Snow Burn

by Joel Arnold

  Vince looked up at Quinn. His features hardened, as if the cold wind had seeped in and frozen it into a harsh mask.

  “When they got here,” Vince said, “they could’ve turned into assholes like you and your family. They didn’t have a pot to piss in, and they could’ve lived on welfare their whole lives. But you know what? They didn’t. They worked their asses off, so that one day they could raise a family and live the American dream. And when I was born, they weren’t so mad at life that they beat me. They didn’t take out their failures on me. You know why? Because they’re good people. That’s why. Simple as that.”

  Vince sent another shower of sparks to its death. “I get so sick of people complaining about how hard life is here, when they don’t have a clue.”

  “Whoa,” Quinn said. “Settle down, Buddha.” He smiled. “I’m cool with that.”

  “My name’s Vince.”

  “Vince. Okay. Vince.”

  Chapter 22

  Everyone sat quietly, staring at the fire; it was too uncomfortable to look up and chance locking eyes with each other. The burning wood snapped and clicked and caused orange sparks to jump, dance and wink out. I scratched at my neck where the collar of my coat had rubbed a raw patch. I cleared my throat. Someone else farted, but neither Vince nor Quinn offered up a confession. The wind whistled softly through the ventilation hole and the flames of the fire jitterbugged over the glowing coals.

  Eventually, Quinn rubbed his lips with his frostbit fingers. “A man doesn’t realize how much he needs a cigarette until they’re gone.” He chuckled. “C’mon. How about another sip of brandy.”

  Vince sighed. He looked at me. “What do you think?”

  I shrugged. “Your call.”

  Quinn nodded at me and said, “He make all the decisions for you?”

  I didn’t answer.

  Vince slowly unscrewed the cap and poured some brandy into an empty Coke can. He handed the can to Quinn.

  Quinn took it and raised it in a quick toast. “Here’s to you for saving my life, chintzy as you may be with the booze.” He drank it all in one swallow and cleared his throat. He looked at the fire. “Armed robbery,” he said.

  It took a moment for the words to register in my brain, but when they did, the air seemed to escape my lungs as if they’d sprung a leak.

  Armed robbery. That meant…

  That meant entering someplace with a weapon. Threatening people to do what you say. How many movies had I seen that in? ‘Everybody on the ground.’ ‘Nobody move.’ ‘Stay still and no one gets hurt.’ ‘Don’t move or I shoot.’

  Did anybody move?

  Did he shoot?

  Vince must’ve been thinking the same thing. “Did you hurt anybody?”

  Quinn slowly shook his head. He chuckled. “Nope. Everything went smoothly, but the damn bank manager followed us out and got a good look at our car.”

  “Who’s we?” Vince asked.

  Quinn looked at Vince like he was an idiot. “My partner in crime.”

  “Did he escape with you?”

  Quinn waved the question away. “He was sent someplace else.”

  Vince thought a moment. He took a long drink from the jug of water we’d lugged along, and set it against the igloo wall. “Anyone else escape with you?” he asked.

  Quinn rubbed the back of his neck with a frostbitten hand. “Just me, myself and I. Had a little help on the inside, though.”

  “And no one noticed?” Vince asked.

  Quinn chuckled. “Well, I’m sure they’ve noticed by now.” Quinn’s face turned serious. “Come on – why not just look the other way?”

  “You were in prison for a reason,” Vince said.

  Quinn rolled his eyes. “I’ve learned my lesson. I’m staying on the straight and narrow from now on.”

  “You’re a fugitive,” Vince said. “So how exactly are you going to do that?”

  “Mexico,” Quinn said. “I’ll go to Mexico.”

  Vince shifted his weight and stood up, the top of his head touching the curve of the ceiling. He didn’t look very convinced, but said, “I need to take another piss.” He looked at me. “Will you be okay in here?”

  I looked from Vince to Quinn. Was he kidding? He was going to leave me alone with this guy?

  Vince said, “We can all go out if you’d prefer.”

