Flat Lake in Winter

by Joseph T. Klempner

  Beginning the second day, the phone began showing signs of life. It would ring at odd hours, each time once, or twice at the most. Each time Fielder went to pick it up, the line would be dead. After a while, he figured it had to be work crews out on the roads, testing equipment. He turned the volume down and learned to ignore the rings.

  By the afternoon of third day, he went out with his shovel and made his first serious attempt at digging himself out. His Suzuki had nearly disappeared; it took him almost two hours to clear around it. But after a few jiggles to the carburetor valve, it started right up. The driveway (or what Fielder called his driveway, since, in reality, it was little more than a twisting path that managed to avoid the largest trees and a bare majority of rocks and roots) was a different story. He cursed himself for never having bought a plow blade for the Suzuki. He’d actually priced one, a huge, second-hand thing they wanted $350 for at a John Deere place over in Martinsburg. They’d asked him what he was going to put it on, and when Fielder had pointed to his Sidekick, they’d laughed like schoolboys. He’d settled on a shovel instead, $12.

  The problem with the snow wasn’t just how heavy it was to lift. It was also a matter of what to do with it once you did lift it. The drifts were so high that you had to throw the snow up, as well as to one side, just to keep it from collapsing back onto the area you were working on. It took him two hours to clear what he guessed was about fifty linear feet. He’d once paced off his driveway, and it had come to just under a fifth of a mile. So, figuring a rate of twenty-five feet an hour, how long could it possibly take him? Another forty hours, tops?

  Totally exhausted, he quit after another hour and dragged himself back inside. He’d just stripped off his boots when the phone rang. More equipment testing, he guessed. But this time, the first ring was followed by not only a second, but a third. He reached for the phone and picked it up, expecting the familiar silence.

  “Matt?”

  “Yeah,” he said, still fighting to catch his breath. “Who’s this?”

  “Kevin Doyle,” the voice said. “Sounds like I caught you in the middle of something important.”

  “No, no,” Fielder managed. “I’m just . . . trying to breathe, is all.”

  “Well, congratulations,” Doyle said.

  “For breathing?”

  “Okay, that too,” said Doyle. “Haven’t you heard the news?”

  “News? I haven’t heard anything but my tea kettle for four days. We’ve had a little snow here.”

  “So I heard.”

  “So what’s the news?” Fielder asked.

  “You really don’t know, do you? Cavanaugh decertified.”

  Fielder’s mouth opened, but nothing came out.

  “You there, Matt?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Cavanaugh decertified,” Doyle repeated. “Threw in the towel on death. Of course, that’s the good news.”

  “And the bad?”

  “Welcome back to eighteen-b rates.”

  Fielder still couldn’t believe it. “Are you serious?” he asked.

  “I’m afraid so. Forty dollars an hour in court-”

  “No, no. Are you really serious that Cavanaugh decertified?”

  “Where’ve you been? It was all over the news this morning. Seems like he was taking too much of a beating from the media, insisting on death in spite of the sleepwalking thing. People were starting to call him bloodthirsty, saying they’d think twice before voting for him again next election.”

  “He called me and offered us LWOP a couple of days ago,” Fielder said. “But it was in exchange for a guilty plea.”

  “And you turned him down?”

  “I never called him back. I-”

  “Ballsy move, man! Way to call his bluff!”

  “Well-”

  “Don’t be so modest, Matt. I always said you were cut out for this work.”

  * * *

  WITH FIELDER’S PHONE service restored, Kevin Doyle was only the first of many to get through to him that afternoon. Hillary Munson checked in from her office in Albany, and Pearson Gunn called from someplace with jukebox music playing in the background. Half a dozen reporters phoned, asking Fielder to comment on Cavanaugh’s surrender; he dutifully reminded them he was still gagged. Bass McClure - the same Bass McClure who’d responded to Jonathan’s early-morning call - phoned to tell Fielder how glad he was to hear the news.

