The Wind Chill Factor

by Thomas Gifford

  “Right. We’re tired. Now who the hell are you?” Peterson asked.

  “I’m Mr. Jackson, he’s Mr. Whitney.” Mr. Jackson flipped open a fake-alligator wallet and showed it to Peterson, who scowled, peered at the small, gilt-edged document encased in a plastic shield. “And these are your new tickets.” He handed us each a folder. Mr. Whitney quickly attached luggage tickets to our bags. “Washington, official business,” Mr. Jackson said pleasantly, imperturbable, businesslike, as though he spent a good deal of time spiriting people from airplanes and explaining who the hell he was.

  Peterson flipped his folder. “Eastern Airlines,” he muttered. Mine was United, the friendly skies and all.

  “I believe you’ll find them in order, gentlemen. Time is short. Are there any questions?”

  “You’re goddamn right,” Peterson said. “I’m not going to Washington. I’m going with him—” He grabbed my folder and opened it, ran a finger along the ticket. “Minneapolis. I’m going to Minneapolis with Cooper.”

  “Please, Mr. Peterson, let’s not make a problem here.” It was Mr. Whitney. He had a determined voice and a terribly dirty raincoat which shot his neat, efficient image. I wondered who they were but I really didn’t give a damn: Roeschler had said we’d be met. What difference did it make?

  “You’re due in Washington this evening, Mr. Peterson. Now, let’s move it—no shit.”

  “Look, no need for unpleasantness. We’re all on the same side here. Mr. Peterson, it’s really essential, the whole show is set. If you don’t trust us, trust Doctor Roeschler.” Mr. Jackson smiled reassuringly.

  “Come on, George,” Mr. Whitney said. “I don’t give a flying fuck if he believes you or not. He’s coming.” He reached for Peterson’s arm, which was a mistake. Peterson reached up and closed his fist around the arm.

  “Mr. Jackson, do you value the life of this silly bastard?”

  Mr. Whitney’s eyes were wide and the color was draining from his face.

  “Of course I do,” Mr. Jackson said. “Really, we are off on the wrong foot, aren’t we? Please, Mr. Peterson, do come along to Washington and try not to hurt Mr. Whitney.”

  “Identify yourself then, Mr. Jackson.”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t. I have very specific instructions. It will all be explained in Washington.”

  “What about Cooper?”

  “He goes on to Minneapolis alone. You’ll be joining him within the week. Scout’s honor.”

  Then Peterson dropped Mr. Whitney’s arm. Mr. Whitney leaned against the door, wiped his forehead. Peterson broke into a loud hearty laugh.

  “Jesus! Scout’s honor! Okay, okay, Jackson. What the hell. …”

  “Well, then, let’s go.” He opened the door. Peterson put his hand on my shoulder.

  “I’ll call you when I get back. And remember this—everything’s going to be all right.”

  I watched them walk away. I had an hour to wait. I went and had coffee and looked at the stuffed animals and the junk you used to prove to your kids you’d been in New York. But then I didn’t have any kids and I hadn’t been to New York.

  When I arrived in Minneapolis I heard my name being paged. It was late. There weren’t many people, footsteps echoed. I’d have to find a cab.

  “Mr. John Cooper, passenger John Cooper, please report to the Northwest Airlines information counter for a message. John Cooper to Northwest Airlines information.”

  Northwest was the only ticket counter that seemed to be inhabited. The tired-looking man pushed his glasses back up his stubby nose and fumbled under the counter. He came up with a plain white business-size envelope with my name printed on it in thick black pencil.

  I took the envelope. It had a large bulge. My hand was shaking; it was the tiredness, nervous strain.

  There was no message. Only the keys to the Lincoln I’d left with the car at the garage in Cooper’s Falls. And a piece of paper: “Row 9, Slot 5.” It was obviously where I’d find the car. But no one had known I was coming. It was curious. But what difference did it make? The hell with it. I wasn’t worrying about understanding things anymore.

  I got my bag on the lower level, which was all but deserted. It was wet and cool outside, stars shining after the rain. A jet whooshed up, hissing and roaring, past the slanting ramps, huge and effortless, red and white and climbing. I was back in God’s country and it was going to be all right. Nothing was going to go wrong now.