  I tried to swallow my fear. “No,” I said. “Go ahead.” The words left an acidic taste in my mouth, like I’d been sucking on a fistful of pennies.

  “I won’t try anything funny,” Quinn promised.

  “If you did try anything,” Vince said, “it would be your last act on earth.”

  “Settle down. I’m cool,” Quinn said.

  Vince paused a moment, looking at me.

  I shivered. “Go,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Yell if he tries anything.”

  “Go.”

  Vince dropped to his hands and knees, crawled into the tunnel and was gone. I realized that even if I did yell, he probably wouldn’t hear me over the wind.

  I looked at Quinn, then at the fire. The silence between us seemed to rise up like a poisonous snake.

  “It’s a long way to Mexico,” I finally said.

  Quinn cleared his throat. He looked like he’d just snapped out of a trance. “Sometimes you gotta take a few chances if life’s going to be worth living.”

  I chuckled.

  “What’s so funny?” Quinn asked.

  “What you just said – Vince says that a lot, too.”

  Quinn squinted at me. “Well, then I guess we have something in common.”

  He pushed himself up to a sitting position. I tensed, wary of his every movement. He leaned back against the snow-packed wall and closed his eyes. “I wish you guys could just look the other way. Just this once.” He opened his eyes and leaned toward me.

  I jerked back, my head knocking a chunk of snow off the wall.

  “You guys saved my life,” Quinn said. “Now save it again. Please.” His lips trembled into a smile. “Please. Just let me go, pretend I was never here. Pretend you never saw me. Pretend you never heard of me.” He reached out.

  How many times had I imagined moments like this? Daydreamed about this very thing? The criminal trying to grab me. And me – knocking his arm away, or breaking his grip, or doing some Kung Fu Tae Kwon Do Dancing Tiger crap on his sorry ass. In my daydreams, I was always quick to react, quick to escape whatever danger came my way. But now…

  Here…

  I couldn’t move. Goosebumps erupted along my arms.

  He grabbed hold of my shirt just below my neck and squeezed, bunching up the material in his hand. His knuckles pressed against my chin.

  Vince?

  I wanted to call out to him. I wanted to scream.

  But in order to scream, you needed to pass air over your vocal chords, and just how the hell could you do that when all the air had just been sucked from the world?

  Quinn’s face was inches from my own. His breath smelled like rotten apricots. I noticed a cross crudely tattooed in blue ink at the base of his thumb.

  I wanted to scurry away, fly away, burrow a tunnel through the snow and keep on digging even when I hit earth, if only it got me further away from this, but I couldn’t move.

  His eyes drilled into mine. “I can’t go back,” he said. “Understand? I can’t go back. Not now. Not after what I did.”

  “Wha – what do you mean?” I gasped.

  “After I escaped I had a little problem. Understand?” He nodded. “You understand?”

  “No.” I shook my head. It felt like it wanted to detach from my neck and float away.

  “When I escaped, there was this guy, see? And – he got a hold of me, and I had to do something. Do you understand?”

  “What did you do?” I asked.

  A tear slipped from his right eye. It traveled down his cheek and dripped off onto my thigh. I jerked back as if it had stung me.

  He closed both eyes, pulled ai
r in through his pinched nostrils. Then he let me go and sat back against his side of the igloo.

  “What did you do?” I asked again. I shifted. Slid. An inch. Two. At least now there was the fire between us

  He shook his head from side to side. “I just want you to understand what a man will do when he’s backed into a corner. That’s all. Just understand that.”

  “Everything okay in here?” Vince poked his head into the igloo. He looked from Quinn to me. “What’s up?”

  Quinn didn’t answer.

  Vince looked at me. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said. I cleared my throat. “Yeah.”

  “Good,” he said. He crawled past me. “By the way, if you’re planning on taking a piss, be prepared for your balls to jump up inside your throat when the cold hits ‘em.”

