Northern Lights

by Raymond Strom

Russell, though he knew I was supposed to work until four, had dropped by Kristina’s just after noon, mere moments after I arrived. Had I not been so upset I might have thought it suspicious but, given my mood and that Russell had tackled me in the entryway when I opened the door, this escaped me. We lay together on the carpeted stairs that led to the living room, my shirt still on, Russell’s jeans hanging from one ankle.

  “You’re going to give up now?” he asked. “But you’re so close.”

  “Close?” I said. “I’ve never been further from anything in my life. I know he did it but I can’t get anyone to believe me.”

  “People believe you,” Russell said. “The sheriff believes you, I believe you. It’s that you have no proof.”

  I stood up and climbed down the stairs, stepping into my jeans and pulling them up, then cinched my belt. Russell spun in place so that he was sitting up and began tugging at his clothes as well.

  “But maybe you need to find some.”

  “What?”

  “Some proof.”

  “But it’s you,” I said. “You’re the only proof.”

  “What?”

  “That’s why Jenny did what she did. She wanted to turn you in but didn’t. Because of me.”

  He looked at me then the same way Jenny would when I put my hand on her leg or stood too close to her. Head tilted, eyes squinted, confused.

  “You did that for me?”

  “She did,” I said. “I never told her anything, but she knew.”

  “Of course she did.”

  I stepped into my shoes, then climbed the stairs past Russell. In the living room, I stopped and stood, unsure what to do. I wanted more than anything to put all this behind me as soon as I could.

  “Where are you going to go?”

  “I’ve always been on my way to the same place,” I said. “There was never any chance of me staying here.”

  “So after he killed those dogs and chased your friends out of town, after he beat your ass and did who knows what with Jenny, you’re going to leave?”

  “That’s right,” I said, pressure building behind my eyes, mucus climbing into my throat. “I don’t know why I even came to Holm anymore.”

  The train whistle sounded in the distance as if answering a question I hadn’t asked. I wouldn’t have to wait another minute. Taking my backpack from the floor, I tore around the living room for my belongings.

  “What are you doing?” Russell asked, now dressed, standing at the top of the stairs with his fists at his waist.

  I didn’t answer. Instead I zipped the last of my stuff into my backpack and let myself out the sliding glass door to the deck, then ran down the steps and into the woods with Russell behind me. The train was already rumbling past the A&W on the other side of Old Main, so I stepped up my pace as I cut through the neighbor’s yard and I was about to run across the street when I was pulled strongly from behind, suddenly finding myself on my ass on the rocky shoulder. A quick moment later, cars came from both directions zooming through where I would’ve been had Russell not yanked me to the ground.

  “What the fuck are you trying to do?” Russell screamed, but the train was still passing so I leapt to my feet and ran across the road, through the A&W parking lot, and alongside the rear ladder of the caboose before it picked up enough speed to leave me. In one last stretch, the tips of my fingers just missed the bottom rung and I tumbled into the grasses that grew in the gravel along the rails.

  Russell caught up to me then, reached down to take my hand, and pulled me to my feet. Then, moving his hands to my hips he pulled me closer, pressed his lips softly to mine.

  “I can tell you one thing that wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t come to town.”

  Tears welled in my eyes, casting a watery sheen over the A&W and the passing cars. I shook away from Russell and tossed my backpack into the parking lot.

  “Look, Shane,” Russell said, walking around me so I could see him. “I don’t care if you go to Minneapolis. I have a car, so here or there doesn’t matter to me, but you can’t leave this behind you.”

  I took three running steps and kicked my backpack, then tried to turn away from Russell.

  “Would Jenny have left?” Russell asked, taking me by the shoulders and shaking me.

  “I’m tired,” I said, then sat down cross-legged and put my head in my hands.

  “We need to know what happened to that truck,” he said. “If we find it, we find Jenny.”

  “Okay.”

  I lifted my head from my hands to find him in front of me. He dropped to his knees and wiped the tears from my cheeks with his sleeves.

  “If she’s not out there,” Russell said, “if we don’t find her today, I’ll drive you to Minneapolis tonight myself.”

