The Shadow Year

by Jeffrey Ford

  “Like five hours. Even if he crawled, he’d have made it by now.”

  “What’s Mom say?” I asked.

  He closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and snored. “She’s out cold in the kitchen. Mary’s fever’s gotten worse. We need the children’s aspirin. Nan’s got her in her place, wrapped up on the couch. I’m going out to look for Dad.”

  “Do you feel better?” I asked.

  He sat down on the edge of the bed and shook his head. The only other time I’d seen him look as weak was when I went to one of his wrestling matches and he’d lost. I had an image in my mind of my father up to his hips in snow, unable to move, and sinking slowly, like it was quicksand. “I’ll go,” I said.

  “Yeah, right,” he said.

  I threw the blanket off and sat up. “I can do it,” I said, and the part of me that didn’t want to was not in my head.

  “You’ll have to go out the window,” he said.

  “I’m just afraid of sinking in.”

  “It stopped snowing, and it looks like there’s an ice crust, so you’ll slide across it.”

  I got out of bed and went to the closet for my coat.

  “It’s getting late, and it’ll be dark soon. You gotta go up to the stores and look for him. If you don’t see him by then, come right back.”

  “Okay,” I said. My gloves were long lost, so I took a pair of white socks out of the dresser and put them on my hands.

  “Put your hood up,” he said.

  We went into his room.

  “Does Nan know about this?” I asked.

  “If she did, she wouldn’t let you go,” he said. Then he stepped forward and pushed up the window. The wind blew in, and I walked forward. He helped me up to the sill, and I scrabbled through onto the roof. The sudden cold, the sight of the houses sunk in snow, stunned me, and I crouched down. The sky was as deep in its gray as the bubble lights were in color.

  “Shit or get off the pot!” Jim yelled, and I felt his hand on my shoulder. I looked back once to see him leaning out the window. When I reached the edge of the roof, I got down on my stomach as I’d seen my father do. Jim was right, there was a sheen of ice on the snow. By the time I thought about sinking in, I was halfway across. I pictured myself trapped in snow, unable to breathe. The image scared me, and I went faster until I fell. Thinking I was going under, I screamed. The snow that cushioned my fall was only up to my waist. I stood and caught my breath, amazed that I’d made it. All down the block in front of me, the snow was drifted up on either side, to the edge of the rooftops in giant waves. I remembered when Mrs. Grimm taught our catechism class and told us about the parting of the Red Sea.

  I made slow headway, as though in a dream. Beneath the wind it was so silent that at one point my ears made their own sound, and I thought I heard Nan calling my name. I trudged forward toward Hammond Lane at the end of the block, where I hoped the plows had gone through more than once.

  The snow started again, giant wet flakes, and night was no more than an hour away by the time I reached Hammond. My sneakers were soaked and freezing. The snow was bunching up under my pant legs, and the socks weren’t gloves. My nose was running. I had to climb a mountain of plowed snow at the end of the block. It was pretty solid, but coming over the peak scared me because it felt like I was twenty feet up. I scrabbled down the other side to where the road was covered in only a few inches of packed snow. Hammond led straight to the stores. I was tired, but now I could walk easily, and that was a relief. A black car came out of the gloom behind me, its tire chains like a drumbeat. I knew it was Mr. Cleary, the principal of East Lake, because he drove with his left hand on the wheel and his right around his throat, where it always rested. I waved, but he didn’t see me.

  The parking lot at the stores had been plowed, and all around its edges were giant walls of snow, like a fort. The deli, the candy store, the supermarket, and Howie’s Pizza were all dark. At the end of the row, though, it looked like there was a light on in the drugstore. In my mind I saw my father standing at the counter talking to the drug guy with the thick glasses, and I walked faster.

