by Annie Proulx
She studied the dull morning. The sky was like an old horse blanket. The gaunt weeks before the snow started. Well, she would just drive east even though it looked like rain. See how far she got. Let the Beetle do what it could.
She was in Littleton at noon, tired and thirsty. She spent fifteen minutes looking for a luncheonette. She had the beginning of a headache. It was a longer trip than it looked on the map. The heavy sky loured. A glass of ginger ale would do good. Maybe a chicken sandwich while she studied her map. It was still a treat to go into a place and order what she liked, then pay for it with her own money.
She parked in front of The Cowbell Diner. Inside she sat in a varnished booth, pulled out the menu stuck behind the napkin dispenser. Crumbs and ketchup smears on the table. One waitress leaned on the counter; the other sat on a stool in front of her, smoking and drinking coffee. There were a few other customers. A man in a ragged jacket seemed at home; he helped himself to coffee from the murky pot behind the counter.
‘Takin’ their sweet time,’ Jewell muttered to herself.
The girl came over and swiped a rag over the table.
‘Help you.’
‘I believe I’ll have a glass of ginger ale without any ice and a plain chicken sandwich, just chicken and lettuce and a little mayonnaise.’
‘White or whole?’
‘What?’
‘You want the chicken on white bread or whole wheat bread?’ She jiggled her thigh, looked back at the other waitress. Jewell recognized the type. There was a kind of salesclerk, waiter, waitress, cashier, barely civil to older people. They took their time, spoke contemptuously, slapped down the goods. Jewell bet this one would slop the ginger ale all over the place. Sure enough.
The bread curled up like a pagoda to disclose wilted lettuce and a wad of grey chicken. The ginger ale was mostly ice and slosh. She mopped up the spilled liquid with paper napkins and bent over her road map. Dismayed to see the auto road was on the far side of the mountain. She would have to drive north and all the way around, another sixty miles, it looked like. When the waitress brought her check – $1.75 – she asked her if there was a faster way to get to the auto road.
‘Auto road? I don’t even know where it is. Melanie, you know where the auto road is?’
‘For Mount Washington,’ said Jewell. ‘The auto road that goes up Mount Washington.’
‘I been up it,’ said Melanie. ‘It was cloudy.’
‘What’s the best route?’
‘Just take one-sixteen, then get on two, then get on sixteen, that’s all I know. A couple hours from here, anyway.’
‘Aren’t there any shortcuts, any back roads?’
The first waitress answered. ‘Not that I ever heard of. So, where’d you go last night, Melanie?’
The man in the plaid jacket swiveled around on his stool. ‘You got a good car?’ Unshaven jowls, eyes like pickled onions. Old coot.
‘Yes, I do,’ said Jewell, thinking of the earnest Beetle. ‘I drive it anywhere.’
‘Well, you got a good car and don’t mind gettin’ off the main road, they’s a shortcut, save you eight or ten mild.’ He hitched across the door and hovered over the map. It’s a loggin’ road. Forget one-sixteen. See, you go down here, see, take one-fifteen, go down past Carrol, about three mild past Carrol, then you start watchin’ on the right. Row of equipment sheds, I dunno, six, eight sheds, and after the sheds there’s a right-hand turn. You don’t take that one, but about half a mild farther there’s another right-hand turn and that’s the one you want. It cuts along over here, comes out somewhere there.’ His finger skidded across the map. ‘Save you some mild, ’bout ten mild. If you don’t mind a dirt road.’
‘That’s mostly what I drive on,’ she said. ‘Appreciate the information.’
‘I wouldn’t take his advice if you paid me,’ said Melanie.
It was quarter of two when she came to the rickety pole sheds. She passed a right-hand turn, and watched the odometer to know when she reached half a mile. Nothing. At one and six-tenths miles a ragged gravel road cut southeast. She turned onto it. Not a breath of wind. The dark sky, the chewed spruce of the idiot strip and behind it rough hills choked with brambles and popple trash depressed her. She was tired. Cold seeped into the Beetle. Probably be close to four and starting to get dark when she reached the top of Mount Washington. What time did they close the shop where you got the bumper stickers? But she was so close it would be a shame not to try. An adventure, going up Mount Washington in the near dark. And coming down again. Don’t let it rain, she thought, glad she had the new brakes.
