The Cabin on Souder Hill Page 16

  Pink knew Isabelle would never believe a story as stupid as that because he hadn’t even spoken to her the night before to know how she was feeling, and he could tell by the look on her face she was more upset than ever. After Isabelle went to bed, Pink had crept back into the living room and asked Claire why she hadn’t stuck to the story they had agreed upon, the one where she called him because Kenny came home drunk and threw her out of the house.

  “That was a dumb story, Pink,” Claire had said. “Besides, you expected Kenny to believe that stupid soup story, why shouldn’t Isabelle?”

  “Because Kenny’s dumber than cardboard, and Isabelle will never let me hear the end of it. Aw, hell, it doesn’t matter anyway. She’s always mad at me about something.” When he’d reached out to touch Claire’s breast in a gesture of reconciliation, she’d slapped his hand away. “What’d you do that for?” he’d said.

  “For Christ’s sakes, Pink, go back to bed.” Claire had jerked the blanket up over her shoulders. “I gotta get some sleep so I can figure out what to tell Kenny.”

  Pink hadn’t understood that last comment. He’d never figured out anything in his sleep, always waking with the same problems he’d gone to bed with.

  He closed the front door behind him and shielded his eyes from the glare off the snow. The buds on the trees were blanketed with white, and Pink couldn’t comprehend how Mother Nature could let a thing like this happen, all those brand-new buds frozen solid. Maybe it did have to do with the Quickening, Pink thought. Clarence had told Pink all about it after hearing something on late-night public radio. “The Quickening,” Clarence had said, his eyes dark and serious as drilled holes, “I’m not fooling, Pink. Feller on the radio said all kind of strange things would happen closer we come to end-times.” End of April snowfall would surely have to count as a strange thing, but it had happened before, not that long ago, and much worse than this.

  Pink recalled the snowstorm of ’93. Over thirty inches deep in some places on the mountains, with eight-foot drifts. Weekenders from Georgia, Alabama, and Florida were trapped in their vacation homes, no power, no phones, a two-day supply of food, and depleted end-of-winter woodpiles. Some folks burned expensive chairs and dressers, huddled next to the fireplace under blankets to stay warm, while others tested the drifts and howling winds on foot, only to be turned back by exhaustion and fear. Unsure how long the snowstorm had been predicted to last, Pink, Loudon, and a few of Loudon’s deputies had tried to rescue some of those people stuck on the mountains. All they’d managed after eight hours effort was to burn up two Hummers and a Jeep when snow caked the drive trains and plugged the radiators, overheating the engines and seizing the pistons. The Quickening, Pink thought, snickering to himself. Coddled folks with too much time and imagination came up with some pretty crazy notions.

  Pink opened the door of the Suburban and brushed snow off the seat where it had blown through the missing window. The truck fired after a few cranks. Pink dropped it into four-wheel drive, adjusted the heater—even though it didn’t feel all that cold—then backed out of the driveway. He couldn’t stop thinking about the night before: Kenny holding a gun on them, Claire standing on the bridge railing wearing less clothing than a Bible-belt stripper, jumping into the lake. It had been quite exhilarating, and the sex afterward in the front seat was right up there with the best he could remember. Even Claire had seemed to ride the rush of fear, having two orgasms before worry set in.

  “What if Kenny comes back with Curly?” she’d said.

  “Christ, Claire. Forget about Kenny and Curly. Their noses are probably packed full of coke by now. They’re not going—”

  “Let’s get out of here,” she’d said, pushing away.

  No amount of pleading had swayed her from leaving, and Pink had only prayed it wouldn’t take jumping off a bridge naked before he had great sex again. But he would jump every day if that’s what it took, it was that good.

  Pink was still mesmerized with the fragrance of Claire’s lilac shampoo when he turned onto the road leading to his mama’s house. Loudon, his badge sparkling like a gold brooch, stood in the road, his jacket puffed up around his neck and ears to block the wind. Pink stared at him through the jagged opening of the broken window. “Lose your car, Loudon?”

  “Something like that,” Loudon said. “How about that window?”

  “Cold shattered it,” Pink said. “Ain’t that a hell of a thing?”

  Loudon nodded, his eyes narrowed in disbelief. Before Loudon could ponder the lie much longer, Pink asked him why he was standing in the middle of the road without a car.

