Dead of Winter Read online

  Fisher, meanwhile, feels his empty stomach coiling up. He pulls on his gloves, steps back into his boots and out into the clench of the frozen air. From under the trailer he drags a cooler and roots around in it, loads his arms, then treads back up the stairs with the snow crackling beneath his soles. He dumps the burritos he’s brought in onto the table, where they rattle and slide like old bones. One clatters to the floor and Pax looks up. Even the plastic they’re wrapped in is so cold it’s brittle.

  He rips open the plastic and piles the burritos onto a plate, then pushes the plate into the microwave. He stands with his hand over the buttons. Ten minutes, he thinks. Except those things are frozen solid. Twelve, maybe?

  From a box by the window he plucks a tissue and blows his nose, blows so hard that his cheeks smart and air wheezes back into his head and blood stains the tissue. He should have picked up some Sudafed, he thinks now, some Afrin too, because, hell, the Vicodin just makes you feel better. What’s he supposed to do? Get enough from Grisby for tomorrow, too? Or spend another shift peering through the fog inside his head at the fog that’s settled over the town, carrying the ache in his face with him everywhere he goes until the cold lets up? And maybe even then he’ll still feel lousy. Just after Thanksgiving he got so bad he went to the clinic. Put it all on his credit card—one hundred and seventy-five dollars for the consultation, sixty dollars for the antibiotics and some spray that had the raw smell of geraniums and he couldn’t bear to use, and he’s still paying it off, Christ Almighty.

  He lets himself sink onto the sofa, although here the chilled air from the window drifts down over him. It touches the back of his neck and he shivers. The plastic he taped up over the glass is ripped from a few weeks ago when Grisby tossed him a beer and missed, and he’s out of tape to fix it. Buy tape, he tells himself, buy milk, buy some fucking cheese and some fucking healthy apples. He closes his eyes and the Vicodin makes the whole idea of the supermarket float gently away, and he listens to the squeaky voice of a cartoon character, the rattle of fake gunfire, the soaring of the music, and he imagines some hero zooming off into the sky.

  He could fall asleep, except for that cold creeping in around him. There’s a throw over the arm of the sofa and he wraps it around himself, right up to his neck. Pax lays his snout in the dip between Fisher’s knees. Fisher rubs his thumb over the smoothness between the dog’s eyes, tells him over a yawn, “You’re a good boy.”

  No wonder when a bleating starts up Fisher doesn’t move. His phone. Fuck it. Let it ring. Grisby calls out, “Don’t tell me you’re not gonna get that. I mean, Christ! What is it with you?”

  But he does let it ring. He’s not going to shove away Pax’s snout, or get up from under the warmth of the throw, or focus his attention on anything in particular, not until the microwave pings and all he has to do is load those burritos onto plates, and find some napkins, and fill his belly.

  Which is what he does.

  In the end he won’t pull his phone out of his parka pocket until Grisby’s shut himself into the bathroom, and that’s an hour and a half from now. Then he’ll sit on the edge of the sofa and stare at the small screen. He’ll notice that the battery is almost drained and think to himself he needs to plug it in. He’ll check for messages and find seven, four of them from Grisby, one from his step-mother Ada, and two from his ex’s landline. He’ll feel a small twinge of worry, and only then will he play his messages, staring at the TV with the phone held hard against his ear.

  By then it’ll be too late, because this is what he’ll hear: Dad? Are you there? Brian’s going fucking ape-shit. Can you pick up? Please? I can’t deal with this. You’ve gotta [voice becomes indistinct] and get outta here. Just come and get me, OK? OK?

  The next message is from Ada. He doesn’t even listen to it. He scrolls down, finds another message from Bree then listens to her voice all stretched and hollow. Dad? Goddamit, pick up! What a fucking mess. I don’t know what I’ve done. You got to get me out of here. I’ve [voice becomes indistinct] had no idea [voice becomes indistinct]. You’re gonna come get me, right? Please, Dad?

  He’s on his feet without knowing it. The softness that the Vicodin gave to the world drops away and instead his head feels thick and unwieldy. The dog’s staring up at him from his blanket, tail thumping the floor. Fisher still has the phone against his ear, though it’s telling him he has no more new messages and to press four to review existing messages, and five to—he holds it away from his head and stares at it.

