The partial moon was high, and the house, garage and barn were bathed in pale light, giving everything a ghostly hue. They waited and watched, but the house was frozen still and quiet. They wore ski masks that covered everything but their eyes and mouths. The only movement was their breath, the only sound an occasional grind of dry powder as they steadied themselves or shoed across the snow.
“Looks dead enough,” Diane said.
“Feels to me like we’re the only living things on the planet,” Sam agreed. He tried to figure the best approach to the old farm. “Let’s check the garage first.”
Diane looked at Sam, then back at the farmhouse. “OK,” she said, a little nervous. “You sure you saw a key?”
“Just a glimpse. But there’s only one way to be certain,” Sam said, and started across the road. “If Angus’s truck is in that garage, we’ll leave. Quiet, like we came,” Sam whispered.
“And what if he returns while we’re in there?”
“If he’s not there now he won’t be back. At least not tonight. Too late. And too damn cold.”
She hoped he was right.
The two figures took off their snowshoes and were careful to walk down the driveway’s frozen tire ruts. They approached the garage and Sam walked around to the side window. There were two pines growing beside the outside garage wall and he pushed in behind their boughs. When he peered through the glass he saw the pale gleam of a four-door sedan, probably the old man’s. Moon’s truck was gone.
He returned and said, “Ready?”
“No truck?”
“Just the old man’s car. Angus must have gone back to his place. And why not, considering there’s no more livestock. And the old man’s ghost is still walking around.”
“I hope Williston doesn’t mind us poking around his place.”
“I hope he does.”
They came around the front of the house, stepping along the worn path where their footsteps blended with others. Sam turned toward the front door. “We’ll knock,” he said. “Just to be sure.”
“Sure,” Diane said. “We’ll just knock.”
The farmhouse was locked. Sam peered through the dark window, but it was opaque with frost. He knocked, heavy and loud. The percussive sound echoed across the road and into the trees.
“Jesus. You trying to wake the dead?”
“I guess I am,” he agreed. Then, “the closest place is Angus’s trailer, but as I recall it’s six miles through woods. Nothing but trees will hear that knock, no matter how loud I can make it. And if someone’s still in the place, I want to know about it.”
Diane looked at him. His eyes peered out of his ski mask, dark and intense. This wasn’t exactly breaking and entering, but close enough to give her a rush high up in the center of her chest. She noticed Sam smile and answered with a smile of her own.
Finally, Sam took off his right-hand mitten, reached up in the dark, and felt along the lintel. The key was where he remembered it. The sharp freeze bit his hand. “And here it is,” he said, ignoring the cold, inserting it into the lock.
They opened the door and went in. The smell of the house was familiar, with a little more stale and age thrown in. The old man had been 62, still young by Winthrop standards. Sam pulled off his ski mask and stuffed it into a coat pocket. Diane did the same, her long hair falling across her shoulders.
“Leave the lights off,” Sam said.
He fished into the belly panel of his coat and brought out the steel handled flashlight, its beam cutting the dark like a blade. Diane reached into her coat pocket and brought out a small handheld flashlight. They examined the contents of the living room, then walked into the kitchen. The table and chairs were unchanged. There was a gas range and a newer refrigerator next to the stove. Sam remembered the day he’d almost shot the old man, the way Williston, drunk, pulled the empty shotgun out of his hands and watched him retch. It was the last time Sam had been in this kitchen.
Truth was, he was thirsty. His mouth felt dry. He walked over to the sink, opened the cupboard and found the glasses were still there, pretty much unchanged. He reached in, took one down, turned on the faucet.
“You think that’s a good idea?” Diane asked.
“I need a drink,” he said. Something that was often enough said in this kitchen.
His back was turned. He filled the glass and raised it to his lips, recalling the mineral rich taste of it. Like liquid iron. It practically rattled on its way down.
“One thing I do need to take out of here,” Sam said, remembering.
“I thought you said we were just looking around.”
He opened the cupboard below the sink and found a dish towel hanging on metal tongs. Still there. He pulled it out and wiped down the glass, then returned it to the cupboard. He replaced the dish towel below the sink. “I need more shells for my shotgun. It’s an odd gauge and if I’m not mistaken the old man kept shells for it in the basement.”
“Why take them?” Diane asked. “Why risk it? Why don’t you just go buy some?”
“These were specially made shotguns,” Sam said. “They take an unusual load. Besides, no one’s going to miss them. They’ll just stay down in that dank basement collecting dust.”
“It’s your show,” Diane said.
Sam turned out of the kitchen and started down the hallway.
“Just a minute,” Diane said. She’d paused in front of the start of the Winthrop glory wall. “I noticed this when I was here before.” She was curious.
“Here’s where it begins,” Sam said, pointing his light onto the first clipping. He was too far away to read, but he started reciting.