  Chapter 23

  There was nothing again for a long time, except the howl of the wind and the dull crackle of the fire. I wondered how much longer our supply of wood would last. At least half of it was gone, and I doubted that any of us wanted to spend any time outside searching for more.

  “Where’d you get those clothes?” Vince asked, indicating the clothing Quinn wore outside of the prison garb.

  Quinn cleared his throat. “These duds?”

  “I’m guessing they weren’t prison issued.”

  “Nope. I got ‘em off a clothes-line.”

  “In the middle of winter?”

  Quinn chuckled. “A laundromat.”

  Vince rolled his eyes.

  “What? You don’t believe me?”

  Vince nodded at him. “Whose wallet?”

  “Huh?”

  “Let’s see it.”

  “No.”

  “Come on.”

  Quinn smiled. “Are you going to rob me?”

  Vince didn’t smile. “I want to see whose clothes you’re wearing.”

  Quinn shrugged. He reached behind himself and pulled out a black leather wallet and tossed it over the fire to Vince.

  Vince opened it, slid out a driver’s license, and examined it in the firelight. “’Darrel Richmond.’ Doesn’t even look like you.”

  “Couldn’t afford to be picky.”

  Vince placed the license back in the wallet and tossed it back to Quinn. “Did you hurt this guy?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean did you hurt this guy? To get his clothes?”

  “Like I said, I swiped them from a laundromat.”

  “And they just happened to have a wallet in them?”

  Quinn shrugged. He leaned back against the cold wall. “You can think what you want. I’m tired of your third-degree crap.”

  “Let’s talk about something else,” I suggested. “We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”

  Quinn and Vince stared at each other as if I wasn’t there. Without taking his eyes off Quinn, Vince said, “Tommy – we need to search him.”

  “What?” I asked.

  Quinn spat. “The hell you will.”

  “He might have a weapon.”

  “Um…” I hadn’t thought about that before.

  Quinn sat up straight. “I don’t have any weapons.” He pushed his back up against the igloo wall. “And nobody’s going to lay a finger on me.”

  Vince’s eyes remained on Quinn, while mine went back and forth between the two of them like they were some weird game of ping-pong.

  “Tommy,” Vince said softly. “I’ll hold him down and you go through his pockets. Check his legs, too. And his ankles.”

  Quinn held up his hands. “No way. Come on, guys. Don’t be crazy. I don’t have anything.”

  “Ready?” Vince asked.

  I knew my lungs were moving, knew air was going in and out of my mouth, but I felt like I was suffocating.

  “Ready?” Vince asked again, sharply.

  I realized he was talking to me.

  “Okay,” I said, barely getting the word out.

  “No,” Quinn said. “Don’t you – ”

  But then Vince was on him, falling across his chest and pinning his arms to his sides. Quinn kicked his legs, trying to squirm out from beneath Vince, but Vince was too big, and he squeezed harder until Quinn stopped kicking.

  “Hurry up, Tommy. Search him,” Vince grunted.

  I didn’t want to search him. I didn’t want to touch him. But his face was turning red, and his breath came out in quick gasps, and I realized that if I didn’t search him soon, Vince might crush the son of a bitch.

  I leaned over Quinn’s legs, wary that they might suddenly lash out at me like a pair of rattlesnakes. I gingerly ran my hands over his front pockets. Nothing. I held my breath and reached around to his back pockets. Again, nothing.

  “Check his legs,” Vince said.

  His pants looked smooth and flat. “There’s nothing there,” I said.

  “Check them” Vince huffed.

  Quinn started to wheeze. He closed his eyes and a grimace took over his face.

  “Do it!” Vince shouted.

  I grabbed his legs, trying to feel through the fabric. I ran my hands down the front of his thighs to his ankles, then back up the other side.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “You sure?”

  “There’s nothing there!” I said. “Come on, get off of him!”

  Vince quickly drew back, his arms raised defensively, while Quinn just lay there, struggling for breath.

  I sat back, as far away from the both of them as I could, trying to catch my own breath, trying to get that feeling out of my mind, that feeling of…

  A feeling like I’d just violated someone.