  Bree didn’t make it down to Anchorage, then, and Brian—Mr Step-Dad, Mr Control Freak, Mr Tight Ass—has gone ape-shit. But then, these last few months his temper’s been humming like a taut wire. No freaking wonder. He’s a man who dresses in dark blue button-up shirts like he’s in uniform, and keeps his hair cropped short, and so totally lacks a sense of humor you can’t trust him. He’s a man who has a room downstairs he calls his den but in truth is his gun room where he opens the lockers one at a time, and takes apart his handguns and rifles and shotguns, and oils them, and even—Fisher’s seen this with his own eyes—sits with one of them cradled on his lap while he watches his big-ass flat-screen TV from his armchair. He favors movies like The Deerhunter, and Platoon, grim movies about soldiers that are full of tragedy and downplayed heroics and he sits through them with his face as unchanging as a photograph.

  Bree calls him Major Jerkoff, but only when Fisher takes her out. They’ll be lining up for a movie or eating pizza and she’ll say something like, Major Jerkoff’s got Mom pissed off. Missed two appointments with clients ’cos he was out with his buds playing soldier or Major Jerkoff says I can’t come home ’til five as he and his buds are having a Strategic Meeting, and she’ll laugh. Major Jerkoff and his buds who stockpile guns and ammo, who bitch about the feds, and about paying taxes, or don’t pay them at all. What a joke. Except Bree’s eyes have a slippery haunted look these days, and when Fisher drops her off, her mom comes to the door looking gaunt with worry.

  Fisher rubs the screen of his phone with his thumb. He needs to think, but his thoughts are all over the place. Grisby’s coming out of the bathroom. Beneath his zipped-up blue fleece the hem of his T-shirt shows, and the sag of his too-big jeans over his skinny ass. “Hey man,” he says, “what’s up?”

  “It’s Breehan. She wants me to come get her.”

  But Grisby just sits in the recliner and tilts his head into his hand. “What she do this time?”

  “Not that kind of trouble. Says her step-dad’s gone ape-shit.” Fisher turns away.

  “Hell, you know how she is, Fisher. Come on, man, don’t let her do this to you. Just stay here and chill.”

  Fisher stares at the phone sitting in his hand, as if it’s going to tell him something he doesn’t know. Like what to do. Like whether to put on his coat and drive all the way out there when, chances are, Grisby’s right. Could be Bree’s pissed at her mom for not taking her to Anchorage and came home buzzed and Brian’s mad at her. It’d be just like her to do something dumb, like the time she slapped another girl in the face at school, or was caught smoking pot when she was supposed to be in detention, or scraped the hell out of a teacher’s car with her keys, or so he said, because it turned out no one actually saw her do it.

  Could be Bree’s mad because Jan canceled the trip to Anchorage—really, who’s fool enough to drive all that way in this kind of cold? Fisher’ll get over there and Jan will tell him something like Get out of here, Mikey, it’s none of your concern, and if he objects, she’ll fix him with her eye and say, For Chrissakes—you had your chance to be a real parent and you blew it. You can’t start now, and Brian will rub that stupid attempt at a beard he’s grown this winter and say, Mike, it’s all under control. Breehan knows the consequences of her behavior. Why don’t you just go on home? and that will irritate the hell out of Fisher, and before you know it, Jan will be shouting in his face and he’ll be shouting back, and Brian will have that
tight-jawed look he gets when he’s about to get real nasty in that quiet way he has. Meanwhile Breehan will have slunk off to her room. Maybe that’s the reason she called him: so that everyone’ll forget why they’re mad at her.

  But Christ. Her voice was all choked up. Since when does Bree cry? She’s not the type and never was. From the day she was born she’s had an iron will and an anger that turns inward. It scares Fisher. When she was small, if he told her off she’d hide and inflict an injury on herself—biting the inside of her cheeks until they bled, scraping at the skin of her forearms with her nails—or onto whatever was around: the wallpaper, the loose back of the sofa, the carpet whose tufts could be plucked out only by someone very determined and with great patience. If Fisher tried to get her to come out she’d stare wildly at him and not look away, just like an animal would if you cornered it.

  Grisby turns up the TV. Some cop show. “Tell me you’re not gonna go out there. You know what? She’s got you wrapped around her little finger. No wonder she’s such a headcase.”

