Christian Kiefer - The Animals

He climbed back onto the machine and returned the key to the ignition and pulled the cord again. The snowmobile rumbled to life and he clicked it into gear and continued down the mountain, the headlights blasting out before him like a flame, his eyes watching the side of the road where the unblemished surface of the snow descended, flat and clear and perfect. And then Rick’s footprints returned from the forest, the path intersecting with the tracks the sled had made on its ascent, and Bill pulled off to the side, not stopping but slowing for a long moment, watching the tracks as they led downhill, then opening the throttle again, watching for the path to swing away into the forest again, but the track went on and he followed it to where the road bent along the creek, to where that dark surface stretched off beside the road and where, in warmer months, he would sometimes see moose standing in the cool slow water, their mouths dripping with wet sedge and pond weed.

It seemed impossible that Rick would have made it even this far on foot in the storm and yet the tracks continued and he followed them, a grim, dark trough cut in the lit snow before him, all the while the wind blowing into his face, the sound of it a constant hiss against his jacket, eyes screwed down to slits and his bare hands in frozen agony. The snow everywhere like a veil that had fallen over him, over everything, sticking to his face, to the goggles, the headlights dimming under the accumulated pack of particulate ice that seemed to rise from the road and fall from the sky in equal measure.

The tracks led to the highway and then disappeared. What he saw before him was a ghost town. Not another human being visible and no lights on the highway but his own. He turned off the machine and clicked the headlamp off and then sat listening in the muffled silence. The buildings before him had become white boxes in the night. Across from him ran the road that led into the center of town, to the Northwoods and the general store and the empty lot where he had parked the truck.

He was shaking now, trembling everywhere from the cold and from the increasing understanding that he had lost Rick’s trail, that Rick was gone. His pants had soaked through where his flesh had warmed the ice enough to melt it, his face a solid mask of frozen mustache and beard and his breath hard and fast and steaming the black air.

Then a sound. The chugging of an engine’s ignition somewhere out there in the darkness. And a reflection of faint yellow light glowing briefly between the buildings and then just as quickly extinguished.

He could not yet see the car but he knew already that it was Rick’s, as if a scent on the air blew to him from everywhere at once. And then there it was: the tiny Honda, its tire chains flapping along in the snow, headlights dark. He watched where it turned out onto the highway, pulling south toward Sandpoint, the car seeming to linger for a moment before accelerating, slowly, into the blowing storm and then the headlights silhouetting the tiny box of the car against the cyclone of snow beyond it.

He pulled the snowmobile to life again and throttled out across the highway and when he reached his truck he leaped for it, digging his numb hands into his pants pockets, jerking the keys out and then dropping them and cursing and scrabbling in the frozen snow, his hands like claws, the keys seeming to jump everywhere of their own accord. But at last the door was unlocked and he started the truck and shifted and pulled out onto the road, the headlights illuminating a vast wall of swirling flakes that flew up at the windshield from a point ever above him and away, and when he reached the highway he extinguished those lights for a moment, spinning south down the invisible road in the direction Rick had gone, but he could see nothing without them and after few dozen yards he twisted them on once more, the blizzard tunneling down upon him and the truck seeming to rise into it forever.

He thought of the bear then, its great furred back covered with snow, and all the days and nights when Bill would sit on the stump by the zookeeper door, talking and feeding the animal marshmallows, one after the other. He thought of the wolf hiding in its shallow depression by the fence, growling in pain and confusion. And he thought of the dead birds. The frightened raccoons. His weakened and half-blind mountain lion. His dead bobcat and badger. And then he thought of Grace and of Jude, and of the engagement ring held, even now, in the drawer in his trailer. How the boy had giggled when Bill hugged him at bedtime. How Grace had forgiven him for everything he had done.

The snow a terrible blur around him. There were moments when he thought he had surely spun from the road and the truck was careening through some empty field in the darkness, but then the snowbanks would reappear on either side of him again and he knew that he was still in the roadway. Twice headlights approached and cars slid past him in the opposite direction. Both times his heart beat quickly for the moment of their passing and afterward his hand hunted under the seat for the gun case, finding its edge and drawing it up to the seat as the truck slid forward upon the frozen road, its motion akin to a sickness he could neither control nor predict. But neither pair of headlights were Rick’s tiny car and they passed him and returned to the darkness from which they had come.

And then, at last, the rear of the Honda emerged from the silent swirl of the blizzard. The car had spun off to the side of the road, its nose embedded in the snowbank. He slowed the truck to a stop. His view through the windshield was of snow and the wrecked car and nothing else and in the quiet hum of his idling truck he leaned forward, unzipped the gun case, and set the rifle across his lap.

Then the Honda’s door opened and Rick stepped out into the storm: a grim and haggard figure in a tattered flannel jacket. He held the pistol in his hand but did not raise his arm to fire, instead only stood by the car’s open door, facing the headlights impassively.

Bill pulled the handle and the truck’s door creaked as it swung open. Then he, too, slid outside, the rifle held in his grip.

What’s it gonna be? Rick called to him. Behind him, the pickup’s headlights illuminated a high berm of packed snow, an unbroken wall maybe eight feet in height and which ran the length of the highway as far as Bill could see.

You don’t know what you’ve done, Bill said.

Rick stood there for a long moment in silence, the pistol still held loose at his side. Then his face curled into a smile. I warned you it was gonna get serious, he said.

You don’t know what you’ve done, Bill said again.

They stood facing either then, neither moving, Nat holding the rifle across his body, one hand on the stock and the other on the barrel, Rick near the snowbank next to the wrecked Honda, the blizzard swirling down upon them as if they had become inanimate figures in some vast snow globe.

What you gonna do, Natty, Rick said. You gonna shoot me?

He could feel a hollowness inside his chest. And then a bloom of warmth flooding through that hollow space. For a moment he could see fish threading their way up a cold river comprised entirely of snow. Yeah, he said quietly, I’m gonna shoot you. Then, in one quick, fluid motion, he raised the rifle to his shoulder and fired.

Rick looked surprised for a brief moment, his face frozen in the flash of the shot, and then he was moving, the pistol raised and its bright flower exploding repeatedly and the sound of the fire whacking the side of the truck like hammer blows. Bill fell sideways into the cab, scrambling onto the seat and crashing his foot down upon the gas pedal as he levered the truck into gear. Around him came the roar of the engine and the seasick feeling of the tires spinning for a moment before the whole vehicle burst forward, his body rolling back, and then the low hard crunch of impact and his body slamming forward against the base of the steering wheel.