Godspeed

by Nickolas Butler

  Light was not generally something those buildings accounted for. And there was a simple reason for this: Windows are expensive. When you are constructing a building on a tight budget, the first line item to be shrunk is the windows. A roof cannot be skimped on. Nor can the foundation, the electricity, the plumbing, or the studs that hold the whole works in place. But windows, windows are a luxury. And natural light, therefore, is a luxury. Think of the shabbiest, poorest domicile you’ve ever visited, and what you’ll often notice is how dark the space is. The trailer park, shantytown, or tenement rarely offers a space with a view.

  Glass is nothing more than melted sand, cooled in just such a way as to render the liquid transparent. The larger the window, the more care is required for that pane of glass. Not just in its manufacture, but in its every leg of transport. And its storage. A piece of lumber might have an imperfection, some knot or twist, but these imperfections can be cut away and the wood used elsewhere; in the construction of a house, there is need for all sizes of lumber. But a window has only one acceptable condition: perfect. Anything less, and the window is useless. To a homeowner, one minuscule crack is the same as a million shards of broken glass. Unacceptable.

  Cole liked to think of the time that went into each window. And not just the labor of crafting the window or transporting and installing it at a building site. But all the molecules of sand, all the billions and billions of particles that had once been the proud shoulders of mountains, tumbled down in avalanches and deposited into rivers, only to be broken down into smaller and smaller stones, until, after countless millennia, those mountains were nothing more than pinprick-size crystals.

  Sitting there, in that idling truck, looking at those great, wide plate-glass windows and the golden light they now sent forth into the night, Cole was reminded of his grandmother taking him to some country church, and while she chatted with other cottontops, how he touched the stained glass on the church’s windows, how he ran his fingers right over Jesus’s face, and over the disciples’ feet, across the brown wood of the cross, and into the very blood of the chalice.

  “To me,” Cole said, “this will al-al-always be, the Cr-Cr-Crystal House. For better or worse.”

  “Come on,” Teddy said. “I’ll drive you up there.”

  “Naw,” Cole put in. “Leave me here. You get on home to your family. We’ll see you tomorrow morning. Meantime, enjoy your Christmas Eve. Have fun with those kids.”

  They shook hands, and then Teddy turned his truck around, leaving Cole there in the immense darkness, as Bart slammed the door of his own truck and walked over to join his friend.

  “You can lean on me if you need to,” Bart told Cole, and as the two friends began walking toward the house, Cole leaned into his shoulder, not so much because his footing was poor but because it felt good to press against something warm and solid. The driveway gleamed white-blue under the moon’s light, all blanketed with newly fallen snow, and the air was crisp and cold, the faintest scent of pine boughs on the wind mixing with a slight sulfurous tang blowing down off the hot springs.

  “I don’t know how you handled that stuff,” Cole said. “I feel . . . swallowed. Like the only thing I can see is darkness, and somehow, it’s all I want to see.”

  “We’ll get you back,” Bart promised. “It ain’t easy going back, but it can be done.”

  Before reaching the house, Bart ducked into their trailer and came back out into the cold with a small backpack, before leading Cole up toward the house itself, struck by how docile Cole seemed now, as gentle as a lamb. Then, bathed in the light of the moon, and the light issuing out of Gretchen’s house, Bart shucked off his clothes—all of them—right down to his newly skinny white ass, before stepping gingerly into those hot springs. Cole watched him, not so much seeing his nudity as registering the delight in his friend’s face—the sheer delight—at finally actualizing a dream.

  “Come on in, buddy,” Bart sang. “Take a load off.”

  Bart leaned over the rim of the hot springs to reach into the backpack, and he produced two bottles of ice-cold Coors Light, which he then sunk into the yielding snowbank just behind him.

  “ ’Fraid you’re gonna need to help me open these,” Bart said with a sad smile. “This one-handed man needs to work on his beer-opening technique.”

