Thomas Mcguane - The Cadence of Grass

The engine started, but the wipers seemed overwhelmed by the snow. And now, she thought, for some drunk driving. She pulled onto the highway, heading northwest — toward what? The Missouri River? Maybe a cozy bar a thousand feet lower? Asylum? Maybe no snow, and a chance to reconfirm the existence of sky behind this ominous cover of white. Sometimes these squalls came in so low you could push toward White Sulphur Springs and be under the stars inside twenty minutes. Though it was rarely necessary more than once a year, you could drink all night with strangers.

She found herself driving on a dirt road through frozen wheat stubble at about the time the dashboard clock showed two a.m. Now every bar was closed. She mused upon the dreadful events that seemed to pile up after closing time on winter nights: schnapps in to-go cups, jumper cables, brutal groping and slurred affections, horrible radio music that was suddenly “great.” Every new season bore something macabre on the wind, with people clubbed, pushed out of cars, people murdered . Not everyone could handle last call when they were already facing winter. Nor lonely escapes on empty roads and lost highways.

Evelyn drove at a steady pace as the wind changed the shapes of snow in her headlights. A deer stepped onto the road from the barrow pit, its eyes bright as platinum. She hit the brakes and the car simply shifted its angle and traveled in a frictionless drift toward the deer that stepped out of the way, its amazed face showing briefly in her window as she slid past and off the road into the ditch. The engine quit. Everything she’d been watching was swallowed by darkness. The engine ticked and cooled in the quiet.

She had no trouble restarting the engine, but the headlights wavered as though losing electricity. When she put the car in gear, the drive wheel spun so freely it failed to disturb the stillness of the vehicle. And when she opened the door to get out, it collided with the side of the ditch bank. She opened the opposite door and the wind ripped it out of her hands, snow whirling inside wildly until she pulled it shut. In her fear she tried the radio, finding only a station on which someone was ranting. She turned it off.

But the motor ran, the heater ran, and there was a reassuring vibration in the car, a feeling, like life, that seemed to hold the piling snow at bay. She held her hand up to the rearview mirror and felt that hope was confirmed by its reflection. There was no food in the glovebox, just the owner’s manual and, somehow, an old issue of The Watch Tower . There was enough gas to run till sunup. Things could be worse. She felt an odd need to seem to be occupied. The radio, again, was no help, no more than a steady hiss, and when she shut it off, the knob came loose in her hand: she put it in the glovebox with the Jehovah’s Witness tract, quite formally promising herself not to let this get to her. Instead, she elected to concern herself with whether Bill had fed Cree, Jailbait, Scram, Lady Luck and Crackerjack. Of course he had. He’d made a small pile of alfalfa away from the other horses, because Crackerjack was timid, and then had piled the cob and rolled oats in the middle. After tiptoeing up to dine, Crackerjack would watch all around himself between mouthfuls and, once the food was finished, would paw at the ground with his speckled right foot to make certain he hadn’t missed a single flake. It wasn’t cold enough to freeze the creek, so there was as yet no need to spud a hole in the ice for the horses to drink. But the cows, that was another story. She knew they were searching everywhere in the storm for their calves; they would search for days and never find them. Each cow believed that just one small further effort, one more step, and her calf would appear. Evelyn looked down at herself, half curled up on the seat in her little black dress and the black coat in which she’d wound herself: she looked like a calf herself. She tried to smile at this thought. Perhaps she could sleep.

The chugging of an old vehicle could be made out over the sound of her car. She twisted around and in the distance could discern two uneven cones of headlights bouncing up the dirt road in her direction. The vehicle was moving slowly and the good light penetrated in a straight line toward her like an arrow while the weaker one wobbled its light across the ground. As it came closer, she could make out the dark mass of an old sedan behind it and, buttoning her coat, decided to take a chance. She got out of the car on the low side and clambered up the bank onto the roadway. She held her arms straight out from her sides, raising and lowering them in what she thought was a universal request for assistance. Then the car slowed down and stopped, the animated, snow-filled beam of good light shining off into the distance.

The driver’s door opened and a huge man got out, a dark beard against a torn military coat, a billed cap pulled low. For some reason he didn’t speak, didn’t ask what her problem was. She listened to her own overly detailed description of the deer coming onto the road and grew acutely aware of ice she now felt under her feet and the odd patience with which the man let her speak. The three other doors of the car slowly began opening, and she could see men getting out. “I don’t think this will be necessary,” she said, without quite understanding what she meant. “Not required,” she added with a dismissive wave of her hand, then turned and hurried through the drifts into the night. She didn’t look back until she was out of breath, when she could see the interior lights of her car and the shapes of men going through it. In another few yards, the snow obscured them.

Evelyn was walking away from the river. She knew that by walking away from a river you could be walking into nowhere. But at the moment, walking of any kind seemed entirely positive and the snow was at her back, the only way she could see through it at all though it didn’t prevent her from colliding with a fence. The wire was too tight to crawl through, so she felt along until she reached a brace post and climbed over. To be inside the fence was a relief. Pioneers coming through Indian country often wept when they saw fences. But she was beginning to get cold and would have to find something to break the wind. The first prospect of shelter was a slight ridge, but the snow had piled up just beyond it and the lee was insufficient; this was a possible place to die and therefore would not do just now. She felt quite level-headed in acknowledging that she was unprepared for death. Even if her mind was in ribbons, she wanted to go on.

The strap broke on one of her shoes. They offered little protection, but she now had to shuffle on one foot to keep from losing it and, from time to time, lost it anyway. The snow was melting in her hair and running down her neck, and she wondered if she hadn’t been better off following the fence, or if perhaps she should have trusted those men. Nothing in her route suggested a destination unless it was sunrise still three hours off, if she could last. It was heartening to plan to meet some point in time when meeting some point on earth seemed unattainable. She realized how cold she had gotten when the thought crossed her mind, What difference does it make? She was traveling toward sunrise and sunrise was traveling toward her. Either they met or they didn’t. Nothing else mattered. She and sunrise were old friends, no?

Evelyn sat at the base of a juniper tree acknowledging that it was poor shelter and that while she was certainly not giving up, it was time to await an idea. That was all that was missing. Noting that the broken shoe was gone, she was vaguely surprised that she hadn’t noticed any pain or coldness in that foot. Perhaps, she thought, it was simply more courageous than the other foot. Maybe it was tired of sharing. Lately, people were always offering to “share” with you, usually something entirely unwelcome, occasionally a nasty surprise. Her heart went out to the warmer foot for keeping its own counsel. Overhead, the slumped contours of the juniper were sagging with snow. The shredded bark against her back seemed protective. Then something strange happened: the wind stopped, leaving an apprehensive quiet.