We're in Trouble

by Christopher Coake

  She nods, but he can see the fear is still working at her. He remembers everything he’s done to bring them here—urging her to come, forgetting to fill the gas tank—

  Mel, he says. I’m sorry. This is my fault.

  She shakes her head. No. No it isn’t.

  It is. And I’m going to figure something out. I promise.

  She stares at him for a long time, her lips clamped shut. The wind rises, howling, and he holds his fingers against her cheek. She closes her eyes and nods.

  Say it with me, he says. We’ll be all right.

  She puts her arm around her neck and whispers, We’ll be all right.

  BEFORE LONG Mel is drowsing, curled across him—and Brad’s glad for this; when she’s awake he’s too worried about her, and his thinking isn’t any good. He hovers over the grill and considers what options he can. There aren’t many.

  He told Mel they had enough gas, but that only was a guess—the grill doesn’t have a fuel gauge. He keeps the flame on only long enough to warm the air around them. Every time he lights it Mel murmurs, and he holds her hands or her feet close to the heat. But then, when he spins the dial off, the cold rises through the mattress with awful speed, like water filling up a sinking boat.

  His thinking is going nowhere. He’s exhausted, but he’s too afraid to sleep—would he be able to wake back up, if the room gets too cold? He holds Mel and listens to the wind. Some gusts shake the walls so much he closes his eyes and waits for the cabin to fly apart, for him and Mel to get sucked into the sky.

  Some time later—neither of them brought watches; he has no idea how much time has passed, but it feels like a hundred years—he shuts down the grill and realizes he can see light, glowing through the quilt. He can see the outline of his own hand. The sun is coming up.

  He disentangles himself from Mel and shuffles across the cabin floor to the doorway. When he looks outside he wishes right away that he hadn’t.

  The wind is still screaming, the snow still swirling down. So much has fallen that Brad can barely register it all—the drift against the cabin is a foot and a half deep, at least. He can’t even see the lake—it’s just a gray smudge, a lot smaller than he remembers it, appearing and disappearing in the gusts.

  The thermometer on the post reads eight degrees. The numbers down this low have blue icicles painted on them.

  When he ducks back inside the tent, Mel is awake, her eyes staring out from under the blanket. He wishes he could make his face seem hopeful, but he can’t. And she can hear the storm as well as he can.

  We’d better eat, he says.

  For breakfast they have tuna on bread, and share a can of pop—they’ve been keeping the cans next to the grill, but even so what’s in them is half slush, half syrup, almost too cold to swallow.

  After they eat, they huddle, shivering, in the center of the mattress. And Mel tells him, I’m a little worried about my feet.

  He takes them onto his lap. She’s been wearing an extra pair of his socks, but they haven’t helped; her feet feel like pieces of ice. He rubs them and rubs them, until Mel says they tingle, then he wraps them in one of his extra T-shirts.

  She’s not looking at him. He knows she’s waiting for him to produce some sort of plan.

  It’ll stop soon, he says. We just have to be patient.

  She doesn’t answer him.

  For a long time, they drowse. Sometimes the snow tails off, and when this happens—when the gray light glows just a little brighter—Brad shuffles to the front door, covers his face with his arm, and looks out at the deep white blanket, at the thermometer, which hovers near ten degrees without changing.

  Sometimes he can tell Mel’s awake—he can feel her staring—and he wants to ask her what she’s thinking. But he never does. What’s the use? She’s probably going over the same bad plans he’s been discarding since last night.

  The gas station is eight miles away, more or less. The gravel road keeps on going, deeper into the woods, and it’s possible—just—that someone lives not that far away. Like maybe the owner of that yellow Jeep. But it’s just as possible that the only thing down the gravel road is more woods. Or other empty cabins.

  How many did they pass, on the drive in? Three? Two? He can’t remember. And anyway, they can’t count on any place out here being wired for electricity, or a phone. But heat—that’s another thing. One of those other cabins has to have a fireplace, or a woodburning stove.