  “Shit, I think something’s wrong.”

  “Something’s always wrong. Hell, I don’t blame the kid, but it’s just too freaking sad to see you jump whenever she calls, and she only ever calls when she’s got herself in trouble. Know what I mean?”

  Fisher closes his fingers around his phone. How easy it would be to slip it back in his pocket, and whatever made Breehan call him will fade away as though it never happened, and nothing will be any different because he sat here in the warmth of his trailer instead of getting into his parka and boots, and warming the car, and driving the ten miles out to Janice and Brian’s place.

  His fingers are tight around the phone. He stares at the screen for a moment, then his finger is jabbing at it, dialing the landline. Maybe Janice’ll pick up and be pissed that it’s only him, not a client or one of her friends, or maybe he’ll get Brian telling him everything’s fine and why wouldn’t it be? It rings and rings. No answering machine. Heck, they were going to have their landline disconnected until they took away Breehan’s cell phone and couldn’t leave her with no way to make a call if they were out. Even they wouldn’t do that.

  He calls again, and at the other end the phone rings and rings.

  It’s close to eight. Could be everything’s quiet over there. Bree upstairs in her room: sent there for the rest of the night for whatever she did that pissed off Brian. Jan’s at the table with a forkful of pasta lifted above her plate and her mouth pulled to one side because she’s hungry and hasn’t eaten all day, has been showing houses to clients, is plain worn out. And Brian? Down in his den with a gun in his lap and his face blue in the flickering light of some movie.

  The phone’s still ringing. Ten times, he thinks. He’s been counting without realizing it.

  Something’s not right. Bree was frightened. He licks his lips and feels where the skin’s turned hard. Brian’s not the type to go ape-shit. He’s a buttoned-up, held-in, clamped-down kind of guy, and isn’t that what’s scary about him? Because you can’t help thinking that one day all that rage will come surging out? What if one day is today?

  Fisher pulls on his parka. He doesn’t have to go up and knock on the door, he tells himself. No, he’ll just drive over and take a look. See whether anyone’s home. If Bree’s waiting, she’ll wave at him from her window or come running out to meet him.

  Grisby’s watching. “Oh, for crap’s sake,” he says, and puts down the remote. “You’re such a sucker.”

  5

  IN THE DARK and cold the air seems thicker, pushing back against Fisher’s car so that it strains even on the flat stretch beyond Denby Hill. Fisher’s gripping the wheel too hard and he knows it. He tells himself he’s driving like an amateur: letting the car jolt over the dips and humps of frost heave, over-correcting on the bends, stepping too hard on the brakes, even though it’s fifty-seven below and the ice has lost its slickness. Beside him, Grisby has finally shut up. Under his breath he’s whistling some half-assed tune that slinks along the edge of recognition, annoying as a fly caught behind glass, and he sways with the uneven motion of the car—lets himself sway, maybe, to make a point about Fisher’s driving—and every now and then he shakes his head in its ridiculous fur hat, as though the two of them are still arguing.

  Fisher didn’t ask him to come along. What the hell does Grisby have to gripe about? If he’d wanted, he could have been sitting in Fisher’s recliner watching the end of the cop show with a beer in his hand and a bowl of chips on his knees. But there’s this about Grisby: he doesn’t like being on his own. You can’t even leave him in your living room and shut the door without him getting just a little freaked out. Maybe he thinks he won’t recognize you when you come back in, or maybe he thinks you’re abandoning him and he’ll never find his way back to town, let alone his apartment.

  Two miles of the road spooling out flat from under the car’s hood and now it slopes upward again. Before long the headlights catch the only thing out here that isn’t white or black: the red of a stop sign mottled with snow. Fisher brakes and glances left and right, only to see Grisby lean forward too, his head blocking Fisher’s view and his whistling suddenly louder. All’s darkness except for the glare of Fisher’s headlights off the snowbank across the intersection, and Fisher sends the car barrelling to the right. Only there’s something on the road. Something huge. Tall legs the color of spruce bark scissor away. A moose. He swerves, cursing, and it takes off between the trees.

  They’re almost at the house when Fisher recognizes the tune Grisby’s been whistling: the theme from Hawaii Five-0.

