Snowbound

by Bill Pronzini

  Cain went back to bed and lay waiting for the sleep he knew would not come again.

  Matt Hughes said, “I’d better get down there. If that slide is as bad as it sounded, I’ll be needed in more ways than one.” He crossed to the bedroom closet, shedding his pajamas, and began to dress quickly.

  Rebecca drew the blankets tightly against her throat and did not look at her husband. The sheets were sleep-warm, but she was still touched by the same cold as on the night before. The masculine odor of Matt’s body and the faint lingering perfume he had brought home with him were vaguely repellent in her nostrils.

  The sound of the avalanche and the spasming of the house had startled her badly at first; but once she had known what it was, once Matt had jumped up and run to the windows and begun shouting about a pass-cliff slide, the apprehension had left her, and she was calm. He hadn’t seen that, though; with maddening condescension he had told her not to be frightened, that everything would be all right-as if she were the intrinsic child and not he.

  He said now, as he buttoned one of his soft-wool shirts, “John and Vince Tribucci were right, after all. But there’s nothing we could have done; you can’t control nature or counteract the will of God.”

  I wish you’d stop talking about God, Rebecca thought. You’re always talking about God, you make such a mockery of religion. But she did not say anything.

  Hughes put on his mackinaw and stepped around the foot of the bed to kiss her absently on the forehead. “Depending on how bad it is, I’ll come back home or call you from the Mercantile. Either way, I’ll let you know soon.”

  It had not even occurred to him, she knew, to ask her along-or to question why she was not eager of her own volition to accompany him. She said, “All right.”

  When he was gone, Rebecca lay thinking about the slide to keep from dwelling on last night’s experience with Zachary Cain-and on what she had done in this same bed after returning from the cabin. If the pass had been blocked, it meant they were now snowbound for, probably, several days. Was that bad or good? A little of both, she supposed. Nobody could come into Hidden Valley, which meant no mail and no fresh supplies: a minor inconvenience. And nobody could leave the valley, another inconvenience for most, particularly since this was the Christmas season. It also meant that Matt could not meet his current mistress and that he would therefore be forced to spend tonight and the next few nights with his wife. Forced, that was the key word; forced. Still, it was what she wanted-wasn’t it?

  I don’t know, she thought then. I don’t know what I want anymore.

  And got up listlessly to face another day.

  Peggy Tyler’s mother-a faded prototype of her daughter-came running upstairs and opened the door to Peggy’s room without knocking. She was fully dressed and had been in the kitchen making coffee. “It must have been a slide,” she said breathlessly. “It must have been a terrible slide in the pass, I don’t know what else it could have been.”

  “I guess that’s what it was,” Peggy said. She was normally a heavy sleeper, and while she had been awakened by the roaring and the quaking, her mind was still wrapped in languid dreams of a warm sun and a warm sea. Her body ached pleasantly; there was a gentle soreness in her loins, and her breasts and nipples tingled from the remembered manipulations of Matt Hughes’ hands and lips. The fucking had been very good last night: some of the best she’d ever had. Of course, the reason for that was Matt’s magnificent Christmas present, which he had presented to her with a kind of shy expectation, as if he had been afraid she would not be pleased, the moment they had entered the motel room.

  One thousand dollars-cash.

  Dollar sign-one-zero-zero-zero.

  After a gift like that, the fucking just had to be very good.

  Her mother said, “Thank the Lord it didn’t happen earlier. You didn’t get home until after one; suppose it had happened while you were driving through the pass? You might have been killed!”

  “It didn’t happen while I was driving through the pass.”

  “It might have. Where were you so late again?”

  “I told you before, Mother,” Peggy said. “I’ve joined a group in Soda Grove that’s putting on a Christmas pageant, and there’s a lot of work to be done.”

  Mrs. Tyler sighed. “We might be snowbound; there certainly is the chance of it. You won’t be able to go to work today or maybe for the rest of the week.”

  How awful, Peggy thought. She said, “I have some sick leave coming. Look, Mother, let’s not get into a panic, okay? If we’re snowbound, then we’re snowbound. It’s no big thing.”