  “Elmer was so damn sure he could make it up the mountain,” Loudon said. “Even though I told him the snow was too deep.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Around the first bend. Put it right into a damn drift three feet deep. He’s calling for backup. Slider has the four-wheel drive up on Slocum Mountain trying to help some folks get down to the grocery store. Hell, if it’s not just like the storm of ’93, all the damn roads—”

  “Hell, Loudon, this ain’t nothing like ’93. You need a ride up the road? Hop in.”

  “I don’t think you can make it.”

  “Get in, Loudon. I’ll get you up the dang hill.”

  “Pink, the drifts are a lot deeper than you think.”

  Pink leaned across the seat and popped the door open. “Come on, Loudon. We can even pick up Elmer. Where you needing to go?”

  As Loudon pulled himself into the front seat, Elmer came stiff-legged down the road like a man trying to walk on ice skates. “Stay down here and wait for Slider,” Loudon yelled at him before slamming the door. Elmer nodded, then slipped and fell on his butt. “Christ,” Loudon said to Pink, shaking his head.

  “You okay, Elmer?” Loudon asked.

  Elmer held up his left hand, waving them off as if to say, “I’m fine,” then steadied himself with his right hand as he rolled to his side and tried to stand.

  “Go on, Pink. I can’t watch this.”

  “You got snow caked on the back of your trousers, Elmer,” Pink yelled as he rolled by. “Makes your ass look like a powdered donut.” Elmer laughed and shook his head, his cheeks pink and round as Valentine cupcakes.

  The snow grew deeper as they passed the squad car, its hood and fender nose-down in the embankment like the shiny flat side of a new shovel. As the incline increased, Pink fed more gas to his Suburban. He felt a tire or two slip and catch, then another, as if the wheels were playing a game of tag on the frozen pavement. The vehicle never stopped moving forward, even though the tires spun on one side, then the other.

  Halfway up the mountain, the road and shoulders turned into a continuous ribbon of white, a scraggly row of white pines, poplars, and beech trees marking the edges, the branches fat and sagging with snow.

  Loudon wore his grave expression, the same one he wore whether he was fly-fishing the Chattooga River for enormous rainbows and browns or sitting at the courthouse listening to a defendant lie about being innocent. Pink had urged Loudon to spend some time in the poker room in Tunica. “No one can read your mug,” Pink had told him.

  “I don’t go in much for gambling, Pink,” Loudon had said. “If I was sure I would win, I might give it a try.”

  “Then it wouldn’t be gambling,” Pink had said.

  “I ’spect not.”

  Pink laughed to himself, remembering, then turned to Loudon. “You got folks up here stranded?” Pink asked.

  Loudon shook his head and looked over at Pink. “Got a dead man.”

  “Die trying to get off the mountain?”

  “Nope. Far as I can tell he shot himself. Dispatcher wasn’t sure. Damn fool thing to do if you ask me. There’s nothing bad enough to blow your brains out. I reckon I even know who he is. That man and his wife that was up here a week or so ago. Folks that own your old place, Pink. I never told you abou
t them.”

  “Michelle Stage?”

  “You know ’em?”

  Pink didn’t want to tell Loudon about running out on her at the Hilltop, that would take too much explaining. Yet he wanted to know what had happened after he’d left. He knew she’d be safe with Lyman, that he’d drive her back to the motel, a perfect gentleman. But how did the husband find her at the Ruby? Had she called him? “Michelle . . . Mrs. Stage, contacted me about selling the cabin. Tired of the long drives, I guess.”

  “Atlanta, if I remember right.” Loudon looked over at Pink with enough squint in his eyes that Pink knew he was fixing to share a secret. “Between you and me, she’s crazier than a one-winged bumblebee in a flower house.” Loudon told him the story of how she ran off and got lost in the woods, then came back to the cabin and went insane, yelling and running around, talking gibberish, how she had to be restrained and spent a few days at Ardenwood Medical.

  “Lost her daughter about a year ago, her husband told me,” Loudon said. “In a car accident. Hasn’t been right since. A thing like that can pervert a person’s mind for life. She even has a restraining order against her. Attacked some woman or something in Atlanta.”

