William Gass - In the Heart of the Heart of the Country

I thought: the fire’s dead, they must be froze.

Pa stopped and nodded at the chimney.

You see, Hans said unhappily.

Just then I saw a cloud of snow float from the crest of a drift and felt my eyes smart. Pa looked quick at the sky but it was clear. Hans stomped his feet, hung his head, swore in a whisper.

Well, Pa said, it looks like we made this trip for nothing. Nobody’s to home.

The Pedersens are all dead, Hans said, still looking down.

Shut up. I saw Pa’s lips were chapped… a dry dry hole now. A muscle jumped along his jaw. Shut up, he said.

A faint ribbon of snow suddenly shot from the top of the chimney and disappeared. I stood as still as I could in the tubes of my clothes, the snow shifting strangely in my eyes, alone, frightened by the space that was bowling up inside me, a white blank glittering waste like the waste outside, coldly burning, roughed with waves, and I wanted to curl up, face to my thighs, but I knew my tears would freeze my lashes together. My stomach began to growl.

What’s the matter with you, Jorge? Pa said.

Nothing. I giggled. I’m cold, Pa, I guess, I said. I belched.

Jesus, Hans said loudly.

Shut up.

I poked at the snow with the toe of my boot. I wanted to sit down and if there’d been anything to sit on I would have. All I wanted was to go home or sit down. Hans had stopped stomping and was staring back through the trees toward the way we’d come.

Anybody in that house, Pa said, would have a fire.

He sniffed and rubbed his sleeve across his nose.

Anybody — see? He began raising his voice. Anybody who was in that house now would have a fire. The Pedersens is all most likely out hunting that fool kid. They probably tore ass off without minding the furnace. Now it’s out. His voice got braver. Anybody who might have come along while they was gone, and gone in, would have started a fire someplace first thing, and we’d see the smoke. It’s too damn cold not to.

Pa took the shotgun he’d carried broken over his left arm and turned the barrel over, slow and deliberate. Two shells fell out and he stuffed them in his coat pocket.

That means there ain’t anybody to home. There ain’t no smoke, he said with emphasis, and that means there ain’t no body.

Big Hans sighed. Okay, he muttered from a way off. Let’s go home.

I wanted to sit down. Here was the sofa, here the bed — mine — white and billowy. And the stairs, cold and snapping. And I had the dry cold toothaching mouth I always had at home, and the cold storm in my belly, and my pinched eyes. There was the print of the kid’s rear in the dough. I wanted to sit down. I wanted to go back where we’d tied up Horse Simon and sit numb in the sleigh.

Yes yes yes, let’s, I said.

Pa smiled — oh the bastard — the bastard —and he didn’t know half what I knew now, numb in the heart the way I felt, and with my burned-off ears.

We could at least leave a note saying Big Hans saved their kid. Seems to me like the only neighborly thing to do. And after all the way we come. Don’t it you?

What the hell do you know about what’s neighborly? Hans shouted.

With a jerk he dumped his shotgun shells into the snow and kicked at them until one skidded into a drift and only the brass showed. The other sank in the snow before it broke. Black powder spilled out under his feet.

Pa laughed.

Come on, Pa, I’m cold, I said. Look, I ain’t brave. I ain’t. I don’t care. All I am is cold.

Quit whimpering, we’re all cold. Big Hans here is awful cold.

Sure, ain’t you?

Hans was grinding the black grains under.

Yeah, Pa said, grinning. Some. I’m some. He turned around. Think you can find your way back, Jorge?

I got going and he laughed again, loud and ugly, damn his soul. I hated him. Jesus, how I did. But no more like a father. Like the burning space.

I never did like that bastard Pedersen anyway, he said as we started. Pedersen’s one of them that’s always asking for trouble. On his knees for it all the time. Let him find out about his kid himself. He knows where we live. It ain’t neighborly but I never said I wanted him a neighbor.

Yeah, Hans said. Let the old bastard find out himself.

He should have kept his kid behind them fences. What business did he have, sending his kid to us to take care of? He went and asked for snow. He went on his knees for snow. Was he ready? Hey? Was he? For snow? Nobody’s ever ready for snow .

The old bastard wouldn’t have come to tell you if it’d been me who’d been lost, I said, but I wasn’t minding my words at all, I was just talking. Neighbor all over him, I said, he has it coming. I was feeling the sleigh moving under me.

Can’t tell about holy Pete, Hans said.

I was going fast. I didn’t care about keeping low. I had my eyes on the spaces between trees. I was looking for the place where we’d left Simon and the sleigh. I thought I’d see Simon first, maybe his breath above a bank or beside the trunk of a tree. I slipped on a little snow the wind hadn’t blown from the path we’d took. I still had the gun in my right hand so I lost my balance. When I put out my left for support, it went into a drift to my elbow and into the barberry thorns. I jerked back and fell hard. Hans and Pa found it funny. But the legs that lay in front of me weren’t mine. I’d gone out in the blazing air. It was queer. Out of the snow I’d kicked away with my foot stuck a horse’s hoof and I didn’t feel the least terror or surprise.

Looks like a hoof, I said.

Hans and Pa were silent. I looked up at them, far away. Nothing now. Three men in the snow. A red scarf and some mittens… somebody’s ice and coal… the picture for January. But behind them on the blank hills? Then it rushed over me and I thought: this is as far as he rid him. I looked at the hoof and the shoe which didn’t belong in the picture. No dead horses for January. And on the snowhills there would be wild sled tracks and green trees and falling toboggans. This is as far. Or a glazed lake and rowdy skaters. Three men. On his ass: one. Dead horse and gun. And the question came to me very clearly, as if out of the calendar a girl had shouted: are you going to get up and walk on? Maybe it was the Christmas picture. The big log and the warm orange wood I was sprawled on in my flannel pajamas. I’d just been given a pistol that shot BBs. And the question was: was I going to get up and walk on? Hans’s shoes, and Pa’s, were as steady as the horse’s. Were they hammered on? Their bodies stolen? Who’d left them standing here? And Christmas cookies cut in the shape of the kid’s dead wet behind… with maybe a cherry to liven the pale dough… a coal from the stove. But I couldn’t just say that looks like a hoof or that looks like a shoe and go right on because Hans and Pa were waiting behind me in their wool hats and pounding mittens… like a picture for January. Smiling. I was learning to skate.

Looks like this is as far as he rid him.

Finally Pa said in a flat voice: what are you talking about?

You said he had a horse, Pa.

What are you talking about?

This here horse.

Ain’t you never seen a shoe before?

It’s just a horse’s hoof, Hans said. Let’s get on.

What are you talking about? Pa said again.

The man who scared the Pedersen kid. The man he saw.

Manure, Pa said. It’s one of Pedersen’s horses. I recognize the shoe.

That’s right, Big Hans said.

Pedersen only has one horse.

This here’s it, Big Hans said.

This horse’s brown, ain’t it?

Pedersen’s horse has got two brown hind feet. I remember, Big Hans said.

His is black.

It’s got two brown hind feet.

I started to brush away some snow. I knew Pedersen’s horse was black.