  Cole quickly shed his clothes, unaware of the fact that Bart may have lured him into the hot springs as much to ensure that his buddy’s rank body was clean before Gretchen’s arrival as out of any sense of celebration. He opened the two bottles and passed one back to Bart.

  Bart set down his bottle near the backpack and reached into the sack once more to produce a bar of Dr. Bronner’s peppermint soap. He proceeded to lather himself up before throwing the bar at Cole, who clumsily caught it.

  “Gotta smell good for the boss tomorrow, right?” Bart said, averting his eyes from Cole.

  “Yeah, I suppose so. Hey, keep that stump out of the water, huh? Last thing you need’s any infections.”

  Good point, Bart thought, before dunking his head under the water, one arm upraised. When he resurfaced, Cole was staring blankly at the house.

  “You suppose if I told Gretchen about . . . you know, about what we’d done . . . do you suppose she’d help us out, Bart?”

  Bart took a sip from the bottle, then set it down and wiped the water off his face and waded over to Cole.

  “Buddy,” he began, “you need to go to a place in your head where all that never happened. All right? Their bodies are gone. Totally gone. There is no evidence of anything. You did what you had to do because I put us in a . . . in a terrible, terrible position. It is truly my fault. But, Cole—you can’t tell anyone about what we did, ever.”

  Bart saw that Cole was crying; he looked like a frightened child. “They didn’t deserve what we did to them,” Cole said. “Burnt up like that, so their families’ll never find them. Killed like damn dogs; like two dogs we couldn’t suffer anymore. Like two dogs barking too loud!” Cole let loose with a series of crazed barks and howls.

  “Stop it,” Bart said, trying to cover his friend’s bellowing mouth. “Shut your mouth, Cole. Knock that shit off.”

  He splashed water at Cole’s face until his friend finally stopped.

  Then, from far down the valley and out toward the highway, came a chorus of coyote cries: barking and yipping and long prolonged howls.

  “Jesus, this is a godforsaken place,” Cole said, his tears subsiding. “I don’t care how beautiful the house is. It’s haunted, and always will be. Three people have died here, and you”—he paused—“you lost your hand.” The two men fell silent awhile. “Bad luck is what this place is,” Cole continued a few moments later. “Like a fucking monument to greed, and we built it. Three rubes, fallin’ all over each other to pick up Gretchen’s spare change.”

  “You heard what I said, though?” Bart asked. “Didn’t you, Cole? We can’t tell anybody what happened. No one. Ever.”

  “Yeah,” Cole said, “I heard you, buddy. Just keep it stowed away. I get it.”

  “I’m fucking serious, Cole,” Bart said, pointing a finger in Cole’s direction.

  “Don’t worry, buddy,” Cole said, his voice now almost eerily calm. “Nobody’ll ever know what you did.”

  Bart stood and waded out of the hot springs, drying himself with one of the ratty towels they’d kept in the trailer. “I imagined a much different dip in these springs when we were finished,” Bart said. “I thought there’d be champagne, caviar, maybe some glitzy lights. . . .”

  “I’m tired, Bart,” Cole said, reaching for another towel inside the bag.

  “We should move the trailer, too,” Bart said. “At least park it across the bridge, in that turnaround. I don’t think it’s something Gretchen ought to see as she pulls in here for the first time in weeks.”

  Cole nodded. “Good idea.”

  They d
ressed quickly and then double-teamed the trailer, picking up the detritus of the past four months of their life. Hanging over all the stale sweat of dirty socks was the slight smell of meth, a light odor that someone else may have taken for vinegar or ammonia but which to the two men was unmistakably and inextricably linked to this place and time in their lives. Cole walked down the hill and drove his truck back up the driveway; then he hitched the trailer up and swung it around, before driving it back and away from the house. Looking in his rearview mirror, it was as if the house were watching him with wide golden eyes under a heavy rectangular brow.

