Whiteout Conditions

by Tariq Shah

  In one hand, Vince has the leash. In the other, he’s got the hacksaw, dangling from the pinkie of his bad hand.

  The moon glows, eviscerating a wad of clouds as we enter the woods. An old tree stump is just up ahead, in a clearing atop a gentle rise. I think the dog is lucky, in a way. Such a beautiful place. As if it can read my thoughts it thrashes against the leash, refusing to be led, flicking blood in its tirade.

  “Get a rock or something will you?” Vince says. “Damn dog is stubborn.”

  There aren’t any rocks in sight. But there is a good size log.

  “Tie off the leash on that trunk,” he says, handing it to me. “Then we’ll stun him. Set him up on the stump.”

  I trudge off to the oak he pointed at, and, looping the leash around it, make a kind of pulley I can crank the dog back with.

  “Remember when we used to pretend we were Arctic explorers, Vince?”

  “I don’t have time for memory lane here, Ant. Hit the dog and let’s go.” He draws a hipper of Canadian Club from his jacket pocket and pulls from it hard and tosses the bottle to me. “Go on.”

  When I move toward Bullets, he maintains distance.

  “We’re not playin’ that game, Ant,” Vince says. “I got to come at him from the other side, or you’ll be chasing him all fucking night.” He sighs and swears in the dark, annoyed this is all more tricky than he imagined.

  “Go slow,” I call to him, “and go kind of in a roundabout way, so he doesn’t catch on what you’re up to.”

  “I know how to do it.”

  Vince hikes off. Bullets and I take stock of each other. He hasn’t really been that real until now. I take a seat in the snow. “Hi again,” I whisper.

  “You know we could probably just do nothing and let this thing choke itself out,” I call out to Vince.

  He snorts at that.

  Then I catch him snapping branches as he stalks up behind the tree where the dog’s tied. Bullets hears too. He comes charging through the snow.

  Vince backtracks in a panic, and Bullets winces when the end of the leash checks his advance. He scrambles to retreat. The fright in Vince’s eyes would have been revenge enough almost, were I the dog, I think, as it lunges with fresh adrenaline against the leash. I approach from behind and though it is with heartfelt, advanced apology, I do crown the poor son of a bitch.

  The dog’s body becomes dead weight. Vince stomps up ahead of me.

  “This is dumb.”

  “Let’s move,” he says, then takes the dog himself, who is already coming-to. With his good hand, he heaves it atop the tree stump. Mean-spirited, the wind thrashes and the drifts come alive like a disturbed nocturnal swarm fleeing the presence of some cloaked predator just beyond detection. The hacksaw’s in the snow, a few feet away.

  As he reaches for it with his bad hand, even I can see how painful it is—his fingers tremble; Vince is sweating, and that is when, after making sure that log’s one wicked knot is face-down like the stud of a mace, and with all what strength I am able to summon, I bring it down.

  I had closed my eyes. There is only whimpering.

  I open them to find him face down in the snow, toiling to right himself. It’s almost peaceful again, but it doesn’t last. Vince is rolling around, too injured to breathe at first. He cradles his hand, moaning and wriggling around. It gives me the shivers.

  “You broke it,” he grunts, “it’s broke, ah…”

  I have the leash half undone by then, unlooping it ’round the tree like a jackass to get it free. Telling the dog it dare not fuss now, but the dog’s already drained, the adrenaline burned off. I have to haul him in a kind of bear hug, all the way back, down the hill, through the pretty woods, the dead field, past the chain and the sign, back to the Cutlass. And the snow comes down so dense I almost wonder whether there are brats in the trees emptying feather pillows above us.

  I open the back door and buckle him in, looking Bullets in the face for the first time in years. His mouth is a mess of broken teeth and bloody sockets. I can’t imagine him living long. His eyes are swimming.

