Dead of Winter (5 page)

“
Can I tell you what I
think?” Lenny said.

“
Sure.”

“
I think you need to start
getting out of the house more. I’ll bet you can count on one hand
the amount of times you’ve been outside since Julia passed
on.”

Jake said nothing. Lenny gave a
satisfied grunt.

“
See? That’s worse than
solitary confinement. A man with the kind of worries you’ve got
could drive himself stir crazy looking at these same four walls day
in day out, especially with all the memories around here. And the
snow thing? Sorry to have to tell you but I think it isn’t so much
the snow as the whole outside world that’s got you spooked. You’ve
become so wrapped up in your own little shell of suffering and
anger – and I’m not belittling or begrudging you that; God knows
Julia was one of the sweetest damn women I’ve ever known – that you
can’t bear to look beyond that window just in case it might offer
you a view of a place
outside
the pain.”

Jake raised his eyebrows. Lenny
grinned.

“
Well I’ll be damned,” he
said, “Maybe I was wrong.
Oprah
watch out!”

“
You could be right,” Jake
said, but he didn’t think so. “But how does knowing what the
problem is help any?” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I miss her,
y’know?” he said quietly. “All the goddamn time. Sometimes so much
I can’t breathe. And at night…at night is the worst of all, when
I’m asleep and I run my hand over the memory of her skin and wake
to an empty bed and cold sheets. Sometimes the pain feels too real
to be grief, Lenny. One night I woke up convinced I was having a
heart attack. I almost called you then, too.”

The fire hissed and the flames caught,
restoring the warm amber glow to the room.

“
You should have called me,”
Lenny told him. “That’s what I’m there for, just like you’re here
to fill me with cheap brandy.” He smiled but it quickly faded. “I
didn’t mean it to sound like I have all the answers either. I
don’t. I can’t even imagine what this has been like for you. But I
hate seeing you like this, stuck in a house alone with nothing to
do but remember.” He straightened in his chair and let loose an
exasperated sigh. “I guess I have some titanium balls telling you
how to handle things, huh?”

Jake shook his head. “No. I appreciate
it. Really. I’m just tired of being afraid, you know? Tired of
waking up from a nightmare only to have the real nightmare crash
down around me. I feel empty, Lenny. And alone. And pretty goddamn
pathetic.”

“
Pathetic? Why? You think
two months after you lose your wife you should be all smiles and
organizing house parties? If I saw you doing something like that
I’d have to take off my belt and whip the shit out of you. The way
I see it is you’re handling it as good as you know how. Another man
would be lying in the ground beside his wife by now after taking
the chickenshit way out.”

“
I came close though, didn’t
I?”

“
Yes. You did.” Lenny said.
“But close is still a million miles away from done and you’re still
here talking about it. That’s good enough for me.”

Jake set his glass down and rubbed his
hands together. “So what do I do?”

Lenny’s face grew somber and he
pointed a long gnarled index finger at Jake’s glass. “Being a bit
lighter on the devil juice might help you some. I’m your friend,
Jake, but if calls like that one two nights ago start getting
regular I’m buying an answering machine for Christmas.”

Although Lenny chuckled to show he
meant it as a joke, the point was clear. It scared Jake however to
think what his nights might be like without the cushioning effect
of alcohol. Then again, he realized, if drinking led him to that
old shoebox beneath the bed again, the next cushion might be the
one in his coffin.

“
You need to start finding
distractions,” Lenny continued. “I’m not saying you jump into a
whole routine but you could start setting aside days to go for
walks. Go catch a movie every now and then. Come with me to Bingo
some Friday night; see if we can’t beat the pants off those
Harperville hags. Hell, even stopping by to see me and the wife
would be a start.”

“
I know, you’re right, but
most of those things you mentioned only remind me of who’s missing
from the picture.”

Lenny leaned forward, his elbows
resting on his knees, his hooked nose mere inches from Jake. “It’ll
get easier,” he said and laid a hand on Jake’s shoulder. “But you
have to start somewhere before you smother yourself.” He stared
hard into Jake’s eyes, as if trying to discern something written
there. “Do you understand?”

The phone rang then and Lenny sat back
in his chair. “Joanne, most likely,” he said and Jake nodded as he
rose, pain flaring in his knees.

“
Will I tell her you’re
here?” he asked as he made his way out into the hall.

“
Might as well,” Lenny said.
“She can sense it anyway.”

“
Still reading tea
leaves?”

“
Earl Grey, morning noon and
night.”

Jake was smiling as he picked up the
phone. “Hello?”

The voice on the other end of the line
was gruff, even over the static the weather wrought.

“
Mr. Dodds?”

“
Yes?”

“
This is Sheriff
Baxter.”

Jake swallowed and felt a
chill thrum through him, even though a distant voice inside him
posed the question:
what’s left for you to
be afraid of?

“
Mr. Dodds?”

“
Uh yeah, hi Sheriff. What
can I do for you?”

“
Is Lenny Quick there with
you?”

The chill intensified. “Yes,
why?”

“
Good,” Baxter said,
ignoring the question. “Tell him to stay put until I get
there.”

“
All right. But what’s – ?”
The realization that he was talking to nothing but static stopped
him and he stared at the receiver for a moment before hanging
up.

All sorts of nightmarish scenarios
paraded through his mind as he slowly made his way back into the
living room, where Lenny was gazing into the fire and humming to
himself, but he pushed them away, blaming his own recent loss on
the almost overwhelming dread that attempted to drape itself over
his shoulders as he took his seat.

“
Well?” Lenny asked a few
moments later when his expectant look went unnoticed.

“
It was uh…it was Sheriff
Baxter. The line is buggered with all the snow. I couldn’t hear him
very well.”