  * * *

  Cicadas called for mates with a power line hum and the engine idled in accompaniment. We were stopped on the county road near the path to Svenson’s place, my door open, one leg in the car, one leg out.

  “Hide over there when you get back,” Russell said, pointing at a thick patch of bushes and ferns a ways off the road. “But don’t come running out when you hear a car because it might be him. I’ll honk twice.”

  After I eased the door shut, Russell turned down the tire ruts to Svenson’s house and I followed on foot, rustling the brush and kicking up grasshoppers, hoping he could keep Svenson distracted in the house talking business while I snooped around outside.

  The automotive graveyard came into view first and beyond that the big red barn. Long grasses grew up along sedans with doors ajar, rusty hatchbacks, and more than one station wagon. Off in the distance were a couple pickups and an old van with no windows. These hadn’t been moved all year and I imagined Svenson, or more likely Chelsea, had passed as close as possible to the old cars with the riding lawn mower over the summer, leaving shoots as tall as corn in places. The house came into view as I rounded the bend and, before it, the three cars parked by the front porch: the tiny hatchback Svenson had been driving, Russell’s car, and Chelsea’s red sedan. Russell had made it inside.

  The house stood on high land and the rest of the clearing sloped away. I circled the perimeter, a foot or two into the foliage, looking up at the property. The oldest part of the house must’ve been built a hundred years earlier, the old front porch and antique living room where I had hung out with Chelsea and her daughter, but a couple newer additions, asymmetrical and sided in vinyl, doubled its size. These remodelings had no unity of theme or style; no one had bothered to line up the windows, which hung in a random pattern on the side of the house like spots on a dog. I saw two quick flashes in an upper window, Svenson and Russell coming to a landing, then turning to the next flight of stairs, and a splash of red in a window below, Chelsea in the kitchen at the sink. A thin wisp of smoke rose from the chimney, though I wasn’t sure why, as the day was hot and humid.

  Scanning the field, I saw Svenson’s truck wasn’t among those parked in the long grasses—of course he wouldn’t leave it out for anyone to find—so I jumped out of the woods and, trying to stay low, ran to a long station wagon with wood paneling along the side. Crouching behind it, I peeked through the passenger window to be sure no one had come outside, then ran to the barn. Through the crack between the doors I could see something the shape of a vehicle inside, but when I tried to pull the door it wouldn’t budge. It had fallen off its upper hinge, the corner sunk deep in the sod. I lifted it off the ground and swung it open a foot on the low hinge, so rusty and dry I was sure the screech it made could be heard in the house. After I snuck sideways through the narrow opening, I peeked back through the boards to see if anyone had come to check on the noise, but the front porch was empty.

  The afternoon sun slanted in beams through the cracks between the old boards, leaving stripes of light across the tarpaulin that had been draped over the truck. I stepped to the corner and pulled the tarp, scattering dust motes in the air, and then I saw a shadow in the passenger seat, head leaning against the w
indow, a stray sunbeam illuminating a mess of blond hair so that it looked like a halo.

  I could have turned back then, snuck back into the woods then out onto the road. Even if it turned out not to be Jenny I knew it was someone, some dead body that Svenson was storing in his truck, but I had to see for myself. I tried the door but it was locked, or maybe it was broken as Leon had said, so I walked around and tried the driver’s side. The raw animal rot had a floral hint, roses and violets, and I knew it was her. I pulled my T-shirt over my nose and climbed in, the dome light illuminating the bullet hole in Jenny’s stomach, the sticky bloody mess that had leaked all over her seat.

  Svenson wasn’t calculating, he was a blunt instrument. The empty gun rack behind us proved he’d had no plan when he killed Jenny, no plan beyond shutting her up immediately, in the most painful way possible. He had shot her in his truck with the gun everyone knew he owned, then drove her here where he left her paralyzed, bleeding, in pain. She had suffered for hours as the life drained out of her, maybe days, her body freezing into this final pose. I took her cold left hand in my right, then looked up to see her eyes open, staring.