  Once the trailer was relocated, they left the windows open to air it out, and Bart lit a few scented candles, the lights of which seemed cheerful and true to the holiday.

  Bart lumbered back uphill. The hot springs had actually relaxed him some, leaving his body as limber as he’d felt since before the start of this project, as loose, really, as he’d felt in years. Cole was nowhere to be found outside, but inside the garage his shoes and socks were neatly arranged near the bottom of the stairs leading to the first floor. Bart set his new cowboy boots right next to them and plodded up the stairs.

  He found Cole stroking a nondescript wall, his fingertips touching the finished surface as if he were reading Braille.

  “I punched a hole in this wall,” Cole said weakly, “right here.”

  “You sure?” Bart asked, walking over to stand beside his friend. “Looks fine to me.”

  “I’m sure,” Cole said. “Right here.”

  Then he pointed down the hall, to the doorway of one of the bedrooms.

  “And there, too. Teddy must’ve patched ’em up right away.”

  “Did a helluva job, then,” Bart said, raising his eyebrows. “Why’d you do that?”

  “I was out of my mind,” Cole answered. “Maybe I still am.”

  “Hey,” Bart said, “come on, now. Don’t say that. We just have to get through tonight. She’ll be here in less than twelve hours, Cole. We get the house cleaned up, make sure things are spic-and-span, then we can crash in the trailer for a few hours. Get some shut-eye.”

  Cole nodded his weary head, and they went to work, sweeping and mopping floors, vacuuming, spraying Windex on all the glass and the surfaces of the gleaming new appliances. They wore thin white cotton gloves, careful not to leave their prints on anything; not the doorknobs or mirrors, not the countertops or the stainless steel of the refrigerator. They wanted the house to appear as it should—totally fresh and unlived in. But for Cole in particular, this cleaning reminded him of the days after they—he still couldn’t quite believe it—murdered Bill and José. Those days of frantically cleaning blood off the floor, ceiling, and walls of the garage. Of disposing of clothing and anything that might yield some forensic evidence of that horrible evening.

  Just before dawn, after they’d both walked through the house three different times, inspecting for the slightest flaws anywhere, they walked down the driveway to the trailer and, like two boys at the end of a long sleepover, fell asleep in the narrow bed, their backs to each other, the mountains growing brighter in the east.

  39

  Merry Christmas,” her driver said, as he passed her a stiff paper cup of hot coffee sealed up tight. “We’ve got a bit of a drive ahead of us.”

  The SUV left Jackson, driving quiet roads southeast of town. In the backseat, Abby studied plans of the house on her phone. Looking at the topographic map of the site, she could hardly believe the sharp elevation changes that defined the valley and the mountain rising straight up from it. Without even laying eyes on the land, Abby felt a queasiness in her gut. This was a landscape that ought to be preserved, not gated off and developed. She’d gone to college for conservation biology, but there she was, flying on private planes, acting as some rich lady’s assistant in a land deal.

  She checked her emails and texts. Still no word from Gretchen.

  The SUV slowed and made a left turn onto a gravel road before coming to a stop.

  “You need to make any calls or send any messages?” the driver said, leaning back to address her. “This’ll probably be your last best chance. I doubt we’ll get much of a signal from here on.”

  Abby stared at Gretchen’s contact information before typing a quick text:

  JUST ARRIVING TO YOUR PROPERTY. DRIVING TO HOUSE NOW. HOPE YOU FEEL BETTER TODAY? MERRY CHRISTMAS.

  She gave the driver a nod, and they resumed the journey, proceeding slowly along an icy gravel road that could only be described as treacherous. The drifts the snowplows had piled up stood taller than the SUV itself, the sides of the driveway marked with tall wooden poles, bright orange flags adorning the tops of the markers.

  “Holy shit,” the driver muttered softly, as he stared ahead to where the river boiled and frothed. “This is your house we’re driving to?” He glanced at the young woman in his rearview mirror.

  “No, no,” she said, meeting his eyes. “My employer’s.”