  I know that sounds stupid. I know he could easily have had a weapon. In fact, I was surprised that he didn’t. But still…

  Part of me wanted to apologize.

  Then Quinn said hoarsely, “I fought for this country. I defended helpless people against Saddam Hussein. Give me that. Give me at least that.” He rubbed his neck and eyed Vince’s backpack. “Let me have another pull or two off that brandy.”

  “No,” Vince said.

  Quinn grimaced. “Okay, then.” He lay on his back and closed his eyes. He scratched at the igloo wall with a frostbit finger, as if all his anger was concentrated in that one small digit. “Good luck falling asleep,” he finally said. “Because who knows what I might do once you’ve gone off to dreamland.”

  My bones turned to ice.

  “Are you threatening us?” Vince asked.

  “Just making conversation,” Quinn whispered. “That’s all. Just making conversation.”

  Chapter 24

  It was close to midnight. I looked up at the ventilation hole. Snow had piled up on the edges, threatening to seal it. I stood up and knocked away the excess. The coals of the fire glowed bright orange and made our shadows dance across the igloo walls. Although the blizzard raged outside, the warmth inside brought sweat to my forehead. Quinn had fallen asleep, spread out on his side in front of the entrance, snoring.

  Neither Vince nor I spoke. Though I’m not a violent guy, I wanted to punch him. He’d turned the situation into something worse than it had to be. It was his damn pride. Usually it worked well for him, but he could’ve used a good dose of humility about now.

  At the same time, I had to admire him. He had guts, that was for sure. How many times had I agreed to something just to avoid confrontation? And here was Vince confronting an escaped convict! Some balls.

  But then again –

  Why did he have to complicate things?

  There was no way I could fall asleep. Not after what Quinn had said. What if he was only faking sleep? What if he’d pounce as soon as we closed our eyes? Would we ever get the chance to open them again?

  Until that moment, I had never felt like my life was in jeopardy. Sure there were times when I felt fear. Fear of getting pummeled by some creep at school. Fear of John Tracy, three years older than me, who lived up the block and sometimes waited for me in the branch of an oak tree that hung ove
r the sidewalk. As I’d pass underneath, he’d drop on me and shove my face in the grass. But he always let me up. I never actually felt like I was close to death.

  And there was the one time my parents did act a bit adventurous and rented an RV for a week in July. The air conditioner didn’t work. The chemicals in the toilet reeked. And one night, we got lost, pulled off onto some side road and backed the RV off the shoulder to spend the night. The next morning we woke up to discover that the rear of the RV was only inches from the edge of a rocky cliff that fell straight down a hundred feet to a lake below. This discovery led both my parents and I to lose our appetites for the day, and to speak to each other in reverential whispers for the rest of the trip. That was the last of our adventures in Recreational Vehicle living.

  But here…

  Jesus…

  Was I ever going to see my mom and dad again?

  Chapter 25

  I sat with my legs crossed in front of the fire. It was too damn hot in here. Too damn crowded. What I’d give to be at Vince’s house watching stupid movies! And hey – screw Vince. What I’d give to be at my own house in my own bed hunkered under the covers reading a good book.

  Vince crawled over to me. He grabbed my shoulder and put his mouth to my ear.

  “We need to find that phone,” he whispered, his breath hot. “We’ll take turns. If he wakes up, say you’re taking a piss or something. But it’s got to be out there.”

  Finally. I knew it. I knew Vince would take action. I nodded.

  “I’ll go first,” he whispered.

  He crawled carefully over Quinn, being especially wary of his prosthetic leg, and disappeared out the entrance tunnel.

  I tossed a small stick onto the fire. It sizzled and caught, sending up a brief burst of yellow sparks.

  Would the phone even work? I doubted it.

  I wondered if my dad had tried calling again.

  Was he wondering why no one answered? Worried enough to drive over to Vince’s house? Worried enough to call the police?