  In the window of the store hung an old poster of the Coppertone girl and the little dog yanking her pants down. The lights were definitely on, and I tried to look up the main aisle as I pulled on the door handle. It was locked. I tried it again and again. I moved to the side of the door to look up another aisle but saw no one. I banged on the window. Staring dully into the fluorescent-lit store, I heard a car’s tire chains out on Hammond. The sound slowed, and then I realized it was turning in to the parking lot. I looked over my shoulder and saw a long white car. It turned and started toward me, its headlights making my eyes squint. I felt weak and couldn’t move. My mouth went dry. The sound of the car’s tire chains as it slowly crossed the lot had become my heartbeat. When the car reached Howie’s Pizza, the fear exploded inside me, and I bolted around the side of the drugstore. There was a wall of plowed snow in front of me, and I jumped up onto the first ice block. I climbed up and up like a monkey. Behind me I heard the car stop and its door open. When I reached the top, I looked back for just a second. Only after I jumped did I realize that the person standing next to the car was not the man in the white coat but the drugstore guy. It was a sheer twelve-foot drop. When I hit, my knees buckled and I went face-first into two feet of snow.

  I got up and turned to go back over the hill but was confronted by a wall of ice. It was unclimbable. I felt like crying, but I didn’t. The dark made me think about how great it would be back in the oven warmth of the kitchen. I took a few deep breaths and thought about how to get home. I wasn’t familiar with the street I was trapped on, which ran behind the stores. Hinkley lived in this neighborhood, so I didn’t go there much. What I did know was that at the end of the winding block it touched the woods somewhere. I thought the drifts might not be as bad under the trees, and I could cut through to the Masons’ backyard and then climb over the fences to ours.

  I started out and wound my way around drifts of snow as I went. The illuminated windows of the houses, some showing lit Christmas trees, made me feel better each time I saw one. Then the wind picked up, and the snow started to come faster, driving against me. My ears hurt from the cold, and my hands were freezing in my coat pockets. I could barely make out the treetops of the woods, looming darker than the night behind a house I was passing. The snow was fierce, and I had to get in under the trees to get some relief. I walked up the driveway of the darkened house, into the backyard. On my way to the woods, I saw an old wooden garage, the snow drifted against one side. It was open, so I went in to rest for a minute. It smelled of gasoline, but it was a pleasure to stand on the solid concrete floor. Leaning against the wall, I listened to the wind outside and closed my eyes.

  I could have stayed there for a long time. I found that my sight had adjusted to the darkness of the place, and I realized that there was a car only a foot away from me. It was a white car. I squinted. A big white car. I thought about how I’d been fooled by the drugstore guy, but then I saw something behind the backseat where the windshield curved down. Resting against one of the fins, I got a better look. It was a kid’s baseball hat. When I saw the Cleveland Indian’s smile, I turned and looked at the house. A light went on in an upstairs window. I let out a whispered cry and ran. Before I knew it, I was in the woods, running through knee-deep snow.

  I don’t remember how I got there, but I kind of woke up and found myself banging on the back door of our house. My father opened it and drew me into his arms.

  “It’s all right,” he said, and I realized how heavily I was breathing. I pulled my hood off and shielded my eyes for a moment against the fluorescent light.

  “I came to get you,” I said, almost crying.

  “I know,” he said, and pulled me close to his side.

  On the floor around us, my mother was sleeping by the entrance to the living room, Mary was sitting up reading an old racing form, and Jim lay with blankets piled over him, staring up
at me. He was trembling from fever, but he said, “Nice work.”

  I pointed at Mary and said, “Is she better?”

  “Yeah,” said my father. “She sweated the shit out.”

  Mary looked up from her form. “I sweated it,” she said.

  Jim laughed.

  My father sent me to the bathroom to get out of my wet clothes, and he went upstairs to my room and got me underwear and socks and slippers and two sets of pajamas. My feet itched terribly as they thawed. After I dressed, I came out to the living room, where my father sat on the couch in front of the Christmas tree. On the coffee table were two small glasses and the squat, dark bottle of Drambuie. I sat down next to my father, and he leaned forward and poured out the golden syrup. He struck a match and touched the flame to the liquid in my glass. A blue flame wavered across the surface. We watched it for a little while, and then he said, “Okay, blow it out.” I did.

  “Give that a minute,” he told me, and took a sip of his. He lit a cigarette. “I don’t know how you made it. It’s rough out there. I was just about to put my jacket on and go back out to look for you.”

