CLAWS 2

by Stacey Cochran

  Twenty-six

  Frank Dalton slammed the door of his truck shut and stepped out into the snow. He looked across the snow-covered yard to his small white farmhouse. He could smell the smoke from a burning woodstove somewhere in the distance, and he could tell from the sky that they were in for a hell of a storm.

  “Time to batten down the hatches,” he muttered.

  Snow fell from the sky like there was no end in sight. He could see the rickety screen door on the porch, and he started out across the yard. Three small porch steps led up to the screen door, and they were covered in several inches of fresh powder.

  Frank’s cheeks burned from the cold, and he cast a glance back over the yard toward the truck. He saw his prints in the fresh snow, and at the bottom of the hill beyond the yard, he saw a rubber tire on a rope swing. A fresh coat of snow sat atop the tire like a toupee, and the tire spun slowly in the breeze.

  Couple more hours, Frank thought, and the snow on the ground’s gonna reach the bottom of that thing.

  Frank lived alone.

  Some nights he’d sit by the window inside the house, gazing out into the yard hoping someone would drive up to his place. His fourth wife perhaps. His second, who he knew still lived in Colorado.

  He didn’t talk to them anymore—or, more specifically, they didn’t talk to him—but a part of him believed they might forgive him for his meanness and his cruelty. A part of him, separate from his callous ambition, just wanted someone to love.

  And so he’d sit by that window staring out into the dark, hoping to see headlights coming up the drive. Sometimes he’d set a small FM radio to a local oldies station—KZRQ “Southwest Colorado’s Golden Oldies”—and the thin sound would play in the background inside the house.

  When he was a younger man, Frank had ideals and passion. He was driven by an unquenchable thirst for power, but as the years rolled by, it became clear that he’d pretty much topped out at the county level. He was ashamed to admit it because the reality was so far from the dream, but in his twenties, he actually thought he could build up to running for President one day.

  Now, he was in his late forties, and time was running out. He lost two elections in his thirties for mayor of Telluride and served on the town council instead. Finally, at forty-four, he won for mayor in his fourth attempt. It was a close election.

  And suddenly, the dream of becoming Governor seemed more realistic, within reach. But he needed money, and he needed influence around the state. All that and more had materialized in the friendship he’d made with Abraham Foxwell.

  To Foxwell, Frank Dalton was a ready-made puppet, and to Dalton, Foxwell was the golden ticket to state politics. What Foxwell couldn’t be sure of was whether Dalton had the requisite ambition to take the state’s highest office. Still, it was worth stringing him along financially just to see.

  I’ll get them back, Dalton said to himself. All those people who didn’t respect me. I’ll watch Janet Creed implode on this bear issue, and then I will move in for the kill.

  From the top porch step, Dalton gazed out at the snow-covered yard. They were in for a hell of a night. He spat out into the yard, turned, and opened the screen door.

  Frank Dalton stepped inside his farmhouse.

  • •

  An hour later, Frank peered out his window and saw the snowstorm worsening. Night had all but stolen light from day, and Frank saw something move by the front end of the truck.

  “What in the world,” he said.

  The window steamed up, and he wiped it with his hand in a circular motion. He peered out into the heavy snowfall and the near dark. He immediately thought it had been a trick of his eyes, but he glanced back across the room to the 30/30 above the fireplace nonetheless. Call it instinct.

  He could smell the smoky fragrance from the fire, as well as slices of bacon boiling away in a stovetop pot of green beans. He was fixing to fry a steak, but his attention went back to the window and toward the truck outside.

  Something large and white stepped around the back end of the truck and looked directly at him.

  It took him a second to register what he was seeing.

  It was a bear, a very large bear. In the darkness and snow, it almost looked like a ghost.

  “What the hell,” he gasped.

  The bear stared a moment more, sniffing the air, and Frank crossed quickly to the fireplace and took down the Winchester from its rack.

  He kept the cartridges on a shelf above his washer and drier, which stood in a room beyond the kitchen. He opened the door to the laundry room, grabbed the cartridges from a box on the shelf, and loaded six into the magazine.

  He cocked the lever and pushed the screen door slowly open.

  The bear was gone.

  With the door open several inches, Frank Dalton peered through the heavy snow out toward the truck. He was too far away to see tracks, but he stepped out into the cold.

  His breath steamed and he held the rifle in his hands, scanning the yard. The sound was utter silence, except for the millions of snowflakes landing on the ground and on the branches of trees.

  His boots settled into the fresh powder on the porch steps. Behind him, he could hear the green beans boiling on the stove. He stepped down into the yard.

  Ain’t no grizzly bear up here in these mountains, he thought. But the truth was what he’d actually seen looked more like a polar bear or a ghost of a bear.

  He stepped over to the truck and saw the tracks in the snow.

  “Oh, shit,” he said.

  They were big, and he suddenly found his heart beating in his chest so fast that it almost hurt. He had to exercise every ounce of self-discipline he could muster to stand his ground and not run back up to the house.