  I search my pockets, and when I find it, I put the leftover half pill of oxy in my palm. Bullets looks at me, looks at it, looks at me. I crush it up as good as I can, then swipe his tongue with the crumble, and smear his nose with the powder that’s left. He doesn’t like it, gives a kind of sneeze, but I think some made it down.

  Then I remember—I don’t have the damn keys.

  *

  Both Vince and I’ve seen enough movies to know that what’s waiting for me at the top of the rise is nothing I will ever expect.

  He could be anywhere by now. Behind a tree. Holed up in some barn or shed nearby. For all I know Vince buried himself in the snow and is waiting for me. Wouldn’t put it past him.

  When the wind pauses in its tantrums, the lumpy flakes of snow fall thick as ticker tape. It is bewitching and also suddenly suspect, as though some diversion or manner of sorcery Vince somehow managed to conjure. I step lightly and need another weapon.

  But, when I spot his form, he is sitting on the tree stump. I get nearer and see him crying, shivering, staring at the useless hands in his lap like he’s reading an invisible book.

  “Give me the keys,” I say. “Just give me the keys and I’ll take you back and we can drop the dog off with the cops or something.”

  “You’re a real disgrace to your family, you know. And to us. Fuck away from me, go back wherever.”

  I take a knee in front of him. “Let me have the keys, man. Come on. We are too old to be doing this.”

  Vince kicks me in the jaw. I don’t recall ever being kicked in the jaw before. Great thud like hitting water off the high dive. Clutch of blackout moments where who knows.

  There’s a little slide in the snow. After I’m laid out, down the rise a bit. Hearing laugher hiss past teeth. When I gain my feet, he falls apart, cackling at me, my half-snowed face.

  “There,” he laughs, “now we’re even, you spooky fucking queer.”

  I rush him, start to strangle him. He gurgles it again, “We’re even, you—funging—ng.”

  I let up.

  “We’re even,” he repeats, gulping air. “In my inner pocket.”

  Shaking my head, I search his coat and in that pocket, there’s the bottle of pills.

  “Gimme a couple,” he says.

  “I should wring your damn neck, Vince, give me the keys.”

  “I’ll give you the keys. Do the pills first.”

  Popping the cap, I let two drop onto his tongue, which he sticks out like he’s catching snowflakes. And he does catch a few, inadvertently. Then I pop one for myself. A whole one this time.

  “Where’s that whisky at?”

  I search around us, spot it by where the dog was tied, and take a gulp and hold it out to Vince. He takes it from me, gently, with his left, less-bad hand.

  “Outer left pocket,” he says.

  And there’s where the keys are, which I take, and then sit down in the snow again for a minute, glad that’s all over. Vince tries using his forearms to drink from the bottle again. Looks like a trained sea lion.

  We give ourselves a minute. Uneasy peace between us, disquiet we’ll forget hopefully soon enough, as we count on the substances to do the work. Just sit there breathing.

  “They help with the cold,” he says, like an expert.

  I nod, punch drunk.

  “You know,” I say, “this has all gotten so boring.” Even the storm falls into a sort of lull that suggests it too could use a break.

  I give a great dazed yawn, and with nothing else to add, we hold out for the warmth to course before making any moves, and watch the clouds begin to congeal over a pristine lake of night. Pure, viscous darkness. Almost syrup.

  *

  I wake on the forest floor, to flurries burying me. For a moment, I make no move at all. This is how it must feel, I think to myself.

  Vince is vanished, as far as I can tell. I’ve never had much idea
where he goes, when he disappears, never much cared. I’m dead-legged getting back to the car. Bullets is still in the back, panting frost and clawing up the windowpane once I’m in sight.

  I thank the Lord of Duralast when that engine whinnies and turns.

  It’s one of those dead-end lanes like a runway to nowhere. I back up, make a three-point turnaround. As I’m heading off toward 94, I see a form rise from that potholed square of bare, buckled asphalt where the Cutlass had been. There he is. Like he just got out of bed.