  “Jenny!” I said and jumped back in my seat, dropping her hand, but she was still dead. I reached over and lay my palm on her forehead, shut her eyes with a downward swipe before I took her hand again.

  I sat there for a long while, staring dumbly out the windshield at the weathered beams of the barn, until I felt what I first thought was a cold stone between our clasped hands. It was the ring Jenny had claimed was so fragile, intact, having survived the assault that had taken her life, now serving only as a marker, a tag, proof of Svenson’s ownership. I tried to pull it off but the ring caught on her knuckle, swollen thicker in death than it had been in life, and I struggled with it for a bit. Finally, I took her hand and put her finger in my mouth, then massaged my saliva into her dry skin and under the ring until it popped off, straightening Jenny’s twisted finger with a crack. The still-wet ring slid easily onto my middle finger, then I put my hands on the steering wheel.

  Had the keys been hanging from the ignition I could have backed up through the door and driven to Holm with Jenny’s dead body as my passenger but, like the rifle, they were missing. The plan was to get back to the road and wait for Russell there, so I got out, leaving the door ajar so it made no noise, then reset the tarp in place—I didn’t want to tip Svenson off, then show up later with the sheriff to find that he had moved the truck. After sneaking back outside, I tried to close the barn door but it was heavy. Kneeling to get a good lifting grip, I took the bottom rail with my right hand and held my left high, then pushed the door toward its hinge.

  The wood flew to splinters before I heard the bullet that shattered the door. The world went topsy-turvy as I stumbled back toward the station wagon with my hand in the air, two fingers hanging off the side in a way I knew wasn’t right, but in my sudden confusion couldn’t say why. The wound was so clean before the blood came, so sharp, I thought maybe I could prop the fingers into place and my hand would grow back together, but then the opening sputtered like a tap long unused. One vessel shot a thin stream with my heartbeat, I felt it in pulses there, in my head, in an odd syncopation all over my body. Two more shots whizzed by me before I dropped into a crouch, scurried toward the station wagon, and put my back to the rear passenger door of the car. I shook my flannel shirt off my right side, pulled it up my left arm, and, aligning the wounds, wrapped up my hand. I held the wrap against my chest while I took off my belt with my right hand, made a loop, and cinched it around my wrist. An imperfect bandage and tourniquet but it would have to do.

  A soft wind rustled the trees that bordered the property before the window shattered above me, dropping jagged cubes of safety glass in my hair. I crawled a few steps over to the back end of the station wagon and peeked around to see Svenson with his elbows perched on the abandoned car nearest the house, rifle pointed at the barn. He tried to keep his eye trained on his aim but the drugs were getting in the way. He squinted, then shook his head and tried to line up his shot again. The bullet that hit my hand was meant for my head and on a better day I wouldn’t have been so lucky.

  I found a rock near a wheel of the station wagon and threw it at the barn. It fell to the ground before it reached but bounced and thunked against the wood. Peeking around the car again, I saw that Svenson came off his mount toward the sound. As he moved past the station wagon I crept in a circle to keep the car between us. He walked from car to car, checking each blind spot where I could’ve been lurking, and finding the area clear he stepped around the barn. Figuring he would loop the barn looking for me, I made a break for the house, passing a dead hatchback and a pickup truck, but I ran out of energy when I reached the car Svenson had been using for a bunker. My flannel was soaked in spite of my tourniquet, so I again cinched the belt tight, then dove into the open back door and lay across the seat, holding my wound above my heart.

  Svenson now out of sight behind the barn, first Russell then Chelsea stepped out onto the porch and, when he thought it was clear, Russell ran for his car, jumped in, and turned on the ignition. He whipped backward and stopped at the point of his turn, one taillight exploding in a spray of glass as he spun the steering wheel, then, finding his gear, the tires tore up the loose gravel and the car sped down the wheel ruts back to the road as bullets found the trees along the path. The screen door slammed shut on the porch as Chelsea ran back inside.

  “I know you’re in one of these cars, Stephenson.”

