Bill Pronzini: Snowbound

McNeil pointed a spasmodic, accusatory finger at Coopersmith. His face was lacquered with sweat. “You had no right, you had no right to make a decision that might cost me my life!”

“The decision was the Lord’s,” the Reverend Mr. Keyes said. “The Lord granted them the wisdom and the courage to do what must be done, and the Lord will grant them the strength to carry it through.”

“The Lord, the Lord, I’ve heard enough about your Lord-”

The Reverend Mr. Keyes started toward McNeil angrily. Webb Edwards restrained him. Eyes touched the minister, touched McNeil, returned to Coopersmith; the preponderence of expressions revealed a vacillation between hope and deepening terror.

Joe Garvey, his nose puffed into a discolored blob from the pistol whipping he had taken earlier, said thickly, “Lew, I can understand why Johnny would risk his life for us, and I can trust him and believe in him. But what about this Cain? He’s an outsider, a man who’s made it plain all along he wanted nothing to do with any of us. How could you and Johnny be sure of what he’ll do out there?”

“That’s right,” McNeil cried, “that’s right, that’s right! A bird like that, a lousy vandal, he’ll run away and try to save himself the first chance he gets. Oh you crazy old man, you crazy old fool!”

Blood surged hotly in Coopersmith’s temples. “What right have you got to judge and condemn a man you don’t know anything about-a man with guts enough to fight for your miserable life and everybody else’s life here? Cain won’t run away, any more than Johnny will. And he isn’t the one who broke into the cafe; whoever it was, it wasn’t Zachary Cain.”

“The hell it wasn’t, he’s the one all right-”

“That’s enough!” a voice shouted suddenly. “I won’t listen to any more against Mr. Cain, I’m the one who broke into the cafe, I’m the one.”

The voice belonged to McNeil’s son, Larry.

Coopersmith stared down at the youth; of all the Hidden Valley residents who might have been responsible for the breaking and entering, Larry was one of the last he-or any of the others-would have suspected. Sandy McNeil said something to her son in a hushed voice, but he shook his head and pushed out into the center aisle. She came after him, one arm extended as if beseeching, as he stepped up onto the pulpit and approached his father.

McNeil was looking at him incredulously. “You, boy — you?”

“Me, Pa.” To Coopersmith, Larry’s thin face seemed for the first time to contain maturity, a kind of determined manliness. “I slipped out of the house around 3 A.M. both mornings, when everyone in the village was asleep, and used an old tire iron you had in the garage to jimmy the door. Then I propped it wide with the orange crates so the snow could blow in and ruin as much stock as possible. I’d have owned up to it sooner or later anyway, with you threatening to have Mr. Cain arrested; but now that I know he’s gone out there to try to save us, I just can’t hold it inside me anymore.”

McNeil’s lips worked soundlessly for a moment. Then, in a low voice that cracked as brittly as thin ice: “My own son, Jesus, my own son.”

“Always talking about Ma,” Larry said, “always talking about her in front of other people, putting her down, saying dirty things. And the way you treated her, both of us, like we were nothing to you and we’re not, all you care about is yourself. That’s why I did it. I thought it would be a way to hurt you. I’m sorry for it now, I wish I hadn’t done it-not only because it was wrong but because I was thinking and acting the way you do, I was being just like you. And I don’t ever want to be like you, Pa, not ever…”

His voice trailed off, and the silence which followed was thick and uneasy. Sandy McNeil looked at her husband, at her son, and then she moved closer to Larry and took his hand; the gesture, the stolidity of her expression told Coopersmith she had made a decision for the future, if there was to be one for the two of them, which she would not compromise.

McNeil’s cheeks were gray and damp and hollow. He watched his wife and son walk away from him; searched the eyes of the others and found no sympathy, found nothing at all for him. He seemed to fold in on himself, to shrivel and age perceptibly until he became like a gnome whose eyes glistened wetly with the cancer of cowardice and self-pity. He groped his way to the organ bench and sat on it and put his head in his hands.

The collective gazes turned from him and settled again on Coopersmith. Quietly, he told them about Cain-who the man was, why he had come to the valley, why he had volunteered to join Tribucci. And when he was finished, he saw a grudging acceptance of the situation on the majority of faces. The palpable, fear-heavy tenseness was more acute than ever, but there would be no panic, no chaotic infighting. Things in here, at least, appeared to again be under control…

“Webb!”

The cry came from Vince Tribucci, jerked heads around once more, brought Dr. Edwards running down the center aisle in immediate response. Vince was leaning anxiously over his sister-in-law, helping her into a supine position on the pew bench; Rebecca held her head, pillowed it gently on one thigh. Ann’s swollen abdomen heaved, convulsed, and her face was contorted with pain. She had her lower lip clenched deeply between her teeth, as though to keep herself from screaming.

Ellen clutched at Coopersmith’s jacket. “She’s gone into labor; the shock put her into labor. Dear heaven, Lew, she’s going to have her baby…”

At the approximate point where he and Tribucci had first entered the wind-combed trees, Cain stopped against the bole of one fir and studied the area. The tracks they had made coming across the sloping snowfield had been partially obliterated by the storm; through the flurries he could make out nothing except the dark outlines of cottage and church, the vague illumination of the church’s stained-glass side windows.

With his gloved fingers opening and closing steadily, agitatedly, around the butt of the Walther PPK, he started down and across the open area. The wind shoved harshly at his back, bending him forward from the waist, and the tails of his coat flapped against his legs like the wings of a fettered bird. Firn crackled and crunched beneath his boot soles. He kept his head up, watching the cottage looming ahead, breathing shallowly.

Long moments later he reached the rear of the attached garage, took the gun out of his pocket, and went along the building’s southern, front wall. Icicles hung from its eaves like pointed giant’s teeth; shutters closed across one of the facing windows rattled loudly above the storm’s querulous skirling. Cain stopped at the forward corner, and from there he could see the gray-black opening of the glassless belfry window and the ice-coated rope hanging down out of it; but neither was discernible from any distance.

Crossing to the church, he edged slowly and carefully toward the front. When he had come midway, he could see all of the near third of the parking lot. Three cars, each of them shrouded in white, were parked nose up against log brakes set on a line with the church’s southern wall. Snow had built little ledges on the sills of their windshields and near passenger windows, and was frozen to the glass itself in streaks and spatters.

Cain went another dozen steps, and two more cars came within range of his vision-both parked with their front bumpers extending to the edge of the church walk, one in the center of the lot and the other down near Sierra Street. Their windows, too, were like blind white eyes. Within a foot of the corner, he squatted and leaned his left shoulder on the icy boarding and stretched out just enough so that he was able to see the area immediately fronting the church. One last car, as frozen and abandoned-looking as the other five.