  “You know,” McClure said, “I always did like that boy. Never understood how he coulda hurt his grandma and his grandpa like that. Even in his sleep.”

  “The human mind’s a strange thing,” was all Fielder could think to say.

  “I guess so,” said McClure. “How you doing over there? Dug out yet?”

  “Not yet,” Fielder said. “But I’m working on it.”

  THAT NIGHT, JENNIFER called from New Hampshire to add her congratulations. “You did it,” she told him. “You really did it.”

  “I don’t know if I did it,” he said. “But it’s done.”

  “Stop being so modest, Matthew. You saved my brother’s life.”

  “We both did,” he allowed.

  “What happens now?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure. I’ll have to call the DA, see if there’s something we can work out in the way of a plea. Then I’ll need to go talk with Jonathan.”

  “Does he know yet?”

  “I imagine so,” Fielder said. “News travels pretty fast in jail. Especially news like this.”

  What he didn’t address - and what Jennifer didn’t press him on - was the question of whether Jonathan, once he’d been informed of the development, would even be able to grasp its significance.

  “Matthew Fielder,” said Jennifer, “you’re my hero.”

  And he remembered his dream, how someday he’d succeed in freeing the prisoner from the dungeon, just so he could scoop up the beautiful princess in his arms, and carry her off to his cabin.

  He was halfway there.

  “How do I ever thank you?” Jennifer was asking him.

  “I don’t know. I guess we’ll just have to keep you around, see what we can come up with,” Fielder said.

  And gulped.

  FIELDER WAS JOLTED awake by the sound of a laboring engine, and for a moment he thought he was back in the city, listening to the Saturday-morning serenade of garbage trucks. He lifted himself up so that he could see over the snow line, which was still more or less mid-window. What he saw was a huge yellow tractor, belching black diesel smoke as it lifted a gigantic wall of snow in its front-loader.

  He threw on clothes and boots and made it out the front door just as the operator killed the engine and jumped down from the cab.

  “Bass? Is that you?”

  Not only was it Bass McClure walking toward him, but it was Bass McClure carrying a bag of jelly donuts and a thermos of hot coffee.

  “Mornin’, Matt,” said McClure, as he followed Fielder into the cabin. “Sorry if I woke you.”

  “I thought you drove a Jeep,” Fielder said.

  “Oh, that.” McClure laughed, waving in the direction of the tractor. “County property. I figured maybe you could use a little help.”

  “You sure figured right. Thank you.”

  They sat for a while, content to eat their donuts and drink their coffee. Though the two men had grown up in opposite parts of the state, and had earned their livelihoods doing very different types of work, they shared a trait that seemed to be going pretty much out of style: Neither of them was embarrassed by silence. So for a good twenty minutes, they simply sat and ate and drank, grateful for the fact of each other’s companionship, but feeling no need to exploit it. And when McClure finally broke the quiet at one point to say, “Afraid I nicked one of your maples on the way in,” Fielder looked up from his coffee and said, “I’ll nail a bucket to it,” and the matter was forgotten.

  McClure stayed a while longer, before he stood up and said he’d better get going, seeing as someone else might need help d
igging out.

  “Well, thanks again,” Fielder said. “And for breakfast, too. Good donuts. Where’d you get them?”

  “Dunkin’ Donuts, up on County Road 27, just past Pine Hollow. Nice folks, only been there about a year or so. Hey, Matt?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m glad the DA backed off.”

  “Me and you both,” Fielder agreed.

  “There’s a family that’s sure seen more’n its share of tragedy. The kids’ runnin’ off, the fire, the incest, the pregnancy. And now this.”

  “You knew about the incest and the pregnancy?”

  “Used to hear a lotta stuff, back then,” McClure acknowledged. “Rumors. Can’t remember if it was the older brother who was sposed to have been responsible, or the father.”

  Fielder said nothing. He decided it wasn’t his place to correct McClure’s understanding and set the record straight about Jennifer and Jonathan.

  “So what happens now?” McClure asked.

