Whiteout

by Vicki Delany

  Jack wrenched the sculpture out of Tiffany’s hands. Joanna ran for the gun, but it had slid under the sofa. She was scrambling on her hands and knees trying to find it when she heard a sickening smack as Jack struck Tiffany across the temple with the little figurine. He stood over her, the statue raised high overhead about to bring it down on Tiffany’s dazed head. The gun forgotten, Joanna leaped to her feet. At last she remembered something from her self-defense lessons. She launched her heel firmly into Jack’s kneecap. With a cry he dropped the statue and fell to the floor.

  Joanna dragged Tiffany to her feet and pulled the dazed girl out the door. Together they stumbled down the porch steps and across the yard. Behind them they could hear Jack screaming his rage as he fumbled under the furniture for his gun.

  An ear piercing explosion and a shower of glass from the front window told them that he found it. Joanna fell to her knees and pulled Tiffany down beside her. Together they crawled into the relative safety of the trees.

  They lay in the snow, hearts pounding, ears straining. Jack burst through the door and stood on the porch firing his gun wildly into the air, screaming abuse with every shot. The women huddled together, arms clasped around each other.

  From her perch in the spindly white pine the old owl grunted in disgust. Bad weather and now this: would she have to go without dinner yet again?

  “In the movies they only have six bullets in a gun, do you think that’s right?” Joanna whispered into Tiffany’s ear. “He must have fired six shots by now.”

  “I don’t know,” Tiffany hissed back, “but I’m pretty sure guns have improved since the days of the cowboy movies.”

  “If you can call it improved,” Joanna mumbled.

  At that moment Jack stepped on the broken old porch step. The rotten wood finally gave way and the tread collapsed with a crack and a shower of wood and splinters. Jack screamed as his foot and half of his left leg crashed through the steps.

  “Now, run! He won’t be stuck for long.” Joanna dragged Tiffany to her feet and set off through the dark woods. Behind them they could hear Jack swearing as he smashed the rotting wood to free his leg from the remains of the porch steps.

  Joanna’s heart was pounding with a strength she didn’t know it had. Any moment it might burst right through her chest. She had never known such fear. A quick glimpse of Tiffany’s white and terrified face reflected her own panic back at her.

  They reached the bottom of the driveway. For a second she hesitated, unsure of which trail to follow, upward toward the road, or down the hill to the thick boreal forest and the frozen lake beyond.

  Jack shouted a cry of victory as he pulled his leg out of the broken steps. He fired the gun once again, and stumbled to his feet.

  Tiffany was already turning up the hill toward the road, but Joanna grabbed her arm. “This way,” she gasped. “I don’t have the car keys.”

  For a moment Tiffany resisted. “The road. If we head for the road we may find help.”

  “No, he’ll think of that. Let’s go.”

  Tiffany took one last look up the hill and then turned to follow Joanna. She trusted this woman now.

  Although the five-and-dime was fairly new, it already looked old and worn out. In this town, in these times, there was not very much money to be wasted on the sort of frivolities the store stocked. Hair clips and frilly blouses and toilet water and cheap costume jewelry sat on the shelves accumulating dust from one year until the next. The floor was grimy underfoot and water stains spotted the ceiling. Lighting was poor on the best of days and with the gathering snowstorm the room was gloomy to the point of despair.

  The store was empty except for the heavily made up and substantially overweight clerk standing beside the ladies’ gloves and the acne-cursed boy in a tall white hat and apron who served the soda counter. One other passenger flicked through a magazine as he waited for the bus. The girl ignored them all and took a seat at the soda counter, setting her suitcase on the floor beside her. The bus passenger looked like a traveling salesman: shiny suit, balding pate and false teeth, an overlarge sample case at his side. Fuller brushes maybe, she thought without interest. The man glanced at the girl’s extended belly protruding out of the front of her tattered winter coat, the buttons no longer meeting at the front, and with a sniff he returned to his copy of Life magazine. She glanced at the picture on the cover: two tiny men stood at the bottom, dwarfed into insignificance by the colossal concrete pillars of the dam filling the photo.