  The car was immaculate, a new slab side, new paint, gleaming wax on the silver with rain standing in big shining drops. Everything was to be fine. I packed my pipe and lit it while I waited for the engine to warm up.

  It was a pronounced euphoria, the sense of well-being which I knew perfectly well was the companion of people who’d undergone an overdose of strain, people who’d finally slipped off the old rocker. But since I couldn’t control it I let it be, let myself feel good as I drove out of the parking lot, eased it out along 494, went north on 35W, toward the lights of Minneapolis, left on 194 toward St. Paul, sweeping north again on 280, moving through the false spring night and the cool moist wind along the highways I knew, moving east on 36 toward the St. Croix and then north along the river road toward Cooper’s Falls. Not the menacing, unknown roads winding through the night to Land’s End and Cat Island, not up through the mountains past Bad Tolz. I was going home.

  Finally, the gates were ahead of me, then I was through them, winding up the driveway. I wasn’t as well as I’d thought. I wiped my wet forehead with my glove and sat for awhile behind the steering wheel. I turned the lights out, shut off the engine, opened the window. It was quiet. I got out of the car and took a deep breath. The moonlight was bright and there were shadows everywhere. I saw the low railing circling the driveway, heard for an instant the awful tearing sound as the snowmobile skis caught under it and ripped apart. … But it was quiet and when I turned to look at the spot where he’d died and frozen, the gaunt man wasn’t there.

  They say that careful, methodical, routine behavior is either a symptom or an antidote for incipient madness. The choice was in my mind when I woke up in the morning. I was in the guesthouse and for an instant I thought that maybe it was the first night home, that I’d just driven in from Boston to meet Cyril. For a moment I thought I was waking from a bad dream. But then, of course, it began to come back to me. It wasn’t the first time around: it was the second and I hadn’t been dreaming.

  So I got out of bed and showered and cleaned up very methodically, gritting my teeth under the cold spray, watching ice melt on the lake and the icicles drip on the eaves outside the kitchen window. I made instant coffee, found a jar of strawberry preserves, and ate them with a spoon. The sun was shining on the lake and the ice reflected it like fire.

  I got dressed and went outside and ran my hands over the Lincoln. The false spring made the air balmy and wet, good to breathe. There was heavy, deep snow ahead, there always was, but it was lovely and youthful just then, a hint of the annual rebirth. What snow was left was thin, sinking into the moist earth.

  I went back inside, rinsed out my cup, screwed the lid back on the jam, rinsed the spoon, put everything away. I went into the bedroom and straightened the covers on the bed, made sure that the coals from the fire I’d apparently made before retiring were contained in the grate. Method equals sanity so I was being as methodical and orderly as possible.

  Slowly, admiring the morning, I drove into town. The courthouse was a wet black ruin, snow clinging in patches like moss. It was cordoned off with sawhorses and slat fencing which buckled every few feet from the kids in town hanging on it. I parked the Lincoln and went to Doctor Bradlee’s office.

  He was alone, bending over an appointment book. He looked up and saw me over the top of his glasses.

  “Well, John,” he exclaimed, straightening up, tall and stoop-shouldered in a four-hundred-dollar blue suit. “What a surprise! When did you get back?” He was glad to see me and I was glad to be back.

  “Last night,” I sa
id.

  “Olaf back too, eh?” He motioned me into his private office and followed me in, leaving the door to the reception room open.

  “Why, no,” I said. “He had some business in Washington.”

  “Washington,” Bradlee said, nodding sagely. “We haven’t seen those fellows for awhile but when they were here they were here in force. FBI men, security officers, heaven help us—when the courthouse went all the town records went with it.” He shrugged, frowned. “Then they were gone and everything was back to normal, the smoking ruins, that was all we had to remind us. It was quiet and calm, like a demon had been exorcised.” He smiled again. “And how’s your poor head? Have you had any headaches?”

  I reassured him and when he asked me what in the world we’d been doing I didn’t know what to say.

  “Traipsing around Europe,” I said, “getting nowhere.”