  “Well, we’d better go see, we’d better go find out right away. Get dressed now, don’t dawdle.” Mrs. Tyler went out of the room and closed the door behind her.

  Peggy had no desire to leave the warmth of her bed; but if she didn’t, her mother would come back up and there would be an argument, and she felt too good today to want to argue about anything. Oh hell, she might as well get up then, and anyway, the time was not far off when she could spend whole days in bed if she felt like it-not far off at all, now.

  Leisurely, she swung the covers back and stood up and padded across to where her purse sat on the dresser. She took out the sheaf of fifty-dollar bills Matt Hughes had given her and stroked the money with one finger, smiling; then, reluctantly, she tucked it away again in the compartment where she kept her bankbook and began to dress. When she went downstairs to join her mother a few minutes later, she still wore the same smile.

  In the cabin at Mule Deer Lake, Kubion and Brodie and Loxner slept unaware of what had happened at the entrance to Hidden Valley; the thunderburst of the avalanche, diminished by the distance, had not disturbed them.

  Loxner and Brodie were quiet in their beds, sleeping soundly. Kubion dreamed of spiders-black, cold, feathery-soft; crawling over him with mouths gaping in wet red hunger-and trembled and trembled and trembled.

  The Tribucci brothers and Walt Halliday were the first Hidden Valley residents to reach the slide. They met on Sierra Street where it narrowed into County 235-A, and from there they could see it clearly through a light sifting of snow. Solemnly, wordlessly, the three men tramped up the sharp incline of the roadway and stopped when they could go no further, staring at the solid blockage rising up into the gray morning sky.

  Sheer slabs of granite and splintered trees with branches and strips of bark torn away, protruded from the irregular surfaces like shattered bones. The western cliff face seemed steeper than it had been, scarred with an inverted fanshell chute that shone blackly against the dove-colored surroundings. In the stillness you could hear the mounded snow and ice and rock settling with a soft rumbling sound, like a thin echo of the slide itself.

  Halliday said, his voice subdued, “Bad. Jesus, about as bad as it could be.”

  Both Tribuccis nodded gravely; there did not seem to be anything else to say.

  Several other Hidden Valley residents began to arrive, among them Lew Coopersmith and Frank McNeil and Mayor Matt Hughes. They, too, were quietly stunned by what they saw.

  Hughes said finally, “My God, do you suppose anybody was in the pass when it happened?”

  “Not likely,” Vince Tribucci answered. “What with the amount of snow dropped by the blizzard last night, I doubt if the road was passable even before the slide. If it had to happen, this was probably the best time for it.”

  Hughes blew on chilled hands; in his haste he had forgotten his gloves. “I’d better get on the phone to the county seat and let them know about this and ask them to get men and equipment out as quickly as possible.” He turned and hurried back to where he had left his car.

  Frank McNeil turned to John Tribucci. “How long you figure it’ll take to clear through?”

  “From the way it looks, I’d guess at least a week. But if we keep getting heavy snows, it could take two or more.”

  McNeil pursed his lips sourly. “Merry Christmas,” he said, “and a Happy goddamn New Year.”

  Thirte
en

  By nine o’clock the clouds had thinned and scattered to the east, and the whitish eye of a pale winter sun dominated a widening swath of sky. There was no wind, and the thin air had lost most of its chill. On the inner valley slopes and in parts of the valley itself, some of the deep powder drifts created by the night’s storm began to slowly melt, forming little cascades in intricate, interconnecting patterns. Ice unprotected by pockets of shadow crackled intermittently in the warming day; the snow on the village streets commenced liquefying into slush.

  Kubion started in from the Mule Deer Lake cabin just before noon, handling the car cautiously, squinting through the streaked windshield. The glare of sun on snow hurt his eyes and intensified the dull ache in his temples. He felt lousy today, badly strung out. Not much sleep last night, that was one of the things responsible-and that dream he’d had, the spiders crawling over him with their red gaping mouths. Jesus! He loathed spiders; they were the one thing which terrified him. He’d never had a nightmare like that before, and it worried him; it was as disquieting as the recurring headaches and his irrational inclination to violence.

