Nerve Damage

by Peter Abrahams

  Not as stupid as a flatlander might think, climbing the mountain at night—even a moonless, starless night like this—if you knew the terrain like Roy did. At least, that was what he told himself as he took the trails in reverse, up Banana Boat to Boo’s Cruise, Boo’s Cruise to Wipe Out, Wipe Out to Cross-Over. A dark night, but the trails were slightly brighter, like shadows in reverse. Soft snow kept falling; Roy couldn’t see it, just felt the flakes drifting down on his face. No wind, a quiet night: except for a sound like panting that grew louder and louder. Roy was making his way up Cross-Over, toward the back side, when he realized it was him. Shameful, to make so much noise in the woods. Roy stopped, leaned against a snow gun, tried to quiet his breathing.

  That took time, especially since the feeling of the lower third of his lungs being tied off had come back; maybe the lower half, to be accurate. He stretched his arms back, stuck out his chest and sucked in the deepest breaths he could, almost violently, trying to break the seal inside him. And it worked, a little. Roy took a few nice, normal breaths, knocked snow off the tops of his snowshoes with his pole tips and kept going.

  Cross-Over, cut by Ski America after a long fight with state and local environmental agencies, narrowed along the curve of the mountain’s shoulder, as stipulated in the final agreement. Roy felt more than saw the trees closing in, a good, safe feeling. Mostly spruce trees at this elevation: he’d chopped one down for what turned out to be Delia’s last Christmas, and dragged it home.

  Is that legal, Roy?

  More of a gray area.

  That’s where the problems start.

  She’d made an angel out of papier-mâché to go on top of the tree, funny-looking, more devilish than anything: she had no artistic talent at all.

  The temperature fell a few degrees; the texture of the snow changed, grew rougher, crunching under his snowshoes: the back of the mountain. Now the wind started to rise. At first, Roy didn’t feel it, but he could hear it whistling softly in the treetops. From somewhere up ahead came the thump of snow falling off a branch. Roy kept going, peering into the darkness. The spur to the Appalachian Trail, only about five or six feet wide, could be hard to spot even by daylight. It split from Cross-Over at the top of a ridge the snowboarders used as a launching pad. Roy trodded on, up and up. The wind blew harder, worked its way down from the treetops, found him. It rose in pitch and with that came a strange wheezy sound. Roy was beginning to think he’d missed the turnoff when the trail suddenly steepened beneath him. He bent forward, pushed on his poles, climbed the ridge.

  But so slow: come on, boy. He was almost at the top—knew that from the sudden gust blowing unimpeded into his face, when he heard a sound that might have been another branch load of snow thumping down; but, in fact, was harder, more solid than that, like the wind banging an unfastened door, for example.

  Roy put his foot wrong, the heel of one shoe coming down on the toe of another. A clumsy move, not him at all; he’d been on snowshoes since boyhood. He lost his balance, fell, cartwheeled to the base of the ridge, and kept rolling—snow getting down his neck—rolling and rolling until his legs hit a tree trunk.

  Roy lay faceup in the snow. It was coming down much harder now, an icy, rapid beat on his face. Easy to picture it filling his nostrils, covering him right up; wouldn’t take long at all. Freezing to death was said to be fairly painless—didn’t you actually feel warm at the end?

  Roy made an angry grunt. That kind of thinking disgusted him. Come on, boy. He reached down to his straps, found they’d held. He groped around for his poles; not there. He got his feet under him, rose, started back up the ridge. Something hard struck his arm, the bad one. Didn’t hurt at all. And what was it? One of his poles, sticking out of the snow. Things were looking up. He grabbed it, kept going.

  Up and up, digging in with the pole, scrabbling at the snow with his free hand, down on all fours as he topped the ridge. Not making it look easy, boy. He knelt there for a moment, just breathing. The wind rose another notch. Roy realized he’d lost his hat. Not good.

  Where was the spur? Should be to the right, unless he was totally turned around. Roy looked that way, peering in the night for a small opening, and saw a yellow light, dim and unsteady, but there.

