They Know Me Everywhere



4.



He trudged up the steep bank of the river and across a short stand of woods, crunching through the frozen snow, crunching over sticks and small frozen trees and plants. He stepped out finally onto the frozen dirt path which was actually two narrow paths worn down to dirt and rocks by years and years of rolling tire treads. The sleet had shifted into a fine fast moving veil of snow, and it was so cold the snow seemed to shimmer like flecks of mica in the pale light of noon. The sky was a sheet of white.



He felt with his cut and and bruised right hand into the pocket of his corduroys to withdraw Billy's credit card. His hand stung in the cold light wind and snow. His blood had crusted dark red over a pair of short, deep, gashes in his knuckles. His right hand hurt like hell, his wrist was beginning to throb with a deep, ringing intensity. Pausing by the side of the path he sucked on the knuckles for a few seconds to get the taste of his own blood in his mouth, the warm coppery taste of it which somehow served to hearten him. When he removed his hand from his mouth the cold snow immediately pricked hard and bright at wound and it was a clean feeling, the cleanest he'd had in a while, in fact. He looked down at Billy's credit card, flipped it over, contemplated his brother's tightly scrawled signature on the back.



He would have to move quickly. Now there's a thought. For a dead man I've suddenly got a strange sense of urgency.



But I guess you're not dead till you're dead and till then you're still alive and living



He wondered if Billy was out and hunting for him yet because sooner or later he would be and he, Buddy, again surprised himself by feeling a deep abdominal flutter of fear at the terrible, perhaps mortal, beating or worse that he'd let himself in for now at the hands of his brother as a result of his actions of last night. As a result, in fact, his actions of now. For the first time since the end of the last long cold sleeting night of misery had passed he considered now the legal ramifications of what he’d done: breaking and entering, felony theft, and who knows what else in the book they'd throw at someone reckless enough to have absconded with a state trooper's, even a soon to be ex-state trooper's, service weapon.



fuck man I am fucked



and then he got a whiff of smoke odor off of someone's camp fire tracing out through the fine crystalline mist of the increasing snow and with that whiff the cold fear in the pit of his belly merged with another sensation now emerging from the back of his skull, from (it felt like) the base of his brain: a shivering, warm, creeping feeling like slender electrical fingers massaging his skull, filling him now with the old familiar upswinging feelings of strength and euphoria, of loquaciousness and capability. He knew what this was and what it meant and it did not matter because he would be a dead man soon but he was still a bit away from it, after all. And maybe, just maybe, there was a chance.



And then before the mask of the feeling could lead him to thoughts of the boy and of Emily he better get on my horse now began to walk quick now down the bipartite path of the frozen dirt tracks and toward where he thought he could see now the thin white smoke drifting from whosever fire it was. Yes, the smoke was coming from the old railroad bridge abutment down the road about 300 yards. He meant to see who and what it might be and he had the feeling now he used to get so long ago after he'd ditched school and had smoked out and gotten high, a centered feeling where only the present mattered, where all hopes and all dreams and all contentment resided in the present, in the right here, right now, the right exactly now



He knew he had to move fast though. He'd have to keep to the woods as much as possible. He'd have to think about borrowing a vehicle. And first and foremost he'd have to take care of his hand - as he trudged along down the track it began to throb mightily in the cold air. There was the drugstore and gas station nearby. He’d pick himself up a knit hat and some mittens. Then he'd go have himself some drinks and a meal and a cigarette afterwards before they'd get him. Or before Billy got to him. It was all the same now. No, he'd have himself a laugh or two and he'd maybe find someone at some bar to hear him out a bit and of course he already had his motel room, the gun in the drawer next to the bed where he planned to end it himself if someone didn't end it for him first. But never mind that for now. He'd have his drinks and his meal and his smoke, and who knows, maybe even -



He stepped up the three enormous, riven, snow-covered granite steps of the bridge abutment which was to their boy's minds when they'd played there as kids like some sort of barbarian fortress and there she sat in front of the small fire she'd built with sticks and some bunched up newsprint.



She sat with her knees close together, warming her dark thin hands. In the white snowing air the paint on her bitten fingernails he could see had faded to a coral color, pinkish, still faintly iridescent. She wore a gold turtleneck sweater under a short, brown leather coat. She wore what appeared be a man's khaki casual pants and they were filthy and noticably ripped at the pocket and rolled at the cuffs. Her purse, large and shapeless and of a nondescript navy blue color, sat on its side at her feet, leaning casually against the stone as though she were a woman waiting at a bus station. He observed the black patent leather tips of her boots which she warmed very close to the small guttering flames and the sharp, thin, scuffed down heels grinding into the stone below the bottom of the trousers.