  “We’ll put our heads together,” Fielder said. “See if we can get together on a sentence that lets Jonathan see daylight someday. If we can’t, we’ll have to take it to trial.”

  “Sleepwalkin’?”

  Fielder nodded.

  “Be careful,” McClure cautioned him.

  “How’s that?”

  “Folks were pretty quick to jump on Cavanaugh for still wantin’ to execute Jonathan, once it looked like he might not a meant to do what he did. But if push comes to shove, and it looks like the boy’s goin’ to walk out scot-free, them same folks’ll turn on you in a minute, tell you an’ your fancy doctors all that sleepwalkin’ stuff is pure b.s., that this was nothin’ but a case of good old-fashioned greed.”

  “You really think so?”

  McClure zipped up his jacket and pulled his cap down over his ears. “There’s a saying around these parts,” he said. “It goes, ‘Things aren’t always what they seem to be at first glance. But sometimes they are.’”

  THAT’S GOOD, that they d-don’t want to kill me no more. Isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Jonathan. That’s very good.”

  They were talking over the phones, and through the tiny round cutout in the Plexiglas partition that separated them. Fielder had driven over to Cedar Falls shortly after Bass McClure had left the cabin.

  “B-but I still stay in jail. Right?”

  “That’s right,” Fielder said. “At least for now.”

  “That’s okay. As long as I got my b-blankets, to keep me warm. And they keep feeding me.”

  “They’ll keep feeding you,” Fielder assured him.

  “Fish.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Fish,” Jonathan repeated.

  “They feed you fish?”

  “No,” Jonathan said. “I sm-smell fish.”

  Fielder took a deep breath with his nose. Sure enough, there was a faint odor in the air of fish being cooked. “You’re right,” he said.

  Jonathan smiled broadly. “Grandpa Carter took me fishing,” he said, as though it might have been that very morning he was talking about. “We went out on the lake, in a boat. I caught two sunnies and a perch. We threw them back. Grandpa Carter said they would live, that way.”

  Fielder noticed that Jonathan had put four or five sentences together, without once stuttering. “Did you like Grandpa Carter?” he asked.

  Jonathan smiled again. “I love Grandpa Carter,” he said.

  “And Grandma Mary Alice?”

  “Her too,” he said. “I-I-I loved her, too.” His eyes had glazed over, though, and now he stared off into the distance somewhere. It was as though it had all come back to him: His grandparents were dead, and he was here in jail, charged with killing them.

  “Jonathan,” Fielder said, “we’re going to have to make a decision, you and me.” But even as he spoke the words, Fielder knew how utterly impossible it was going to be to enlist Jonathan’s help in the process.

  “What de-decision?”

  “We have to decide if we should go to trial, or if we should agree that it’s best for you to stay here, or a place like this, for some more time.”

  “I can stay here,” Jonathan said. “Can I k-keep my blankets?”

  Not, “Will I ever get out of this place?” Or, “How long will I have to stay here?” Faced with this monumental decision, all Jonathan wanted to know was, could he keep his blankets?

  “Of course you can,” Fielder said softly, “of course you can. But you have to decide.”

  “Decide?”

  “Whether you want to stay here awhile, or have a trial.”

  But how was Jonathan supposed to know what a trial was? All he seemed to be able to do was to look back at Fielder and smile sheepishly. “You decide for me,” he finally said.

  “I can’t do that,” said Fielder. But by the time he got around to speaking the words, he was thirty miles away, and halfway home.

  “HELLO?”

  “Hello, Jennifer.”

  “Matthew! How are you?”

  “I’m good.”

  “I didn’t expect you to call back so soon.”

  “Can’t a guy miss you?”

  “Of course you can.” She laughed. “I mean, I’m glad that you do. But is that the only reason you called, just to tell me that?”

  “No,” he admitted. “I want you to come here.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m very sure.

  “You told me to stay away,” she reminded him. “Why the sudden change?” she asked.

