Christian Kiefer - The Animals

Bill glanced slowly around the room, fists clenched and trembling, beer splashing the floor at his feet. The jukebox played its song of cowboys and lost love. Then he ran headlong for the door.

In the blowing snow, the yellow Honda was turning out of its parking spot, its chained tires whacking the surface of the concrete like muffled machine gun fire, the taillights a faint red blur as the car braked and then slid forward. Bill called his name again as he came down into the parking lot, his feet slipping everywhere but somehow reaching the car as it slid toward the asphalt of the highway, his fists battering the yellow curve of the roof, screaming that name again and again as the car pulled out and away from him, its tire chains flopping in the snow, pulling out onto the highway and into the darkness of the storm.

THE DRIVE to Bonners Ferry would have taken fifteen minutes on a clear day, but the snow was blowing sideways across the road and the pickup seemed to shift across that landscape as if adrift. They had plowed, had probably plowed many times, but the blizzard was so thick that he could sometimes not find the roadbed at all. And yet he kept moving forward, the snow a tunnel that seemed to curl in upon his vision, not opening up but closing upon him like a fist and the road continuing forever toward a destination that seemed, in the storm, to move farther and farther from his rolling tires.

When he finally pulled into the Safeway parking lot in Bonners and saw Grace’s pickup there he nearly wept with relief, the truck sliding in next to hers, his door already opening. She stepped out onto the snow and he embraced her and told her he loved her and that he was sorry and she looked at him and put her hands against his face. This guy’s nuts, she said.

He nodded. I called the sheriff from the bar. He’s out looking for him.

Good, she said. Where are we going?

He hesitated before answering. Then he said: Coeur d’Alene.

Bill, she said slowly, you’re coming with us, right?

I can’t, he said.

She looked away.

You know I can’t.

Dammit, Bill, she said. There were tears in her eyes now. What am I supposed to do now?

Highway’ll be clear down to Coeur d’Alene. Get a hotel room and I’ll come down later tonight.

Later tonight? She would not look at him. You probably don’t even have a phone up there right now.

I can’t leave them, Grace. I haven’t even had the chance to feed them tonight.

They’ll be fine for one night.

You’re probably right but I just can’t do it.

The truck’s window cranked down and Jude’s face appeared. Come on, he said. Let’s go.

Hey big guy, Bill said.

Hey back, Jude said. We’re going on a snow adventure.

Crazy, Bill said.

Hey I have your book.

That’s all right, you keep it. He glanced over toward the truck and as he did so the book tumbled from Jude’s hand into the snow. He stepped over and picked it up. It was still in the plastic ziplock baggie, the rubber band holding the whole thing together.

You can keep the book, pal.

Mom says I need to work on returning what I borrow.

Oh, he said. All right. Good job, then. He unzipped his parka and slid the book into the inside pocket and then zipped it up again.

So let’s go, Jude said.

He looked from the boy to the woman and back. Roll your window up, buddy, he said. I need to talk to your mom first.

Hurry up, the boy said.

I’m trying.

Jude looked irritated but he rolled the window up and then scooted into the dark warmth of the cab.

Look, it’s gonna take me a couple hours, Bill said. I’ll have to take the sled up.

She did not respond, looked away from him out over the parking lot.

I just need you and Jude to be out of here, he said.

Dammit, Bill.

I know. Believe me I know.

What’s wrong with this guy?

This question he could not answer.

She embraced him. You’re pissing me off, she whispered in his ear.

I’ll see you tonight.

You’d better, she said. Her voice was thin and her eyes glossy with tears.

NAPLES HAD never been much more than a scant collection of battered buildings along the railroad tracks and the creek but now it was full dark and in the blizzard it seemed as if the entire town had simply blown away. Everything black. No power anywhere he could see. Even the bar had gone dark. He parked the truck at a gravel lot near the school, a place he parked each winter during the heaviest snowfall, and pulled the ramps down and started the snowmobile, jerking the cable repeatedly until the engine caught and started running, and then backed down the ramps onto the snow. It felt solid and substantial under him, a heavy machine set upon tracks and ready to scream out into the snow like a banshee. He lifted the ramps and returned them to the bed and closed the tailgate. Then he opened the cab once more to look in at the interior. The rifle and the dart gun were both in their single case under the bench seat, and he thought that he should probably bring the case with him but there were only three or four rounds in total for the rifle and he did not know what he would do with it were something to happen, the thought of which sent a long shiver through him. In the end he left the case behind.

A car fled past him on the plowed highway. Then another. He sat upon the snowmobile, straddling it, the machine humming under his body, the truck behind him already disappearing from view. Then he pulled out into the road at last. The vehicles that had passed before him dissolved now into the blur of snowfall and no headlights appeared behind. Ice crystals stung his face, his beard and mustache already frozen, the snow a fleeting field of sparks that seemed to run out before the faint glow of the machine.

He turned off the highway onto the spur and turned again into the mile-long road that led to the rescue, following the path of a dark flat creek for a quarter mile, its edge rimed with ice and its surface a perfect unmoving black plate bordered by white, and finally turned up the draw toward the top of the ridge, a curl into darkness, the sled below him whining and growling, the throttle held nearly wide open. The snow was smooth here, although he sometimes thought he could see the faint trough of old footprints illuminated in the headlights, but if so the image was too faint to be sure of and seemed to materialize and fade each time he looked at it, like an illusion visible only in the peripheries. He thought of Grace and of Jude, riding south on the highway toward Coeur d’Alene, hoped they were safe, wondered then why he had not climbed into the truck with them. But he could not leave the animals. He could not leave without checking on them, without ensuring that they were all safe. It was simply something he had to do, every night, without fail.

When he saw the footprints in the lit swath of the storm, he thought at first that the track must have indicated the path of an animal, but the path was like a trough, not like the careful prints of elk or deer or even coyote but the slogging boot prints of a man. He turned the sled to the side, slowing, peering down as they approached and then seeing the trail where it came down the mountain and then moved into the forested darkness beside the road.

His body seemed to burst all at once into gooseflesh, his hand off the throttle now so that the machine stood idling at the side of the road, and the feeling that ran through him was pure terror, his eyes peering into the black trees where the boot prints disappeared as if some huge beast might emerge, something out of story, out of myth. He knew he was being watched but in that moment it felt like he was being watched not by a man, not by Rick, but by something else entirely. The darkness. The forest. The black trees all around.