  Behind the counter, the clerk mopped up the floor. He would let the girl sit there as long as no one else came in for a soda. If they did, she would have to go and stand outside. But with one look at the street he knew that there would be no more customers today. Might as well close up the shop once the bus to Toronto passed through.

  The clock over the cash register clicked the minutes slowly. The bus was late, thrown off schedule by the approaching snow. The salesman flicked through his magazine, the girl looked at the floor, every few minutes she checked in her pocket to be sure that the bus money and the directions to the home were still there. With a cheery good night the overweight woman waved to the soda jerk and rushed out into the night. The boy wanted to lock up and go home, but he’d get in real trouble if he didn’t wait for the last bus.

  Eventually they heard the heavy sigh of the bus pulling to a stop in front of the store. As usual only the bus driver got off and stumbled in for a cup of coffee.

  “Hell of a night out tonight,” he mumbled to the clerk and the salesman. “Hope we can get out of the way before it really hits. Going to be a big one, I can tell you.” He finished his coffee in two gulps and returned to the bus. The girl and the Fuller brush salesman climbed on after him.

  The girl stifled a moan as a sharp pain ripped through her stomach and handed the bus driver her money. “Toronto, please,” she mumbled. The pain subsided and she breathed deeply with relief.

  The bus driver stared at the money in her hand. “That’s not enough to get you to Toronto.”

  She looked at him not understanding. “But this is all I have.”

  “Well, it’s not enough.”

  “Please, I have to go to Toronto. Maybe I can send the bus company the rest of the money after I get there.”

  The man laughed and stared at her belly. She pulled her coat tighter around her but it still did not meet at the front.

  “Yea, right,” he sneered. “Pay up or get off the bus.”

  She didn’t know what to do. “But my da said this was the fare to Toronto.”

  “Well, your da obviously don’t know nothing. Now get off the bus. Ask your da for more, the next bus comes through on Friday.” He looked past her. “Can I help you, sir?”

  She lifted her cardboard suitcase and pushed past the man in the shiny suit. He stepped quickly out of her way as if she were a bad smell. “If you’d kept your legs together, you wouldn’t be needing to go to Toronto.”

  The bus driver laughed and handed the salesman his ticket.

  The girl stood on the sidewalk, cardboard suitcase in hand thin coat flapping open in the wind. In the short time she had been on the bus the store clerk had turned out the lights, locked the door and escaped for home.

  As is the way in the north in winter, night had fallen in a matter of minutes. All the storefronts were closed tight. There was no one in sight; everyone was seeking shelter from the approaching storm. Not that she would have ever approached anyone for help in any event. She was a McDonald; she knew not to expect kindness from people.

  She picked up her suitcase and set off down the street. She would just have to walk home and hope that her da would give her more money so she could catch the next bus. Probably be in for a beating first, but that could be endured.

  She passed the brightly lit windows of the church hall but didn’t spare them a glance. Inside, the minister’s wife and the bazaar committee had finally come to the realization that no one would venture out on a night like tonight.


  “I am only sorry for those poor unfortunates so in need of our Christian charity,” the minister’s wife exclaimed to the ladies of the committee, patting her iron gray curls into place. “We must pray that our next bazaar will be a success, for their sakes.” The ladies nodded as they gathered up their cakes and squares. Bending over to pull on heavy boots, they groaned in unison.

  Chapter 30

  All around them the storm continued to build. As if it were a living, thinking being, it had been gathering its strength into itself all day and now it burst forth in an excited frenzy of wind and snow.

  Tiffany could barely see Joanna through the depths of the blizzard. She was nothing but a vague, ghostly shape, drifting in and out of focus against the undulating landscape. There was no day, no night, no sky, no earth. Only shifting, living white. The feel of the snow-covered ground beneath Tiffany’s feet changed as they burst out of the woods and onto the frozen lake. They were no longer tripping over barely covered rocks and fallen logs, the snow on the lake was thick and smooth and unbroken. Joanna grabbed Tiffany’s hand. “I can barely see you,” she gasped. “Hold on or we might get separated.” Gratefully Tiffany clung to Joanna as if she was a life preserver and Tiffany was drowning, drowning, not in water but in snow. A slower death perhaps, but just as final.