The road roughened, narrowed, pale gravel through the dark woods. A mile or two in, the road formed a Y. There were no signs, no way to tell which went where. The right branch seemed the best bet and she turned onto it. The nameless road crossed a bridge, then twisted uphill in loops and curls; innumerable side roads branched to the left, the right. Mile after mile the road bored into the forest. She passed log landings, an ancient green trailer with a caved-in roof and a pair of antlers dangling over the gaping doorway. The road went black and mucky in the low spots. Mud sprayed up onto the windshield. The gravel had played out. She fought up a grade of shelf rock and onto a corduroy trail of rotting logs through a swamp. There was no place to turn around. She was frightened now and wanted to turn back, but could only go forward. The first ticks of freezing rain. A moose splashed into a stand of spruce stubs. The little car wallowed through holes and the muffler tore loose on one of the logs before she was out of the swamp. The track – it was no longer a road – steepened, a gullied-out nightmare of stones. She could not turn around, could barely go forward.
The fine sleet built up on the windshield. The wipers rasped ineffectually at the mud and ice. Finally, a lurch to the side, a grinding. The Volkswagen was hung up. She switched off the ignition, got out and looked underneath, saw the rock pressing against the undercarriage. The sleet rattled on the little car, hissed in the spruce. It would take a helicopter to get the Beetle off that rock, she thought. There had been a come-along in the old car’s trunk, but it had disappeared when she got the Volkswagen. But if she could find a stout pole or two and get them under the Beetle maybe there was a chance to lever it off. If she had the strength. She was bound to try. But wished for Mink. Saw how he used his rage to pull him through difficult work, through a difficult life. Her heart was pounding. She stumbled into the slash, looking for a good, sound stub. She wasn’t dressed good for this, she thought, the knit pants cuff catching on snags.
Branch slash, decaying trunks, green saplings – nothing that would do. It was the hardest kind of work getting through the tangle of deadwood. Panting, she came to a gully crisscrossed with dead trees, boding with brambles. There was a stub that looked sound and of a size she could manage. She tried for a good position to haul at it. She could lift the near end free, but the far end seemed to be moored by another trunk. She was shaking. Would have to get to the other side of the gully and pry it loose somehow. Knew she could not balance her way over on the fallen trunks like a tightrope walker, like Mink would have done. She struggled, clawed down into the gully, began to force her way through choked brambles and rot. The sleet pattered. It was dark and stinking down in the close stems. Branch stubs jabbed. She fought her way forward, seven, eight feet, her heart hammering, so intent on reaching the other side of the gully she felt only astonishment when the fatal aneurism halted her journey. Her hand clenched wild raspberry canes, relaxed.
39
The Logging Road
DRUMMING NOVEMBER RAIN streamed over the windshield. Gusts rocked the car, slapped wet leaves into the street. Ray’s milky breath condensed on the side windows softening the glare of stoplights, the neon sign CHIN GARDEN (the a in China had never worked) into colored lozenges. The heater whirred its warmth onto his legs. He turned onto Henry Street, the headlights throwing off sparkles from wet trees, the flecked sidewalk. Water charged with leaves raced in the gutters, wet boots flashed like flint
s. The windows of his house shone in the darkness like squares of melting butter.
He pulled into the driveway, aligning the wheels with the sloping strips of concrete on each side of the tufted ridge of grass that brushed the underside of the car. He could see the red of the kitchen curtain through the window, see Mernelle moving around the table, probably smoothing out the place mats or laying the silver out in short rows like children lined up for a photograph.
The door had swelled in the dampness and he had to push it twice before it would open. Mernelle, her rump to him in the tight black pants as she bent and reached into the cupboard under the sink for a fresh sponge said ‘Nasty out?’
‘Pretty bad. Getting colder already. They’re calling for it to snow before morning.’
‘The deer hunters will be glad.’ The wind smashed rain against the back door. The gas tank cover rattled against the house.
‘Yeah, they’ll like it. How long to supper? Smells incredible good. What is it?’