  “Why’d it take you so long?” I asked.

  “Well, I went up to Hammond on my way out. And it was plowed, so I started walking to the stores, and about halfway there I look over on the side of the road and see a hand coming out of the snow. At first I thought I was seeing things. So I walked over to it and kicked some snow from around it, and there’s a body.” He took another sip.

  “What’d you do?” I asked.

  “I dug the body out. Man, this guy was frozen solid. I mean solid, like a statue. Finally I turn the body over—the eyes were shattered like glass. You know who it was?”

  “Who?” I said.

  He pointed with the two fingers that held his cigarette. “The guy up the street. You know, the old man with the squirrels.”

  “Mr. Barzita,” I said, and felt the snow in my face. I thought about him sitting among his trees with the gun on his lap, his eyes shattered, and I took up the Drambuie. The first taste was sweet molten lava. Barzita turned to confetti.

  “He’s plucked his last fig,” said my father. “So once I found him, I had to go up to the stores and use the pay phone to call the cops. They told me I had to go back and wait by the body, so I did. I stood there for about two hours, freezing. Finally the cop came, and him and me put the body in the backseat of his car and took it to the hospital. On the way there, we got stuck and had to dig out. We had to help other people who were stuck. It was a big rigmarole. Bullshit on top of bullshit. The cops asked me all kinds of questions. They figured the guy’d gone out to the store early and maybe a plow clipped him in the dark. His neck was broken. After it was over, the cop gave me a ride. I still had to get the aspirin and stuff. On the way, though, more bullshit. Then he got a call and had to drop me up by the library. You know, one thing after another.”

  My father got up and turned out all the lights except those on the tree. We sat in silence, staring at the colors. I drank only half the Drambuie before I put the glass down on the table.

  “Have you squinted yet this year?” he asked. He had this thing about squinting at the Christmas lights in the dark. We both squinted for a while, and then I leaned my head back and closed my eyes.

  “Okay,” he said, “what’s nine times nine?”

  I made believe I’d fallen asleep, but I heard Mary from the kitchen call quietly, “Eighty-one.”

  He’s Coming Up the Drainpipe

  The next day, as soon as he could get through, the heating guy came and fixed the oil burner. It was good to get out of the kitchen. Jim was feeling all better, except he had a cold. He and I went outside in the frigid wind and sunshine to help my father, who had to get to work that night, dig a path to the street and free the cars. I waited for a chance to talk to Jim about what I’d seen, and my father finally went inside for a while.

  “I know I was wrong about Barzita,” I said, “but now I know where the man with the white car lives.”

  “Where?”

  I told him about the house with the garage that bordered the woods.

  “What if he killed Barzita and then dumped the body in the road during the blizzard?” Jim said.

  “I didn’t think of that,” I told him. “I figured I was just wrong.”

  “If you didn’t think of it, it’s probably right,” he said. “We’ll go through the woods, and you can show me the guy’s house, but we have to wait till the snow’s gone. Otherwise he can track our footprints back home.”

  “I left footprints,” I said.

  “Let’s hope the storm covered them.”

  On the days left of our Christmas vacation, we went sleigh riding, had a massive snowball fight with armies of kids, and Jim and I walked to the bay one afternoon because Larry March told us his father said it was frozen solid. Jim said March’s old man’s head was frozen solid, but we walked out onto the bay, powdered snow swirling around us in the sunlight. There were eruptions of ice that stood a foot or so above the surface. Sometimes the ice was rumpled, sometimes patches were clear and smooth and you could look down into the murk below. If it weren’t for me being scared of falling through, Jim would have gone all the way to Captree Island. When I told him I was going back to shore, he turned to me and said, “I know why Mary won’t help us.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Pop and her aren’t working the figures for the races. He told me the other day, he’s waiting for the running of the pigs down at Hialeah. There’s no races for him to bet on right now. I’ll bet she thinks she’s on vacation like Pop.”

  That night, standing before Botch Town, we asked Mary if Jim’s theory was right. She didn’t say anything but stepped forward to the board and scrutinized it. We stood there for a while until Jim looked at me and shook his head. He reached around Mary, picked up the prowler figure, and tried to hand it to her. She pushed his arm away.