  “How do you know all that?”

  “It’s my business to know, Pink. Like it’s your business to know a termite trail from a wasp’s nest. I heard about that little incident, Pink. Man called my office pretty upset. You shouldn’t go around trying to hoodwink college-educated, wealthy folks.”

  “He was window-shopping anyways,” Pink said. “I can tell the ones that’s ready to part with some digits from their bank account.”

  Loudon didn’t seem smug with his admonishment of Pink nor did he seem upset about the incident, but Pink could tell he was concerned about Michelle. Pink thought about her, what she’d said about her husband, her daughter, and especially about him and Isabelle. Pink wanted to tell Loudon all of that, but it was too queer and troublesome to repeat. Besides, strange talk could lead to even stranger consequences.

  When Pink turned into the driveway, Loudon leaned to the side and unsnapped the strap that secured his weapon. “Why don’t you wait here, Pink. Let me see what we’ve got.”

  “I’ll be fine.” Pink shut off the engine. “Besides, I’ve got you and that cannon strapped to your hip to protect me,” Pink said.

  “This is no joke, Pink. You don’t know people like I do. Folks do things you’d never imagine in a million years. A tiny circuit misfires in their brain and suddenly they’ve got a gun stuck to their head . . . or yours.”

  Pink strode behind Loudon, who had drawn his weapon and held it with both hands, the barrel pointed down and away. A breath caught in Pink’s lungs and wedged there, and for a moment he thought to wait in the car. What was he afraid of? Michelle seemed harmless. Crazy, yes, but what woman wasn’t? Nobody was moodier than Isabelle, and as for Claire—

  “Let me see your hands, ma’am,” Loudon said, his voice firm and deep. Loudon had stopped bolt-still, holding his pistol two-hand-steady, leveled at someone on the porch. Pink almost walked into Loudon’s back, unaware he’d stopped. He peered around Loudon to see who he was pointing his pistol at. Michelle was nested in the snow wearing her nightgown, staring at Loudon, the nightgown covered in blood. It brought to mind Clarence bending over that nine-point buck several years back near Caney Creek. They’d tracked it for seven hours, almost to dusk, the animal finally dying in a patch of blood-soaked snow. Pink glanced toward a lawn chair toppled over on the deck, blood cutting into the white the way red syrup ate into the shaved ice of a snow cone. Blood-streaked snow covered the deck, pink in some places, deep red near the chair.

  Michelle sat motionless. Loudon repeated his order. “Please show me your hands, ma’am.” Pink couldn’t see Michelle’s hands under the comforter. She raised her right arm, and Loudon cautioned her to do it real slow. She brought out the right palm and held it up to Loudon, then the left, both of them red as stop signs. It reminded Pink of his wedding to Isabelle, her father coming into the church dripping blood from his fingers.

  “Thank you, ma’am. Now could you please pull back that blanket so I can see what’s underneath.”

  Michelle looked dazed, lost, but certainly not dangerous, and Pink couldn’t understand Loudon’s intensity. Loudon was sober as a Shriner, his eyes wary and unflinching, as if he’d just caught Charles Manson stealing deck furniture. Loudon wasn’t morose, exactly, but he wore gravity like a three-day beard. Once, driving home from the Little Pigeon River, he’d told Pink how mankind teetered at the edge of chaos, how every man, woman, and child was no more than a breath away from violent crime. “Folks wait in checkout lines at Val-U-Mart, pump fuel at the BP, eat dinner with their family down at Pizza Hut with absolute certainty no one will walk up and shoot them dead. But that security is only an illusion, Pink, and folks don’t understand how fragile it is . . . thinner than spring ice.” Loudon’s gritty manner softened somewhat around women though. Pink had seen that a time or two and always figured women put the salty sheriff off-kilter somehow. It was kind of funny to watch, Loudon fumbling with a smile, his hands dipping in and out of his pockets like a couple of chipmunks playing hide-and-seek.

  “Is this police procedure?” Pink asked, hoping that Loudon might lighten up a bit.

  “You tell me, Pink. You’re the one watches all the television.” Without blinking, Loudon took a step toward Michelle and waited as she peeled the blanket back. Pink was struck by the severity of the dead man’s gaze, his eyes staring, undead, the large rip in his head attesting otherwise.

