Snowbound

by Bill Pronzini

  “No,” Kubion said.

  “The bullet went clean through, but Jesus, it hurts.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I never been shot before,” Loxner said defensively. “That’s why I maybe froze up a little back there. You get shot like that, for the first time, it shakes the crap out of you.”

  “Yeah, yeah, shut up about it.”

  “Fucking security cop, fucking cop,” Loxner said, and lapsed into silence.

  Brodie held the speedometer needle on sixty. “A hundred grand, maybe more, shot straight up the ass. And we’re out better than ten on top of it. Now what the hell do we do for a stake?”

  “We’ll make a score somewhere,” Kubion said.

  “Sure-but where?”

  “You leave that to me. I’ll think of something. I’ll think of something, all right.”

  Four

  The light began to go out of the somber afternoon sky at four o’clock, dimming rapidly behind a thick curtain of snow, turning the pines and fir trees into wraithlike silhouettes on the steep slopes of Hidden Valley. Distorted by the snowfall, the brightening village lights-the multihued Christmas bulbs strung across Sierra Street-were hazy aureoles that seemed somehow to lack warmth and comfort in the encroaching darkness. And the thin, sharp wind sang lonely and bitter, like something lost in the wilderness and resigned to its fate.

  That’s me, Rebecca Hughes thought as she sat listening to the wind in the big, empty Lassen Drive house: something lonely and bitter and lost and resigned. A dull candle sitting in the window, waiting for the return of the prodigal. Alas, poor Rebecca, I knew her well…

  She reached out in the darkness and located her cigarettes on the coffee table. In the flame of her lighter, the six-foot Christmas tree across the living room looked bleak and forlorn — colored ornaments gleaming blackly, silver tinsel like opalescent worms hanging from the dark branches: a symbol of joy that was completely joyless in the shadowed room. The furnishings, too, seemed strange and unused, as if they were parts of a museum exhibit; she had picked out the decor herself when she and Matt were married seven years before-Pennsylvania Dutch with copper accessories-and she had loved it then, it represented home and happiness then. Now it was meaningless, like the tree, perhaps even like life itself.

  Turning slightly to light her cigarette, Rebecca saw her reflection in the hoar-frosted window behind the couch. She paused, staring at herself in the flickering glow. A pretty face once, an animated face, with laughter in the gray eyes and a suggestion of passion in the soft mouth. But in this moment, with her chestnut-colored hair pulled back into a tight chignon at the back of her neck, the face looked severe and weary and deeply lined; in this moment, she was a twenty-eight-year-old woman who was forty years of age.

  She moved her gaze from the window, snapping the lighter shut and putting the room in heavy darkness again, thinking: I wonder who she is this time? Not that it matters, but you can’t help wondering. Probably not a valley resident; Matt has always been so very careful to preserve his saintly image here. Young, of course. Large breasts, of course, he always did like large breasts, mine never quite appeared to suit him. My God-how insanely ironic if that were the reason behind it all! I’m sorry, Rebecca, your tits are much too small, I’m going to have to find a mistress or two or twenty, you do understand, don’t you? Yes, certainly I understand, dear; I couldn’t possibly expect you to be faithful to me when my boobs are so small, I’m only sorry they didn’t grow larger so we could have had a perfectly happy marriage.

  Well what difference did it make, really, why he did it? He did it, that was all. Pathetically, in her eyes-like a child who thinks he’s being very clever with his mischief; yes, like a child: pleasant, good-hearted, pious, playing an adventurous game and not quite realizing the wrongness of it, not quite realizing his own hypocrisy. When she had found out about the waitress in Soda Grove six years ago and confronted him with the knowledge, he had broken down and cried, head against her bosom, saying, “I don’t know why I did it, Becky, it just happened, and I’m sorry, forgive me, I love you,” and she had forgiven him, and four months later it had happened again; it had been happening ever since.

