Bill Pronzini - Snowbound

I wish you’d stop talking about God, Rebecca thought. You’re always talking about God, you make such a mockery of religion. But she did not say anything.

Hughes put on his mackinaw and stepped around the foot of the bed to kiss her absently on the forehead. “Depending on how bad it is, I’ll come back home or call you from the Mercantile. Either way, I’ll let you know soon.”

It had not even occurred to him, she knew, to ask her along-or to question why she was not eager of her own volition to accompany him. She said, “All right.”

When he was gone, Rebecca lay thinking about the slide to keep from dwelling on last night’s experience with Zachary Cain-and on what she had done in this same bed after returning from the cabin. If the pass had been blocked, it meant they were now snowbound for, probably, several days. Was that bad or good? A little of both, she supposed. Nobody could come into Hidden Valley, which meant no mail and no fresh supplies: a minor inconvenience. And nobody could leave the valley, another inconvenience for most, particularly since this was the Christmas season. It also meant that Matt could not meet his current mistress and that he would therefore be forced to spend tonight and the next few nights with his wife. Forced, that was the key word; forced. Still, it was what she wanted-wasn’t it?

I don’t know, she thought then. I don’t know what I want anymore.

And got up listlessly to face another day.

Peggy Tyler’s mother-a faded prototype of her daughter-came running upstairs and opened the door to Peggy’s room without knocking. She was fully dressed and had been in the kitchen making coffee. “It must have been a slide,” she said breathlessly. “It must have been a terrible slide in the pass, I don’t know what else it could have been.”

“I guess that’s what it was,” Peggy said. She was normally a heavy sleeper, and while she had been awakened by the roaring and the quaking, her mind was still wrapped in languid dreams of a warm sun and a warm sea. Her body ached pleasantly; there was a gentle soreness in her loins, and her breasts and nipples tingled from the remembered manipulations of Matt Hughes’ hands and lips. The fucking had been very good last night: some of the best she’d ever had. Of course, the reason for that was Matt’s magnificent Christmas present, which he had presented to her with a kind of shy expectation, as if he had been afraid she would not be pleased, the moment they had entered the motel room.

One thousand dollars-cash.

Dollar sign-one-zero-zero-zero.

After a gift like that, the fucking just had to be very good.

Her mother said, “Thank the Lord it didn’t happen earlier. You didn’t get home until after one; suppose it had happened while you were driving through the pass? You might have been killed!”

“It didn’t happen while I was driving through the pass.”

“It might have. Where were you so late again?”

“I told you before, Mother,” Peggy said. “I’ve joined a group in Soda Grove that’s putting on a Christmas pageant, and there’s a lot of work to be done.”

Mrs. Tyler sighed. “We might be snowbound; there certainly is the chance of it. You won’t be able to go to work today or maybe for the rest of the week.”

How awful, Peggy thought. She said, “I have some sick leave coming. Look, Mother, let’s not get into a panic, okay? If we’re snowbound, then we’re snowbound. It’s no big thing.”

“Well, we’d better go see, we’d better go find out right away. Get dressed now, don’t dawdle.” Mrs. Tyler went out of the room and closed the door behind her.

Peggy had no desire to leave the warmth of her bed; but if she didn’t, her mother would come back up and there would be an argument, and she felt too good today to want to argue about anything. Oh hell, she might as well get up then, and anyway, the time was not far off when she could spend whole days in bed if she felt like it-not far off at all, now.

Leisurely, she swung the covers back and stood up and padded across to where her purse sat on the dresser. She took out the sheaf of fifty-dollar bills Matt Hughes had given her and stroked the money with one finger, smiling; then, reluctantly, she tucked it away again in the compartment where she kept her bankbook and began to dress. When she went downstairs to join her mother a few minutes later, she still wore the same smile.

In the cabin at Mule Deer Lake, Kubion and Brodie and Loxner slept unaware of what had happened at the entrance to Hidden Valley; the thunderburst of the avalanche, diminished by the distance, had not disturbed them.

Loxner and Brodie were quiet in their beds, sleeping soundly. Kubion dreamed of spiders-black, cold, feathery-soft; crawling over him with mouths gaping in wet red hunger-and trembled and trembled and trembled.

The Tribucci brothers and Walt Halliday were the first Hidden Valley residents to reach the slide. They met on Sierra Street where it narrowed into County 235-A, and from there they could see it clearly through a light sifting of snow. Solemnly, wordlessly, the three men tramped up the sharp incline of the roadway and stopped when they could go no further, staring at the solid blockage rising up into the gray morning sky.

Sheer slabs of granite and splintered trees with branches and strips of bark torn away, protruded from the irregular surfaces like shattered bones. The western cliff face seemed steeper than it had been, scarred with an inverted fanshell chute that shone blackly against the dove-colored surroundings. In the stillness you could hear the mounded snow and ice and rock settling with a soft rumbling sound, like a thin echo of the slide itself.

Halliday said, his voice subdued, “Bad. Jesus, about as bad as it could be.”

Both Tribuccis nodded gravely; there did not seem to be anything else to say.

Several other Hidden Valley residents began to arrive, among them Lew Coopersmith and Frank McNeil and Mayor Matt Hughes. They, too, were quietly stunned by what they saw.

Hughes said finally, “My God, do you suppose anybody was in the pass when it happened?”

“Not likely,” Vince Tribucci answered. “What with the amount of snow dropped by the blizzard last night, I doubt if the road was passable even before the slide. If it had to happen, this was probably the best time for it.”

Hughes blew on chilled hands; in his haste he had forgotten his gloves. “I’d better get on the phone to the county seat and let them know about this and ask them to get men and equipment out as quickly as possible.” He turned and hurried back to where he had left his car.

Frank McNeil turned to John Tribucci. “How long you figure it’ll take to clear through?”

“From the way it looks, I’d guess at least a week. But if we keep getting heavy snows, it could take two or more.”

McNeil pursed his lips sourly. “Merry Christmas,” he said, “and a Happy goddamn New Year.”

By nine o’clock the clouds had thinned and scattered to the east, and the whitish eye of a pale winter sun dominated a widening swath of sky. There was no wind, and the thin air had lost most of its chill. On the inner valley slopes and in parts of the valley itself, some of the deep powder drifts created by the night’s storm began to slowly melt, forming little cascades in intricate, interconnecting patterns. Ice unprotected by pockets of shadow crackled intermittently in the warming day; the snow on the village streets commenced liquefying into slush.

Kubion started in from the Mule Deer Lake cabin just before noon, handling the car cautiously, squinting through the streaked windshield. The glare of sun on snow hurt his eyes and intensified the dull ache in his temples. He felt lousy today, badly strung out. Not much sleep last night, that was one of the things responsible-and that dream he’d had, the spiders crawling over him with their red gaping mouths. Jesus! He loathed spiders; they were the one thing which terrified him. He’d never had a nightmare like that before, and it worried him; it was as disquieting as the recurring headaches and his irrational inclination to violence.