  He followed the tracks with his eyes and saw that they led down the hill toward the tire swing. Snow fell heavily all around him, and he took three steps toward the edge of the hill to where he could see the tire.

  It swung back and forth, and the snow atop it had been brushed off.

  Frank raised the rifle to his shoulder and scanned the darkness looking for the bear. His glasses fogged up.

  “Son of bitch,” he muttered, and he lowered the rifle.

  He exhaled deeply, but his breath felt ragged in his chest. He was frightened. His lenses cleared.

  He wanted to run back up to the house and call the police, but he was struck by his own pride at the realization that he could not call them. Not about that. Not about a bear.

  Panic made him angry.

  He raised the rifle to his shoulder and fired above the tree line. The crack! echoed out into the stillness of the mountain air.

  He heard something large begin running, crashing through the trees beyond the tire swing. He knew by the sound of its weight that it was a bear, and it made a growling sound that carried up the hill.

  He’d frightened it. He could tell, and it filled him with a burst of rash confidence. He ran a few steps down the hill, ready to shoot again.

  It was scared of him! The bear was scared.

  He cocked the lever.

  Suddenly, he slipped. He felt the rifle fly from his hands, his body crashing to the ground, and his head hit something hard and sharp. An explosion of pain struck him, but he was instantly out cold.

  His head had hit a rock about the size of a bowling ball that jutted up from the snow, and he was gone. Gone to the conscious world.

  • •

  Freezing.

  Aching pain.

  Frank Dalton woke slowly as though from ten hours sleep. It hurt to open his eyes, and the pain at the back of his head was unlike any pain he’d ever felt before. He could feel it oozing.

  He tried to clear his throat.

  Where am I? he thought.

  His head was damp with blood, and he tried to sit up. Pain exploded over the back of his neck, but he managed to lean over on one arm. The arm sunk down into the snow.

  “Jesus,” he muttered.

  He scanned the hill arou
nd him, looking for the tire swing.

  He did not see it. Everything was blurry.

  He glanced down at his chest and legs. He was covered in four inches of snow. He tried to brush it off and found that his fingers didn’t quite work. They were stiff with cold.

  He felt ice and snow on his face, like his cheeks were frozen. His eyebrows were thick with ice. He touched them with his fingers, but he found that he had no feeling in his fingertips.

  And then he realized. . .

  His glasses.

  They were gone.

  Frank Dalton squinted, but his near-sighted vision only allowed him to see things that were close. Beyond a few feet, everything blurred, and more than twenty feet away, he could see nothing, could make out nothing but the blurry white ground and the fact that it was snowing heavily.

  He rolled over and patted frantically in the snow feeling for his glasses.

  “My glasses,” he said.

  He could not find them, and his arms kept sinking down into the snow, his weight too great on its surface.

  “Where did all this snow come from?” he said.

  It had been snowing, but not this bad. He tried to sit up on his knees and he sank down into it. It felt as though there were several feet of snow.

  How could that be? How long had he been out?

  “Where is the house?” he said aloud.

  Even without his glasses, he should have been able to see the lights from the house. He’d only been fifty yards away when he’d fallen. It would be blurry, but he should be able to make it out nonetheless.

  And then he remembered the bear.

  His eyes shot nervously around.

  He stopped breathing and listened to the still silence. He could hear the wind rustling tree branches. He could hear snowflakes landing on the ground. But he didn’t hear the bear.

  He remained utterly silent another five, ten seconds. He exhaled deeply. The bear was gone.

  What Frank didn’t know was that the bear had come back for him after he’d fallen. What Frank didn’t know was that it had dragged him nearly a thousand yards straight uphill from where he’d fallen. What Frank didn’t know was that he had been out cold for nearly ninety minutes.

  The snow fell heavily. He was freezing.

  He continued patting around him feeling for the pair of glasses that had fallen from his face. The glasses lay buried in the snow nearly a thousand yards straight downhill.

  Frank Dalton continued crawling around in the snow, creating a widening circle. He couldn’t see. His hands were numb from the cold. He whined frantically.

  The snow continued to fall from the sky.

  “Oh, my God,” he said, “I’m going to freeze to death.”

  He tried to climb to his feet but sank down in the deep powder. He lurched forward, lifting his leg up from the powder to take a step. His leg sank down several feet into the snow again, and he lost his balance and fell forward.

  His bare hands sunk down into the snow. He tried to crawl over the surface. He was crawling in the wrong direction, the opposite direction from his farmhouse.

  Again, he tried to climb to his feet but sank down.

  He started to whine, but his voice was lost in the endless white wilderness around him.

  Twenty-seven

  Jonas helped Angie up the steps at the front of her cabin. The spinning blue lights of three sheriff’s deputy cruisers radiated in the falling snow. The air was freezing.

  “Here we go,” he said.

  “Careful,” Angie said. “That’s a lot of snow.”

  “Winter has arrived.”

  Jonas pushed open the screen door, and they stepped onto the porch. Angie removed the keys from her pockets and hit the deadbolt. The door opened.

  She reached inside and flipped on the lights. Jonas glanced back out into the falling snow, saw his and the other two cruisers. They’d spent all day in the hospital.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been this tired in my entire life,” Angie said.