  I think: Vincent Von Jovic: the one who dares crawl underneath cars, where it’s maybe warmest in a blizzard. Who, when he sees me driving off, in his own vehicle, instead of doing anything else, of all things, decides to wave. I thought that was his sum total, but I figured wrong. I’m always wrong, thank god. He looks like a stranger out there, waving at me like I’m some passing frigate and he’s ashore with nothing better to do. Doesn’t flag me down, chuck a rock, run after the car—he waves bye bye.

  And he doesn’t deserve it, and I don’t know if he can even see, but still, I wave back.

  *

  The AM radio weatherman calls it a symptom of the polar vortex, the blizzard that is shredding its way northwest. He says all airports are shuttered, that the freeways are suicide in every direction except due south-southeast.

  I-55 isn’t a death trap yet, though the lines dividing the lanes are sketchier with each glance. I follow in the wake of a Maersk 18-wheeler. If this is smart or unwise, as a tactic, is irrelevant. It’s the only one.

  Keeping my eyes open is a task. My lids feel weighted. Bullets, quiet in back. If I can just make it out of this state. Think I might dodge the worst of this, keeping to the middle of what I guess is the middle of the lane as best I can, since the car responds to any turn of the wheel on a lag that gets longer and longer, until at some point it won’t respond at all and we’ll start sliding.

  The radio says Indiana is getting clobbered, but it’s not getting shellacked like here, not yet. If this setup lasts—if the Maersk and me can keep this up, can keep it nice and steady—we could be home before noon tomorrow. By sunset, surely.

  It is as I’m thinking this that the Maersk lights up quadruple red ahead of me, starts to snake, then hydroplane, its wheels spinning and churning powder like a steamboat’s impeller as it jackknifes across all four lanes while I’m slamming the brakes, which makes us go pinwheeling down the lane.

  Our tandem skid slows to a stop, and by then we’ve both pulled about a one-eighty, and Bullets is awake. A minivan behind us honks and slows. I flash my high beams. In the rear-view, I watch it reversing. When it’s up beside me, the window on the passenger side rolls down. I roll down mine.

  “Get. Off. The road!” yells the driver.

  I just nod extra big and bring my window up. Not about to have a dialogue. Of the twelve odd Pall Mall cigarette packs lying throughout the car, not one of them has an actual square inside it. Vince’s car’s stupid wiper blades wag their fingers in my face, all of which, taken together, I take as sign to maybe stop driving.

  The next exit takes a half-century to get to. Slicks of black ice make the ramp a real joy, and that kind of dry-mashed snow that sticks to tire tread is not helpful. But if we don’t maintain speed we run the risk of slipping into the sidewinding drifts that the winds are lashing across the plains hard enough they seem to sandblast them into sharp objects. The cross winds nearly turn us like a dial, but we make it down.

  Hanging a left puts it at our backs. I don’t even really need to press the accelerator. We cruise toward the lights of whatever village this is, and when we pull into the lot of the first motel we come across, it does not feel at all corny or blasphemous to cross myself and praise those gales that delivered us.

  *

  “I need a room, man.”

  The kid at the counter clucks and wags his head, flipping through the ledger on his desk. “I’m afraid we don’t have any vacancies, sir. Full house cuz of the storm.”

  “It’s an emergency. I’ll take whatever you got. I’ll take a broom closet.”

  The kid has such a good-natured chuckle. Thinks I’m joshing. “Sir, I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do. I’m just working the desk tonight.”

  “Have you been outside lately?”

  “Uh… no, sir. I have a good view though. Super Jack London out there.”

  He doesn’t understand. I need to make him comprehend.

  “I know you’re just doing your job. You’re following orders here—I get that. I’ve got an injured dog. You like dogs? I’m on like four hours sleep over the past forty-eight. I’m begging here. Anything, a couch, a broom closet, a fucking sock drawer. Just a few hours. You don’t know what kind of day I’ve had.”

