panicked just a little at the thought that he might actually have to save a life.
The blood led him to a closed door where a dim light crept underneath.
“Judge Parrant?” he said cautiously, leaning close to the door.
He was reluctant to barge in, but when he finally turned the knob and stood in the threshold, he found a study lined with shelves of books. Along the far wall was a desk of dark wood with a lamp on it. The lamp was switched on but didn’t give much light and the room was heavy with shadows. On the wall directly back of the desk hung a map of Minnesota. Red lines like red rivers ran down the map from red splashes like red lakes. Behind the desk lay an overturned chair, and near the chair lay the judge.
Although fear reached way down inside him and made his legs go weak, he forced himself to move ahead. As he neared the desk and saw the judge more clearly, he forgot all about the procedures for a tourniquet. There was nowhere to put a tourniquet on a man who was missing most of his head.
For a moment he couldn’t move. He felt paralyzed, unable to think as he stared down at the raw pieces of the judge’s brain, pink as chunks of fresh watermelon. Paul didn’t even move when he heard the sound at his back, the soft shutting of the door. Finally he managed to turn away from the dead man just in time to see the second thing that night his Scout training could never have prepared him for.
2
“Cork?” Molly said from the bed.
He heard and he didn’t. Standing at the window with his hands poised at his zipper, Corcoran O’Connor watched drifts rise in the yard. His old red Bronco parked in the drive was already hub deep in powdery white. Farther down through the pines, the abandoned resort cabins by the lake were nearly invisible behind a gauzy curtain of blowing snow.
“You’re not really thinking of going, are you, Cork?” Molly asked. “Not into that.”
“What would folks say if I ended up snowbound here?”
“The truth. That you were screwing Molly Nurmi, that shameless slut.”
He turned to her, frowning. “Nobody calls you that.”
“Not to my face, anyway.” She laughed when she saw his anger. “Oh, come on, Cork. I’ve lived with that most of my life. It doesn’t bother me.”
“Well, it bothers me.”
“I’m glad it does.” She pushed the hair from her eyes, dark red hair damp with sweat. “Stay, Cork. I’ll fire up the sauna. We can get hot and wet, roll in the snow, come back to bed, and make love again. How does that sound?”
He finished zipping his pants, buckled his belt, and came away from the window. He went to the bed and took his red corduroy shirt from the corner post where it had been hastily draped. Slipping it on over his long johns, he slowly worked the buttons through. He bent and tugged on his socks. The cold floor had nearly frozen his feet. “Hand me a cigarette, will you?”
Molly took one from Cork’s pack of Lucky Strikes by the bed, lit it, and handed it to him. “They’ll kill you.”
“What won’t anymore?” He glanced around the room, looking for his boots.
“You seem distracted today.”
“Do I? Sorry.”
“Feeling a little guilty?”
“Always.”
“There’s no need to,” she said.
“Easy for you to say. You’re not Catholic.”
“Come on. Relax here beside me a minute while you finish your cigarette.” She patted the bed at her side.
He looked out the window. “I should get going. It’ll be hard enough getting back into town as it is.”
Molly drew the blanket and sheet around her and pushed herself up against the headboard. She pulled her knees up to her breasts and hugged them as if she were cold. “Why are you always so concerned with what people say about you, Cork? It’s not as if you’re still the golden boy.”
“I don’t care what people say.” He knelt and fished around under the bed for his boots. “It’s not me I’m worried about.” He found them and sat on the bed.
“Your wife?” she asked innocently.
Cork exhaled and shot her a cold look through the cloud of smoke.
“You know what I mean,” she said.
Molly took the Lucky Strike from his fingers and tapped the ash into a little tray shaped like a pair of red lips on the nightstand. She left the cigarette there while Cork concentrated on lacing his boots. She reached out and let her hand drift down the knobby ridge of his backbone. “What is it that you think we do here, you and me? I’ll tell you what I think it is. This is grace, Cork. This is one of those things that God, when He created it, said, ‘That’s good.’ ”
Cork kept lacing his boots as if he didn’t hear, or if he heard, as if it didn’t matter.
“Can I tell you something, Sheriff?”
“I’m not the sheriff anymore,” he reminded her.
“Can I tell you something,” she went on, “without you getting cold and stomping out?”
“Do I get cold and stomp out?”
“You get quiet and make excuses to leave.”
“I won’t get quiet,” he promised.
“Cork, I think you miss your family.”
“I see my family all the time.”
“This is different. This is Christmas. I really think you miss them more than you want to admit.”
“Bullshit,” he said, standing up.
“See, I’ve made you mad. You’re leaving.”
“I’m not mad. I just finished tying my boots. And you know I have to leave.”
“Why? What difference would it make if you stayed and people found out about us? It’s not as if you’re being unfaithful to a loving wife.”
“It’s a small town and I’m not divorced. People would kick us around in their talk like a couple of soccer balls. I don’t want my kids having to listen to that.”
“Fine.” She slid down and pulled the covers tight around her. “Have it your way.”
He picked up his cigarette, took a last drag, and ground out the ember on the red lips of the ashtray. He slipped the pack of Lucky Strikes into his shirt pocket. “Going to see me out?” he asked.
“You know the way.”
“Now who’s cold?”
“Go screw yourself,” she said.
“The world would be a dreary place, Molly, if that’s the way things worked.” He leaned down and gently kissed the top of her head.
“Go on,” she said, pushing him away softly. But she smiled in spite of herself. “I’ll be right down.”
He walked along the hallway of the old log house, over Molly’s braided rugs, creaked his way down the stairs and into the kitchen. Molly had fed him. Some sort of light brown sprout bread and lentil soup. Yogurt and strawberries for dessert. She drank Evian springwater, but she’d given Cork a Grain Belt. A few swallows were left in the bottle and he drank that down. The beer was still cool but had gone flat. He lifted his parka from the peg beside the back door and put it on, then settled his black watch cap over his ears. As he worked his gloves onto his hands, he glanced at a small plaque that hung on the wall. It was homemade, woodburned by Molly’s father long ago. It contained an old Finnish saying her father had roughly translated into English:
Cold, thou son of Wind,
Do not freeze my fingernails,
Do not freeze my hands.