  In blind panic the woman and girl ran out further onto the frozen lake. The snow was up past their knees but they pushed on as if they were human snowplows. They were digging giant furrows behind them, such as a farmer might make to prepare his fields for seeding. But so harsh was the wind and so heavy was the falling snow that their path disappeared almost immediately. Within seconds, no trace of their panic driven passage remained.

  It seemed to Tiffany that they had been running through the white night, hands clasped tightly together, for hours. But all too soon the strain on her panicked heart and the effort of plowing through the virgin snow forced Joanna to a halt. The older woman was in better shape than Tiffany, thanks to regular exercise, good diet and no smoking, but none of that mattered compared to the difference in their ages.

  Joanna bent over, hands on her knees, desperately trying to pull oxygen into her starving lungs. Tiffany moved close and absentmindedly rubbed Joanna’s back.

  “I don’t hear anything, do you?” Joanna gasped.

  Tiffany strained her ears. All she could hear was the howl of the wind. “No, I don’t think he followed us.”

  For a split second Tiffany felt nothing but overwhelming relief: Jack was gone, it was over. Then she took in her surroundings. She could see absolutely nothing, nothing but endless shifting white. It was night, but the sky and the stars were gone. It wasn’t even black, as night should be, just a darker shade of white. Lashes of wind blew frozen pellets of snow into her face. She couldn’t begin to make out a trail marking the direction in which they had come.

  “Joanna, where are we?”

  Joanna looked up. She was still breathing deeply, but the gasping had stopped and she was able to stand straight. “I don’t know.” She looked around. “We must be out on the lake. I’m sure if we just turn around and walk back in the direction in which we came we will get back to the edge of the lake. Then if we follow the shoreline for a little bit we will come to the Reynolds’ place and we can ask them for help. Hopefully Jack gave up on us long ago.”

  Tiffany knew that Joanna was as confused as she was, but she was trying to put up a brave, adult front. Simultaneously the two women started the return journey across the Lake. They headed in opposite directions.

  Joanna’s resolve collapsed and she burst into tears. “Shit, Tiffany, I don’t have any idea which way we came, do you?”

  Tiffany glanced about wildly. There was not a single landmark to be seen. She remembered her geography teacher telling the class how the Inuit built large groups of standing stones, that they called Inukshuk, to mark the landscape and give travelers some point of reference in the vastness of the Artic desert. Too late now to build an Inukshuk.

  Joanna cried silently. The tears froze to her eyelashes and cut icy rivulets down her cheeks. Now that the frenzy of their dash to freedom had passed, Tiffany slowly became aware of just how cold she was. She was wearing only running shoes on her feet and a thick wool sweater, lovingly hand knitted by her grandma. She gratefully pulled her hands up into the sleeves and with a flash of shame remembered how she refused to be seen wearing it in public. She only put it on to go to Joanna’s because the cabin was always cold and she knew that Joanna wouldn’t even notice if she was a geek wearing a homemade sweater. At least she was better equipped than Joanna, who had taken her own sweater off when she built up the fire. She was dressed only in a flannel shirt and jeans. Tiffany put her arms around Joanna, who was shivering uncontrollably. “Come on,” she muttered trying to keep her voice full of nonexistent enthusiasm. “We’ll go this way.”

  She half dragged the older woman after her, but all too soon Tiffany knew that they were lost. If she didn’t find shelter, and soon, Joanna would freeze to death. And she, Tiffany, wouldn’t be very far behind. Already her fingers and toes were numbing.

  “Look, over there,” Tiffany shrieked. “A light. We must be going the right way. Come on, Joanna. It looks really close. Maybe we’re almost at the Reynolds’.”

  “I don’t see a light.” Joanna’s teeth rattled so badly, she was barely able to get the words out. Tiffany hoped that wasn’t a patch of frostbite she saw on the older woman’s nose. She didn’t know how long it took for frostbite to develop. But like anyone living in the north, she knew it was a very bad thing.