  But this doesn’t change the fact that any other place is at least three miles off. Probably farther. Which means walking. And they only have jackets. Mel’s shoes have fucking holes in them.

  And then—he’s been trying not to think about this, but he has to—assuming they are able to get to the gas station, or a place with a phone, what will they say? By the time they reached anyone they’d have to be pretty fucked up—which means police, doctors, a hospital. Questions. And how would they answer them? We were just out for a drive?

  He’s got six months hanging over his head for violating probation, but add on breaking and entering, possession of a stolen vehicle—he’d be going back in for a long time, maybe even long enough to get bumped up from Cook County Jail to one of the penitentiaries.

  Mel, he says.

  What?

  Talk to me, he says. It’s too quiet.

  I’m trying not to think anything, she murmurs.

  He can understand that well enough. But her voice has a quality to it he doesn’t like—and he realizes: it’s too even. She sounds too calm.

  Tell me something, he says.

  Like what?

  Tell me where we’re going to live.

  She shifts, so that he can see her eyes. The apartment? she asks.

  No. Like your dream house. Tell me about it.

  I don’t know, she says.

  But then she talks. She tells him about North Carolina, a beach house she went to once, when she was in high school. After a while her hands start moving, above the quilt, shaping what she describes. The two of them will have a house like that one. A big house on stilts, out on the shore.

  What’s it like there? he asks.

  Mel’s voice is ragged, but she tells him about the sunrises. How it’s so warm at night they’ll be able to sleep outside on deck chairs, watching sunrises and sunsets. They’ll have dogs that run with them through the surf. The water will be blue and the air will smell like salt. Their hair will turn blond from all the sun.

  She stops, a shiver in her voice. Her eyes are blinking. Brad sits and lights the grill—they need the heat, but he also wants the sight of her face in the firelight.

  He sinks back down next to her. Keep talking he says, and strokes her hair.

  THE SUN DIMS. For the first time in hours the snow subsides, but the wind still sweeps and howls, and the needle on the thermometer drops—at sunset it points at six. When Brad shines the flashlight out at the lake he sees only white tree trunks, and wisps of snow, swirling and tattering above the ground like steam.

  He lights the grill and lies back down—but no sooner has he huddled with Mel than, with a tiny, sucking pop, the fire goes out.

  Oh God, Mel says, softly.

  Don’t panic, he tells her, almost by reflex, even though the sudden dark seizes his breath, too.

  He turns on the flashlight, then fumbles in the odd shadows, trying to relight the fire. But it won’t catch. He tilts the grill up and down, sideways, flicking Mel’s lighter. He unscrews the propane tank, shakes it. It’s too light.

  Okay, he says. Okay.

  Mel is watching him, long shadows across her face, the blanket clutched around her shoulders.

  He hasn’t been able to come up with much of a plan, but he tells Mel anyway. Listen, he says. We have to try and start a fire.

  Where?

  In the grill.

  What about smoke?

  I don’t know. We can breathe through the blanket or something. Would that work?

  She whispers, Maybe.

  We
need wood, he says.

  They look around them. The entire cabin is made of wood, but for all its holes and cracks, it’s sturdy. Brad starts to pound on the one interior wall, to see if he can pry loose a board. But he’s got no tools. With just his hands it’s going to take a while. Maybe too long.

  Brad! Mel says. The closet—the shelves.

  She’s right The three shelves are made of wood planks, resting free on their braces. He stacks them in his arms. They’re too thick to break apart; Brad tries kicking one a few times with his boot heel, but all he does is send a shooting pain up into his kneecap.

  Whole, then. He leans the end of one shelf into the grill, into a nest of crumpled pages Mel has torn out of the paperback mystery she brought to read on the drive. The paper lights quickly, crackling. Mel watches the fire, her mouth hanging open. Her hair is like part of the room’s shadow, clinging to her face.

  Like everything else in the cabin, the wood is full of damp. Brad keeps tearing pages and stuffing them under the board. Finally the board starts to smolder; smoke spills out of the grill and into the tent. They quickly disassemble it. The smoke pours out and up, swirling through the room’s drafty air before collecting against the ceiling. Brad’s eyes and throat sting, but he pulls his sweater over his mouth and keeps lighting paper. At this rate he’s going to use half Mel’s book.