  “No,” she said, and looked around the board. She found the white car parked up the block by Mr. Barzita’s house and picked it up. When she put it down, it landed right in front of our house.

  “When?” Jim said.

  “Now,” said Mary.

  “Now?” I asked.

  “Right now,” said Mary.

  Jim had already taken off up the stairs, and I was close behind him. We went to the front window and looked out into the night. The snow was everywhere, and the moon was full. Jim said, “Oh, shit,” and a second later I saw the headlights. The white car crept slowly by. After the taillights disappeared from view, Jim stepped back and sat on the couch.

  “I told you,” I said.

  When we went back down into the cellar to tell Mary she was right, she’d already gone over to her own side of the steps. We heard her over there as Mickey. Then Mrs. Harkmar was telling him he had all the right answers. Jim turned his attention to the board. “The prowler is prowling,” he said.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Hey, look,” said Jim. “She changed that.” He was pointing to the figure of Charlie Edison, now in our backyard.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I said, and could tell he’d caught the inch of fear in my voice.

  “He’s coming up the drainpipe for you,” he said.

  I laughed, but later, after the lights were out and I was in bed and Charlie was behind my open closet door, I wasn’t laughing. That night Charlie spoke through the sound of the antenna singing. Three times I heard his voice come out of the noise and call for his mother. Each time I was just about asleep when I heard it.

  Why the Sky Is Blue

  Back in school, at the start of gym class on Monday, this big weird kid, Hodges Stamper, came up behind me, put his arm around my throat, and choked me. Coach Crenshaw stood there scratching his balls, watching the whole thing. Hodges applied so much pressure that I couldn’t breathe. Using the heel of my sneaker, I kicked him in the shin with everything I had, and he grunted and let go. There was spittle at the
corners of his mouth, and he was smiling. I slunk away and hid next to the bleachers.

  Crenshaw eventually blew his whistle and told us he had invented a new sport for the New Year. “Push Off the Mats,” he called it. The middle of the gym floor was covered with wrestling mats. He had us line up and asked Bobby Harweed and Larry March to be captains and to pick two teams. I was chosen third to last; my stock had risen.

  “Each team lines up on one side of the mat, facing the other,” said Crenshaw. “I blow the whistle, and then you all crawl toward each other. If you stand up, you’re out. The idea is to drag your opponent to the edge of the mat and make some part of their body touch the wooden floor. As soon as they touch, they’re out. Then you can go help your teammates drag the rest of their guys off.”

  He told us to line up and pointed to the edge each team should take. Then he yelled, “Crawling position!” and we got down on all fours. He put his whistle to his mouth, waited ten seconds, and blew. We charged forward. While I was crawling, I was frantically looking for one of the two kids weaker than me. I saw one, soft and white as marshmallow, kneeling as if he were in a trance, and I veered toward him.

  Before I got there, though, somebody grabbed me from the side. I looked around, and it was Hinkley. He took my leg and pulled me. I went down on my stomach and tried to dig my fingers into the mat. It didn’t work. I was sliding along. When he was just about to force my foot down onto the wood, I flipped over on my back and with my free leg kicked him out onto the floor. I sat up in time to catch the look of surprise on his face. Crenshaw blew the whistle and made the “you’re out” sign at him.

  I turned back to the battle in the center of the mat. Our team had cleared off all their guys except Stamper, who knelt like a mound in the middle of everything, kids swarming all over him. I joined in. He pushed and grunted and spat, but we were too many for him. He finally went over, and we dragged him toward the side like we were moving Gulliver. I looked up and saw Crenshaw smiling at the action. We got Stamper so that his head was out over the wood. He wouldn’t let us push his head back, though, so five guys, all at once, on the third Mississippi, pushed down, and it finally hit the floor with a crack. I saw Stamper twice later that afternoon—once when I went to the bathroom and once to get a drink from the water fountain. Both times he was leaning against a wall in the hallway, and both times he asked me if it was lunch yet.