  “Well, I see it, Joanna. Come on, follow me. Not much further, I think.” She slipped her arm around her friend’s waist and half dragged the woman after her. “Just a little bit more. I hope they have a fire going, and the kettle on to boil. I’d love a cup of hot chocolate right about now. How about you?” With a pang Tiffany thought of her grandma, the warmth of their house, the blazing stone fireplace, lazy old Rocky snoring in front of the hearth, his feet moving as he dreamt of his glory days, chasing squirrels and chipmunks deep into the woods. Warm chocolate chip cookies and a steaming hot drink ready when Tiffany got off the school bus. She had never told her grandma that she loved her, she had never thanked her for taking her in and looking after her so well. Please, please, let her see her grandma one more time, then she could die.

  With a sigh Joanna collapsed to her knees into the snow. She was buried up to her thighs. “I’ll wait here. You go on without me and come back with help. I’ll be okay. I’ll just have a little rest while you’re gone.”

  Tiffany grabbed Joanna as she was about to pitch forward onto her face and hauled her back to her feet. “I don’t think so, Joanna. I think we’ll stay together. I need you, you know.”

  Joanna smiled, her lips ice blue. “That’s nice.”

  Tiffany could still see the light ahead of her, a bright beacon cutting through the gloom of the snowstorm, but it wasn’t getting any closer. Surely they had traveled enough by now that they should be almost there. In fact, the light wasn’t getting any brighter either. It was almost as if it was moving as they moved.

  She plodded on, every step an effort, either lifting her foot high enough to get over the mounds of snow, before placing it down again, or pushing through the thick drifts. It would be a lot easier if Joanna would follow behind in the trail she cut, but Tiffany dared not relax the death grip she had on the woman’s arm. If only she had a rope or a scarf, something to tie them together. Instead she steadily pulled Joanna along beside her.

  The light bobbed silently ahead of them, neither growing nor dimming, it just moved steadily. Snow was melting inside of her shoes, wetting her feet, which immediately turned to ice. Icy crystals stuck to her hair and to her eyelashes. The wind reached arctic tentacles down the back of her sweater, feeling for the warm, dry spots between her shoulder blades. Her hands were frozen solid. Without caring much she wondered if she would ever be able to feel them again. This is us
eless, Tiffany stopped so suddenly that Joanna pitched forward. Tiffany let go of her arm and Joanna fell face first into the snow. She didn’t move, the first soft snowflakes melted against her still warm body, but soon they formed a little mound all around her.

  Tiffany sunk into the snow beside Joanna. I’ll close my eyes for a minute, and then we’ll carry on. I wonder where my mom is. She always wanted to go to Hawaii; maybe she’s there right now. I’d like to go to Hawaii one day. Maybe I can find my mom there. She’ll be glad to see me.

  Her eyes flickered shut, then flew open again. The light was closer now, much closer. So close that it was almost in her face. It cut through the gloom of the winter night like a brilliant, old-fashioned paraffin lantern. Tiffany reached out a hand to touch it, but the light swayed gently just out of her reach.

  She strained to make out the undulating shape faintly visible behind the glare of the lamp. Shifting white hair, and a face so pale that when Tiffany blinked it was gone, blended back into the snow. Only the flash of a red scarf, decorated with soft blue flowers, and the gentle glow of the lantern were visible in the expanse of the frozen world. Almost there. She abandoned her dreams of the blue beaches and green palm trees of Hawaii and once again lumbered to her feet, pulling Joanna up beside her. The woman was almost a dead weight, but at least she was beyond resistance. They stumbled forward and the light bobbed on ahead.

  So faintly she wasn’t sure she saw it at first, a gray line of brooding snow-encrusted trees loomed out of the vast whiteness. Tiffany shouted with joy, although her throat didn’t make a sound. The shoreline began to take shape and then she could see the rough planks of a dock, left bare for the winter.

  “We’re safe,” she gasped. “Come on Joanna, we’re back on land.”

  “Good,” Joanna mumbled. “I’ll lie down here for a minute.”

  “No way, not after we’ve come this far.” Tiffany released her grip on Joanna for just a minute as she clambered up the bank on her hands and knees. When she was safely on land, she reached down to offer her friend her hand. The moving light had disappeared the moment she touched land, and Joanna was nowhere to be seen as the snow swirled around her in ever decreasing circles.