‘Roast pork with baked squash. Seemed like a good idea with this bad weather. And I made apple pie. That’s what you smell, the cinnamon.’
‘You want a drink?’ Hung his damp coat on the wall hook where it could dry. From him came the bitter fragrance of raw wood. His slippers were in the hall.
‘Maybe one. Make it light.’ She peered into the hot oven, jabbing at the pork with the meat fork. Ray turned on the little radio over the sink. Trumpet music, something Latin American with a clicking sound. He took the bottle of bourbon out of the sugar cupboard with its smell of dry pine and spices, the green ginger ale bottle from the refrigerator. Mernelle pulled the ice cube tray out of the freezer.
‘I just filled it this morning,’ she said, ‘so the ice cubes don’t have that old taste.’ She held the tray under running water until the lever cracked the cubes loose with a brief icy groan. Ray stood behind her, leaning against her, pressing her belly against the edge of the sink. He breathed into her hair. She felt the heat of his breath on her scalp, in her ear, felt his mouth at the nape of her neck, his tongue licking the stray hairs.
‘Ah. Ah,’ he said. ‘Home. I love it.’
Her blighted longing for kids flickered. ‘Want to give that roast another fifteen minutes. It’s five pounds so we’ll have enough leftovers to make shepherd’s pie tomorrow.’ She took her drink from him. The glass was cold in her hand. The ice knocked glassily.
In the living room Ray sat in his leatherette recliner, Mernelle on the sofa rich in its gold tweed upholstery, tapered legs stabbing into the shag carpet. The coffee table, of sleek caramel wood, bore a lustrous dish of mints, stacked copies of Lumberyard Review, Motorboat and Reader’s Digest. The plywood paneling shone with lemon oil. Photographs of autumn scenes in stamped brass frames hung around the room. On a table at the end of the room the television set faced them.
At the end of the sofa a cabinet with glass doors, and inside, Mernelle’s bear collection: glass bears, ceramic, wooden, Bakelite, plastic, papier-mâché, a varnished dough bear from Italy, a straw bear from Poland, stuffed cloth bears, twig and stone bears and a metal music box bear with a crank in his back who played ‘Home on the Range.’ She did not know why she collected them. ‘Oh, it’s something to do, a hobby, like. I don’t know, I just like them.’ Ray brought back bears for her from every place he went, from the lumber conventions in Spokane, Denver, Boise, from other countries, from Sweden, even Puerto Rico and Brazil. In a way he collected them; she arranged them on glass shelves. She had to like them. She did like them.
Ray switched on the television set. The blue rectangle swelled out at them and the crooked figures shimmied through desperate snowfall. The images held their attention like flames in a fireplace. At eight-thirty Mernelle went into the kitchen to make Ovaltine and cut the pie, still as warm as sleeping flesh. She arranged the dessert plates, white with blue rims and gold leaves, on the tray, poured the pink-tinged Ovaltine into the cups that matched the plates. Against the sound of the storm she made a chinking of china, played the silver sound of spoons. In the living room Ray set up the little table, spread the yellow cloth on it. She set the tray down gently. They watched the flickering story, their forks muffled in crust and cream. The sight of his empty knees rent her. If there’d been kids they would be putting them to bed about now. Ray would tell the bedtime story. ‘Once upon a time there was a little girl who lived on a farm at the top of a tall, tall hill. Her name was Ivy Sunbeam MacWay, better known as Sunny to all and sundry. Even on Sunday.’
Late in the program the phone rang. Ray stretched. His sharp elbows pointed the plaid shirtsleeves.
‘If that’s someone at the mill—’
‘I’ll get it, Ray. You shouldn’t have to go out on a night like this.’ The black streaming night. She answered the phone, but he was up, standing in the doorway and listening. The hollow voices of the television sank into grim music and the tough voice ‘… I’m a cop … on the day beat out of …’
‘Yes, yes.’ In the nervous questioning voice reserved for strange authorities. Someone was telling her an address. She listened, gestured for a pencil and paper. He stood beside her watching her write a number, directions to a town a hundred miles away in the mountains. ‘She is seventy-two years of age, she was heavyset, but thinner now, maybe five-foot-five in height, I’m not sure. She is shorter than me. She wears glasses.’ She listened to the young voice, ‘I tried to call her yesterday afternoon a couple of times but didn’t get any answer. What time? Well, I’m not sure, but the rain had just started. Maybe about three. Tried again this morning. She is out quite a lot so I didn’t think anything of it. Yes. Yes, I can bring a picture took of her last spring. Me and Ray’ll start right away.’ After she hung up the phone she wondered why her hands didn’t shake, she pressed them against her eyes, then dropped her arms limp to her sides, sucked air in past her teeth.