  This particular little affair had been going on for about a month now. It had started like all the others, with a transparent excuse for not coming home in the evening, and it had progressed like all the others: Matt returning after midnight two and three and four times a week, with perfume lingering on his body and long hairs on his clothes (blond this time), falling into bed exhausted. He had not touched her, of course, since it began; he never touched her, never wanted her, never had anything left for her in any way. It would be like this for a while yet, a few more weeks. Then he would tire of the new girl, or she would tire of him, and the cycle would begin anew: an apology for his neglect, a few less than ardent nights (she had always been passionate, that couldn’t be the reason for the endless string of mistresses), expensive gifts, a period of attentiveness-and then, just when she would begin to think she had a husband again, he would call her to say that he would not be home until late…

  She had not bothered to confront him again after the Soda Grove waitress. He would have told her the same thing he had that first time, and have begged her forgiveness, and have professed his love for her. And the terrible thing was, she knew he did love her in some way she could never understand and did not want to lose her. He would never, as a result, leave her for one of the girls with whom he slept. Things would have been so much easier if there had been that possibility, Rebecca often thought; the decision would have been taken out of her hands. But it would never happen, and she had simply been unable to take the initiative herself: Little Orphan Rebecca with no place to go, no particular skills, a little afraid of the big wide world beyond these mountains where she had been born and reared; who could not seem to stop believing in love-conquers-all and happy endings and other fairy tales. So she forgave him tacitly each time and remained with him-enduring, pretending. Withering.

  She felt suddenly very cold, as if the wind had managed to get inside the warm house; gooseflesh formed on her bare upper arms, beneath the short sleeves of the blouse she wore. Standing, putting out her cigarette in the cloisonne table tray, she went out of the dark room to the stairs in the main hall. The bedroom she shared with Matt was at the front of the house, directly above the living room. It, too, seemed cold and dismal to Rebecca tonight-and the wide, antique-framed double bed was a kind of index of her melancholy.

  She did not turn on the lights. She could see well enough in the dark: walking half-blind through life or half-blind through a familiar house, easy enough to do once you got used to it. Crossing to the walk-in closet, she took out a heavy wool pullover and slipped it over her head. Then she stood for a moment, arms folded across her breasts, hugging herself. What now? she thought. Back downstairs to sit smoking by the window? Television? Soft music? Loud music? Another book? How about a hot bath-or, more appropriately, a cold shower?

  She wished she knew how to sublimate. That was what modern women did, wasn’t it? They sublimated their frustrations, they developed hobbies or joined committees or became Fern Libbers or played bridge or painted pictures or wrote stories or took jobs or studied astrology or Far East religions — things like that. Well, that was fine for modern women, but what about old-fashioned members of the “weaker sex” like Rebecca Hughes? She wasn’t a collector, and she hated card games, and she had no artistic talent of any kind, and the only jobs you could get in an area such as this were prosaic and totally unrewarding, offering no mental commitment whatsoever. There were no committees or clubs in Hidden Valley, you had to go to Soda Grove, and besides, she was neither a joiner nor a mixer, and if that wasn’t enough, she was afraid to drive any distance in snow and ice. She had no interest in astrology or Far East religions or any of the other passions of the Aware Woman. It was not that she was apathetic or incapable of individualism; she had always possessed a genuine fondness for literature and r
ead extensively and considered herself well informed and had opinions and believed in certain causes. She belonged to several book clubs and regularly utilized the services of the mobile county lending library when it came through twice a month; she read until her eyes ached and her mind refused to grasp the meaning of words and sentences. And how much reading could you do? Too much-and not enough.

  The simple truth was that she did not know how to sublimate; she was not modern, and she was not by any means “liberated.” She recalled clearly enough the time she had decided she was, two years previously, and her resolution to strike back at Matt in the most fitting manner: by doing exactly what he was doing, sauce for the goose as well as the gander. Why not? she’d thought then. Why couldn’t she, too, find solace and fulfill her needs in someone else’s bed?