  He moved toward it, and in three or fours steps was out of the wind, and therefore on the spur, a very narrow trail, conifers packed tight on both sides. The snow was much deeper here, slow going with just one pole. He kept on, silent except for the soft thudding of his snowshoes. Then the wheezy sound began again. What the hell was that? He stopped to listen, didn’t hear it. He started up, and there was the wheezy sound. After a few more steps, he realized the obvious.

  The yellow light grew sharper and steadier. After a moment or two, Roy saw the bulky shape of the mountain hut, not quite as black as the night. Closer and closer. The yellow light glowed in a window; Roy could make out the division of the panes: a vision of warmth and safety. Was Skippy hiding out here? Not a bad hideout, especially in winter, with the hikers gone. Not a bad hideout. Smart kid, even if no one else knew it. But what about his cell phone in the snowbank outside? That didn’t fit.

  Then it hit Roy, an amazing possibility, like the first dawning of a religious miracle. Meet me here, Roy. If anything ever happens, meet me here.

  Roy, absolutely silent now, holding his breath to stop the wheezing, crept toward the door of the hut. It hung open a few inches. The escaping light illuminated footsteps—ski-boot footsteps—in the snow on the stairs; a pair of skis leaned on the wall. Roy unstrapped his snowshoes and went up, stepping silently in the footsteps already there.

  Like what?

  Anything bad. If we get separated, if you can’t find me.

  His heart was pounding. Roy could hear it, like a drum in the night. He reached the door, put his hand on it, gave a little push. It swung open.

  A woman in a ski suit was kneeling by the bunk beds on the far side of the hut, her back to him. She seemed to be looking for something underneath. A red ski suit, red hat, red ski boots. Not a miracle, but cold hard logic; all that was missing were a few facts to complete the chain.

  Roy stepped inside.

  “Delia?”

  Twenty-four

  Her head whipped around.

  Not Delia.

  Not Delia in so many ways, but here were two: café au lait skin and a fringe of glossy black hair poking out from her ski hat.

  Lenore. The other side: it was real.

  She rose, unrushed, controlled. The look in her eyes changed. If there’d been fear, it was quickly gone, easing down through surprise to something even milder that that. Her gaze left Roy, moved to the open door behind him, to the ski pole in his hand, back to his face.

  “You don’t knock in these parts?” she said.

  Roy said: “Where’s Skippy?”

  She raised her eyebrows.

  “Have you hurt him?”

  “I haven’t hurt anyone,” Lenore said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “A sixteen-year-old kid—he spotted you near the Dunkin’ Donuts,” Roy said. “You and Westie.” He felt cold air at his back, kicked the door shut, not taking his eyes off her. Her composure was infuriating; at the same time, some of it rubbed off on him, turned his anger icy, a feeling previously unknown to him. “Tell me about that room,” he said.

  “Room?” said Lenore. She backed against the bunk beds, throwing a long shadow across the floor. The only light came from an electric lantern at her feet, small and square.

  “At the back of Wine, Inc.,” Roy said. “The room Tom went in. What goes on in there?”

  Lenore didn’t answer. Roy gestured under the bunk beds with his ski pole. “What were you looking for?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  Roy took another step inside. Lenore backed away a little more, now right up against one of the bunk beds. “You might as well start explaining,” he said. “Everything’s going to come out now.”

  “And what wo
uld everything be?” said Lenore.

  “Sit down,” said Roy.

  She stayed where she was; but not as tall as Roy, not as broad, not as strong.

  “Start with the Hobbes Institute,” Roy said.

  “Never heard of it.”

  “You’ve been seen here in Ethan Valley, by the way. There are witnesses.”

  Her eyes took on an inward look. Roy was thinking, too: Could Westie still be around, maybe close by? He listened, heard nothing but the wind outside, shifted the ski pole to his good hand.

  “Sit down,” he said again.

  She glanced at the ski pole, sat on the lower bunk.

  “What were you looking for?”

  “A blanket?” She met his gaze, maybe didn’t like what she saw. “I got stranded up here. A blanket, in case I had to spend the night.”

  Roy pointed to a stack of gray army-style blankets on the top bunk. “Stranded doing what?” he said.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Where’s your lift ticket?”

