Peter Geye - Wintering

“How are things, Miss Grimm? You sleeping all right?”

She didn’t know how to explain what was more sinister about Charlie on that morning than there had been less than a week before. It was as if his calmness belied the urgency in him. Like he was dying to make his first mark in the world.

She didn’t answer, saying instead, “Is there anything else you need?”

“How about the deed to the Timber? Our offer’s fallen a tad but we’ll give you forty dollars for it.”

“Don’t insult me.”

“That ain’t an insult, it’s a life-insurance policy against a slow and painful quarter hour.” His voice was steady and calm.

“I’ve spoken with my attorney, and he advised me that if you made another threat, I could press charges against you for harassment.”

“This ain’t harassment, you whore. It’s your final warning.”

“He’s keeping an eye on this place,” she said. She thought her voice was as steady and calm as his. “He would’ve seen you come in. He knows the minute he sees you to call the sheriff.”

“You think I’m worried about Sheriff Anderson? That pissant? Or old Curtis? You think he’s got some jurisdiction up here that trumps mine? It’s true what they say, you’re goddamn batty.”

No sooner did he finish talking than Sheriff Anderson and Curtis Mayfair came hurrying in.

“Miss Grimm,” the officer said. “Muttonchops here isn’t causing any trouble, is he?”

Charlie swung around. “You’re choosing the wrong side, Anderson. Who the hell do you think pays for your wife’s fine dinnerware? The good people of Gunflint? Kiss my ass.”

“Charlie,” Curtis Mayfair said, his voice still booming even at his age, “don’t do something you’re going to wish you hadn’t. As of this minute, there’s a way for you to walk out of here without cuffs on your wrists. But that window’s closing. Yes, sir.”

“You’re a goddamn donkey, old man. Keep your nose out of this.”

Then it was Rebekah who spoke. “Charlie Aas, I will not sell you any of my property. Your threats or your father’s threats, they’re pointless. I’m not afraid of you. No one’s afraid of you.”

This last was a lie, and not a convincing one. Everyone feared the Aases. Clem Anderson, his hand on his service revolver, he was scared of Charlie, and not only because what Charlie had said was true, and he meant to keep his wife happy. No one had been killed yet, but there was a trend and it wasn’t veering toward town picnics. But as of that day, Curtis still wielded some moral authority and Clem felt he needed to protect Rebekah, even if he wouldn’t feel this way for much longer.

“Hey, Charlie,” he said, “let’s step on over to the Traveler’s and have this out over lunch. What do you say?”

“Daddy’s gonna string you up by your balls, Anderson, if you don’t step aside,” Charlie told him. As soon as the words left his mouth, Clem was on him. He wrenched his arm behind his back and kicked one of his feet out from under him and Charlie’s face slammed into the counter. Before he lifted it he was cuffed and knocked to his knees.

“Goddamn you, Charlie. Why don’t you listen? Why do you run your mouth like that? Don’t you know people don’t want to hear that shit?”

Charlie was so red-faced and angry his blond whiskers looked ablaze. He started ranting then, hurling his threats first at Clem and then at Rebekah and Curtis, and then all around three times more. By the time Clem had ushered him to the door, he was shouting loud enough that the lighthouse keeper might have heard him across the harbor.

“You’ll next see me through the flames of hell, you crazy whore! I’ll burn this place to the fuckin’ ground with you in it!”

Clem was telling him to shut up and was smacking him across the back of his head. “Where’s your sense, son? You sound like a madman. Folks can hear you raving.”

Charlie craned his face into Clem’s. “You don’t know what a madman is until you see me. You all better keep the bucket brigade ready. This place is gonna burn bright.”

Clem took his club from his belt and hammered Charlie’s knee. Rebekah didn’t hear another peep from Charlie that day.

In fact, it would be a long time before she heard anything at all. His eruption certainly hadn’t lacked for attention. She thought maybe that’s all he really wanted. Just another Aas pissing on another light post. She’d have to wait a long while to find out how serious he was. For that misdemeanor in the apothecary, Charlie was given a fine and corralled by his father, who couldn’t have predicted he would go so far. But even as he checked his son’s behavior, Marcus saw something in his actions that he liked. He saw a boy ready to take what needed to be taken. He saw his heir.

Though he never would take a thing from Rebekah. She kept the Shivering Timber from his claws. Within a month of Charlie’s arrest, she’d not only shuttered it, but also sent the remaining molls on their way to better days with what she called severance. A thousand dollars per girl, five thousand dollars in all. And passage out of Gunflint.

It was not long after all this happened that I came to town. By the time I arrived Gunflint had changed its collective mind radically about Rebekah. She was still thought touched. Was still eccentric and nearly impossible to know. And people still regarded her as cold. But she was also considered a kind of spellbinder or witch, someone not to be trifled with. Someone who could outstare the pastor or the sheriff or an Aas. Even the moon.

All of which is to say that Rebekah was capable of anything. Maybe Gus was right about her and the letters. About everything.

THE FIRST TIME Gus saw the plane he thought it was the evening star orbiting back into view. Hesperus, his father had called it the evening before, as they stood on the lake fetching water. Before he heard it, Gus saw it bank over the tree line and level out, catching the setting sun on the floats and the silver fuselage. And then he heard it coming in his direction, still a mile down the shore.

He watched, stunned, as the plane seemed to fall right into his ski tracks far off in the distance and ride them toward him. He stood in the shadows offshore, feeling his breath leave him all at once and his pulse throbbing in his neck. He glanced toward the shack, smoke rising from the chimney into the eventide. Then he studied the keener darkness along the shore. My God, he thought, and threw his poles behind him and pushed through the unpacked snow for that darkness. He was standing under and behind one of the trees as the plane flew past, so loud he felt it in his eyes.

It was Christmas Eve. There was a hare to butcher.

When he poled up to the shack he found his father standing out by the water hole, staring up at the sky. He wore no coat. No gloves. Only the red hat and his boots and trousers with suspenders over his union suit. Without looking at Gus he said, “That wasn’t Santa Claus.” Then he did look at him. “You got a hare, though.”

Gus planted his poles, bent to unclip his bindings, and stepped out of his skis. “The last supper,” he said.

Harry smiled. “I doubt that. Go on in and grab the lantern. Let’s get that hare ready for the frying pan.”

Harry butchered the rabbit by lantern light outside the shack. The plane wasn’t mentioned. If Harry was nervous or frightened or shaken, he didn’t let on to Gus, who was all of those things and more. Every sound — his father’s blade cutting into the hare, the blood dripping into the snow, his father’s occasional deep breath, the wind rising in the night — put him on edge and sent his eyes darting skyward, even though such gentle sounds bore no resemblance to the roaring plane. He inventoried their camp again. The canoes leaning against the tree on the edge of the clearing. Up in the cache, their ready larder. The saw and maul and their fishing rods up there, too. Everything in its place. His skis and poles planted next to the boats. The stack of firewood still enormous thanks to him. He had a moment of panic at the thought they would not be here long enough to burn it all.