  And so she had called Rae Johnson, a girl in Reno whom she had gone to school with, a blackjack dealer in one of the casinos and a self-proclaimed free spirit, and Rae had said, Sure, come on over. Rebecca had told Matt she was going away on a visit for a short while, and he said he thought that was a fine idea, it would do her good-very eager to get rid of her because he was in the middle of one of his affairs then. She took the bus to Reno from Soda Grove, and Rae conducted her on a tour of all the clubs and introduced her to several male friends, sensing that Rebecca had come for a fling without anything having been said about it.

  She had liked the man named Doug, she could no longer remember his last name, the moment she’d been introduced to him. Witty, charming, intelligent, easy to talk to, and when he had asked her up to his apartment for a drink, she consented readily enough; she had done a lot of drinking that night-something she seldom did because she was prone to violent and prolonged hangovers-and the liquor and the flashing neon and the bright sophisticated conversation had apparently dissolved all inhibitions, and she had needed desperately to be loved, it had been a long time then as it was a long time now. They sat together on his sofa and drank vodka gimlets, and he kissed her, put his tongue in her mouth, stroked her breasts almost casually-and all at once the euphoria and the anticipation and the passion faded away, and she was completely sober; she was like slick silver ice inside. She broke the kiss, and he looked at her smiling and suggested they go into the bedroom, and she could see the outline of his penis, half-erect, her eyes on him there and nowhere else, and fright spiraled inside her, and she couldn’t go through with it, she simply could not go through with it. She pushed away from him, flushed and ashamed, straightening her skirt and blouse, putting on her coat, not looking at him at all then; and even though he did not protest, was in fact nonchalant in his mild defeat, she had had the abased feeling that he was silently laughing at her.

  She left Reno the next morning, not explaining to Rae because Rae knew by looking at her what the trouble was, and came back to Hidden Valley filled with the sense of resignation. There had been no more flings…

  Aimlessly Rebecca left the bedroom and went downstairs, along the hallway into the bright copper-tone kitchen at the rear of the house. Again, she did not turn on the lights. She rummaged through one of the pine cupboards over the drainboard, looking for the coffee, and then remembered she had used the last of it during the afternoon-that was why she had called Matt, for God’s sake. No coffee then, and how about a nice hot cup of tea? Yes, fine, and it did not matter in the least that she hated the taste of the stuff.

  She filled a kettle with icy tap water, set it on the stove, and went back to stand in front of the drainboard, waiting in the darkness for the water to heat. As she stood there, she found herself staring through the window over the sink, through the snowy dark and the ghostly pines at the faint haze of light in the cabin five hundred yards farther up the slope. Zachary Cain, reticent recluse, she thought. Never talks to anyone, seldom leaves the cabin. According to Matt, he buys five or six bottles of whiskey a week, which means he sits up there and drinks alone, and I wonder why, I wonder who he is?

  When the water finally began to boil, she made the cup of tea and laced it liberally with sugar and carried it into the living room. As she sat again on the couch, she continued to wonder about the man named Zachary Cain-who he was, why he drank so much, what his reason was for coming to a place like Hidden Valley. And, even though it didn’t really matter, couldn’t really matter, if he too were somehow lonely.

  Five

  Lying not-quite-drunk in the darkened cabin bedroom, Cain felt a sense of acute loneliness that was for the first time disassociated from Angie and Lindy and Steve.

  The day had been another of the bad ones, filled with painful memories of his family that deepened what was an already mordant despair. But with the coming of darkness, those were not the only memories which had plagued him. Inexplicably, he found himself thinking of things he had locked away in a corner of his mind for the past six months.

  There was his work, his abandoned profession. He had been an architect-a good one, a dedicated craftsman-and he recalled how it had been and how you could lose yourself in mathematics and blueprints and sheer creativity, and the way you felt when you saw one of your designs taking shape in wood and glass and stone, standing complete, an entity you alone had conceived.

  There were the friends with whom he had willfully severed all relations, by disappearing from San Francisco without word shortly after the accident: Don Collins, another senior employee of the architectural firm for which he had worked and his closest friend; Bert Rhymer, whom he had known since their collegiate days at Stanford; Barry Kells, Fred Gaines, Walt Yamaguchi. And all the easy confidences they had exchanged, the interests they had shared, the laughter they had known.