FEARED EATEN BY WOLVES
Searchers Discouraged in Hunt for W. H. “Gray” Winthrop
January 28, 1905, Defiance, Minnesota—The search for W. H. Gray Winthrop, Defiance attorney, avid fisherman and hunter, has been abandoned. Winthrop was last seen entering the remote wilderness at mile marker 76 on the Iron Line, where he was hunting wolves. For two weeks nine men and a half dozen hounds have been scouring the country. They recovered his shotgun and the torn remnants of one snowshoe, both identified as Gray’s, and both scarred by fang marks.
Doc Dunlap, who headed the search party, returned yesterday with news that the country for miles around has been thoroughly covered. Other than the shotgun and snowshoe, searchers’ efforts have been in vain. Wolves in that vicinity are plentiful and chances are the man’s body was entirely devoured.
When he was finished, Diane turned. “When was the last time you read that?”
“Twenty years. Some things you just don’t forget.”
“Guess not. That was verbatim. You must have a pretty good memory.”
“Average,” he said. “Just one of the old man’s games. He made me memorize it. You’d be surprised how much you can remember when the punishment for getting a word wrong is a smack upside the head that rattles your teeth.”
“Oh,” she said. But as bad as she knew that sounded she was still interested in what the other pictures portrayed. She cast her small cone of light on the next picture along the wall. In the old photo two men stood over five wolves laid out in front of them on the snow. The next photo showed even more wolves, some of them hanging from a game pole, others laid out in front of the five hoisted wolves.
“I’ll leave you to it,” he said. “I’m going to get those shells.”
“OK,” Diane said, absorbed in the pictorial legacy of the Winthrop family clan.
In the basement Sam’s beam flashed on two full boxes of 10 gauge shells. He was surprised to find the fresh makings for more shells on the workbench, as though the old man had been in the middle of stocking up before his accident. It supported those who believed the old man hadn’t pulled the trigger on purpose.
He placed the two boxes of shells into the back belly panel of his coat. The
y were heavy behind him, but their awkward weight felt familiar, reassuring. There was something that felt good about taking ammo from the old man’s basement, particularly ammo Williston Winthrop would never be able to use.
By the time he emerged from the basement Diane was at the end of the wall.
“That’s a lot of wolves,” she said.
“I counted them once. Four hundred and seventeen. After my grandfather and the old man cleaned out this area, they began hunting further afield. Went up into Canada, even Alaska.”
“Incredible.”
“More like a demented obsession. But that was the old man’s way.”
On the main floor, at the end of the hallway, was the office Sam was never supposed to enter. He remembered it, the smell of cigar smoke still thick in the tight interior of the room. When he was very young his father told him the room was off limits. Innocent and compliant, he obliged. But for Sam Rivers the forbidden, at least in this context, pricked his curiosity like a bug itch. The door was usually closed, but whenever he heard the old man working at his study desk, Sam would pass by the room slowly, listening. Sometimes, when the old man was away, Sam opened the door and peered inside. When he realized he could open and peer without being discovered, at least when he was certain the old man was gone, he lingered at the opening. His curiosity grew. He was surreptitious in his efforts. He was careful—knowing the old man—to leave plenty of time between explorations.
Not long before he fled, Sam had been in the kitchen when he heard a clattering from the nearby office. Standing in front of the sink, he swore he felt the floor vibrate along the floorboards. At the time he wondered about it. Then on one of his perusals of the sacred chamber, he carefully examined the floor. Under a corner of a corded throw rug, he found a section of the boards with slightly larger gaps between the slats. He inserted the edge of a paperclip into one side of the narrow gap. He pried and a foot-square section of floorboards lifted to reveal a deep hollow. Nothing much in it. Papers, a couple of folders, a small metal box.
He’d just turned 17. The papers didn’t interest him. Knowing about it was enough. There were coins in the metal box. They were old and tarnished with age.
Now Sam re-entered the old office. He smiled to remember the trepidation that first accompanied his perusal of this room; the way his heart was hammering in his chest, his fear the old man would catch him nosing around his private stuff. Now he was simply curious again, hoping the old man had left something interesting in his secret space.
Diane watched him cross the room, raise the corner of a rug (this one different, but used for the same purpose). Sam left the rug turned over, moved to the old man’s desk, found a large paper clip and used it to pry up the edge of the floorboard. Just like when he was a boy.
“A secret stash?”
Clearly she was interested. “I guess. Some place the old man thought was secret. He never let me come into this room. Said his study was off-limits, which in the end only made me curious.”
Diane grinned. She could relate.
Sam flipped up the foot-square piece of floorboard, revealing a small cavernous opening. He reached in and pulled out a yellow plastic CD case containing a disk. He flipped it open, turned it over, and noticed the recording grooves near the center hole. “Not much,” he said, observing the width of the recording. “But I suspect whatever this contains should be interesting, if the old man was hiding it here.” Beneath the jewel case were several files. He pulled them out of the hole. “Pine Grove Estates?” he wondered, reading the tabs. “Ever heard of it?”
Diane shook her head. “Never. Maybe the disk has something. Did your dad have a computer?”
“I haven’t seen one.” The metal box was gone. The rest of the hold was empty. “We’ll just keep these,” he said, returning the wooden covering to the floor. “Maybe they contain something worthwhile.”
