Franklin joked. "And as
you regularly remind me, nobody loves a lawyer."
"Well, nobody loves a killer, either."
Franklin stepped forward, the knife hanging at his side, blade brushing
against his pants leg. "Now let's not exaggerate. I'm not a killer."
"Then a butcher."
"Okay." Franklin wiped the blade on his pants leg. "And
what's so wrong with that?"
"It's filthy."
"To you maybe. But to tell you the God's honest truth, I like it.
And I'd be bored to death if I just sat around."
"Bored?"
"Don't laugh. I need to work."
"Who's laughing? You've worked like a madman your whole life. I
was hoping for something different when we moved out here."
Hope's red-eyed stare seemed to soften, but Franklin felt himself becoming
more adamant. "I don't want to spend the next ten years of my life
reading the Sunday paper cover to cover and going to the same endless dinner
parties. I need to do things."
"I know, I know. It keeps you young."
Franklin gestured in frustration with both hands, holding the blade
aloft. "Hope, you're acting like a child."
"I wish you'd put that knife down. It scares me the way you wave
it around like that."
"It scares you? Everything scares you, doesn't it? God damn it,
this is just like Amy. You know that, don't you? Just the way you tried
to manipulate her."
Hope froze for an instant, then shot back, "Amy made her own mistakes.
Don't blame me. And not that you were around to help, I might add."
"Oh really?" Franklin started forward, swinging his hands
at his side as he spoke, the knife blade catching the flame from the kerosene
lamp.
"I was supposed to read her mind?"
"You were there, in that home office you negotiated."
"That's right. And you were at the law firm. Working as always."
Tears formed in the corners of Hope's eyes and she turned away. "You
don't know what it's like to be left alone so much."
"Oh, please, not that again." Franklin walked back to the
deer carcass, then added bitterly, "Isn't it amazing how my life always
seems so much more interesting than yours."
Franklin started in on the haunches, his voice rising and falling with
each tear at the translucent membrane holding skin to muscle.
"After Amy left, you wanted to quit your job, come up here, and
escape the whole world. Only now you've run out of distractions and you
want to pull me down with you. But I'm not going to sit around just waiting
to die."
"Sometimes I forget what a heartless son of a bitch you are,"
Hope said.
She kicked a clod of dirt that landed at Franklin's feet. He watched
her hurry down the hill and into the square of light spilling from the
kitchen door. He cursed to himself as he wiped the blade on his trousers.
When he cut into the deer's thigh, he thought of his daughter, wan and
glassy-eyed as they dropped her off at the expensive, upscale clinic a
year ago. I'm sorry, sir. No novels or newspapers. They distract from the
regimen. Where the hell had Hope been? Locked in her little white office,
no doubt . . .
From across the lawn, he heard a storm door slam and the sound of glass
shattering.
Franklin walked into the large sunroom carrying a tube of window caulking
and a putty knife. Outside, the sky was overcast with high clouds that
muted the morning sunlight into a plain, unflattering illumination across
the leafless country. A hard, freezing rain seemed due any moment. Hope
had the wood-burning stove cranked up and the air felt as close and warm
as a greenhouse. She sat in a white wicker armchair, legs stretched out
under a quilted throw, reading her book and nursing a cup of coffee.
"I fixed that pane."
"I saw. Thanks." Hope raised her eyes from the page. They
were still red.
"Look." Franklin drew closer and laid an open palm on Hope's
shoulder. "It was late, we both said things we shouldn't have."
Hope rubbed his hand once, then suddenly pulled away. "Oh! I'm
sorry, but you smell like that animal."
Franklin picked at a spot of deer fat on his work pants. The stiff yellow-brown
mass cracked against his fingernail.
"Not in here."
"I'll go change," Franklin said, moving out of the room. "Then
maybe we can go for a walk. Down by the grange hall."
"How much of that animal is left out there?"
"The skin's off. And we had a good hard freeze last night so I
can take my time with the cuts and fillets. Now don't look so upset, please.
He's not going to come climbing in here on his own."
