The Center of Winter: A Novel
Page 34
We sat peering at the paper in the dark. It was some kind of official form. “‘Honorable discharge,’” he said, pointing to the words. “‘Dale Olav Knutson,’” he said, pointing. “That’s me. Look at this.” His shaky finger rested on the words “Purple Heart.” Then it skittered across the page to another box. “Expert marksman,” and then “VKC: 118.”
He leaned back, holding it out in front of him. “You know what that means?” he asked. I shook my head, sleepy. He pointed at the letter C: “Count,” he said. Then he pointed at the letter V. “Verified.” His finger stopped at K. “Kill,” he said. He dropped his hand.
He looked at me. “Hundred and eighteen bodies. Hundred and eighteen perfect shots.” He laid the page in his lap and gazed up at the window. “I get their faces. Nights.” He waved a hand in front of his face. “I see their faces. Even though I never rightly saw them in the light.”
He stared straight ahead awhile, his angular profile outlined by the thin light. Then he turned his face to me. “On t’other hand, it takes some doing, that’s for damn sure. Didn’t earn the Purple Heart by standing around doing nothing. Got a little shrapnel, sure, but that’s not what the Purple Heart’s about. Not just any motherfucker gets his leg blown off can get a Purple Heart. You got to earn it,” he said, nodding. I drank the rest of my beer. “Did it by studying strategy. Plans of attack. Learning them so’s I knew them better than the sound of the blood in my own ears. And one thing that’s certain is a man’s got to have a contingency plan. In the event of unforeseen ambush or trap.” He rested his hands on his knees, stood up, and came back with two beers. I held mine to my forehead. I was dizzy and hot.
“Your father,” he said. “He was good about that. Had a plan, and used it only when it was time. You don’t best be wasting your reserves on just anything. You wait until the time is right, until it’s called for. Then you can act in good conscience.” He looked at me. “Your father was a brave man. You best know that.”
I nodded.
“No matter what folks say. A man’s life is his to do with as he likes, as he sees fit.”
I nodded again. He turned away, satisfied that I understood. “Ain’t nobody can say for a man when enough’s enough. That’s a line between him and God, and when it gets crossed, ain’t nobody can fairly judge how he chooses to act. Your mama doing all right?” he asked suddenly.
I nodded once again. “She’s a lady,” Dale said. “She is an upstanding woman.” He looked out the window. “What do you think, then?” He turned his watery eyes toward me. “I ought to kill her, or divorce her? There’s satisfaction in one,” he went on, not waiting for me to answer, “but then you got your consequence. You got to look ahead to the outcome. Got to plan for the contingency. Be prepared for what’s around the corner, that’s best. So you got to weigh,” he said, lifting his bottle and his empty hand, “that satisfaction against what comes of it. You got to consider the lesser option, for your own sake, long term.”
He paused, as if he were considering it right then. “What you got to do is kill them in your mind,” he said, tapping his temple and dropping his hand. He fell silent for a moment. “That way when you kill them they’re already dead.”
He gazed up at the light. I felt like I was intruding, and looked at the small, tight breasts of the girl in the magazine. After a while, I looked over at him, slid off the couch slowly, and creaked back up the stairs.
I found Kate and Davey sitting outside on the top step, side by side, next to a bed of frostbitten marigolds. I looked down at them.
“We need a plan,” I said. “In the case of unforeseen events.”
The night Mom had dinner at Frank’s, night before last, it was wet and super cold and the slushy snow had been coming down hard all day. Over at Oma and Opa’s we built a snow fort in the yard and afterward we had hot chocolate with marshmallows. We all slept in the car on the way home.
That night, I dreamed someone was banging a drum by my head. I woke up and realized it was Kate and Davey, pounding on the wall. I sat up. “What?” I yelled.
The pounding stopped. I heard their door open and they ran down the hall. My door opened and there they stood in their matching flannel nightgowns. They said, at once, “There’s a noise.”