  The kid pauses, thinking, chewing his lip. Flipping through his ledger. I’m burning a hole through his forehead with my glare. “I just—we have a phone you can use? You can maybe call around? I don’t know there’s anything I can do, sir, you should’ve… I’d ask my manager but—”

  “Look, what if my wife was pregnant out there in that car?”

  “I-I’d say go to the… hospital…?”

  “Where’s the fucking phone.”

  The kid points down the hall.

  “Tell me your name.”

  “Tim?”

  “I expected more from you, Tim. I am disappointed.”

  “I am sorry for your predicament, sir. People from around here, they know better than to travel in these conditions. Rooms go fast. It’s not your fault.”

  “Thanks, Tim. That’s good to know.”

  I call Caroline and let her know her better half is out there like a buffoon in the storm and that she might want to think about searching for him. She tells me that he’s already home, though. That he’s been home for a while now. They’re getting ready to have some chili.

  “Wow. Okay… good to hear.”

  “And since we’re on the subject what the hell happened to Vince’s hand? Ant? Care to answer? Where are you? And where in the world is our car?”

  Before I can explain she says, “Know what—forget it, I’ll ask him and we’ll deal with it. Ant, do us all a favor?”

  “Anything.”

  “Don’t come back.”

  She hangs up.

  There is a soda machine beside the ice machine in the hallway off the lobby. I feed it a five, get a few water bottles, a couple Cherry Cokes, zip up my jacket, and head back out in the storm to the car.

  *

  He had vomited at some point while I was dealing with Tim. First thing I do is wash his face. I do so carefully, dabbing at him with a wad of bottled water-drenched napkins I found in the glove box. His muzzle, his throat are swollen, the injuries still so fresh I am afraid that if he moves too much he’ll start bleeding again. He’s already lost so much. I’m doing what I can. He only has one unbroken tooth left, his left lower canine. He is feverish to the touch and shuddering. Attacking us would have hurt him ten times worse than anything he could have done to us.

  Soggy and pink, the napkins go splat on the floor in back.

  “I missed the funeral, missed my flight, almost killed you, and that jerkoff beat me home,” I say to the dog, and lower the seat down by him to stroke his ear.

  I turn the engine on to get some heat going, hit the overhead lights. Or, I think, should I be packing him with snow?

  “Gonna get you to a vet. Don’t worry, bud.” Outside a plow shovels past, its lone yellow misery light spinning, all heavy scrape and salt spray.

  I massage the muscular base of his neck. Bullets looks around.

  “Not sure what to do, bud,” I tell him. His ribs wheeze up and down in shallow swells like a squeeze box. “You’d think I would know.”

  He seems scared. Like he’s waiting for a vaccination. The wind has the Cutlass going side to side.

  My nose at his ear, I whisper that he is not allowed to go. I realize then—I am terrified.

  “How about let’s be f
riends. How that sound? Let bygones be bygones. Blink once if you’re with me.

  “You have to stay though, bud. You have to stay right here. That’s the deal. Stupid storm’s scaring you. Be gone in a bit. And we’ll get you fixed up, we’ll get you squared away. We’ll get you a new grill. All chrome? That sound good?”

  I tell him: “Stay.” I am sick of this. Not another one.

  “Just you have to hang a little while more. That a deal?”

  I smooth his white coat. I can’t see anything clear at all now, but there’s no need really. Lowering my forehead to his, smelling his fur, I whisper: “I’m sorry. Okay? I am sorry. Truce?”

  Because I outlived everyone I love, and now there is nothing left except this one last raw, shredded nerve that is singing through me now, singing a pain I thought was lost to me but is here and now and singing right through me. I feel it. It’s all I feel, I am alive with it. It’s all right now. So I hold on, and I let it sing, and despite the fact it cannot change anything, that in all likelihood it means nothing, and even if he knows I of all people can’t deliver, Bullets gives me a paw, drapes it over my forearm. I stroke the valley between his eyes with my thumb. We make a little pact, a covenant, just between us strays. We shake on it.