Hollis felt a jolt deep inside himself when bringing his eyes to her. He felt a tightening in his chest. “Deb, I can't give you my blessing,” he said, his voice breaking, “but I can't say I'd blame you either — because I wouldn't.”
“I know you wouldn't,” she said, resting a hand against his neck. “So that's good enough for me. Thank you.”
His eyes began welling, and when he then tried to speak, the words he most wanted to say confounded him, becoming uttered in part through a stifling, gasping shortness of breath.
“Love you, too,” she responded, pressing dry lips against his chin as he leaned forward to kiss her forehead.
Hugging each other, they both wept for a little while — and afterward, they sat back without talking, the tears dripping off their faces, shaken by the irrevocability of the moment. Then Hollis rose from the couch and went to stand at the window. When Debra finally left the living room for bed, he was still there at the window, staring into the night — as if reluctantly awaiting the snow which would soon fall, somehow already sensing that frigid morning where everything around him would become transformed.
19
And so it was to be that snow, at dawn this morning, which beckoned Hollis and Lon forward while the Suburban's hazard lights blinked near the golf course — while the whole of Nine Springs conveyed a listless existence and fireplaces had begun to tinge the air with a woodsy autumnal flavor. The pair trudged straight across the deeply buried greens as a vision of red and cobalt — Hollis in his metallic-colored duvet jacket, Lon in his scarlet parka — going away from the place where Lon had slipped, both leaving a trail of footprints through a glaring, unbroken white expanse: neither speaking now as the sun reflected off the snow and washed out their sight, neither questioning their slow progression which fractured the pure white earth below a pure blue sky, neither asking why it was that they had felt the need to venture forward on the golf course instead of returning to the temperate comfort of their respective homes. Thick, visible exhalations of breath curled up in front of their rosy- cheeked faces like hot industrial steam, preceding them beside hidden sand traps and icy man-made ponds. Holding hands for support, walking side by side, the two men swallowed the cold and the wind, remaining mindful of each step crushing the snow, aware all the while that if one should suddenly fall the other was likely to get dragged down, too. Yet Hollis couldn't maneuver quite as deftly as Lon, for his left thigh ached somewhere below the scar while his feet had grown numb inside the leather boots. But pressing onward with an increasingly painful limp, Hollis was bolstered by a recollection he had been fortunate enough to have never experienced firsthand — those bitter winters during the Korean civil war, that subzero march southward from the Chosin, exposed skin bonding to metal and bloody palms stripped off by frozen mortar shells, frostbite blackening heels or toes. Then Hollis sensed his winter footwear was absorbing moisture; it seemed his socks were growing damp and squishing around within the boots, although the loss of feeling in his feet prevented him from knowing for sure.
It was Lon, however, who paused to catch a breath, shaking loose the snow caked on his galoshes before removing one of his black mitts. While Hollis blew into his bare hands and rubbed his palms together to generate heat, Lon held the mitt out for him, nodding once but saying nothing. Hollis accepted what was offered, working the wet mitt onto his left hand. Just then a crow's scream broke the morning calm, its harsh call echoing from where the bird circled far overhead and appeared to be monitoring them from up high. As if prompted by the ominous cawing, Lon resumed walking, seizing Hollis's bare hand in his own bare hand, tugging him along. The crow screamed a second time, its uneven circle moving and traveling with the pair.
Farther they went, past the eighteenth hole, farther still — the streets and homes now well behind them, the eastern section of the golf course having been designed to jut into undeveloped desert like an oasis — until reaching the edge of their known world, dead-ending at a chain-link fence where, ahead of them in that no-man's-land beyond Nine Springs, was a grove of orange trees, then sloping terrain, then the distant ranges of the Catalina Mountains. But what summoned them lacked reason; what drew them to the fringes was only revealed when at last beheld, and in its august presence they stood dumbstruck at the fence: a lone Hereford cow was waiting on the other side, standing several yards away beside an orange tree, as if sanctuary from the snowstorm had been sought below the branches — a solitary brown-and-white cow which had seemingly anticipated their approach, facing them with eyes agape, glistening while long pendants of ice dripped from its huge nostrils and underside, staying erect but releasing no breath — lifeless there yet frozen upright in tableau.
How strange, Hollis thought, for death to leave the beast standing. But he also understood that death — that trespasser of safe places — was often curious in method: whether it came beneath a bridge, or by a river, or on a golf course, or in a hospital, or beside a tree. Death, he thought, was like the downfalling of snow last night, so quiet and so pacifying, inevitably blanketing all which might hope to remain untouched. So the pain of dying was one thing, he told himself, whereas death itself was something entirely different, something which was benign by nature and not unkind.
“No,” Lon uttered, “no, no, don't understand it, don't get it — how'd we find ourselves here?” His hand flexed and squeezed against Hollis's hand.
“I don't know,” were the words which floated within steam from Hollis, his body shivering. “I don't know,” he repeated, glad for the small bit of warmth Lon's bare hand afforded him. At that moment the crow screamed a warning at close range, making the pair start and glance up to where it sat nearby. Neither had noticed the large bird's arrival, how it had glided noiselessly right above them as a shadow — wings fully expanded, rigid talons slicing the air — to land atop the fence, turning itself around toward them, and perching there now like a sentry, watching with coal-black sockets and darting, questioning movements of its feathered head.
“We need to go,” Lon said, sounding agitated. “I'm suddenly not feeling all that great. Something isn't right.”
“Okay,” Hollis said, meeting the crow's stare, peering into a blackened socket but perceiving a hollowness where an eye should reflect.
“I think I overexerted myself, I think that's it. And I think Jane is probably worrying, so we really better go.”
Cocking its head, the crow thrust its beak forward, bellowing furiously as if ordering them to leave.
“Okay,” Hollis repeated, hesitating long enough to cast his gaze one last time at the poor creature beneath the orange tree: while Lon — refusing to look anymore, pounding the snow with his galoshes — about-faced and tugged on his hand.
“I'm going.”
Hastily they returned upon their own beaten trail, and as Lon led the way among the field of white which was quickly melting under the sun, Hollis soon discerned the figure of someone else in the distance, an inert shape pausing where Lon had fallen earlier on the ninth hole green. The trodden, slushy trail wound back from the desert and brought them closer to the residential lots of the community, the snow ebbing to a grayish muddy surface as sidewalks and asphalt thawed. But the ultraviolet rays thrown off the ice had become excruciating, and with photophobia now hampering their progress instead of the snow, he couldn't quite yet make out who it was they were fast approaching. Perhaps, he thought, it was another person entranced by the aftermath of the snowfall, or possibly an officer from the sheriff ‘s department who had been alerted by the blinking hazard lights of the parked Suburban, or maybe even one of the many groundskeepers investigating the post-storm condition of the golf course; and if the person hadn't been so tall, he would have assumed it was Lon's wife searching for her husband when he had failed to come home.
Since Lon was leading and held a better vantage point, Hollis asked, “Who is it? Can you tell?”
“How's that?” Lon huffed, short of breath, still pulling Hollis by the hand.
“Do you see who it is?”
The figure was a few yards in front of them, marking the spot where their journey had started and, presently, would conclude.
“Who are you talking about?” Lon answered, his labored voice imparting an entire day's worth of exhaustion. “I don't understand who
Just then Hollis realized what must be loitering on the ninth hole green. “Never mind,” he said, finally