I sat stiffly holding my sheets to my chest. “What kind of noise? Like a raccoon?”
Kate shook her head. “Like a someone in the house.”
The three of us stared at each other, thinking.
“It’s probably Mom or Donna,” I said. “Did you look in the kitchen?”
Kate stamped her foot. “We already went and checked their room. They’re gone, both of them. Gone. This is the emergency. You have to go look and see what it is.”
I slid out of bed, put on my shoes, and lifted the baby out of her cradle. She shifted comfortably in my arms and drooled. “All right,” I said. “But you’re coming with me.”
They each grabbed hold of my pajama bottoms and jogged alongside as I went down the hall.
We stopped when we saw him. Dale was sitting at the table. Just sitting there. After a while, he slowly looked up.
He didn’t look right. He looked crazy.
“Where’s your mother?” he asked Davey.
Davey shook his head and hid behind my leg. I started counting backward by elevens.
“Speak up, boy!” Dale shouted, banging the table and standing up. His chair hit the wall behind him. “Where in the hell is your mother?”
Davey started to cry and that made Kate start to cry, so I said, “Sir, she went for a walk with my mom.” I shifted the baby to my other hip and tugged on Davey’s ear so he’d shut up.
“Hell she did!” he shouted. Kate and Davey cried harder. My left eye started to twitch. The baby slept on. Dale seemed to calm down and he looked at them distractedly. “All right, then. Get in the truck. Go on.” He waved in the direction of the door. “All of you. Go get in the truck.”
He sounded tired. We filed out the door and he lifted us into the back of the giant pickup truck that was full of snow and bags of salt. He slammed the door and got in on the other side and reversed with a grinding of gears. We all huddled up with me in the middle and hung on to the sides as we zipped backward out of the driveway and tore around the corner and went straight on Main for a while, whipped right at Ash Street, and slammed to a stop in front of Davey’s house. Dale pulled us all out, one after another, and herded us into the kitchen.
Kate and Davey were covered with snot and snow and we were all soaking wet and Kate had the hiccups. “You two,” Dale said, picking up first Davey, then Kate, and putting them in kitchen chairs, “Stay put. You move, I’ll kill you. You set there till your brother says get up. Gimme that child,” he said to me, taking Sarah and stuffing her into her high chair. She fell asleep with her head on its table. “You,” he said, turning to me. “Come with me.” And he started down the stairs.
I followed him into the darkest part of the basement, where we weren’t usually allowed to go. He turned on the light, exposing a plywood worktable piled high with army gear. He reeked of alcohol, something stronger than beer. He was tapping each item, taking inventory of the table’s contents: water bottle, bowie knife, flak jacket, rope. A row of just-cleaned guns gleamed, their ammo belts laid alongside.
First, he put on the mud-brown helmet. Then the cargo pants and the flak jacket, and then he leaned down and stuck the bowie knife into his sock. “Here we go,” he said to me, strapping two belts of ammo around his waist. “It’s time to engage the contingency plan. Events necessitate a shift in strategic maneuver.” He clipped his water bottle to his pants and stepped into a pair of combat boots, leaning down to lace them up with violent jerks. He stuffed a revolver into his belt, grabbed the coil of rope, and picked up a rifle. He paced past me, around the central heater and water pipes, to the dark center of the basement where the drain dripped with melted snow. He picked up a chair. The low table was cleaned off, only the empty ashtray left.
I went and got the guns. This is my first mission, I thought. I am Lieutenant Esau Elton Schiller and I have a duty to do. It is not mine to say right or wrong. I answer to my superiors. I wrapped an ammo belt around my waist and headed up the stairs with my arms full of guns. My duty is toward my country, I thought. The people who serve it are held in highest regard. I am entrusted with the rights and privileges of my fine rank, and held to its responsibilities. Rounding the corner, I found Kate and Davey huddled together on one chair. When they saw the guns, Kate’s face went white.
