Darkness the Color of Snow

by Thomas Cobb

  “No. I guess I’ll hang on to it.”

  “All right, man. Do what you want. But listen. I’ll give you more than you paid for it if you want me to take it back. Like you might want a smaller gun and some cash. I know things must be a little tight for you right now. Whenever you decide it’s not your best weapon, just give me a call. I’ll give you a hundred more than you paid. You know. Goodwill.”

  “I’m going to keep the gun, but maybe I’ll leave it to you in my will.”

  “Whatever you want, man.”

  “DON’T BE SO glum,” Gordy says to Pete and John. “I’m going to draw a name out of a hat. You’ve got three out of four chances to keep your jobs, whether you deserve them or not.”

  “Oh, that’s just cold, man. You should get a job at the hospice, giving everyone odds on how much longer they’re going to last. You’d be a comedy sensation.”

  “I just may do that,” Gordy says.

  “You’re awful cheerful, considering.”

  “No. I’m not cheerful. I’m just not going to give Martin Glendenning the satisfaction of knowing how much this is bothering me.”

  “No, man. I mean you don’t even look bothered.”

  “I’ve made a decision. And I’ll let you know pretty soon. So I’m not still trying to work things out, that’s all. It’s pretty much decided. I’m going to talk to Martin later this afternoon. Either of you want to resign?” Gordy looks from Pete to John and back again. He smiles. “I didn’t think so. I’m going to be in my office for the rest of the morning. You two hold down the fort. I don’t want to be disturbed.”

  “You got it.”

  GORDY EMERGES FROM his office about an hour later. “OK. Everything in there is taken care of. Anything out here I need to know about?”

  Pete starts to say something, catches himself and shakes his head. “No, man. Everything here is copacetic.”

  “Good. I have some errands to run. I probably won’t be back until two or so. I’m not telling you where I’m going because I don’t want anyone to know where I’m going, and you two won’t have to lie when you say you don’t know.”

  “Got it,” Pete says.

  When Gordy is gone out the door, John says, “I don’t much like being in the position I’m in, but I bet it’s a hell of a lot better than the position he’s in. I got a seventy-­five percent chance of surviving this. He’s got no chance of not pissing off a lot of ­people.”

  HE MAKES HIS way down the rocky and rutted road. He hasn’t been down this road since the day they found the white Lexus, but he’s maneuvering it better, as if something buried in his brain has come to the surface and he’s driving the road on years-­old memory.

  He stops in front of the house and knocks on the door. She doesn’t answer, but he suspects she rarely spends much time in the house in the daytime. She’ll be out back somewhere, attending to something. Her truck’s here, so she’s here.

  “Need a hand?” he asks when he comes into the barn where she’s breaking down bales of straw for bedding.

  She looks at him for a bit. “I think I got it. Been doing it for a long time.” Her hair’s coming undone from her feed store cap and hangs down at the side of her face. She reaches up and tucks a strand of it behind her ear. “You need something?”

  “A bit of your time. A cup of coffee, maybe.”

  “I don’t drink coffee anymore. Tea?”

  “Yeah. Tea.”

  “I’ll go in and start the water. You want to spread this straw in these two stalls? I got girls getting ready to kid.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yeah. Glad to.”

  “Do a good job. A doe is someone’s mama.”

  WHEN HE’S DONE, he walks into the house through the kitchen where the teakettle is steaming away on the stove. Nearby are a teapot and two thick ceramic mugs.

  She walks into the kitchen from the hall that leads to her bedroom. The barn coat and cap are gone, and she’s rolling up the sleeves of a denim shirt. Her hair is pulled back into a ponytail.

  “You look nice,” he says.

  “You look like shit. And don’t get your hopes up. Sometimes I just feel the need to brush my damned hair.”

  “Just came over to talk.” He smiles.

  She pours the water into the teapot and brings it and the mugs over to the table. “What do you take in your tea?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t drink tea.”

  “Well, if you did, what would you take in it?”

  “Probably nothing.”