  She glanced down at the ticketless front of her red jacket. Therefore: she’d walked up in darkness, just like him, except in ski boots, and with skis over her shoulder, not easy.

  “Or were you hiding something here?” Roy said. “Is that it?”

  Lenore gazed at him, said nothing.

  “Pull that bed away from the wall,” he said.

  “You,” she said.

  Roy took a step closer and pointed the ski pole at her. The wind rose higher, pelting snowflakes at the windows. “I’ll do whatever I have to,” he said.

  He thought he saw belief in her eyes. Her tone changed. “Move it where?” she said.

  Roy motioned. “So I can see under.” There was enough space for a kid under the bed, especially a skinny one like Skippy.

  Lenore got a grip on the two vertical supports, tugged at the bunk bed. It slid across the floor, smooth and easy. And underneath? Nothing, just dust balls on the rough pine planks, less worn than the rest of the floor. Roy looked at the bed: The same bed he and Delia had slept in that Winter Carnival night? He thought so. If we get separated, if you can’t find me. An improbable idea—even wild—came to him; but Delia could be improbable and wild.

  “Rip up those boards,” he said. At that moment, he knew what Lenore was doing in the mountain hut, knew what she was looking for.

  “Why?” she said.

  “It’ll save you time.”

  “You lost me,” Lenore said.

  “Because the hiding place won’t be obvious,” said Roy.

  “Hiding place for what?”

  Was that a little smile, flashing quickly across her face? Roy slammed the ski pole on the mattress, inches from her, very hard. The sound boomed in the hut. “The note,” Roy said. His heart started up again, pounding away with excitement his chest could barely contain. “Or whatever it was she left me.”

  “She?” said Lenore.

  “Delia,” Roy said. “As you know.”

  “That name means nothing to me,” Lenore said. But it did, all right: he could see it meaning something in her eyes, something big.

  Roy went closer, peered down at the floor, saw that the plank nearest the wall fit poorly, leaving a quarter-inch gap, even more. “Start there,” he said, pointing with the pole.

  “Start what?”

  “I told you—ripping up the floor.”

  Lenore didn’t move. She looked him up and down, a cool, appraising sort of look. “I’ve got a question of my own,” she said. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “What are you talking about?” Roy said.

  “That seizure you had, coughing fit, whatever it was,” she said. “Are you sick?”

  “No,” Roy said.

  “How sick?”

  “I’m not sick,” Roy said. But his body trembled a little; nothing he could do about it. He pointed the ski pole in her face. “Rip up the goddamn floor,” he said.

  “How?” Lenore said.

  The first good, honest word out of her mouth. Roy glanced around, spotted a poker by the woodstove. Couldn’t let her have that, of course, but—

  From the corner of his eye, he caught a sudden movement, quick and red. And then she was on him, wrenching the ski pole from his grasp and twisting him to the floor with some sort of technique he had no answer to, so fast. From above, her hands closed around his throat, started to squeeze. Nothing cool or appraising about her eyes now—they were hot. Lenore enjoyed her work. She was going to kill him. Roy writhed beneath her, squirmed, tried to roll—and at that moment felt something hard in the right-hand pocket of his jacket: Janet Habib’s gun, still there, forgotten. He got his arm loose, reached down, pulled out the gun. She saw it coming free. Her eyes widened. Her grip weakened, just a little. Roy slashed the gun across her face.

  Lenore cried out, fell back. Roy, still on the floor, aimed the gun at her. And her gun? In Freddy Boudreau’s desk, down at the station: a pleasant realization.

  “Now some answers,” Roy said. “Starting with Skippy.”

  “Okay,” she said, bleeding from her mouth. “Just let me—” And then she kicked out with her ski boot, not at Roy, but at the portable lantern. It went flying, light expiring in midair. Roy pulled the trigger. The gun went click. The safety? He didn’t know guns. Roy fumbled in the darkness, but by that time the door of the hut was banging open and she was on her way outside.

  Roy got up, saw night framed in the doorway, slightly lighter than the inside of the cabin. The wind had risen, was shrieking in the trees. He spotted Lenore, a quick dark form against the snow. Her skis clattered together. Roy ran out. She was bent over. A ski boot clicked into its binding. Her form shifted, curling over the second ski. He kicked it away from her. She made a furious noise, tried to grab the gun, missed.

