Cold Quiet Country Read Free Page B

nothing straight left. Gwen was a curvy country road. Red hair and freckle-faced, and freckles all the way down her arms. Her hair was up, and that made her look older. I allowed myself a good look as I came toward her and she retreated inside, still facing me, and backed against the counter.
    With all the books I’d read and all the words I’d studied and all the miraculous fictions I’d imagined, the best I had for her was, “Burt says you’ll find some lunch for me.”
    She studied me like she was taking the measure of a dolt and then swallowed slowly. “There’s the refrigerator.” She spun with a move that flared her dress and left the room. Thirty seconds after she was gone, her calves were still burned to my eyes.
    I filled a glass with water and sat at the table with the chair sideways so I could open the refrigerator door and study what was inside. I ended up slathering a couple slabs of fresh-baked bread with butter and jam.
    Burt put me to work forking compressed hay from the goat stalls. No one I knew raised goats, and I was unfamiliar with them, but the odor was just a new twist on the old rotten ammonia stink of composted urine and hay. I couldn’t shovel very much before I had to run from the stall to gulp a few breaths of clean air. The goats didn’t mind, because the smell was trapped; it was only digging a foot of hay that released its full power. I shoveled all afternoon for a belly full of food and a rip in my pants when I caught a nail sticking out of the wall.
    I only had the one pair. Didn’t have the money to buy another until two weeks ago, and that from working for the butcher Haynes. The whole time I worked for Burt it was mostly for food. I saved a few dollars and he allowed me to sleep in the barn and wash in the trough.
    My first evening at the Haudesert place, Burt told me to get cleaned up, because even he—reeking of the barn and unaware of it—smelled goat stalls on me. I sat to dinner with his family, his wife Fay and his boy Jordan, and Guinevere. Burt’s other son, Cal, had his supper brought to him in bed. The first month I was there I only saw him once, when Fay asked me to run him a glass of water because she was a mess with bread dough in her fingers and he was hollering for a drink.
    Burt gave me a beer that night while we sat on the porch smoking stogies. He asked questions about politics. Had I done any thinking about natural rights? What did I think about the Commies taking over the country? I listened and he explained what a reasonable man would believe about the subjects. As I tried not to puke from cigar smoke and beer, Burt announced he held rank in the Wyoming Militia. His boys were old enough to have made up their minds, and each of them were joining, and that’s how I know that one way or the other when they see the way I left Burt, they’ll be on their way to find me at this house. They’re country boys with snowmobiles and friends. Heavy-artillery friends. They’ll come for me. Them and every redneck militiaman they can find.
    * * *
    More paper. A wooden bin to the side of the hearth holds dry oak and cherry logs, already split. Many have long splinters barely attached and quickly fuel the blaze. I load the fireplace and huddle close, breathing smoke because it’s hot and painful.
    The chimney is open but the fire has yet to establish the right drafts through the house. Smoke hangs a foot below the ceiling. In the flickering light, ghosts almost lift up from the photos on the wall.
    I fall to my behind and press stupid fingers to my belt. My leg wound seeps. Progress. With my belt undone, I look at my boots. Blow into clasped hands and then swing my arms. I fumble with the laces, pancake them between my fingers and pull. Toe the heels off and push until my boots clonk on the hardwood floor. Pull my shirt over my head and shake my hair. Ice flies. I’m naked on the floor, shaking, rapidly dying despite the inferno a few feet away. I crawl to the