Diane made a note of the folder’s subject. She’d never heard of Pine Grove Estates, but she knew she’d be searching for it as soon as she returned home.
“We can check out those disk files at my place.”
Sam looked at her. He recognized her reporter’s interest. He thought he’d better have a look at the disk before she put it on the pages of the Gazette. “Let’s check upstairs,” he said.
They climbed to the second floor and continued nosing around the old house. In 20 years Sam was surprised to know nothing much had changed. When he opened his old bedroom door he found everything the same. The bed sat in the corner. The overhead light was exactly as it had been. There was a small desk in the corner with a dresser beside it. On top of the dresser was a piece of macramé his Mother made for him when he was a boy, a foot-square black rose. Above his bed, hanging on the wall, was the gun rack he’d made in eighth grade shop, empty.
It was all carefully preserved, clean, the bed still made as though his return was expected. He was surprised to feel nostalgic for his boyhood room, where so much had been wrong for so long.
He walked over to the mattress and sat down. Same give, same resistance, even the same bedspread. He wondered if anyone had slept here since he’d left.
“It’s all the same,” he said, surprised.
Diane came over and sat beside him.
“It’s weird,” he added.
“What’s so weird about it? What did you expect?”
“I don’t know. Guess I hadn’t thought about it. I suppose I expected to see storage, or a study or something.”
“He has a basement,” Diane reminded him.
“Had,” Sam corrected. “I know. I just didn’t expect it to be exactly the same. I thought maybe there might be something here. It’s a little eerie, like visiting a grave and feeling a presence.”
“Your dad had a scary feel to him, the few times I met him.”
“He had an interesting perspective about women.”
“I wouldn’t call it interesting,” Diane said, remembering. The Range could be a tough place for single women, where some men had a perverse sense of sex roles. “More like, if we didn’t fuck there’d be a bounty on us.”
The harsh comment made Sam grin. “That’s about it,” he agreed.
They were quiet for a moment, sitting on the bed.
“Is that what you would say?”
The way she asked felt suddenly different. But it had been a very long time since he had tried to parse a woman’s interests, so he hesitated.
“We are born naked and alone, and we die naked and alone. I think we should feel damn fortunate when in between we can be naked and alone together.”
It was Diane’s turn to chuckle. But what she was thinking was: How did a man as awful as Williston Winthrop have a son like Sam Rivers? She knew Miriam deserved some of the praise. But Miriam had her faults. Miriam was sweet without the willingness or ability to make difficult choices, like divorcing Will Winthrop, for starters.
“What happened to you?” Diane finally asked. “I know Williston beat you up pretty bad. But what finally made you leave for good?”
Sam had never told anyone. “I tried to kill my father.”
Diane paused. “I suspect you had motive.”
“You didn’t see me when I left. I had a black eye, a bruised cheek, three broken ribs. But I didn’t find that out until after I thought it was taking too long to heal.”
“Where were you?”
“Sisseton, South Dakota, just across the border. I didn’t run very far at first, because I wasn’t sure about leaving. I wasn’t sure where I was going. I wasn’t sure about anything.”
Diane thought about it. “That was the middle of winter, wasn’t it? I remember your mom being pretty upset. But she didn’t talk about it much.”
“Yeah. It was winter.”
It had been twenty years, but remembering it like this Sam could still feel a vestige of the tension he’d felt a
s a boy. He took the next few minutes relating the story to Diane, including the part about almost killing the old man and then the old man’s departure. Now, two decades later, it all sounded surreal, like a very bad dream.
Diane was quiet. Sam guessed she wasn’t sure how to take it—the beating that started in this room. Unexpectedly her hand moved to his thigh. While he was wondering how to take it—just consolation?—it squeezed.
Maybe not just consolation, he thought. But while he was wondering how to take that, she turned her head, just so. Then he reached up and placed his right hand along Diane’s neck, threading his index finger under her ear. She came into his kiss and opened her mouth. Sam raised his left hand to the other side of her head. She reached up to press his hand more firmly against her, affirming it. And after a few long moments with their lips fastened together, neither of them wanting to stop, she pulled his left hand away from the side of her head and moved it to her breast.
Chapter Twenty-Six
January 31st, late evening—Williston Winthrop’s farm
Suddenly a piercing, lonely howl came into the room.
“Christ,” Sam said, as if out of a dream. “Did you hear that?”
He was holding her breast and it was having the desired effect. For both of them. He could feel her bra under her sweater. Her breast felt full. She didn’t want him to take his hand away, unless it was to reach up under her clothing and...
Then another howl.
Reluctantly, Sam got up off the bed and turned to the window.
“Goddamn it,” Diane said.
Sam smiled in the dark. He thought about turning back to her, but another howl changed his mind. “Ditto,” he said, turning toward the window. “Let’s just hold that thought.”
“Hold something,” she murmured.
It’d been too long. Probably for both of them, Sam guessed. But the wolves had returned and they would have to wait. Given the circumstances, a little tension could be a good thing.
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