  There were the simple pleasures and relaxations, the little things that rounded out and made complete a man’s life: the look of San Francisco, the multifaceted jewel of lights that was The City on a warm spring or summer night; drinking ice-chilled beer and fishing languidly for bass beneath the cottonwoods and willows on the narrow waterways of the San Joaquin Delta; sailing on the Bay on bright windy afternoons, venturing under the Golden Gate Bridge and out onto the Pacific beyond Land’s End for a glimpse of San Francisco as the seafarers saw it; reading books and viewing old movies on television and listening to the immortal threads of sound woven long ago by Bix and Kid Ory and Satchmo and W. C. Handy. These, yes, and a dozen more.

  The memories flooded his mind unbidden, unwanted, and he could not seem to consume enough alcohol to drive them back into that mental corner. The loneliness was born then, selfish pathos, and because he didn’t want it and could not reconcile it, he was angry with himself and almost desperately uneasy. The normality of his past life was dead and buried-he too was dead, inside where it counted-and even at Christmas, even if miracles were possible and the effort was worth making, you could not resurrect the dead. But the loneliness persisted, creating a senseless paradox: hollow man who wants and needs to be alone, and is lonely.

  Cain lay motionless on the bed, with his face turned toward the closed door-vaguely aware of the thin strip of light filtering in beneath it, aware that he had not shut off the lamps when he’d quit the front room a few minutes earlier. The hell with it, he thought. The hell with the lamps. He moved his head in a quadrant then and stared at the closet door opposite. Inside, the 30.06 Savage was propped against the back wall, fully loaded, where he’d put it when he first came to Hidden Valley. He could not get up and go over there tonight any more than he had been able to do it any of the other nights. He simply did not have the guts to kill himself, the fact of that was inescapable; he had found it out on the evening three days after the accident, when he had left the hotel room in downtown San Francisco, driven out to Oyster Point, got the rifle from the trunk and loaded it and put the muzzle into his mouth, finger stiff on the trigger, and sat there for thirty minutes that way, sweat drenching him, trying to pull that trigger and not being able to do it. It would always be as it had been on that night-but that did not stop him from thinking about it, the single shot that would end al
l the suffering and allow him the same oblivion which he had through his carelessness inflicted on Angie, on Lindy, on Steve…

  “Christ!” Cain said aloud, and reached over to drag the bourbon bottle and an empty glass from the nightstand. He poured the glass half-full, drank all of it in two convulsive swallows, gagged, felt the liquor churning hot and acrid in his stomach.

  Lonely. Lonely!

  He swung his feet off the bed and went shakily into the bathroom and knelt in front of the toilet and vomited a half dozen times, painfully. When there was nothing left, he stood up and rinsed his mouth from the sink tap, washed his face and neck in the icy mountain water. Then he returned to the bed and sprawled out prone, breathing thickly.

  Angie and the kids, gone, gone.

  But not architecture, not San Francisco, not Don Collins and Bert Rhymer-not me.

  Lonely.

  No!

  Lonely, lonely, lonely…

  Six

  In the living room of his brother’s Eldorado Street house, John Tribucci sat with his wife, Ann, and played that fine old prospective-parents game known as Choosing a Name for the Baby

  “I still think,” Ann said, “that if it’s a boy, he should be called John Junior.” She was sitting uncomfortably, hugely, on the sofa, one hand resting on the swell of her abdomen; beneath the high elastic waist of the maternity dress she wore even her breasts seemed swollen to twice their normal size. Long-legged and normally slender, she had high cheekbones and rich-toned olive skin and straight, silky black hair parted in the middle-clear testimony to her part-Amerind heritage, her great-grandmother having been a full-blooded Miwoc. Pregnant or not, she was the most beautiful and the most sensual woman Tribucci had ever known.

  He said, “One Johnny around the house is plenty. Besides, I refuse to be prematurely referred to as John Tribucci, Senior.”