Hope smiled but her eyes stayed distant. "Just please go get changed,
Franklin."
Steam had completely blotted out Franklin's
image in the mirror and each time he tried to clear it away and take a
few strokes at his cheeks and neck with the razor, it fogged up again.
If he weren't so weary, Franklin thought, the episode might have had its
comical edge. He'd been up until four-thirty flensing every trace of flesh
and fat off the hide, carefully detaching it from around that long tightly
molded head, then laying it out across a trio of sawhorses to keep it dry.
The bickering with Hope rankled him all night. Still, he had ridden the
swing of her moods before, PMS and menopause. She'd eventually snap back.
And that's just what she's doing, he joked to himself. Snapping back. They'd
survived thirty-six years of marriage and one nearly lost child, they would
survive fifteen years of retirement.
With a hand towel, he cleared the mirror and started in on his neck.
His thoughts drifted to Amy, wondering how she was faring in New York City,
now that she was out of that clinic.
A blurred movement from the driveway below caught his eye through the
bathroom window. He peered down to the gravel parking circle. There was
no mistaking the red turret lights and the green and white lines. An errant
memory surfaced as he put down his razor: That's right, mister. Your daughter's
still in the holding pen. No, only her lawyer can see her until after the
arraignment.
The officer was overweight and middle-aged with a perfectly shaved face
that melted into a pronounced double chin. He wore a four-corner hat, dark
green jacket, and tan jodhpurs that looked like something belonging to
the Canadian Mounties. He rubbed his hands together to ward off the cold
as he stood outside the kitchen door. The sky behind him seemed to have
darkened visibly.
Franklin had on a T-shirt and a bathrobe he'd pulled off the back of
the door in his rush downstairs. He wiped the last of the shaving cream
off his neck as he let the stranger inside.
"Morning, officer."
"Mrs. Winter in?"
"Just a minute, I'll get her. Get you a cup of coffee?"
"No thank you, sir. Mrs. Winter?"
Hope appeared at the door that led to the sunroom. She cinched her robe
at her waist and offered a pale hand to the officer.
"You called the police?" Franklin asked. He tried to read
her mood but Hope deflected his inquiring stare with a determined lightness.
"Yes, thank you, officer. It's really nothing, I suppose. You see,
my husband and I had an accident late last night. We hit a deer, poor thing,
and I thought we might be required to report the incident. Anyway, it's
in our barn, for better or worse, and we wanted to dispose of the remains
properly. According to the health laws."
"If it's necessary," Franklin put in. He tried to stop Hope
with a meaningful glare but she kept aiming her good cheer toward the middle-aged
officer in the equestrian outfit.
"Well, that all depends," the officer said. "Usually
we get a county health inspector out, 'specially if the animal's on private
property. Just to check for Lyme, rabies. It's only a precaution. You don't
have to do it."
"The body's out in the barn," Hope responded brightly. "Let
me show you where it is."
"You know," the officer put it, "anywhere else you might
get a reward."
"A reward?" Franklin asked.
"Too many of these critters eating the shrubs. Not to mention all
the accidents. We had a kid got a broken leg just a week ago." The
officer picked a speck of something dark from between his large front teeth.
"Down in Connecticut and New Jersey, they're paying two, three hundred
dollars a pop."
"Well, lucky it was a Volvo," Hope said.
"Excuse me?" the officer asked.
"Our car's a Volvo. It's a very safe car."
"All right, ma'am."
"Anyway, why don't you come with me and have a look. Just so we
abide by the rules."
"Out here," the officer said, "nobody's gonna check on
you. But," he straightened his four-corner hat, "let's us have
a look-see."
Franklin watched as Hope led the officer across the grass. The sky was
getting heavy, he thought. Snow would be falling anytime now.
Rain came instead. With the sun just below the horizon, the rows of
clouds turned dark and forbidding, then they opened. The bare trees stood
as stark as scarecrows while the wind pelted frozen particles that coated
every surface with a crackling glaze.