  Jonas closed the door and stepped into the entryway. He stood politely.

  “Well, we’ll keep an officer up here all night,” he said. “You don’t have to worry.”

  Angie reached the sofa. She turned and looked at him across the room.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Jonas nodded. He smiled wearily.

  “I’m serious,” Angie said. “Thank you for everything.”

  “I’m just doing my job.”

  Jonas’s eyes glanced at the floor. He stood in the entryway. Angie watched him.

  “Will you stay up here?” she asked. He didn’t answer right away, and so she said, “I’d feel safer.”

  “Of course,” he said.

  “I’d appreciate your presence.” She sat down on the sofa. “I feel safe around you. Have a seat, Jonas. Please.”

  She motioned for him to grab a chair from the kitchen table. He stepped from the entryway, took a chair, and carried it over near to the sofa. He sat down and looked at her lying back on the sofa. She pulled a blanket up to her chin.

  “My life wasn’t supposed to turn out this way,” she said. “This thing’s out of control.”

  “You just need to get some rest,” he said. “You need a good night’s sleep. We can think clearly about it in the morning.”

  “What’re we going to do about the bear situation?”

  “You’re the expert.”

  “We could relocate them farther north.”

  “To Yellowstone?”

  Angie said, “Yellowstone doesn’t want our grizzlies. Their own population has doubled in the past thirty years. They’re planning to remove its protected status under the Endangered Species Act, and so they sure aren’t going to want ours.”

  “You think there’s more than one?”

  “It looks like it,” Angie said.

  “Can people live together with a bear like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the one that killed those kids.”

  Angie looked into his eyes for a long moment.

  “I think we have to find a way,” she said.

  “All this land,” Jonas said, “all this wilderness. It’ll never be like this again.”

  “Once that resort goes up,” Angie said, “Durango will become the next Denver. If Foxwell doesn’t do it, someone else will in time. Capitalism drives men to do things propriety should not allow for. You mark my words; history will record the failure of freedom as the failure to control capitalism. It destroys everything in its path.”

  Her eyes were almost completely closed, now. Jonas watched her drift off to sleep.

  What do we need? he thought.

  And, as if reading his thoughts, Angie’s eyes opened one last time. She said, “We need a culture that places a higher value on humility than on the accomplishments of greed.”

  He looked at her. Her eyes closed. And a moment later, she was asleep.

  Twenty-eight

  The man with no name sat in the dark. His jail cell contained no sound, save for the sound of his own rhythmic heartbeat. He could hear his pulse beating in his ears. He sat on the edge of the cell’s bed, his eyes closed. Momentarily, he opened his eyes and stared at the wall across from him.

  He heard someone groan from further inside the holding area. He’d gathered that there were about a dozen cells like his. It was three o’clock in the morning.

  They threw questions at him all day. He answered none. They wanted to know how he got the doctor’s jacket, who he worked for, why he wanted to kill Angie Rippard, why he tried to shoot her up with a syringe of pure adrenaline.

  Who was this man with no name?

  The truth was, the man himself did not know.

  He opened his mouth, breathed in deeply, and exhaled. He seemed utterly calm.

  Silently, he stood up from the bed, turned and knelt down, facing the thin mattress. It looked as though he might pray.

  For a moment, his arms rested in front of him on
the mattress and the woolen fabric of the green jail-issued blanket. Though the man did not believe in God, he prayed. He asked for forgiveness for his sins. He prayed for the eternal peace of his soul. He prayed that if he died and if his soul was to be reborn, that it would be reborn anew in a body that would serve its quest for divine purpose better than this one had.

  The man cleared his mind.

  He reached under the bed and removed a steel rod from the back left leg. The rod was about nine inches long. One end of the rod was sharpened to a fine point. He held the rod—a shank, as prisoners call them—and sat back down on the bed.

  He listened to the still quiet inside the jail. Had anyone heard him?

  No.

  The man sat on the edge of the bed, holding the shank in both hands. He stared at it.

  As strange as the thought was, it came to him nonetheless. He did not want to be cold when he died. And there was a chill to the air inside the Durango, Colorado jail.

  He pulled back the blankets on the bed, the coarse white sheet. The mattress had a hard plastic coating over it. He could feel it under the fixed sheet. He glanced once toward the barred door of his cell, out toward the hallway. There was no one there.

  Then, he gritted his teeth and brought the sharpened point of the shank up toward his throat. He held it in place against the left side of his throat. It took him a moment to find his jugular with the shank’s sharpened point, that spot where nurses sometimes feel for a pulse.

  There it is. Beating, beating, beating. Pumping blood.

  The man held the shank in place with his right hand. He placed the palm of left hand over the dull end, ready to thrust it into his throat.

  His body flooded with panic and adrenaline, his mind reacting to what it knew he was about to do. Everything in his biology told him not to do what he was about to do. He savored the fear.

  He drifted there for a moment not sure that he could do it.

  And then, as if by accident, he shoved the shank in, skewering his throat, goring open his jugular vein.