  Finally the board catches; flames crawl along its sides. And the smoke boils up even faster. The cabin fills with orange light, odd shadows. The heat against Brad’s face, his hands, nearly makes him weep with relief. He crouches low, close to the mattress, face-to-face with Mel. Her eyes are streaming, leaving sooty tracks along her cheeks. They cough and cough. Brad’s chest tightens.

  After another few minutes he starts to feel dizzy.

  We’ve got to put this out, he tells Mel—his vision is so blurred that she’s only a smudge in front of him, her cheekbones pulsing orange. We’ll suffocate.

  Mel shakes her head, puts a hand on his arm. Wait, she says.

  She stares at him for a long time. Then she hugs him, puts her mouth next to his ear.

  She says, I don’t know, maybe—maybe this would be best.

  He can barely believe he’s heard her right. His eyes burn, his throat narrows. His breath is coming faster and faster.

  She says, It would be quicker.

  I can’t fucking believe you.

  Brad staggers to his feet and grabs the board by its unburned end. He runs with it to the door, then outside into the cold and the dark, into the deep powdery snow on the porch. He jams the fiery end of the board down into the snow, and watches it sputter, watches the surface of the snow shift and hiss in the wind.

  He stumbles back inside—his feet in their boots feel like pieces of concrete—waving smoke away from his face. The flashlight is still on, and in its small circle of light Brad sees Mel lying on her side on the mattress, sobbing, her fists curled beneath her chin. Brad crosses the floor to her on his knees, down where the air is still clear. He picks up the flashlight and aims it at the ceiling, seeing a thick layer of smoke, here and there forming whirlpools where holes in the roof or walls let in the wind.

  Get under the blanket, he tells her, his teeth chattering.

  She moans.

  He can’t help himself: he kicks the mattress until Mel looks up at him. He coughs and rubs his eyes and tries to keep the flashlight pointed at her.

  I said cover yourself. I have to get the smoke out.

  Mel throws the wool blanket over her head. Brad opens the door again, and then flaps the quilt to wave the smoke toward the doorway. It begins to dissipate, a little; he keeps waving until his hands grow too numb. Then he builds the tent again, over Mel. He climbs inside and points the flashlight at her.

  I’m sorry, she says, and turns her face away.

  What the fuck was that about?

  If we’re going to die, she says, I don’t want you mad at me.

  Mel, we’re not—

  He wants to tell her We’re not going to die. Wants to shake her and tell her not to give up, that they’ll never survive if she can’t even make herself try. But then it sinks in: the fire was his last idea. They’re out of heat. Mel’s right; they probably don’t have long.

  Brad? I just thought—

  I know, he says. He holds out his hand. I’m—I’m just not ready.

  Saying this tightens his raw throat. Mel grips his fingers—hers are so cold it’s all he can do not to jerk his hand away.

  I just don’t want to give up, he says.

  She sits and puts her arms around him.

  There’s nothing more to do, she says.

  Brad thinks—at the same time—that she’s right, and that he hates the way she can sound so reasonable. Like this is an argument she’s won. But all the same he puts his face into her hair. And though all of their skin is cold, he can feel, after a while, a little bit of heat between them, a tiny pocket somewhere near their bellies. How long could it last?

  Just hold on, she says.

  It’s my fault, he says.

  No. She whispers this, runs her hands over his hair. No. You couldn’t know.

  He’s sobbing now, like he can’t ever remember crying—not when his mother told him she was done with him, not after the times he took a beating in jail. He can’t stop whatever it is that’s coming out of his throat, a sound so big and jagged that it hurts him to let it out. He keeps saying, No, over and over again.

  It’s not fair, is what he thinks.

  Mel’s crying, too—but softer, gentler. It’s okay, she tells him. At least we’re together.

  He’s just begun to calm down when the flashlight’s beam starts flickering, dulling.