Franklin had spent the better part of the afternoon in the barn, following
some of the suggestions for the safe handling of venison made by the officer.
Just after five, he came inside still wearing his jeans and T-shirt, the
Bowie knife strapped to his belt. A pleasant fatigue invaded his muscles.
After sending the officer off in his car, Hope had spent the day reading
in the sunroom, the wood-burning stove stoked. She shifted her body at
Franklin's entry but didn't look up.
Franklin stood in the entryway and watched her reading until the phone
rang. He picked up the line in the living room and spoke in a subdued voice.
Afterward, he rejoined Hope and stayed standing, leaning against a window
casement. Night had almost completely engulfed the field outside and the
glassed-in room became smaller, the walls no longer opening onto anything,
but turning the place into a floating capsule, a submarine, a mirrored
chamber inhabited by dozens of reflected Franklins and Hopes.
"How's Amy?" Hope asked suddenly. The tone of her voice startled
Franklin. An old accusation.
"Right," he said, looking at the fire behind the glass door
of the stove. "That was her just now. Called to ask for some money."
He liked hearing Amy's voice now that she was out of the clinic and getting
her life back together. I'm moving to New York and looking for a job, Dad,
maybe in an art gallery. New York, what did that mean?
"And?"
"I told her I'd send five hundred dollars. You know she's still
struggling."
"Is that all?"
"Such as?"
"What else did you talk about?" Hope reached toward a glass
filled with ice and something clear. Her eyes looked cloudy beneath a flushed
forehead.
"Lots of things," he said.
"You talked about our fighting, didn't you?"
"No."
"I wish you wouldn't discuss our private affairs with our daughter."
"I told you I didn't."
Hope took another long sip from her glass. "You're lying to me,
Franklin. I hate it when you lie."
"Hope, how much have you been drinking?"
"Just a little."
"And those pills? I saw the Valium vial lying on the kitchen counter.
It's almost empty."
"I only take those for sleep."
Franklin paced the room, over to the black, smooth surface of the window.
Then he turned and eyed Hope from across the length of the room. "I
can't believe you called the police on me. Were you drunk then or just
hung over?"
"It wasn't on you-"
"Yes it was and it's ridiculous."
"Fine, Franklin, fine." In one final swallow, she finished
the glass and raised herself out of the chair. She took a step forward,
faltered, then righted herself. A sustained gust of wind drove rain onto
the glass panes with a sound like BB pellets.
"It's not fine. Look at us. You're drunk and I'm angry and there's
no one else I can talk to right now."
"That's your fault as much as anyone's."
"Amy doesn't think so."
"So you did talk to her about us. How much else are you keeping
from me, Franklin?"
"Nothing, I promise."
"Liar." Hope reached for her glass but missed. It fell to
the slate floor, spilling but staying intact. Tears cut lines down her
cheeks.
"Hope, please, calm down and let's talk." Franklin started
across the floor, hands extended.
Hope kept her face focused on the melting ice cubes by her feet as she
stabilized herself on a chair arm.
"What's the point, we won't agree. You just bludgeon people with
words."
"Look at me!" Franklin bellowed. "Goddamn it, look at
me!"
Franklin pulled one of Hope's shoulders around toward him, but she jerked
herself out of reach and started unsteadily toward the kitchen. Her crying
became louder, then rose in pitch to a keening like an animal's wail. The
blue veins at her temples pressed through the translucent skin. Her hair
had the look of a rope beginning to fray.
"You keep away." Her voice was guttural and blurred. "I
can't stand having you in the same room. In the same house."
"I want to help."
Franklin took her shoulders between his hands and turned her toward
him. Hope struggled hard, shaking her head side to side, beating her fists
against Franklin's chest. Her eyes wandered, refusing to meet his own.
"Liar, liar, liar."
"Please," he said into her streaked face. "You're not
yourself. Just sober up and everything will seem better."
For an instant Hope lowered her arms and seemed to settle herself. Then,
all at once, she unsnapped the leather belt holster at Franklin's side
and pulled the Bowie knife free.