  6

  FISHER PULLS UP at the bottom of the driveway. Through the trees the house is drunk with light. Each window is a luminous rectangle, no blinds pulled down, no curtains drawn except for the butt-ugly living-room curtains. In itself this is strange. He was going to park here where the road and driveway meet, beneath the sign that says Trespassers will be Shot, Survivors will be Shot Again, but now, making an awkward turn and the car lurching through softer snow, he steps on the gas and sends the car careening to the top of the driveway.

  He thinks: Any moment now, someone’s going to look out the window to see who’s here. He thinks: There’s no need to get out of the car, no need at all.

  Beside him, Grisby’s stopped whistling. He says, “Fuck, some kinda private party going on,” and sniggers.

  For a moment Fisher doesn’t understand. Then he hears it: above the rumble of the engine, a heartbeat of bass pulsing through the fragile skin of the windows. Someone’s got the music turned way up. Breehan, he thinks. Then, Shit. He flings open the door and rushes across the snow. Threading through the air comes the whine of an electric guitar and raw-throated singing.

  Already the inside of his nose is tickling where the hairs have frozen stiff, and his eyelashes stick with frost where his breath catches them. The Vicodin must be wearing off, because where the cold seeps into his head the delicate membranes throb like something inside him is trying to get out.

  The house is built like a boat at dock, jutting out from the hillside in three floors, the v-shaped deck above him its prow. There’s a door right next to the double doors of the garage and he knocks with his glove on, presses his thumb hard on the doorbell glowing green, knocks again. He waits. The next time he pushes the doorbell he tilts his head close to the wood. Over the angry rush of the music he hears the bell trilling upstairs.

  From behind him comes the crunch of Grisby’s boots over the snow. “This is weird,” Fisher says. The cold rushes in around his teeth and over his tongue. “She must be home. Christ.”

  “That kid of yours. What d’you wanna bet she called you out here for nothing? She’s forgotten whatever the hell bug she had up her butt earlier and now she’s having herself a little party.” He reaches past Fisher and turns the doorknob. The door swings open and out belches warm air smelling of floor cleaner. The music’s clearer n
ow: Led Zep. For fuck’s sake, thinks Fisher, since when did Bree listen to anything that old?

  Above the bench along the hallway hang coats and jackets, and beneath it sit boots and shoes and slippers all lined up the way Brian likes. It’s impossible to tell who’s here and who’s not when there are always enough clothes and boots for a dozen people. To the left, a doorway into Brian’s den. The lights are off and the door half closed.

  Fisher makes his way to the stairs. You’re supposed to take off your boots so you don’t tread snow or mud or whatever other filth you’ve brought in with you onto the pale carpet. He’s walked up these stairs in his boots only to have Brian bark at him, “You’re gonna ruin the carpet. Put on a pair of slippers, that’s what they’re there for.” Which makes him forget the next time too. Just to piss Brian off, to see whether this time he can wind him up far enough for him to lose it. But it’s never worked out that way. Brian’s stood at the turn in the stairs glaring at him, even come down the stairs with his hands balled up and snapped, “Slippers—you know the drill.” Fisher hates the things: cork-soled, felt-topped, clunky and ugly like it’s Brian’s mission to humiliate you. Brian’s own slippers are black leather and sleek, like boots for someone who doesn’t want to wear boots inside for fear of ruining his carpets and the resale value of his house.

  “Come on,” Fisher tells Grisby, and off they go, up the stairs in their boots, Fisher craning his head as he comes around the turn and peers through the banisters. The music swamps him as he stands just short of the top. He can barely see for trying to think through the noise. The sound system: where is it? Here’s the living room with its leather sofa, and its coffee table of magazines, all pristine like no one actually reads them, and its framed reproductions of old maps of Alaska, and its large black and white photograph of a man in a leather cap beside a bi-plane out on a frozen river. The shit-brown velvet drapes across the windows to the deck are drawn tight, for once, and it feels too warm in here. There’s a wood stove over by the stairs to the next floor, a small flat-screen TV, and speakers the size of shoe boxes bracketed high on the walls. The amplifier’s not where it used to be. Fisher scans the room, finally spots a small black box on the open shelves between the living room and the kitchen. He walks toward it half-crouched, like he’s cowed by the force of the music, then pushes the first button he sees. And just like that, like a balloon ripped apart, the noise is gone.