  “There’s goat’s milk and sugar, if you want it.”

  He smiles. They had once battled over goat’s milk. He refused to drink it, expecting it to be thin and bitter. He had finally drunk some on a bet and had been amazed by the smooth creaminess of the milk.

  “What’s up?” She leans back in her chair and puts her feet up on the one vacant chair.

  “A crossroads. Came to a crossroads, and now I’m dithering. This way or that way.”

  “And you came to me?”

  “You’re the only one I could think of who isn’t either working for me or dependent on me in some other way. And you won’t bullshit me.”

  She smiles and shakes her head. “Goatshit you.”

  “Whatever. You won’t.”

  “So you think. You don’t know. Maybe I’ve changed a lot in the last few years.”

  He looks hard at her. She’s a little heavier, her hair touched with gray, and her mouth and eyes lined. But on the outside, she really hasn’t changed much. He suspects the same is true for the rest of her.

  “Well, I’m here. Mind if we talk for a while?”

  “No. Let’s talk.”

  PAM POURS HIM a cup of tea, and he picks it up holds it to his nose and feels the steam come onto his face. He takes a sip. “So we go on. Whatever way we go on, we just do. That’s all.”

  “Well,” Pam says. “That sounds about the way it is. You do just go on.”

  “Are you happy?”

  “Me? Yeah. I’m happy. Maybe I could be happier, who knows. But I’m happy enough that I don’t worry about it. I take it that’s not the case in your situation?”

  “It’s a tough time. The toughest time I’ve ever had, or at least in the top two. I need to make some decisions here, and I don’t feel like I have enough information to make them.”

  “What information do you need?”

  “Do you get lonely?”

  “Are you coming around offering a miracle cure for loneliness, which is really your loneliness?”

  “No. I really want to know. You live out here by yourself, and you seem to do fine.”

  “Myself and forty-­six goats. More than that in the next ­couple of days. Yeah, sometimes I wish goats could talk. But mostly we get along just fine without the talking. Loneliness is not a state of being, you know. It’s a reaction to a state of being, which is simply being alone. And you choose both of them. I don’t have to live alone. I could find someone to live with. It wouldn’t be that hard. Men are pretty damned easy to find. I just haven’t found one who’s better than not having one, which is a state I find myself more and more contented with.”

  “Contentment is a pretty wonderful thing. I was pretty content for a long time, then the apple cart went over.”

  “Apple carts do that. But tipped apple carts don’t have to stay tipped. Or if they do, you can go on without them. Find another. I kind of think that contentment was always there, I just chose to chase after other things. When you finally find yourself content, it’s like you always were, but you just forgot to think about it.”

  “Buddhism?”

  “Goatism.”

  They look at each other for a bit. Where there was once so much to say, now there is so little, or maybe too much.

  “I am sorry about Bonita. I really
am. I didn’t really know her, but I know she was very well thought of in town. And of course, I’m sorry for you. Vic died nearly thirty years ago, and I still miss him. Maybe not every minute or every day, but he’s always not here.”

  “Vic?” He has never heard of Vic.

  “Before your time. Vic and I came here back in the eighties. He died of a staff infection, really just a very, very bad cold. Hadn’t even been here a year. I had burned a lot of bridges, and I had nowhere to go. So I stayed. Me and the goats. It’s been an odd life, I guess, but a good one, all in all. Don’t know where I’m going with this. Except that you get through things. You think you’re not going to, but you do.”

  “You know what happened last night?”

  “No. What now?”

  “The town council met for the unstated but perfectly obvious purpose of firing Ronny Forbert.”

  “And they did?”

  “Actually, no. They put me in a spot where I’ll be forced to fire him. Pilate washing his hands, I guess. So I’m in kind of a bind everywhere. Bonita’s gone, my job is turning into its own private hell. You know what bothers me most? The one thing that really fries me? It’s when someone sees a tragedy as an opportunity to advance themselves. The complete lack of decency. That’s what kills me.”