“You have to be sentries,” I said.
After a minute, Davey said, “What’re sentries?”
“You have to stand guard at your post. One at the back door, one at the top of the stairs. Kate, you’re at the door. Davey, you get the stairs. Take the baby into the living room.”
Davey picked her up and staggered off with her. A second later, he returned. Kate said, “Who are we shooting?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “It’s not ours to judge.” The clock ticked in the frontal area of my skull. Toward the back, the drain dripped. In my inner ear was the sound of rope rubbing against rope, and a chair scooting loudly on concrete.
“What are we guarding against?” Davey asked, and approached me slowly, eying the guns.
“Intrusion,” I said. “Surprise attack.”
He nodded and gingerly lifted the smallest gun from the top of the pile. Holding it like you would a pair of scissors, by the handle, facing the ground, he backed toward the stairwell and pressed himself to the kitchen wall.
Kate jumped off the chair, came forward, and put out her arms. She sank under the weight of the gun. She sat down on the floor with her back to the door. I said, “Point it at the stove.” She set the gun on the linoleum and carefully turned it so it faced the stove.
I was left with only one gun, the biggest of the three. I held it the way my father had shown me when I was six: across my midsection, right hand wrapped over the hilt, left hand wrapped under the barrel, for maximum safety and speed. “All right,” I said. “Stay still. Stay there till I come up. Davey, take your hand off the trigger. Just hold it by the handle. Okay. I’m going down.”
Holding the gun tense and just away from my body, I marched down the stairs.
Dale was standing on the chair with his neck in the rope’s loop. Peering out at me from under his helmet, he said, “We’re good to go?”
I nodded.
“Ten-four,” he said, and pushed his shoulders back. “Get me a gun.”
I went around to the table and came back with a snub-nosed revolver.
“Perfect,” he said, looking at it, pleased. “You are a smart son of a bitch, you know that? You’ve done well.” He looked down at me and smiled.
“Thank you, sir,” I said.
He saluted me. I saluted him in return.
“Soldier, turn around to face the stairs,” he said. I did, and closed my eyes.
I decided I would not turn around.
No, I thought. A soldier does not shirk his duty in the field. A soldier has a responsibility to account for all members of his platoon, and to report the dead.
The reverb of the shot was ringing off the concrete walls and spiraling into my ears like a screw. The sound of the shot itself had lodged at the top of my spine. The wooden chair had cracked against the floor.
I decided it would not be necessary to turn around.
“Sir,” I said. I counted to one hundred, then said, “Sir,” again.
One dead.
I marched forward and came to the bottom of the stairs. “Attention!” I called. “Lay down your weapons! That is an order!”
“Is it safe?” Davey called down. His small body was outlined against the kitchen light and he held his gun straight at me. Right hand on the trigger, left hand over the barrel. The most accurate hold, a marksman’s hold.
“Pretty much,” I called up. He clicked the safety on the gun and laid it down. “Stay put, Kate!” he commanded, and thumped out of sight. I came up the stairs.
Kate wouldn’t let go of her gun. Davey tried to take it from her but she yelled at him. He tried coming up from behind her, but she bit his ear. Finally he looked up at me.
I shrugged and slumped down in a chair at the kitchen table. “Let her have it if she wants it,” I said. “She’s probably scared.”
“I’m not scared,” she said calmly, the gun on her lap. “I just want to hold it.”
“Put on the safety,” I said, “and you can hold it.”
“Okay,” she said. “Where’s the safety?”
Davey showed her the safety. She clicked it and settled back against the door.
We sat there awhile. I wiped my forehead with the cuff of my pajama sleeve. It was hot.
“Is my dad dead?” Davey asked.
I nodded. “One man down.”
Davey sank down next to Kate. She lay her head on his shoulder, patted his knee, and put her hand back on the gun. Then Davey gently lifted her head, stood up, crossed the kitchen, and opened the cupboard beneath the sink. He crawled in. Kate, looking torn, laid down the gun and followed him in. They sat quietly, their four bare feet sticking out.