Franklin immediately jumped back. The blade hovered between them gleaming
and trembling in Hope's two hands like a solitary candle flame.
"Get away," she cried. "I'm telling you."
"Please, settle down, Hope. That's not going to solve anything.
Please."
"Now," she said, still crying, her knuckles white on the wooden
knife stock. "I want you away from me."
"Hope, please. Everything will be all right. I promise." Franklin
tried taking a single step forward, holding out an open hand in supplication.
"I'm warning you."
"Hope, I'm sorry if I've made you angry. Just let me hold you."
He took another step and the blade slashed down. The tip cut a straight
line across his palm. Franklin paused, staring with astonishment at the
blood that seeped out the wound and began dripping onto the floor in perfect
circles.
"You're crazy," he cried. "What are you doing?"
"Just get out of here." Hope continued clutching the knife,
measuring the distance between herself and Franklin with unsteady, tearful
eyes, her body listing from side to side.
The front door closed quietly. The red taillights of the Volvo moved
like twin fireflies through the night air. They briefly illuminated the
sign that read Winterland, then disappeared.
Pike's Diner was mostly empty. Franklin took a seat at the counter.
He ordered coffee from a waitress, kept his right hand dug inside his flannel
jacket pocket, held the white ceramic cup with his left. An Anheuser-Busch
clock above the Softee Ice Cream dispenser read 6:45. His right hand throbbed
in his pocket and when he pulled it out he saw his closed fist oozing blood.
"Anything else?"
"No," Franklin said, quickly hiding his hand. "Coffee's
fine. Thanks."
There were times when his judgment could be skewed, he knew, moments
when his impulses should not be trusted. He wondered whether this might
be one of those times.
Franklin pulled out his wallet and, after laying a dollar on the counter
with one hand, examined the contents. He had seventy-eight dollars in cash,
two blank checks, three credit cards, a bank card, Triple-A membership
card, AARP temp card, and some photos. He arranged Amy, Hope, and himself
in various combinations. He was surprised to see how much Hope had aged.
After turning forty, she'd shied away from cameras and so every shot of
them showed a younger couple with an adolescent daughter, all virtual strangers
now.
Maybe, he considered, he and Hope had been a bad match from the start.
Recently he'd been having a hard time remembering exactly what on earth
had kept them together. They had drifted after Amy had moved out. They
were no longer building lives but winding them down. Sleepwalking toward
a precipice.
In the bathroom he washed off the blood in a small sink and used some
pink soap from a hanging dispenser to sanitize the wound. On the way back
to his stool, he noticed a Trailways bus schedule taped to the wall beside
a pay phone. He could call Hope, leave the keys with the waitress.
He used his left hand to dial. He listened to the rings, heard the electronic
voice ask whether the party would accept the charges. His daughter answered
yes. Music was playing loudly in her apartment and people were laughing
in the background. That's right. It was Saturday night. Not that the days
of the week meant anything to Franklin anymore. A fly walked purposefully
across the black metal rim of the pay phone. Someone exited the diner and
the door slapped shut.
"Hello? Hello? Dad, is that you?"
Franklin held onto the receiver, breathing lightly. He thought about
a divorced woman he'd met at a dinner party who'd made a pass at him. But
that had been ten years ago. Ten years. She wouldn't even remember his
name anymore. Perhaps she was already dead. He felt something deep within
him sag, like an old rafter when the snow piled too heavily on a roof.
Bending but not quite breaking. Just enduring the weight of time. Slowly,
quietly, he hung up the receiver.
At the counter he finished his coffee and stared at the waitress, her
pale, sagging face and raw, red hands. He thought of the officer who'd
come to their house with his country professionalism. Two hundred bucks
a pop. He saw the dark stretch of Vermont winter looming ahead like a tunnel.
He transferred his keys to his left hand and headed out the door, back
home toward Winterland.
David Heilbroner, L'84, a freelance writer in New York and a regular
contributor, wrote about thriller-novel authors in the May 1998 issue.
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