  “She must be a very private person.”

  She’s dying, Abby thought, before replying quietly, “Yes, she’ll never be . . .”

  “She’ll never be able to keep this road open all winter,” he continued. “We’re lucky the snows have been so light. Another month, heck, another few days, everything’ll be buried.”

  At five and ten miles an hour, it took forever to reach the turnaround at the end of the road, just before the river and bridge leading up to the house. And then there they were, finally. Abby pressed her face close to the window, the cliff-faces rising up majestically over the house, steam rising from the hot springs, and the sunlight warming that whole valley as if to plate it all in gold foil.

  “My lord,” Abby said. “Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?”

  The driver parked the SUV near a camping trailer and three pickup trucks, all emblazoned with a triangle logo, and they sat for a moment, idling and staring out the windows.

  “No,” he replied. “I haven’t. Never seen anything like this.”

  “I know this isn’t probably part of your job description,” Abby said, “but I wonder if you might escort me up there? Inside, I mean? I really don’t know what to expect.”

  Which was the truth. If the house wasn’t complete, or hadn’t been completed to Gretchen’s specifications, what would she tell the men who awaited her inside the house? After all their work, after crafting such a beautiful structure, how could she possibly withhold their rewards? And on Christmas morning, no less? She, of all people. And how would they respond to her, this young proxy, when all along they’d expected Gretchen? When they had so clearly toiled, and all for that one woman’s benefit.

  “Are you kidding me?” the driver said, grinning. “I can’t come this close and not see the inside.”

  They left the warm confines of the vehicle and walked slowly across the bridge. The driveway was salted, which made the going easier. As the elevation steepened, their strides up toward the hot springs grew more labored, and finally they approached the steaming pool, where the driver removed his gloves and touched the water’s surface.

  “This place is like Shangri-La,” he said, staring up at the cliff-faces all aglow in the morning light.

  Together, they walked to the garage, where Abby pushed open a door to reveal a perfectly clean concrete floor. There was room there for three vehicles.

  Three vehicles, she thought. For one woman who may never drive again.

  She followed the sound of voices and the smell of freshly brewed coffee up a beautiful hickory staircase and onto the expansive next floor, where three men, perhaps a decade older than her, hunched around a commanding granite kitchen island, all of them sipping coffee out of paper cups. At the first sight of her, they stood right up, straightening their backs and smoothing the fronts of their button-down shirts. The most youthful-looking of the three pulled at the lapels of what looked to be a brand-new
black blazer. The biggest of the men seemed to be missing all the fingers of his left hand, his right hand cradling that stump. The last man looked utterly haggard, so bedraggled and thin he might have crawled out of a culvert, though his hair was combed, and something in his eyes shone like pride, or perhaps just relief. Then, as the driver also came up those stairs behind her and stood on that first floor, his eyes wide and his mouth open as he reached the main floor, Abby noticed something cross all three men’s faces, and their eyes squinted with confusion and anger.

  “Who are you?” the haggard one asked. “Where’s Gretchen? What the fuck’s going on here?” His face was red, and veins were popping on his neck and forehead.

  The young one intercepted him as he moved toward Abby, barking like a rabid dog. “Where’s Gretchen, huh? Where is she? We did our job! We DID OUR JOB! Where is she?”

  “Now hold on,” the driver said loudly, his voice booming in that wide-open space as he stepped between Abby and the men. “Let’s all just calm down, all right? This young woman is here on behalf of her, uh, employer. Isn’t that right, miss?”

  “Yes,” Abby said. “I’m, uh, I am Gretchen’s assistant.”

  “Where IS she?” the bedraggled one bellowed.

  “Calm him down,” the driver said to the other two men, “or I’m going to escort this young woman back to her hotel and whatever meeting you fellas here were expecting just ain’t gonna happen.”

  “He’s right, Cole,” said the young one in the blazer. “Let’s all take a deep breath.”