  Roy raised his voice over the wind, pointed the gun at her. “I want answers.”

  Lenore raised her voice, too. “Don’t you get it?” she said. “You’ll never know.” Then she did the unexpected, pushing off with her free leg. Roy realized what was happening, too late. Lenore took off on one ski. He fired. The gun made a small bang, dwarfed by the storm. Lenore was out of sight almost at once, doubly lost in the night and the driving snow, leaving him standing there. Roy heard the sharp, crisp snicking sound of a turn expertly carved, not skidded. Then another. And after that, there was just the wind.

  He listened, anticipating—praying for—wipeout sounds. But none came. By now, she’d be on Cross-Over. Chasing her on snowshoes? Pointless. If she knew the mountain, or had even studied a trail map for five minutes, she’d know to take the cut off to Easy Rider, a wide and bumpless cruiser all the way to the bottom. His cell phone? In the truck.

  Roy went back inside the mountain hut and closed the door. He moved across the floor, bumped into the woodstove. Feeling around on top, he found matches. He lit one, and soon had two fat candles burning. Then, using the poker and the tongs, he pried off that ill-fitting floorboard, the one closest to the wall, under the bunk bed where he and Delia had slept that Winter Carnival night. There was nothing underneath. He pried up a few more boards with the same result. And then one more, just in case. But no. She was silent.

  “Delia,” he said. “Please.”

  Roy sat on the floor between the two candles, resting his back against the wall. His back had never troubled him in his life, not once; but it did now, right between the shoulder blades, where you’d put a target. He went over things in his mind, tried to form some story from all he’d seen and heard. No story came to him, no straight line of facts from A to Z. Not knowing Z—that was one thing. Was there even an A he could be sure of?

  Yes: the existence of this other side. That was A. And therefore he probably did know some of the letters along the way. But the very biggest—Janet’s insistence that she’d seen Delia in the backseat of the limo: Was that a real letter or not; true or false? She had a bandage around her head, but I recognized her.

  He had to know.

&nb
sp; That was all there was to it. Roy’s heart—he’d never been so conscious of it—began banging again. This time it took his breath away, a greedy heart needing all available oxygen and leaving none for him. For a few moments, Roy thought he wasn’t going to get it back: a few terrifying moments when he learned what drowning felt like. But slowly his breath returned, puny little puffs of air at first, then stronger, more normal; at least the way normal was now. He rose, strapped on his snowshoes, and blew out the candles.

  One last thought: to leave a note of his own. Delia—find me. But it was too soon to know if that made any sense at all; at the moment it was like raising the question of a letter beyond Z. He needed some kind of proof. Roy knew where to look, also knew he had to steel himself for what might lie ahead. To steel himself: one of those expressions with metal in them, expressions that often snagged in his mind. He made himself stand straighter, seem stronger, as though sculpting his own body. Energy came, too, maybe false, but just as useful as the real thing. This new energy of Roy’s was fueled by anger: anger at Lenore’s escape; anger at how easily she’d overcome him in physical combat, the fact that she was a woman making it worse.

  The wind had died down and the snow had stopped falling, but it was still dark when Roy parked in the lot behind the Congregational church. Snowshoes back on, a snow shovel and a spade over his shoulder and a flashlight hanging from his belt, Roy crossed the graveyard. The snow was deep; with the weight he carried, Roy sank an extra inch or two with every step. Worn out: he knew he must be, but his legs didn’t seem to get the message. They just kept going, scissor blades alloyed from steel and anger.

  The sky was dark, the woods darker, but the snow on the graveyard itself seemed to give off a faint glow and Roy didn’t need the flashlight until he reached the last row, Delia’s row. He’d cleared her gravestone before leaving for Dr. Chu’s clinic, but it was snowed over again, the top barely breaking the surface. Gently, with the plastic snow shovel, he swept snow off the stone, then switched on the flashlight to make sure. The name on the stone was Mary Ann Little. Roy moved to the next one, tried again.