Peter Geye - Wintering

“Who killed that bear, Gus? I brought a couple chunks home and had your mama cook it up for me. We had a real romantic time of it, she and I. We drank wine and supped and then spent the night tangled in your daddy’s sheets. Of course, it wasn’t the first time I bent her over that particular bedspring. Won’t be the last, neither.” He was silent for a moment. “Your sister made us breakfast in the morning. I thought about giving her a go, too.”

Gus blinked and took a deep breath before resting his finger on the trigger, thinking of his mother and of Signe and of this man being in their home. He squinted tightly and peered down the pistol barrel.

“That you moving around, youngster? Hiding behind a rock there?”

Gus aimed the pistol a third time and tensed his finger on the trigger. In the starlight he had him dead to rights.

“There’s not enough darkness to swallow your ass up. No rock big enough to shield it. Didn’t your daddy tell you the only thing you really needed to know?” Now he yelled, “I am the czar and master of these fucking woods! Everybody knows what you don’t, Eide! Even your fool dad! And for that you will suffer greatly!” He howled again as he had out on the ice. “But I will wait until morning, so you can see the glint of my blade and the shine of my eyes as I smile down upon you.” Charlie shined his flashlight into the trees once more, then turned slowly.

Gus shivered and bristled and took another deep breath as he steadied his gun hand with the other. He sighted Charlie again and closed his eyes, then heard five rapid shots and opened them to see Charlie drop to his knees. Then Gus closed his eyes again, dropped the pistol, and curled up behind the tree.

—

He thought of those hours often. Too often, he was sure. There remained times, Gus told me, when he felt he was still brooking that darkness, times when a decade of his life seemed a trifle compared with the passing of that single night on the shore of the bay. But it must have ended, that night, because he remembered all the whiteness — the drifting snow, the pressing clouds hiding the rising sun, the frost on the pistol’s barrel — and how none of it, not even taken altogether, could bleach the blackness from that daybreak.

And he remembered his father crawling on hands and knees, from the direction of the blind that Gus hadn’t even managed to get to. In the hoary first light Harry put a finger to his lips and came up next to him and pulled the bearskin from the Duluth pack and wrapped himself in it, then laid his head back against the tree trunk and took a deep breath. “You all right?”

Gus squeezed his eyes shut.

“Hey!” his father said, the sound of his voice barely audible above the breeze. “Look at me.”

Gus opened his eyes. His father’s face was only inches from his own.

“Are you all right?”

Gus opened his eyes wider.

Harry grasped the back of Gus’s neck. “Did you see Charlie? Did he find you?”

My father let me kill him, Gus thought. He felt dizzy and closed his eyes against the whirl and didn’t open them until he was steady again. His father still had him by the neck, so he shook himself free.

“Did he find you?”

Gus lunged on top of him then and tried to punch him but landed only a glancing blow. Harry swept his other arm from under the bearskin to hug him fiercely. “Hey, hey, it’s okay,” he whispered, even as Gus struggled to get free.

“Pull yourself together,” his father said. “It’s me.”

Gus lay back against the tree again.

“Look at me. You’ve got to tell me, did that asshole find you?”

Gus remembered Charlie’s awful voice, his shocking threats, the gunshots. “I shot him.”

“You what?”

“I hate you.”

“Gus, what are you saying?” He grabbed his son by the front of the coat and pulled him close. “What did you do?”

“I killed him!” Gus shouted.

“Hey,” Harry whispered, slipping his hand over Gus’s mouth. “Calm down, damnit.” He let his hand fall. “Keep quiet.”

“How could you let me?”

Harry pulled the Ruger from where he saw it in the snow, flipped the cylinder open, and saw all six bullets. He closed the cylinder, spun it, opened it again. “Did you reload or something?”

Gus looked at the pistol and then out on the bay. The only relief from its grayness was the line of black trees in the distance beyond. He wiped his eyes and tried again, but Charlie Aas wasn’t there.

“Gus, look at me. You didn’t shoot him. Charlie’s still out there.”

“But the gunshots? I saw him go to his knees.”

“You heard the Remington.” Harry grabbed it and showed him the spent ammo. Only one shot remained in the chamber. “That was me shooting.”

“Who’d you shoot?”

“Don’t worry about that.”

“Did you kill Len Dodj and Matti Haula?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. Just be quiet and listen.”

“We have to hide. If Charlie’s still out there, we’ve got to hide.” The panic wasn’t something he felt as much as he tasted it, bilious and hot. He again imagined Charlie’s bowie knife carving the night apart.

Now Harry slapped him. “Look at me, boy!” This wasn’t whispered. He took Gus’s face in his hands. “Did Charlie find you? Did you really see him? You must have, right?”

“I don’t know,” Gus said.

“You don’t know what?”

“If he saw me. But I sure saw him. He was standing right over there.” He pointed. “I shot him.”

“You did not. You didn’t even fire the gun.”

Gus closed his eyes.

“Look at me, Gus. Tell me, what did he say?”

“He said he was going to kill us, so I killed him.”

Harry let go of his face, then slumped against the tree. “You didn’t kill him, bud. Charlie’s still out there.”

“Then we have to hide. He’s going to kill us.”

“Okay,” Harry said, but not to Gus. Once more he checked the pistol and the rifle, wiped the snow from them, and blew through each barrel.

Gus noticed his father had no pants on, only the threadbare bottom half of his union suit and his boots and snowshoes. He was wearing his coat and his red hat, thank God. His mittens he’d thrown down on the snow.

“Okay,” Harry said again. “Okay.” He took a long look up and down the shore and back into the woods he’d just crawled out of.

“We have to hide,” Gus said again. “Now. We can go back to that tree, where you found me that morning after the bear. We can hole up for a day or two and wait.”

“Wait for what?” Harry stood and wrapped the bearskin around him like a skirt. “Give me your belt. And the holster.”

Gus took them off and watched his father cinch up the bearskin with it.

“We’re going to find Charlie’s plane before he takes off.”

Gus didn’t budge from his spot against the tree. “Who did you shoot?”

Harry knelt and buckled the pack shut, then slung it over his back. “We’re going to find his plane and we’re going to find Charlie. He can’t move that fast, not without snowshoes.”

Gus still didn’t move as his father stood. “Did you kill them?”

“Don’t worry about that.” Harry handed him the Remington. “Carry this. And remember, there’s only one shot left.”

Gus wouldn’t cry in front of his father. He simply would not. He’d vowed that he wouldn’t and he hadn’t and he wasn’t about to now, much as he felt like it. So he bit down and said, “Why didn’t Charlie shoot us when we ran out of the shack? He could’ve shot us right then.”

“Charlie’s a pack of rabid goddamn wolves that ain’t even hungry. That’s why he didn’t kill us then. He didn’t shoot us for the same reason he burned our meat. For the same reason he sicced his daughter on you last fall.” He looked squarely at Gus. “Charlie thinks the world exists for his amusement, and his thoughts are every bit as crooked as the Burnt Wood River. Bear that in mind till all this is done.” He took a frantic survey of the woods around them before turning back to his son. “Plus, he’s been outed. Everybody in Gunflint knows his game now, so whatever crookedness he didn’t know he had in him, well, it’ll come to the surface now. He’ll play this like a man with nothing to lose, which is what he is. And that’s why we have to get after him.”