  Rusty hinges shrieked open and closed as he made his way from vehicle to vehicle looking for me.

  “I’m gonna find you,” he called, now very close.

  Windows shattered as his rage grew. Though all I could see was the front door of his house, I heard him busting the glass of the different cars with the butt of his rifle when he found them empty. He taunted me while he searched the grounds.

  “Your faggot boyfriend may have gotten away for now but I’ll find him. He won’t get far.”

  Another window went to pieces.

  “He set you up, you know,” Svenson called. “Your boyfriend did.”

  A car horn sounded twice in the distance, the signal.

  “We knew you were in the barn. This was his idea. That’s why he brought you out here.”

  More glass shattered, followed by a single drawn-out note from the road—Russell laying on the horn. He must have realized then that I hadn’t gotten away.

  “I was going to pick you off from my bedroom window but he said we should wait so you could find her first before I killed you.”

  Crash.

  “What were you doing in there so long anyways?”

  My eyes began to pulsate on beat with my heart, the pressure of the blood behind my eyes making images in my vision. Like back in my room at the Arlington, the patterns and people I once saw on my wall now moved across the ceiling of the car, the seats, the house. Was that shadow on the porch in my mind, or was it Chelsea?

  “There’s only one car left!”

  Then Svenson stood over me as he always had, blocking out the world and the sky.

  “So I did hit you before,” he said, kicking my leg. “I should let you bleed out like I did that snitch friend of yours, but that wouldn’t be satisfying.”

  He brought the butt of the rifle to his shoulder and leveled the barrel at my face. His eyes, following the bead of the rifle sight, looked right into mine as he pulled the trigger but there was only a click.

  “Was that ten shots already?” Svenson said to himself and laughed. He set the butt of the rifle down by his feet, leaning the barrel against his leg as he reached to his back pocket for more ammunition. “Just a bit more suspense—”

  The sound that interrupted him was a wet crunch followed by the subtle drone of a tuning fork, like nothing I had ever heard, then Svenson dropped to his knees, eyes rolling back in their sockets before he fell forward onto me, head lolling on my lap, spasms roiling his body. Where he had
been standing Chelsea now stood with the cast-iron pan in her hand and a shocked look on her face. My belly grew warm from the blood pouring from Svenson’s head and then the world went dark.

  Fifteen

  I woke up paralyzed, my left arm and both legs locked in place with restraints. Scanning through the buttons on the armrest, I pushed the yellow one with my free hand and my vision blurred. My arm grew heavy and my aim inaccurate, so I slapped a few times at the control panel hoping to hit the call button, and soon after a nurse pushed a steel cart into the room.

  “I hear you, darling,” she said, “I’m on my way.”

  Whatever the yellow button released into my blood had made my tongue thick and dry, my head heavy. I tried to answer but instead I fell into my pillow, floated above my bed, and the nurse was there too, billowing. She rolled my head her way to shine a light in my eyes.

  “I see you in there,” she said. “Welcome back. I’m going to check your bandage now.”

  On my way toward darkness again, eyes closing, my head came to rest with a clear view of my hand, bound at the wrist, wrapped with a wad of white tissue so that only my thumb and two fingers poked through.

  “Got yourself into quite a mess here,” she said, unwinding the gauze and setting each piece on the cart as it came loose, until I could see that half my palm was missing and the spot where my hand now dropped off toward my wrist had taken on the texture of bubble gum, as if someone had tried to stop the bleeding with a wad of Big League Chew.

  “It’s swollen and gooey for now,” the nurse said, “but it will get better. Don’t be alarmed.”

  I had no worries, not with those drugs dripping into my arm—I was about as far from alarmed as could be. I had a strange yet persistent feeling that I was watching a movie and in it everything would turn out okay.

  “This will help,” she said and tapped the morphine button again, dropping me into darkness.

  Late that night my fingers returned made of fire. Even the yellow button couldn’t stop it, didn’t even faze me. The pain brought a sharp edge to consciousness, a clarity I had never felt before. A new nurse, sleepy-eyed and slow, came with a syringe and stuck the needle into the back of my hand.