‘That was the New Hampshire state police. Some deer hunters found Ma’s car way up on a logging road. Looks to have been there a day or two they think – there’s snow on it and no tracks around it. No answer at her phone the police said. It just rings and rings. They had Mr. Colerain drive by the trailer and check, Sheriff Colerain, and she’s not there. They tracked us down through Ott.” She was dialing, her fingers knowing the familiar number and stood listening to the burr-burr, burr-burr, imagined the ringing in the empty trailer.
‘They said they don’t know how the car could ever have drove up there. It is hung up on a rock. They said it is all just rocks and stumps and swamp, that a bulldozer would of had trouble making it up there.’
‘Is she hurt?’
‘They don’t know, Ray. There wasn’t nobody in the car. Her pocketbook is on the seat. There’s money in it. Thirteen dollars. They needed a description so they can call the motels and hospitals. They said it is snowing to beat the band up there. Ray, what in the hell was she doing on a log road up past Riddle Gap, New Hampshire? You know some burglar or worse could of broke in, kidnapped her, stole her car.’
‘Get your warm duds on. This will be a bad trip through them damn New Hampshire mountains.’
The land steepened on the east side of the Connecticut River. Mernelle sat on the edge of the seat, braced her hand against the dash. The road gleamed black in the headlights, the windshield wipers nodded.
‘She’s been funny the last few months, Ray. Remember in August when she came home with somebody’s mailbox dragging off the back bumper? It must have made a terrible noise going down the road and she said she never even heard it. And Ray, the time she tried to cross the brook when the bridge was out and got the car in a hole? She’s been a terror in that damn car. She’s too old to drive, Ray. I’m going to tell her, too, right to her face.’
The rain clicked, grain of ice in each drop. As the temperature fell ice ridges built up at the extremities of each sweep of the wipers, leaving fans of clear glass outlined in ice. The wipers scraped and clawed. Ray pulled over gingerly and picked the ice off the wipers by hand. B
lack ice coated the windshield as he worked on the wipers. He scraped the windshield clear, but in less than a mile had to pull over again and clear the ice buildup. The defroster roared but only produced a saucer-sized rising moon of clear glass, forcing him to drive with his head craning up over the steering wheel.
The steep roads had not been sanded and the DeSoto slewed, the rear end throwing out on even the gentlest curves. On hills they did and skidded sideways. No headlights came from the other direction but far behind them Ray saw the slow crawl of another vehicle in the rearview mirror.
‘I bet that’s the sand truck behind us,’ said Ray. They wavered along at twenty miles an hour, the sleet pouring down like salt. In Jarvis it changed to snow.
‘Small favors,’ said Ray. But the tires held on snow, the wipers swept the flakes away. He increased the speed to a steady thirty.
She woke in the hot motel sheets and knew by the sound of his breathing that Ray’s eyes were open. The cramped room, a plastic chair crowding the double bed, the television set, was stifling. Her head ached. The heat was on full blast, and from the gushing air she knew it was bitter outside.
‘How long you been awake?’ she whispered.
‘Haven’t been to sleep yet. I just keep thinking she might be out there. Getting awful cold out.’ He got up and pulled at the Venetian blind, his wedding ring a glint. The slats rose at a crooked angle. A crystalline haze blurred the motel yard light. The fine, fine snow that fell when it was bitter cold. There was the wind, he thought. Even if someone was dressed warm and hunkered down in a hollow tree, in a sheltered corner, how long could they last? Did old farm women burn with fires of endurance or did they let go quick and easy?
‘What do you think, Ray?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know. It don’t look too good, honey. But we got to keep our fingers crossed. She might be in somebody’s spare room right now. Don’t borrow a worry.’