  “Two reasons,” he said. “First, because I miss you terribly. Second, because I want you to help me talk to Jonathan.”

  There was only a momentary pause. Then Jennifer said, “Okay, if you think it’s best.”

  “I think it’s best.”

  “What made you change your mind?”

  “It’s time for us to start figuring out if we’re going to insist on a trial for your brother, or if we’re better off seeing if we can to work out some kind of a plea bargain that gets him out in a reasonable amount of time.”

  “Like how much?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’ll have to talk to the DA.”

  “So how can I help with Jonathan?”

  “I’m not at all sure you can,” he admitted. “But I don’t seem to be getting anywhere on my own. So I figured it might be worth your going into the jail with me, see what happens.”

  “And Troy?”

  “Bring him, too, of course. But I don’t think he should go in with us. That might be too much for Jonathan. And for Troy, too.”

  “We can be there tomorrow night,” she said, “if that’s soon enough.”

  “That’s perfect.”

  WHEN FIELDER’S PHONE rang later that afternoon, it was Gil Cavanaugh. “Tried you three or four times,” the DA said. “Your answering machine must’ve been off.”

  “Everything was off.”

  “I wanted to tell you personally that I was decertifying the case, Matt. But I’m sure you’ve heard, by this time.”

  “Yes, I have. But I appreciate the call. And my client and I are certainly very grateful.”

  “One for the visiting team,” Cavanaugh said.

  “Well, at least we’ve avoided a shutout.”

  “Just remember,” the DA reminded him. “If you insist on playing things out, it’s the home team that gets last licks.”

  “And if we don’t?”

  “I’m not going to lie to you, Matt. I’ve taken quite a beating in the polls over this case. My favorable rating is down to 42 percent. It’s never been below seventy, before this. I just want this thing to go away, and go away quick.”

  “And therefore-”

  “And therefore, I’m ready to offer your client a plea. Murder Two, minimum sentences, to run concurrent.”

  Second-degree murder started at fifteen-to-life. Jonathan would serve fifteen years in a state prison. After that, his freedom would rest in the hands of a parole board, never a comforti
ng thought. Fielder said nothing.

  “I might even consider Man One, but only if he’s willing to take it right away.”

  “With what kind of time?” Fielder asked. First-degree manslaughter carried as little as two-to-six, or as much as eight-and-a-third-to-twenty-five. Since there’d been two victims, the judge could double the time if he wanted to, by imposing the sentences consecutively. But he didn’t have to.

  “I’m willing to leave it up to the judge,” Cavanaugh said.

  “You might be,” said Fielder. “But I’m not.”

  “You’re asking a lot,” Cavanaugh said. “Let me think about it, see what I could live with. In the meantime, why don’t you talk to your client?”

  “I did,” Fielder told him. “This morning.”

  “And?”

  “And he left it up to me.”

  Cavanaugh chuckled. “Don’t you love having a client like that?”

  “No. As a matter of fact, I hate it.”

  “He’s going to have to do some real time here, Matt. Suppose he comes out after a few years, does something again? How’m I going to look then?”

  “He’s taking medication,” Fielder explained. “It suppresses the sleepwalking. With that under control, he’s a puppy dog.”

  “Tell me something, Matt. You really believe this sleepwalking crap?

  “I believe he was sleepwalking, yes.”

  “Sheeet,” said Cavanaugh. “You guys got the story out pretty good, you really did. Then the media folks took it and ran with it. Before I knew it, I found myself painted into a corner. Hey, Matt, I’ve been around for a few years. I’m smart enough to recognize when I’ve got a no-win situation on my hands. So I’ll do whatever I have to, in order to cut my losses. But do me a favor, Matt?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t give me this sleepwalking bullshit. I know a murder for money when I see one.”

  For a moment, Fielder almost took the bait, almost launched into a long speech about how Jonathan was incapable of being greedy, that to him there was no difference between a $10 bill and a $10 million estate. But he avoided the impulse.