  The headaches were another source of his uptight feeling. The dull pain in his temples and forehead hadn’t developed into one so far, but he knew it could happen easily enough, he knew he could lose control again. He could feel the impulsive need to destroy lying just below the surface of his emotions, like something ineffectually chained in a dark cave, waiting for the opportunity to break free and come screaming into the light.

  And there was the need to get out of this frigging wilderness, to get back to civilization, where they could set up another score; the attendant frustration of knowing they couldn’t chance it the way things were. According to the morning radio reports, the Sacramento cops had finally found the rented garage and the dummy armored car; there would be no lessening of the heat for some time yet.

  Kubion drove down onto Sierra Street and noticed that there was more activity in the village than usual-that two people were walking up the middle of the road toward the pass. Then he became aware of the huge mound of snow and rock and splintered trees which blocked the valley entrance in a long downward fan. What the hell? he thought.

  He kept on past the Mercantile-he had come in for a few minor supplies, to get out of the cabin again for a while-and pulled the car into the Shell station and parked it on the apron. He went up the rest of the way on foot, stopping next to the man and woman he had seen trudging along the road: a couple of senior citizens in plaid mackinaws and woolen hats. “What happened here?” he asked them. “Avalanche, is that what it is?”

  Lew Coopersmith looked at him, frowned slightly, and then seemed to place him. “That’s what it is,” he said at length.

  “When did it happen?”

  “Just at dawn. Woke up the whole village.”

  “Yeah, I can imagine.”

  “If you and your friend planned on leaving before Christmas, I’m afraid you won’t be able to do it. According to estimates, we’ll be snowbound at least a week and maybe more.”

  “You mean nobody can get in or out of the valley?”

  “Not unless they use snowmobiles around and through ten or fifteen miles of heavy timber. The pass is blocked solid.”

  Some country, all right, Kubion thought: the frozen bunghole of creation. Well, what difference did it make? If anything, it was a favorable occurrence; for the next week or so they would be cut off completely from all the fuzz on the outside.

  But he said, playing it cautious, “My friend’s wife is going to scream like a wounded eagle. She was expecting us for the holidays, back in San Francisco. We were leaving Saturday.”

  Ellen Coopersmith said, “Oh, that’s too bad.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Phone lines are open,” Coopersmith told him, “so it isn’t like we were completely isolated. Your friend will be able to call his wife and tell her the circumstances.”

  “He’ll want to do that, okay. Thanks.”

  Coopersmith nodded. “Sorry about the inconvenience, but it’s just one of those things that happens. Nothing you can do.”

  “I guess not,” Kubion said. He turned away and walked back to his car and sat unmoving behind the wheel, staring up at the slide. An idea began to nudge his mind. Snowbound, he thought. Nobody can get in or out of the valley. No contact with the outside except by telephone. Made-to-order kind of situation, by God. And he remembered the check Matt Hughes had cashed for the old man in the Mercantile the previous afternoon: unofficial bank and how much was there in that office safe? Ten thousand? Maybe not even that much, and then again maybe more-maybe a lot more. How many people in Hidden Valley? Seventy-five or so, wasn’t it? Hicks; but hicks sometimes had plenty of money, you were always hearing about some old fart who kept his life’s savings in a fruit jar because he didn’t trust banks. Might even be as much as thirty or forty thousand in the valley…

  Abruptly, Kubion shook himself. Christ! He was thinking like a punk again, there was no score for them here, how could there be? They were trapped along with the rest of the damned people, and there was the safe house to think of. The hicks knew him and Brodie by sight, if not Loxner, and realistically there just didn’t figure to be nearly enough in it in the first place. Even if there was a hundred grand in cash and jewelry in Hidden Valley, it wouldn’t be worth it. Still, it was a wild concept: rip off an entire valley. Wouldn’t that be the cat’s nuts! But three men couldn’t execute a caper like that-or could they? Well there was probably a way to do it and get away with it, all right; the snowbound business took care of any outside interference, it would be like working in a big sealed room… Oh shit, it was crazy and stupid to even consider it. They needed a job like Greenfront should have been: safe, clean, big take, no loose ends, no people who knew what they really looked like and could identify them afterward.