  “My father used to say that ­people are like goats. What they can’t eat, they shit on. Actually I’ve found goats to be a lot more noble than ­people. It’s a bad rap on the goats. And what are you going to do?”

  Gordy smiles. “Well, I can’t eat it.”

  “You want some more tea?”

  “No. I better get going. I just needed to talk a little, and you’re a great one to talk to. Hope I didn’t take too much of your time.”

  Pam shrugs. “What’s time? Another thing I’ve learned from goats. Time is just something ­people make up to worry about. The goats will get fed. I’ll get fed.”

  “Well, thanks for the tea.”

  “You’re welcome. Anytime. Whether I have tea or not. Gordy. Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “What’s stupid? That’s got to be as relative as time.”

  BACK IN THE cruiser, Gordy phones Martin Glendenning and sets up a meeting for lunchtime. “You’ve made up your mind, have you?” Martin asks.

  “I believe I have. Yes.”

  RONNY GETS OUT of the shower, dries and dresses in his duty gear, tucking his pants into the highly polished nine-­inch combat boots. He thinks again about getting a new phone or finding a pay phone. But the need or desire just isn’t strong enough. Maybe he doesn’t actually want to talk to her. He isn’t sure.

  He drives through Lydell, past the center of town and down Snake Farm Road, until he comes to the pull-­over, where he parks his truck and gets out, puts on his coat and the holstered Mark VII. Everything looks the same, as if he and Max were out here only days ago, not years.

  Someone, probably a hunter or two, has been here ahead of him. The snow is packed, and boot prints cover boot prints. He walks over the latest set and into the woods. It’s quiet, beyond quiet, silent. Most of the birds have migrated and many of the animals are hibernating. But there are always winter birds—­juncos, titmice, chickadees, and turkeys. Deer and rabbit are abundant in the winter. Probably everything is hunkering down for the storm tonight. He can feel it coming as well. It’s still and warm, not windy and cold as it had been earlier. The storm is moving in.

  He walks on down the thin but well-­packed trails. Everything is covered with a layer of ice that was once snow. The rocks are treacherously slippery. Twice his boots slip on the rocks, and once he nearly goes down. He has to climb over one big oak that has come down onto the trail, and he ducks under the branches of a smaller beech that has been uprooted in a storm.

  Clearly no one is working on the trail anymore. Hunters would be too single-­minded to bother clearing it up, and he guesses that kids are too busy with video games and other electronic stuff to come out to the woods. How long has it been since he has really walked through these woods? Years. He guesses he can’t hold anyone more blameworthy than himself.

  The small stream that he and Max used to dam up to catch crawfish and minnows is still there and running. It has made small openings in the ice cover where he can see the water moving. He sits on a granite boulder and watches the water go by as the ice glistens in the last sun.

  It’s peaceful here, and there is something here that he has lost—­an ability to just exist and accept. There’s a feeling in the woods that the world is right, and that he is a part of it, and is, therefore, right, too. But then, he doesn’t live in the woods. He isn’t sure that there is a way to even begin to set things right. The world beyond the woods has methodically collapsed around him, and he can do nothing, probably, to stop it. Here, it’s all right. Here, those matters seem small, but he knows that once he steps out of the woods they will grab him again.

  He unholsters the Mark VII and looks at. He still wants to think it’s a beautiful gun, but it isn’t. It’s too big, too ungainly to have any beauty to it. It’s a sledgehammer or a bolt cutter or pick-­ax. It’s useful, it’s efficient and powerful, but it isn’t beautiful.

  He opens his mouth and takes the barrel of the gun into it, letting his tongue slide over the end of the barrel. The taste is oily and metallic. But somehow he can exert no pressure on the trigger of the big gun. This is a place where he wouldn’t mind dying. At least so he once thought. But here, now, with the Mark VII in his mouth, ready to blow his skull to bits, he doesn’t want to die. He thought he did, but he doesn’t. He isn’t afraid. He just doesn’t want to do it. Maybe this is the wrong time, the wrong place, but, whatever, it’s wrong.