  “Do you know who murdered Cyril?”

  I shook my head, wondering what to say. How do you tell someone about Die Spinne, giant submarines, a man like Ivor Steynes, and a man like Brendel … a man like my grandfather? And what would he have said if I’d told him about my father? It all spun out like filament from an enormous, ever-moving, always-twitching spider. The web was infinite and infinity has never been easy to describe.

  “A senseless killing—” he began, then blinked. “But of course it wasn’t senseless. I don’t know what to make of it and I don’t suppose it amounts to a hill of beans if I can, one way or the other.” He unwrapped a piece of Christmas candy, a round disk with red and white spokes. “Keep these around for lads,” he said, crumpling up the cellophane wrapper. “But there aren’t many kids in Cooper’s Falls anymore. Time flies, John.”

  “Look, Doctor Bradlee, what I wanted to see you about—how’s Arthur? Can I see him?”

  Bradlee folded his hands across his vest and tilted back in the leather swivel chair behind his massive desk. He put his size 13 wingtips on the edge of the blotter and moved the candy into his cheek.

  “It’s funny about Arthur. A man his size and age has a heart attack and it’s not good—too much weight, arteries wearing out, the oldest story. He collapsed at the hotel one day in the middle of his lunch, just fell forward into his cheddar omelet. I’d told him to lay off the eggs, but he had to have his omelets, his big cigars, and you can’t blame him, I guess. Anyway, we got him to the hospital and I did all the usual things. On top of it all we found out he had pneumonia—walking around in the cold, you get pneumonia.”

  “But how is he? Is he alive?”

  “Well, yes, he’s all right now, as all right as he can be—he was a long time coming around. He was in a deep sleep for days but his life signs kept coming back. He was resting up, you might say. Lots of stamina, what people like to think of as the will to live. He just lay there fighting it and one day he woke up.” Bradlee’s eyebrows went up and he shrugged. “First thing he said was—you’ll be amused by this—the first thing he said to his nurse was, ‘Where’s John? Is John all right?’ Came out of it and asked how the hell you were. …”

  “I wonder why that was on his mind?”

  “Well, I suppose he’d been thinking about you when it happened—you know, thinking about all the goings-on around here before you and Peterson went your separate ways. He woke up thinking about whatever he’d been thinking about when he fell into his omelet. Nothing surprises me anymore, John, not a thing. …” He peeled off his glasses and plucked a Kleenex from a container on his desk. He carefully folded it and breathed on the lenses and began to polish.

  “He went home yesterday, took him home myself. Seems fit enough. He’s on borrowed time now, of course. He knows that. But with reasonable discretion, he could live for years.” He hooked his glasses back over his ears. “He’ll be glad to see you, John.”

  “I’ll be glad to see him,” I said. “There’s not much left to believe in. Arthur’s something.”

  Bradlee looked at his watch.

  “I’ve got a fellow coming in with a bad arm, John. Said he could use a painkiller. At least I think that’s what he said—while I’m dispensing medications can I give you something? Some Valium, anything for your head?” He stood up and I got up and walked into the outer room.

  “Valium,” I said.

  He went back to his office, returned with a plastic bottle.

  “Directions are on it,” he said. “Say, are you going to see Arthur? Now?”

  “I thought I would.”

  “Let me call him. The fewer shocks the better.”

  I was sitting in the car when I saw the man come around the corner. His arm was in a sling. There was something vaguely familiar about him but he was in the door before I could place him. Someone I’d once known, someone from out of the past. Cooper’s Falls was full of people who looked vaguely familiar, who somehow bore the last traces of their childhood after all the years.

  I was thinking about my father while I drove out to Brenner’s house. What would Arthur have thought about the truth of my father’s life? But it was immaterial. There was certainly no point in telling him at this late date, was there?

  There was solace and contentment that afternoon, a rest for the weary spirit and body. Arthur Brenner met me at the door, thinner and strained about his eyes, but warm and reassuring, enveloped my hand in his.