“
Baxter? What did he want?
Is he on to our little speakeasy here?”

Jake tried to think of a lie, or at
the very least a semi-truth he could give Lenny to appease him, but
the cryptic nature of Baxter’s call left no room for anything but
the truth.

“
It was about
you.”

The joviality vanished from Lenny’s
face, replaced with an immediate look of concern that added twenty
years to him. “What about me?”

“
I don’t know. He just asked
if you were here. I told him you were and he said to tell you to
stay put until he arrives.”

“
Why?”

“
I told you, I don’t know.
That’s all he said and then he hung up. I’m sure it’s nothing.
Maybe Joanne’s car broke down and she’s going to be late home or
something.”

Lenny slowly shook his head. “A
sheriff wouldn’t come looking for me just to tell me that. He could
have told me that over the phone. No, something’s
happened.”

“
Aw c’mon, don’t go thinking
like that,” Jake said. “Look out the window, there’s nothing but
white. Going to be all sorts of traffic problems tonight. I’m sure
that’s all it is. When you left, was Joanne heading
somewhere?”

“
Yeah,” Lenny said, eyes
glassy. “To the store, but that’s only a few blocks away. She
wouldn’t have taken the car.”

“
She might have, to be out
of the cold.”

“
Jake, I see what you’re
trying to do, but she didn’t drive. Whatever Baxter is coming here
to tell me, it isn’t about a goddamn breakdown.”

Jake couldn’t argue further because he
knew nothing he’d say would sound believable, even to himself.
Lenny was right. When Sheriff Baxter made house calls, it was to
ask questions or deliver bad news, and Jake felt certain his own
tragedy had attuned him to bad tidings.

And his nerves were singing
now.

Mind racing, he almost managed to
block out the sound coming from the walls. But then his guard
faltered and his heart skipped a beat, allowing that unmistakable
ticking sound an undistracted audience.

Tick-tick-tick.

It ticks for
thee.

No
,
he thought, braced by panic.
Maybe not.
Maybe not me at all
.

Lenny rose, tugging Jake from his
fearful musings and quieting the deathwatch in the
walls.

“
What are you
doing?”

Lenny’s nerves didn’t seem to be
faring much better. A faint trembling made the glass wobble as he
finished his brandy in one gulp and started towards the
hall.

“
Lenny? What are you doing?”
Jake repeated, rising to follow.

“
Going home. If something
has happened to Joanne, I’m not waiting on a cop to break the news.
Might be too late by the time Baxter gets his fat ass through that
snow anyway.”

“
Wait,” Jake said and
hurried after him into the dark hallway, his knees aflame with
pain. In the few seconds it took to reach him, Leroy had already
donned his coat and hat and was turning to the door.

“
Damn it, wait!” Jake said
again, and the near-hysteria in his voice made his friend pause,
one hand on the knob.

“
Something’s happened,”
Lenny whispered, face grave.

I don’t want to be here by
myself
, Jake almost blurted, immediately
shamed by his selfishness. Instead he reached for his coat. “You
wanted me to start getting out more,” he said, “so if you’re not
going to wait, I’m coming with you.”

He couldn’t believe he had said it and
only when it was out did he realize how truly small and unfriendly
his world had become. In here was loneliness and despair, all
measured by the ticking of the deathwatch. Out there was the snow,
the loathsome blanket of putrescent mold beneath which Julia slept
forever.

Lenny looked about to argue, then
sagged and yanked open the front door.

The hostile night roared into their
faces as they stepped out into the cold.

* * *

This is insane.

Jake bowed his head against the wet
white kisses the sky drove into their faces. Already his skin felt
numb and sore, his nose wet and dripping, knees raging with the
agony of battling through the ankle-deep drifts that hunkered
against the light like protective mothers.

The buildings on both sides of Brennan
Street stood like monoliths, fringed with snow and twinkling with
the ice that bejeweled them. In some, dim yellow light hugged the
frosted windows; in others there was no light at all. Vehicles
hunched against the curbs wore scaled skins of white. For such a
change in the costume of the earth, noise was expected, but it was
as if silence itself fell in shreds from the darkness
above.

Lenny was a rail-thin silhouette
against the gathering of lights at the head of Brennan Street, his
stride purposeful, shoulders tight, hands jammed into his pockets,
breath pluming.

Jake squinted, hobbling through the
packed snow as fast as he could bear it, praying his knees wouldn’t
quit on him. The thought of ending up face down in that cold fluffy
mold was enough to send shivers rippling through him. “Lenny, slow
down,” he called at one stage but his cry went either unheard or
unheeded.

Lenny moved on, Jake struggling to
keep up and wondering, as he guessed his friend was, what the hell
Baxter had to report and what he’d do when he found they’d left the
house rather than wait.

He prayed Joanne was all right, though
a selfish part of him, a mindless, insensitive creature he kept
locked away in the foulest recesses of his subconscious, yearned
for her to be dead, so Lenny could share in his suffering. So he
would no longer have to face the nights alone. Lenny’s advice was
good, but it welled from a shallow pond in which his friend had
never washed, a source that sprung from sympathy, not
empathy.

Only through his own loss could he
understand Jake’s and then, they could help each other through the
dark.

Jesus
, Jake thought, snapping back to himself,
what the hell is wrong with you?

He’d been friends with Joanne almost
as long as he’d known Lenny. She was a small, stout woman, full of
well meaning bluster but more than capable of adopting an evil
temper if it suited her needs. In many ways, she was her husband’s
polar opposite and in this case at least, the old saying about
attraction held true. Their love was as strong as Jake and Julia’s
had been, even if the Quicks' method of maintaining their
relationship was to feign indifference towards each other and to
trade sarcastic barbs as much as possible.