  He takes the gun from his mouth and reholsters it. He listens to the water below his feet as it makes its way past the smooth stones. He smells the air as if he could smell the coming snow the way animals can. He slides off the rock and begins walking out, picking up trash and moving deadfall from the trail.

  “GORDON,” MARTIN SAYS when Gordy walks in. “It’s good to see you. Are you doing all right? The council meeting must have been very unpleasant for you. I wish that hadn’t happened. I tried to make things a little easier on you.”

  “I had the impression that the meeting went exactly the way you planned it to go, Martin.”

  Glendenning smiles. “Nothing goes exactly as you plan it. You have to adjust to the currents, so to speak. I bear you no ill will, Gordon. I hope you know that. I admire what you have done for Lydell over all these years. I hope that was clear in my amendment to give you the authority in all of this. I didn’t want the council to be dictating police matters to you.”

  “Martin, if we could bag you and sell you by the pound at a gardening center, Lydell’s financial problems would be a thing of the past.”

  “We talking manure here, Gordon?”

  “We’re living it here, Martin.” Gordy takes the envelope from inside his coat pocket and hands it across the table to Glendenning.

  “This is your decision? You could have just called me or sent me an email.”

  “No. I think it has to be this way.”

  Glendenning opens the envelope, unfolds the letter, and puts on his reading glasses. Gordy watches him as he reads.

  “Gordon. This is a letter of resignation.”

  “Yes it is.”

  “But this is not right. No one has asked for your resignation. No one wants your resignation.”

  “I did what I thought was best for the town, Martin. You wanted to cut the payroll, and I cut out the biggest single item—­my salary.”

  “But we have to have a police chief.”

  “Then have one. Promote Pete. He has seniority. And he’s the best cop in the department. You don’t really have a problem here.”

  “I don’t know that I could work well with Peter Mancuso. I mean, not like I work with you.” />
  Gordy smiled. “It will be a different experience for you. One I wish I could watch, but I’ll be off somewhere being retired. And you know you and I have never worked well together. You just throw shit on me.”

  “And you throw it back. But Forbert. This leaves Forbert in the department. This is not acceptable.”

  “I told you. He’s a good cop. Pete will go on making him a better cop. And you and I both know that you were after Ronny to get at me. Now you don’t have to go after anyone. I’m gone as of the end of the year.”

  “But the witness that has come forward. Forbert is not a good cop.”

  “Do you know who the witness is, Martin? Never mind. I know you do. And I know that whatever the witness saw, it’ll be a tough sell in court. There’s no question that there was a struggle, and there’s no question that Matt Laferiere was seriously impaired. And I’ve asked the state police to take over the investigation. It’ll be fair, and Ronny will be exonerated.”

  “I will refuse to accept this.” Glendenning holds up Gordy’s letter.

  “Doesn’t matter if you do. I dropped another copy off at the town clerk’s office. I will be retired on January first.”

  Glendenning scowls and then seems to regain control of himself. He stands up and extends a hand to Gordy. “Then I will accept this with only the greatest regret.”

  Gordy smiles. “I wouldn’t have wanted to give you anything less. Enjoy your time with Pete.”

  UNDER THE TRUCK, where he is hidden from view, where he crawled to start working on the rusted nuts that hold the rear axle shackles in place, Sammy hears someone come into the garage, and he slides out from under the truck, just his head, and he sees Ronny Forbert. Then he hears the angry voices, and he scoots back under the truck. He has a three-­pound hammer in one hand that he’s been using to hit the bar, trying to crack the rust on the nut and bolt. He stops breathing when he hears the first shot.

  Then there are more shots. And red dots swirling on the floor. He knows from TV that those are laser dots from a gun sight. And after each shot there is yelling and groaning and he sees two of his friends drop to the floor as though they were puppets with their strings cut. And right after each shot, he hears the small brass chime of a bullet casing hitting the concrete floor. And though he knows what they are, he cannot help his brain from repeating the line, as he remembers it, from the old movie about the guy who wishes he’d never been born, that they show every Christmas. God just made another angel.