  “His eyes won’t shut,” Michelle uttered in a flat tone.

  “I understand, ma’am. I would like you to gently scoot out from under your husband and move to that chair over there.” Loudon pointed at the lounge chair with his gun as if to lead her across the deck. Michelle slowly set her husband’s head down in the snow as she uncurled her legs, having trouble standing as though she’d sat too long. Wobbling to her feet, tears filled her eyes as she steadied herself against the railing. She shuffled through the bloody snow, righted the chair, and sat down.

  Loudon moved precisely, apparently intent on retrieving the gun clutched in the dead man’s hand. “Stand over there by Mrs. Stage, Pink.”

  Pink walked slowly toward Michelle, his eyes shifting between Loudon, Michelle, and the body. Pink was surprised the man was still holding the gun and couldn’t figure out how that could have happened. Wouldn’t a dead man have dropped it? Loudon knelt by the body and tried working the firearm from his fingers, having little success. “Take her inside, will you, Pink. And don’t let her change clothes just yet.”

  Pink wasn’t sure why Loudon was so concerned. It was obvious Michelle had no weapon since she was naked under her nightgown, and she didn’t seem to possess the strength or inclination to use one. Michelle fell easily into Pink’s step as he guided her by the shoulders toward the house. Once inside, he led her to the bedroom and sat her on the mattress, the blankets and sheets still balled and twisted from a restless sleep. He went to the bathroom for a hot washcloth then remembered what Loudon had said about not letting her change.

  Loudon came in and used the phone.

  “Can I get Mrs. Stage out of this wet gown?” Pink asked. “It’s frozen hard as a damn ice cube.”

  Loudon nodded toward Pink then turned away and talked low to someone on the phone.

  Pink pulled the blanket from the bed and wrapped Michelle in it. “I’m going to pull your gown off; then we can clean you up, okay? Hold the blanket over you.”

  He stepped closer and could smell the nicotine in her hair from the Hilltop the night before, along with a dying trace of perfume. He liked the smell, unlike the strong odor that strippers wore. Michelle raised her arms as Pink slipped the gown over her head. The blanket Pink had wrapped her in for privacy fell to her lap and Pink turned away, but not before glimpsing the roun
dness of her breasts. “Sorry, ma’am,” he said. But she hadn’t seen him look, didn’t seem to care anyway, her gaze somewhere off in another county.

  With his head turned, he groped for the blanket and eased it back up over her shoulders. Her fingers gently fastened the blanket across her chest.

  “Slider’s on his way,” Loudon said, hanging up the phone. “Everything okay in there, Pink?”

  “I’m going to help her into the shower so she can clean up.”

  “We don’t have time for that, Pink. Get something on her. They’ll clean her up down at the hospital.”

  Now that Loudon had the gun, he didn’t seem all that concerned about Michelle anymore. Pink heard the sliding glass door open and shut and figured Loudon would wait on the deck for Slider.

  “I’m sorry about what I said to you last night, Pink,” Michelle said, looking up at him. “It was very wrong.”

  “It was wrong of me to run out on you the way I did,” Pink said. “Hope Lyman treated you right. He’s a good man, churchgoing, sings in the choir and all. I knew you’d be all right.”

  “It’s my fault Cliff is dead,” she said, looking out at the snow on the side deck. “I blamed him for everything. That’s why he shot himself.”

  Pink remembered what Loudon had said on the drive up the mountain. “Ain’t nothing bad enough for a man to kill himself,” Pink told her, “and it sure ain’t your fault.”

  “Some things are bad enough, Pink. Some things are. Cliff believed he killed our daughter on his way over to see his girlfriend. Hard to pull yourself up from that.”

  “Some folks are survivors, ma’am. Some folks aren’t,” Pink said, searching for something he could easily dress her in. When he would help Isabelle into something, it was usually her robe. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d seen her in regular clothes—a dress, jeans, a pretty blouse. Pink slipped Michelle’s robe off the hook on the door and guided her right arm into the sleeve, then the left. She stood and let the blanket fall away. He reached over to cinch the belt at her waist, but she eased his hands away and did it herself. “I don’t know where my tennis shoes are, and I lost my slippers in the snow,” Michelle said, her eyes brimming with tears.