Through the window it was still deep dark. I looked at the clock. It was only one in the morning. There were hours and hours till day.
I stood up and went over to the phone by the fridge. I dialed Frank’s number, which I had memorized in the event of an emergency such as this. Behind me, Davey started to cry with maybe sadness or tiredness or relief.
EPILOGUE: KATE
Let me begin again.
Far north, in the center of winter, I am leaning in the bedroom doorway. The flowers, dead in a vase on a table in the corner of the room. The music box, lid ajar but not singing. A pack of old matches, one dead match. The clothes by the side of the bed, still holding their shape: the sock wearing an invisible foot. The jeans wearing a woman’s hips, curved, as if she lay on her side on the floor. The sweater’s arm flung up in a gesture, as if in sleep.
The sound of my hands, dry and whispering to each other, keeps some sort of time.
A man is sleeping. Facedown, his shoulders a separate shade of white from the sheets, a shade separated by shadow, lines like a charcoal drawing.
Here in the deep north a man is sleeping. From the doorway, I watch the way moonlight slides down the curve of his lower back, giving it a gleam, seashell smooth, that sunlight would never allow. He sleeps. I can feel the heat of his body from here.
I go down the hall, the floor cold against my feet. I press my fingertips to their doors as I go by: Peter, curled in a knot at the foot of his bed; David, snoring, one socked foot dangling out from under the covers; Sophie, belly down in her crib. I hold still, willing my heart to hush so I can hear their breath. Under Esau’s door, a fan of light on the floor: I pause, and hear a shuffle of papers, muttering. He does his best work at night.
I hurry down the stairs to the kitchen, shifting from foot to foot, waiting for water to boil. I watch the winter moon on the white row of roofs, and the way the moonlight avoids the darker hollows of the bare black trees.
We have an easy life. We have our family, and coffee and the children and the paper. We have quilts. Downstairs, the grandfather clock tells four.
Soon it will be five. At five, it is almost day. I can make coffee and wait for the paper. And wait for him to come down, bleary-eyed, smiling, kissing me, Morning, good morning, I’ll say.
You cannot live with the past cluttering up the house. You ca
nnot waste your love. You must love what is left, and has the will to live.
The past ends, in my mind, the night that Davey’s father died. After that, we became what we are. People need their broken places, their secrets and stories. Once you have these things, you can go on. Then they either kill you or they don’t.
That night, Mom and Donna and Frank all showed up at once, and when we told them what had happened, there was crying and yelling and it was loud and confusing. Frank went downstairs and came back up. Then Donna bent over and let out a wail like an animal and he grabbed her by the shoulders and led her into the front room. I heard her say, “How am I supposed to do laundry now? How can I go down there?” and start crying again.
Davey and I sat silently in the cupboard with the cleaning supplies.
Davey shifted and sighed. “Now both our dads are dead,” he said flatly.
I scratched my nose. It was true.
“Should we get out of the cupboard now?” I said finally.
He considered this.
“In the morning we could make a snow grave,” he said, somewhat cheered.
“Okay,” I said. “We could get Esau to bury us.”
They came and dragged us out of the snow graves the next morning, though. We spent the next day floating through the house like small phantoms, trying not to disturb Donna, who sat rocking, rocking in her chair, holding baby Sarah on her lap, staring straight ahead and silently crying. My mother murmured on the phone. We had cereal for dinner, and Davey fell asleep with his head on the table. Frank carried him upstairs and put him in bed. I crawled in next to him.
“Shove over,” I whispered, and grabbed a pillow. He looked at me, blinking.
He sighed. “He’s in heaven, probably,” he said.
“Yeah.”
He nodded and rolled over with his back to me. I threw my arm over his side so he’d know I was there for sure.
Down the hall, his mother cried, and the floor creaked under her feet.