  Mel has been crooning to him, whispering his name into his ear, and when he says, The light’s going out, she actually laughs.

  Figures, she says, and the beam gutters and dies.

  He wonders if he’s seen her for the last time. In the dark he tries to call up a picture of her face, and wonders if he’ll be able to work his lighter with his frozen hands, at least long enough to take a look.

  He thinks about how once when he was in high school he burned a blister onto his thumb, lighting candles with his mother’s lighter after a power outage, and how angry he’d been at himself, when she told him he could use one candle to light another—

  Holy shit, he says to Mel.

  He clambers to his numb feet and crosses the room, feeling his way to the basin with his hands, his breath coming in quick gasps. Because he remembers, sees them almost like they’re giving off light: underneath the basin, in a mold-covered shoe box, are two candles, and a book of matches.

  VI.

  Brad had known plenty of women before Mel. Ever since he’d wanted them to, he’d had no trouble getting girls to notice him—especially during the years he’d had extra weed falling out of his pockets. They came, they went, and that had always been fine. He tried, as much as he could, to be mellow, to avoid all the same stupid dramas he saw his friends falling into, over and over. He’d never dated anyone longer than a couple of months—he never understood the guys who knew, who all of a sudden went crazy for a girl, who one minute were ordinary guys and the next minute were acting like neutered dogs.

  But after a few weeks with Mel, Brad couldn’t decide who he was more like: some junior-high kid with a crush, drawing hearts on his notebook; or a junkie.

  Ordinarily Brad hated using the phone—he’d go weeks without picking one up. Now he sneaked calls to Mel from the storeroom phone at the deli where he worked. It’s me, he’d murmur, watching for his boss. Oops, gotta run. Mel would call him late on the nights they didn’t spend together. Talk to me while I fall asleep, she’d say. And he would.

  Mel was taking summer classes and working, in a university records office. On his free days Brad would catch the train to DePaul and hang out in the union, until Mel’s class or her shift was over. He’d sit there in the middle of all those well-dressed students feeling like
a fucking imposter, like everyone in the room knew he had no business there—and still that waiting was all right, because it meant more time with Mel. When she walked into the union and saw him—when her face lit up—it was worth it.

  Finally Mel told him they couldn’t touch until her homework was done; her grades were slipping. So they made a game of it. They’d sit at a coffee shop, at separate tables. Brad would read or listen to his little CD player while she did her homework, and if he caught her looking at him he’d shake a finger. When she was finally done she’d slip into the booth next to him and kiss him. Half the time they’d run to her place. The other half they’d sit late into the night and talk and talk.

  She’d tell him about wanting to be a teacher someday, about how much she loved being around little kids. Back in Michigan she had what sounded like two dozen baby cousins and nieces and nephews. She missed babysitting them, reading to them. I think I’d be a good teacher, Mel said. Don’t you?

  Absolutely, he told her. She’d changed him, just in a matter of weeks; if she could open up his eyes, he figured she could open anyone’s.

  She was a genius, after all, at getting him to talk; if he so much as grunted she’d be all over it, asking him what he meant, and what did he think of this, or that, and here’s what she thought of this, or that . . . keeping up with her, sometimes, felt kind of like being on speed.

  One day, early on, Mel got him talking about the music he wanted to make, about how maybe someday he’d like to start a club, or produce records. He’d be happy as a DJ. Think about it, he’d say. We met at a club. That would be nice, you know? Running a place where everyone could dance and get happy and hook up.

  Then he told her—and he was surprised by how quickly, nervously, the words came out—how he’d been thinking of getting out of Chicago. How when he was off probation he’d maybe go to Miami, where the club scene was so good.

  Mel listened and smiled without parting her lips, but for once she didn’t ask him any other questions.

  THEN ONE NIGHT, two months in, Mel called him, saying, Brad, Brad, come over right now. He’d run to the L, thinking she was having some kind of emergency. But when he finally knocked on her door, she answered wearing only a bathrobe, holding a bottle of wine. They’re all gone, she said, looking up at the ceiling. We’re alone!