  I told him the story while we walked in the warm afternoon, the country lanes and matted grass wet underfoot, the earth fragrant, ice melting. We walked in the woods among the tall, barren trees which flourished on Arthur’s estate and we stood watching the fragile, thin shields of ice on the ponds and low spots where the weeds and cattails poked up through. It reminded me of hikes I’d taken long ago with Cyril, of high-topped boots with knife pockets on the sides, of the roar and the rush of Cooper’s Falls tumbling down white and choppy. …

  Arthur s mood of quiet support was such that I went ahead and told him of my father’s treachery, his devotion to the philosophy which had made my grandfather a pariah. I tried to apologize to him for the abuse of his trust, his help, but he marched impassively on in his great brown overcoat which flapped low near his ankles. He wore a brown cap pulled low on his broad forehead, looked older and more tired than I had ever seen him. His age was against him. He tightened the muffler at his throat.

  As I’d talked, I hadn’t been aware of the course we’d taken, and then I heard it, the falls, and we stood at the precipice on the flat slippery rock looking down at the water rushing over the ledge, white frothy plumes increased by the melting snow. It roared as it tumbled and crashed and spray crystallized in a cloud hanging above it. The hills rose up around it, the firs pointed and dark green. The sun was an orange-pink glow rolling on the horizon.

  “When I wonder what it all means,” Brenner said, his voice giving the he to his frail-seeming appearance, “I come here and watch the falls and remember that it was here long before me and will be here long after I’m gone, that the sound of the falling water has never ceased in all the years. We’re all one with nature. All of us. …” He turned his back on the falls and looked off across the fields toward the setting sun. We were at peace and I wasn’t haunted by any ghosts. It was lonely, as if Arthur and I were the last two men on earth. Finally, he hooked his arm through mine and we set off together on the path winding back toward the house.

  “Don’t apologize for your father,” he said as we made our slow way through the gathering gloom. “Never apologize for any of the Coopers, John. It’s a strong line, stronger than you may be thinking just now.”

  “Nazis, Arthur,” I said. “A nest of them.”

  “It may not be what it seems,” he said, his voice still strong and rich from the great chest. “The Orientals may have something in the worship of their ancestors. Continuity, John. We’re all in this together and nobody has ever gotten out of it alive. Belonging to a line, being part of the great whole. In the end, it may be everything.”

  It was as if the rocks and the ages were speaking to
me, telling me of the immutability of time and how everything goes on and friends and enemies finally become one in the infinite past.

  “There is an old belief,” I said, “that on some distant shore far from despair and grief, old friends shall meet once more.”

  Arthur looked at me and from deep in his eyes, sunken with his illness, he smiled.

  We were both tired when we got back to the house. We ate a light meal, eggs and bacon and tea, and he prevailed on me to stay the night. I agreed, as much for him as for myself: I was worried about him in a vague, undefined way.

  Before we went upstairs to bed he took me down to his workroom, where he did his porcelain.

  Flowerdieu’s Charge was finished, fired, painted, gleaming. It shone in the light, a complete and perfect thing. Flowerdieu’s Charge, a last hopeless, doomed gallantry.

  In the morning we settled in the bright, cheerful sitting room. He had prepared trays of breakfast, scrambled eggs and muffins with butter and honey and steaming cups of tea. The sunlight drenched the green and white flowered chintz chairs and couch, flowers winked brightly in vases, and a fire burned in the grate. Bach was playing in another room. I thought of the distant shore.

  “You presented me with a difficult choice, John,” he said, “after I had some time to reflect on what you told me yesterday. I couldn’t sleep for a long time last night. I was thinking. …”

  “I didn’t mean to upset you,” I said. I stared into the steam, stirred my pale tea while watching stray leaves swirl up to the surface, then sink.

  “No, no, you didn’t upset me. You presented me with a problem, a choice, and I wondered what to do. I could lie there in my bed listening to my heart beating and I thought, how many more times will it beat? How long before I slip quietly into the past? And I also considered how much you’d found out on your travels, how many lives had been lost. And I thought how much despair there was in your voice and your eyes. I’m old now, John, I know that despair is a waste and a joke, I know that politics and war and the struggles we engage in are nothing more really than something to keep us busy while we’re here. …”