I wipe my hands on my pants, and stand over him. The fresh air drifting through the open door cools the sweat on my brow but I’m shaking so hard I’m afraid it will shake me to pieces. My guts seem about to escape through my throat. They’re headed off by desperation. “How do I make this stop? How do I get him back?”
He gives the smallest little shake of his head.
“Goddamn it,
He does, but I have to bend low to hear the words. “It wouldn’t interest you,” he says.
“What wouldn’t?”
The fist he brings up is trembling, and for a moment he looks like an old man about to waggle it at some pesky kids who’ve left a flaming bag full of dog turds on his stoop. But then a twig-like finger springs free and bends toward him, indicating he wants me to come closer.
I hesitate, and in that hallway where the light is hesitating too, time passes unmeasured by the fall of the old bastard’s coins. I hunker down, knees crackling, my gut straining against my belt.
“Tell me what to do.”
With that maddening smile still mangling his lips, he brings his head close and whispers in my ear. “You have to give me what
Wintry’s been near-death since the fire, but in Milestone, even if you don’t have an old man’s pennies in your pocket, you can draw the time out just enough to get your business done. I’ve been doing it for too many years to count, and Wintry’s doing it now.
With his last reserves of strength, he leans against the doorjamb, awaiting my word. He says nothing, offers no condolences, asks no questions, just stands there, eyes narrowed against the gnawing pain, watching as I return from the kitchen, a bread knife clutched in one hand. When I ask for his help in cutting Kyle down, he dutifully steps over the threshold where Cadaver is playing possum, and accompanies me upstairs.
My boy is as I found him, though he’s stopped swinging, his shadow like a painted thing on the polished floor. The wounds mask the emotion on Wintry’s face as he supports Kyle’s legs while I drag the bed away from the wall and far enough into the middle of the room to allow me to mount it and reach the noose. There is little give in the mattress, though I can feel the hard springs pressing through. The rope has been looped three times around one of the rafters. It won’t be hard to cut and the blade is sure.
“Lift him,” I instruct. Wintry does. The sound of his breathing is like a steam train leaving the station.
Kyle is turned away from me, and I’m thankful for that. All I can see is the back of his head, the dark unruly hair. I can’t remember the last time I touched it, but I won’t touch it now. Later, maybe, when Wintry’s gone.
I begin to saw at the rope, tears or sweat running down my face, I can’t tell which.
The first loop snaps with a labored groan.
Then the second. When the third gives way the boy is free, and falling, but this time it is not a noose that catches him, but Wintry, whose eyes now seem to contain an emotion I have never seen in them before. It’s the same look he once drew from me whenever Flo lavished attention on him.
Envy.
And it’s directed at the boy cradled in his arms.
Chapter Seventeen
Wintry carries the boy downstairs. He goes slowly because of the pain, and because he doesn’t want to drop the boy. Doesn’t want the Sheriff to have to try to hide his mourning any more than he’s already doing.
So he takes the steps easy. Kyle isn’t heavy. It’s like carrying a baby, and right now Wintry wishes he knew magic, or had the power of healing, because he’d bring that kid back for the Sheriff lickety-split. But he doesn’t know magic, and he doesn’t have Cobb’s power to heal. If he did, he’d surely use it on himself, and make the awful burning go away.
Though the stairs seems to go on forever, it has an end, and when Wintry reaches it, it feels like he’s just come down off the mountain he calls home—used to call home—into the valley.
He stands there for a moment, ignoring the raging fire in his arms and the terrible pain from the muscles beneath, and he pictures Flo, who might walk in that door any second, smiling, delighting in his surprise. Just like the night he asked if he could walk her home and she agreed, except it was his home he walked her to. Just like she surprised him by refusing a drink, or anything but the short walk to the cot in the corner. Just like she surprised him by weeping all the way through their lovemaking, then asking him to marry her afterward. And sure, Wintry was no fool, he’d heard the stories, heard that she’d killed her husband, but at that moment it didn’t matter. He’d said yes, and in the morning, when he watched her leave, watched her until she had descended the mountain and was little more than a speck, he decided that if she did kill her man, he must have deserved it. And maybe he would too, but he could think of worse ways to die than at the hands of the woman he loved.
Burning, for example.
Grimacing, he turns to look at the Sheriff, whose face is almost the same shade as his son’s, and nods. For a moment it doesn’t seem as if the man understands what Wintry’s trying to tell him, so he adds, “Take him.”
The Sheriff reaches out with the kind of look a man not used to holding babies might have when presented with one. But he takes his son in his arms, anguish rippling across his face, and brings the boy close to his chest.
“Let’s go,” he says, as firmly as a voice broken by tears will allow him.
But Wintry doesn’t move. Instead he glances down into the corner by the door, where the man he wants to see, the man he came here to see is still sitting.
“Just a sec,” he says to Tom, and leans over the man with no eyes.
“He’s gone,” the Sheriff says quietly, and there’s a certainty to his voice that only the man who killed him can have.
“He welshed then,” Wintry murmurs. “Didn’t do what he promised he’d do.”
“If I were you I wouldn’t be surprised. The devil doesn’t keep his promises.”
Wintry straightens, a hard black knot of bitterness caught in his throat. With a sigh, he leads the way out into the sunshine, still taking it slow out of respect for Sheriff Tom’s grief.
It feels like hours before they reach the end of the path, and here they stop.
“Thanks,” the Sheriff says. “For…” He shakes his head, brings the boy’s head close to his chest with one grubby, bloodstained hand. His eyes are filled with the kind of agony Wintry knows all too well.
Sheriff Tom blinks, as if to dismiss further conversation, or acknowledgment of his gratitude, and moves around the front of the truck, to where the sun through the overhanging leaves makes dancing patterns on the road, and he motions for Wintry to open the side door. Kyle’s head begins to turn, as if he wants to see what Wintry’s up to, or where he’s going to be stowed, and the Sheriff gently puts a hand on the boy’s chin, directs his gaze back to the gold star on his father’s uniform. The light breeze ruffles the boy’s hair, making him seem alive. But anyone who might come along this road need only look at Sheriff Tom’s face to know the truth about the situation.
And then the sound of an engine getting closer tells Wintry that someone is coming along. He hopes, for the Sheriff’s sake, that whoever it is doesn’t stop to offer help, or ask questions. But then, this is Milestone, and people rarely do. Can’t rightly be afraid of death if you’ve never had to look at it, which is why most folks in this town don’t look anywhere but inside themselves.
“Wintry…”
It’s Wintry’s turn to apologize for being distracted by the car. “Car comin’,” he says, and sets about opening the door for Tom. “We best hurry ourselves outta the road.”
He feels a cold lance in his side at the thought that maybe the kid—Brody—managed to get his hands on a car and is racing to put them out of their misery once and for all. Wintry wouldn’t mind, but he figures that’s more than the Sheriff deserves.
“Best hurry,” he says again.