She wore a maroon beret-style cap pulled down over her ears. Oily, velveteen black locks of hair peeked out from beneath the beret to brush against her the tight, faintly rouged skin of her high cheekbones. The cold seemed to put upon her tawny skin a gray veneer and she was shivering. Her full, symmetrical lips were dry and flaking beneath the faintest plum hue of lipstick mostly long gone, but her green eyes were hard and resplendent and glaring from within their artfully drawn edging of mascara and beneath her immaculately arched eyebrows. He could see, even beneath the beret, that she possessed one of the most intricately lined and complex foreheads he'd ever observed on a woman.



He stood there at the top of the steps, aware that he gaped, quickly trying to compose his features.



"Hi," he said.



She glared at him. She began to shiver. Her breath plumed thinly.



"Your hand..." she said, gesturing. Her voice was a low rasp.



He saw that his blood was streaming openly now down across his fingers and that it had stained his corduroys and their gray cuffs and in fact that it had seeped very slightly into the thin snow scrim covering the rock beneath his feet.



"I know," he said, "I cut it last night. I was,” He took a breath, forced himself to speak slowly and evenly, “I was at my brother's place when I cut it."



She did something with her mouth that caused her eyes to flatten out. The tense, hunted quality of her expression leaked away in that instant leaving only flat boredom in her eyes now and a dreadful weariness. Her eyes slid to the left and she looked balefully out at the brown cold slow-moving river which was just beginning to freeze.



"Oh. Well." She sighed. "That's too bad. You should be more careful"



Use your head, he thought, yeah right, he thought, Use your head, use your head, use your god damned head



"Listen," he said, "If you don't mind my taking a seat here for a bit, I'll help build that fire up for you."



She said nothing. She continued to look out at the river. With the cold now, seated on the bare stone as she was, her shivering was making a fast progression into shuddering.



"It's cold," he said, "I wouldn't mind sitting here with you and getting warm for a bit."



Her hard green eyes quickly came back to his.



"What are you going to, gather more sticks or something?" Her teeth chattered. She softened her tone slightly. "I think I can gather more sticks myself. It is cold, but I think you'd better not. I think you'd better," and she paused now, gesturing again with one long index finger, "I think you'd better worry about giving some attention to that hand instead. You're really bleeding. You're going to get an infection."



He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. "Yeah, well, you're right. But that's exactly what I'm going to do. Look, I'm just on my way up to the gas station now to wash up and then to the drugstore to get some stuff to clean and bandage this thing. Then I thought I could get us a little food and something to drink and if I can get my hands on a bottle of lighter fluid, then we can build this thing up a bit and really get warm here for a minute."



She stared at him.



"Don’t worry, I've got the money.”



"Do you smoke?" she said, speaking up fully for the first time. Her raspy voice was deep for a woman's and there was a strange, bluesy warmth at its edge.



He laughed suddenly, quick and low, four or five chuckles, and for the first time in a long, long time he felt and sounded to himself like the old Buddy. Yes, for one split second there he felt his life creeping back to him. I better not think about it



"Right- or left-handed?"



He thought she almost smiled.



"Well," she said, "This is a very generous offer."



"Alright, then." He blew into his hands. The snow was falling softly now in large flakes and there was no wind. The sky had darkened to a light, pigeon gray. "I'll head out. What do you smoke?"



"Salem Lights if they have them. But anything will do. This is really nice of you. You don't have to do this."



"I want to. Like I said, it'd be nice to sit and get warm for a bit. What would you like to drink?"



"Since you're asking, I would just about kill for a beer right about now."



"Any particular kind?"



"Bud is fine."



No, not quite, he thought. But shit, they know me everywhere



"Sounds good," he said. "I'll see if they have some wine too. I could really go for a nice bit of red wine."



"Mmmm," she purred. "You're reading my mind." She smiled at him now, full on. She really let him have it with the high beams. It was glorious. Heavenly. To be smiled at in such a way, by a beautiful stranger. It was better than any sex.



Don’t think about it!



"I'll be right back," he said.



Walking up the road in the falling snow, he wondered if she'd be there when he returned.



He hoped she would be.



He felt like his luck might be turning.



don't kid yourself



Then there was a commotion of footsteps in the woods just to his right and the cold blue fear came back rippling out from his belly, an electrical current into his spine



not yet now Billy you bastard not yet I'll kill you if you fuck this one up for me again you fucking cunt bastard



He cut quick to the right, out of view, and crouched behind the thick trunk of a pine, waiting to see who or what it was coming toward him.