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

I wished Big Hans would stop. I was counting the spaces. It was comfortable behind my back except for that. There was a long silence while he held his breath and afterwards we waited.

The wind was rising by the snowman. There were long blue shadows by the snowman now. The eastern sky was clear. Snow sifted slowly to the porch past the snowman. An icicle hung from the nose of the pump. There were no tracks anywhere. I asked did they see the snowman and I heard Pa grunt. Snow went waist-high to the snowman. The wind had blown from his face his eyes. A silent chimney was an empty house.

There ain’t nobody there, I said.

Hans had hiccups again so I ran out.

I ran to the dining room wall and put my back flat against it, pushing hard. Now I saw clouds in the western sky. The wind was rising. It was okay for Hans and Pa to come. I would walk around the corner. I would walk around the wall. The porch was there. The snowman was alone beside it.

All clear, I shouted, walking easily away.

Pa came carefully from the barn with his arms around his gun. He walked slow to be brave but I was standing in the open and I smiled.

Pa sat hugging his knees as I heard the gun, and Hans screamed. Pa’s gun stood up. I backed against the house. My god, I thought, he’s real.

I want a drink.

I held the house. The snow’d been driven up against it.

I want a drink. He motioned with his hand to me.

Shut up. Shut up. I shook my head. Shut up. Shut up and die, I thought.

I want a drink, I’m dry, Pa said.

Pa bumped when I heard the gun again. He seemed to point his hand at me. My fingers slipped along the boards. I tried to dig them in but my back slipped down. Hopelessly I closed my eyes. I knew I’d hear the gun again though rabbits don’t. Silently he’d come. My back slipped. Rabbits, though, are hard to hit the way they jump around. But prairie dogs, like pa, they sit. I felt snowflakes against my face, crumbling as they struck. He’d shoot me, by god. Was pa’s head tipped? Don’t look. I felt snowflakes falling softly against my face, breaking. The glare was painful, closing the slit in my eyes. That crack in pa’s face must be awful dry. Don’t look. Yes… the wind was rising… faster flakes.

2

When I was so cold I didn’t care I crawled to the south side of the house and broke a casement window with the gun I had forgot I had and climbed down into the basement ripping my jacket on the glass. My ankles hurt so I huddled there in the dark corner places and in the cold moldy places by boxes. Immediately I went to sleep.

I thought it was right away I woke though the light through the window was red. He put them down the cellar, I remembered. But I stayed where I was, so cold I seemed apart from myself, and wondered if everything had been working to get me in this cellar as a trade for the kid he’d missed. Well, he was sudden. The Pedersen kid — maybe he’d been a message of some sort. No, I liked better the idea that we’d been prisoners exchanged. I was back in my own country. No, it was more like I’d been given a country. A new blank land. More and more, while we’d been coming, I’d been slipping out of myself, pushed out by the cold maybe. Anyway I had a queer head, sear-eyed and bleary, everywhere ribboned. Well, he was quick and quiet. The rabbit simply stumbled. Tomatoes were unfeeling when they froze. I thought of the softness of the tunnel, the mark of the blade in the snow. Suppose the snow was a hundred feet deep. Down and down. A blue-white cave, the blue darkening. Then tunnels off of it like the branches of trees. And fine rooms. Was it February by now? I remembered a movie where the months had blown from the calendar like leaves. Girls in red peek-a-boo BVDs were skiing out of sight. Silence of the tunnel. In and in. Stairs. Wide tall stairs. And balconies. Windows of ice and sweet green light. Ah. There would still be snow in February. Here I go off of the barn, the runners hissing. I am tilting dangerously but I coast on anyway. Now to the trough, the swift snow trough, and the Pedersen kid floating chest down. They were all drowned in the snow now, weren’t they? Well more or less, weren’t they? The kid for killing his family. But what about me? Must freeze. But I would leave ahead of that, that was the nice thing, I was already going. Yes. Funny. I was something to run my hands over, feeling for its hurts, like there were worn places in leather, rust and rot in screws and boards I had to find, and the places were hard to reach and the fingers in my gloves were stiff and their ends were sore. My nose was running. Mostly interesting. Funny. There was a cramp in my leg that must have made me wake. Distantly I felt the soft points of my shoulders in my jacket, the heavy line of my cap around my forehead, and on the hard floor my harder feet, and to my chest my hugged-tight knees. I felt them but I felt them differently… like the pressure of a bolt through steel or the cinch of leather harness or the squeeze of wood by wood in floors… like the twist and pinch, the painful yield of tender tight together wheels, and swollen bars, and in deep winter springs.

I couldn’t see the furnace but it was dead. Its coals were cold, I knew. The broken window held a rainbow and put a colored pattern on the floor. Once the wind ran through it and a snowflake turned. The stairs went into darkness. If a crack of light came down the steps, I guessed I had to shoot. I fumbled for my gun. Then I noticed the fruit cellar and the closed door where the Pedersens were.

Would they be dead already? Sure they’d be. Everybody was but me. More or less. Big Hans, of course, wasn’t really, unless the fellow had caught up with him, howling and running. But Big Hans had gone away a coward. I knew that. It was almost better he was alive and the snow had him. I didn’t have his magazines but I remembered how they looked, puffed in their bras.

The door was wood with a wooden bar. I slipped the bar off easily but the door itself was stuck. It shouldn’t have stuck but it was stuck — stuck at the top. I tried to see the top by standing on tiptoe, but I couldn’t bend my toes well and kept toppling to the side. Got no business sticking, I thought. There’s no reason for that. I pulled again, very hard. A chip fell as it shuddered open. Wedged. Why? It had a bar. It was even darker in the fruit cellar and the air had a musty earthen smell.

Maybe they were curled up like the kid was when he dropped. Maybe they had frost on their clothes, and stiff hair. What color would their noses be? Would I dare to tweak them? Say. If the old lady was dead I’d peek at her crotch. I wasn’t any Hans to rub them. Big Hans had run. The snow had him. There wasn’t any kettle, any stove, down here. Before you did a thing like that, you’d want to be sure. I thought of how the sponges in the bucket had got hard.

I went back behind the boxes and hid and watched the stairs. The chip was orange in the pattern of light. He’d heard me when I broke the glass or when the door shook free or when the wedge fell down. He was waiting behind the door at the top of the stairs. All I had to do was come up. He was waiting. All this time. He waited while we stood in the barn. He waited for pa with his arms full of gun to come out. He took no chances and he waited.

I knew I couldn’t wait. I knew I’d have to try to get back out. There he’d be waiting too. I’d sit slowly in the snow like pa. That’d be a shame, a special shame after all I’d gone through, because I was on the edge of something wonderful, I felt it trembling in me strangely, in the part of me that flew high and calmly looked down on my stiff heap of clothing. Oh what pa’d forgot. We could have used the shovel. I’d have found the bottle with it. With it we’d have gone on home. By the stove I’d come to myself again. By it I’d be warm again. But as I thought about it, it didn’t appeal to me any more. I didn’t want to come to myself that way again. No. I was glad he’d forgot the shovel. But he was… he was waiting. Pa always said that he could wait; that Pedersen never could. But pa and me, we couldn’t — only Hans stayed back while we came out, while all the time the real waiter waited. He knew I couldn’t wait. He knew I’d freeze.