everywhere, and many of them had not yet formed crusts thick enough to support my weight. I fell into them and struggled out and got to my feet and walked a few steps and fell again, pratfall after pratfall. It became monotonous. After what seemed like six or eight hours of grueling, Herculean effort, I came to a familiar limestone formation against which I had rested for a spell this morning when I had been traveling in the opposite direction. The limestone marked the halfway point through this arm of the forest, which meant that I was only one-quarter of the way back to Timberlake Farm. I allowed myself less than five minutes, then started out once more. I walked eastward, judging my direction by certain formations of land and trees and brush which I had carefully committed to memory on the way westward earlier in the day. The wind blew and the snow snowed and the cold chilled and the light gradually went out of the gray sky as if some celestial hand were slowly turning a rheostat switch up above the clouds.
I was lying on my back under a bare elm tree, resting. I had no idea how I had gotten there; I couldn't remember lying down. And I was lying on the rifle which was still strapped across my back? Odd. Distinctly odd? But much more comfortable than I would have thought. Oh yes. So comfortable. Just lovely. I felt warm and snug. I could look up through the interlacing black branches and watch the pretty little lacy snowflakes spiraling down to the earth. So very pretty and warm and soft and pretty and soft and warm, warm, warm, warm
Hanlon, don't be a fool, I told myself.
Well I like it here, I answered.
For eternity?
Five minutes will do.
Eternity.
Will you stop messing in my comfortable world?
Get up.
No.
Get up!
I rolled onto my side, sat up, clutched at the trunk of the tree, and got my numbed feet under me again. My sense of balance was functioning about as well as it would have done had I just now stepped off the biggest, fastest roller coaster in the world. The world circled around and around me? Nevertheless,
I got going once more, head down and thrust out in front of me, teeth clenched and jaws bulging, shotgun in one hand, the other hand fisted, looking and feeling mean as a treed raccoon.
A clump of powdery white stuff fell out of the laden pine boughs overhead and struck me in the face. I spluttered, coughed, cursed, groped around in the snow, found the shotgun just inches from my fingers, used it as a staff, and levered myself to my feet.
I thought smugly, How about that for stamina? Huh? Now that is what you call true grit.
But right away the pessimistic half of me leaped into the conversation with both mental feet. If that snow, I said sternly to myself, hadn't fallen smack in the middle of your ugly face, you know where you would still be? You would still be right there on the ground, under that tree; you'd be there until you finally froze to death.
Not true!
Sure is.
I was resting.
Resting?
Conserving strength.
Well, every minute you spend 'conserving strength' is one more minute that Connie and Toby-remember them, Connie and
Toby, wife and son? — spend all alone in the farmhouse.
Hey, you really know how to spoil a good mood, don't you?
Yeah.
I guess I've rested enough.
You better believe it.
Determined to put an abrupt end to this interminable interior dialogue, I oriented myself, took a deep breath of air that seemed instantly to crystallize my lungs, and walked westward. Within a few minutes I came to a narrow frozen creek. I crossed it and went up the western slope of Pastor's
Hill.
On the crest I braced myself against the wind that pummeled my back, and I stared out at the open fields of Timberlake Farm. The house was concealed by billowing curtains of snow. But it was out there, just beyond my sight, and I would be home in an hour or so. Just one more mile to go, the last mile, the easiest mile by far, right across open land, no trees or hills or briars or brambles, easy, simple, sweet, a real Cakewalk.
Darkness.
Softness.
Warmth.
And I kept thinking:
Death is not beatable.
Death is not cheatable.
Death is not mutable.
Death is real and final.
'I'm not dead yet!' I croaked, staggering to my feet.
I walked perhaps ten yards before I realized that I no longer had the shotgun; and I turned right around and went back to look for it. I passed the place where I had collapsed, kept going.
Twenty or thirty feet farther on, I found the gun. The snow had nearly buried it. The black, ice-sheathed barrel poked up out of a drift just far enough to catch my eye. I pulled the weapon free, gripped it firmly in both trembling hands, and stomped off toward the house that was still shrouded in a shifting haze of snow.
Each step was agony. Pain shot up my legs, burned along my back.
Only my feet were free of pain, for they were numbed by the intense cold.
I had trouble getting my breath.
I cursed my weaknesses as I walked.
(I am expending too much time and too many words recounting this journey back from the Johnson farm. And I know why I'm doing that; I can see through myself so easily. There are two reasons. One: I don't want to have to write about what follows this standard scene of wilderness survival. I don't want to face up to the memory.
Two: I am trying with all my might to convince myself that I did everything I possibly could have done, everything any human being could have done. I walked for four miles through a furious storm, seeking help. Was it my fault that there was no help available at the other end? Stop stalling, Hanlon. Will you just get on with it?)
Darkness moved across the sky like spilled ink seeping through a carpet.
The temperature dropped.
Night came in full, squeezed tight around me, exciting claustrophobic fears.
I proceeded blindly, squinting at nothing, blinking away the tears that the cold wind had pressed from my eyes and which it now turned to ice on my cheeks. I kept moving, trusting to instinct to keep me headed for home, because I was terrified that the moment I stopped I would become confused, disoriented, and would wander helplessly in circles thereafter.
Snow: crusting in the eyelids, tickling in the nostrils, stinging the lips, melting on the tongue
Wind: behind like a pursuing demon, pushing, shoving, battering, whistling against muffled ears
I fell.
I got up.
I walked.
There was nothing else I could do.
How far to go?
Quarter of a mile.