  But a whole valley, a whole goddamn valley.

  Could it be done, with just three men?

  Kubion lit a cigarette and sat drumming his fingers on the hard plastic of the steering wheel. Come on, come on, he thought, it’s a pipe dream. And then: Okay, so it’s a pipe dream, so actually doing it is all the way out. The thing is, can it be done on paper? Is it workable at all?

  He sucked at his cigarette. Well, why not find out? He was uptight, wasn’t he? The waiting-at least another ten days of it for sure now-and the worrying about those bastard headaches and that dream about the spiders: all of it pressing in on him, flooding his mind. What he needed was to focus his thoughts on something else, something that would keep him from blowing off, and there was nothing better for that than the working out of a challenging score-even an imaginary one.

  Kubion started the car and drove back along Sierra Street and parked across from the Mercantile; got out and slogged through the liquidy snow to enter the store. Except for the white-haired old lady who had waited on him the day before, the place appeared empty. Recorded Christmas music still blared away from the wall loudspeakers: some clown singing about a winter wonderland. Yeah.

  Maude Fredericks said when he reached the counter, “Isn’t it terrible about the slide? Such a thing to happen just before Christmas.”

  “Sure,” Kubion said. “Terrible. Tell me, you have a detail map of this area?”

  Her brow wrinkled quizzically. “Well, we have a specially printed tourist brochure that includes a comprehensive Hidden Valley map. We also have a county topographical map.”

  “Fine, I’ll take both,” Kubion said, thinking: And wouldn’t you crap your drawers, lady, if you had any idea what I want them for….

  Fourteen

  Cain spent most of that day snowshoe walking among the lodgepole pine on the upper east slope, where the stillness was almost breathless and the air was thick with the cold, fresh, sweet scent of the mountain forest in winter.

  He knew these woods well, the series of hiking paths which crosshatched them, because he had spent a considerable amount of time exploring the area during
the summer and fall months. When he was having a particularly bad day and the weather permitted, he had found that taking long walks served as an effective tranquilizer. Alone deep in the forest, you were mostly able to shut off your thoughts and to allow only your senses to govern; and, too, you made yourself physically tired, a weariness that acted like a supplemental narcotic to the liquor.

  But on this day, as on the previous two, the forest did nothing to erase the continuing feeling of loneliness which had come over him on Monday night-which lingered like a sudden bright and maddening stain on the fabric of his mind; if anything, the absolute solitude of the surroundings increased it. He felt confused, restless, irritable. And to make it worse, now the damned people in this valley were starting to bother him.

  Two unwanted and unexpected visitors yesterday. First that old man, the retired county sheriff named Coopersmith: pleasant, apologetic, asking politely if he knew anything about a door having been jimmied open at the Valley Cafe. It hadn’t been the indirect implication that he was a malicious vandal which had caused him to snap angrily at Coopersmith; it had been the visit itself, the intrusion on his aloneness. The same was true of Rebecca Hughes’ appearance last night. Perhaps she had come simply because she was lonely and wanted some innocent companionship, but that had not mattered at the time. He had only wanted to be rid of her; he didn’t want conversation, and he particularly didn’t want conversation centered on the subject of loneliness; so he had made the obvious insinuations, he had treated her, cruelly, like a tramp.

  But this morning when he’d reexamined the incident not long after being awakened by the still-unidentified earth-quakelike concussion, he had felt a sense of shame. He’d hurt her, her tears had been genuine when she’d run out, and the last thing he truly cared to do, after what he had done to his own family, was to inflict pain on anyone. Alone and fully sober, he’d thought that he could have got her to leave some other way and was sorry he hadn’t. Briefly he’d considered going down to the Hughes’ house and apologizing to her, but the embarrassed intimacy of a personal apology was something he simply couldn’t face. And if yesterday were any indication, it would become necessary to leave Hidden Valley. There were plenty of similar places in the Sierra; it made no difference at all in which of them he lived just as long as he was left alone.