Sarah St.Vincent - Ways to Hide in Winter

He had cropped his hair even closer than usual, giving him a fuzzy look. “What sign?” I asked, looking at the gray meat of my hamburger. I had overcooked it, and it was dry. I opened a Pepsi that tasted much too sweet.

“The Underground Railroad one. The historical marker. I heard a rumor way back when I first took over up there, but I never really thought it was true. I can’t even believe it. Runaway slaves! In that very building!” He was rapturous, even more so than he’d been about the mystery project—which remained ongoing, if the parts currently stacked on the hostel’s porch were any indication. “In some ways, it makes me feel a closer connection to God, you know? Like Moses and the Israelites—how they fled slavery in Egypt. Like the building was part of a deliverance.”

I walked to the sink and poured myself a cup of tap water, peering into the bottom to make sure there were no bits of rust or dirt. “You’re right, that’s really something,” I answered absently.

“Sure is. I’m going to look into it as soon as I get a chance. Maybe the county historical society has something on it.”

I looked at him, his bright eyes and radiant smile, and for a brief, troubling moment was puzzled. What had we been talking about? My grandmother’s face, her grim expression and narrowed eyes, appeared before me. I should have put more wood in the stove before I’d left. She’d be cold.

“So how are you?” Martin asked, taking a swig of his Dr. Pepper.

“Me? I’m fine.” I returned to the present. “How’s our friend?”

“The foreign guy? Busy. I put him to work.”

“What? Why?”

“Because he can’t pay,” Martin replied nonchalantly. “He somehow got down to his last few dollars, it seems. So I told him I’d let him stay for free and eat whatever he can find in the kitchen if he helps me out. He’s up there sweeping out the game room right now.”

I rubbed a fingertip along the edge of the counter, frowning as I envisioned the stranger with his thin limbs, the padded coat in which he looked so slight. “What’s he doing here, do you think?”

“I don’t know—not my business to ask. I invited him to our Bible study tonight, but he didn’t seem very interested. Hey, do you want to come?” His face brightened.

“I can’t—I’m having dinner with my grandma. Thanks, though.”

“No problem. It’s a standing invitation. We always meet on Thursdays.”

“Yeah, I know.” Although if the older ones found out I had been brought up Catholic, I thought, they would probably chase me out of the building. Many of the churches in the area taught that Catholics weren’t Christian, pointing to what they called idol-worship and who knew what else. I’d lost more than one childhood friend over it, although these days people seemed more inclined to focus their ire on Middle Easterners they’d never have to meet.

“All right, Kathleen,” he beamed, slapping his money on the counter the way he always did. “I’ll see you later.”

The sky darkened during the afternoon, and in the evening a lashing rain came, pelting the windows and battering the ceiling. At six, I dragged the metal signboard in, locked the store, and walked as quickly as I could to the Jeep, holding a plastic bag over my head to shield my face. The drive to the grocery store in Carlisle—all Centerville had was Miller’s, a combination convenience and hunting store much better known for its crossbows than its food—was a long one, the rain coating the roads in slick, half-frozen sheets. I steered the car carefully around the curves, watching for deer. They didn’t usually come out during storms, but you never knew. I had once counted thirteen of them as I drove up the mountain on a foggy night, my headlights shining into their wide, frightened eyes as they stood by the side of the road, vigilant and vulnerable, watching. That had been years earlier, but I still remembered it, the wonder of it, thirteen adult deer stunned into stillness, one after another, poised to run but frozen in their beautiful, fatal uncertainty.

The parking lot at the grocery store was jammed, probably with people from Centerville and other rural dwellers leaving their jobs in Carlisle. It was a cheap, crowded place, and none too clean, but we all continued to go there out of habit. My grandmother had been a cashier there for a while, after my grandfather had decided working wasn’t worth the bother. I parked at the edge of the lot and made my way toward the faded awning, feeling my hip begin to ache with the cold. Ignoring it, I yanked a shopping cart from the interlocking line of them and pushed it through the sliding doors, wiping the rain from my eyes.

I entered the bleak, brightly lit produce aisle and dropped two dirt-streaked potatoes into a bag. The hams were at the back of the store, and I was edging my way there past displays of holiday candy when I saw Amos’s mother.

She was standing with her back to me in front of a row of Christmas cookies, wearing a stylish black jacket with a belt around the waist. I caught a glimpse of her in profile as I passed, her dark eyes, pert nose, and tanned skin, and felt my throat contract. I did not want to see her. Most of all, I did not want her to see me.

“How come you never talk to her?” my mother had asked once.

I had shrugged, or tried to.

“It makes it look like you don’t like her,” she had persisted. “Or like you feel guilty or something.”

I had turned and fixed her with a long look.

“I do not want,” I’d told her firmly, “to talk about this ever again.”

This was shortly after I had left the hospital, when I was still as thin as a starved animal, with long red scars not entirely hidden under my clothing and an expression that struck even me as angry and raw-looking. She had stared at me, startled, and quickly turned away to do something else.

Amos and I had met when I was fifteen and he was nineteen, and gotten married on the mountain as soon as I’d finished high school. The marriage had lasted for four years, almost five, and then he had died. There didn’t seem to be anything to say about him aside from that. When the lights come up, the show is over, and there really isn’t much of a point in hanging around the theater.

The truth was that the whole thing—everything that had happened—still made me sick inside, although what I felt was more anger than sadness. More than once, I had opened my mouth to talk to Beth about it, but was always stopped by a sense of unsteadiness, almost nausea. Early on, when I had just come out of one of the surgeries, she had stroked my hair and said, “We can talk about it when you’re ready, hon.” But I was never ready: never ready to tell her, or anyone, that I wasn’t feeling what I was supposed to feel, that instead of sorrow I felt a fury so corrosive it seemed to be eating away at me on the inside, hollowing me out like a snakeskin, making me grind my teeth at night. Women weren’t supposed to be this angry; no one was, especially not someone who, according to everyone else, was grieving. Angry is what I was, though, and it was an absolute anger, the kind that comes from the cold, hard knowledge that something unfair has happened, something you will never be able to forgive.

In any case, I had no desire to come face-to-face with Amos’s mother. The very thought gave me a sense of dizziness, causing me to wander, disoriented, into an altogether different section of the store. I stood for several minutes under the pale lights of the frozen-food aisle, staring stupidly into the frost-covered glass, before coming to my senses, grabbing the ham, and fleeing to the car.

At the house, my grandmother was waiting for me, her hands on her hips. Her housedress, I noticed, was stained, as if she had spilled something on herself that day. A cigarette was pinched between her lips. “You didn’t tell me your father was coming.”