Snow(8)

The driving started out bad and only got worse. The sky was already dark by the time they turned out of the rental car garage, but at least the roadway leading to the interstate had been recently plowed. The snow swirled down in tornado clusters, rushing at the Cherokee’s windshield and spiraling in the cones of light issuing from the headlamps. Not surprisingly, they were just about the only vehicle on the road. The interstate narrowed and cut through a vast pine valley, with great heaping snowbanks studded with black firs rising up on either side of them. The occasional set of headlights passing them on the opposite side of the road were reminders that civilization was, indeed, still out there.

Two hours into the trip, Fred Wilkinson was sawing wood in the backseat with his head craned back on his neck. Nan was slouched against her husband’s chest, sleeping in her own silent way. They had been playing solitaire only twenty minutes earlier, giggling like two schoolchildren while Nan accused her husband of being a dirty old cheater. The cards now lay splayed in their laps, forgotten.

In the passenger seat, Kate was adjusting the radio, hoping to locate a station strong enough to struggle through the storm and make contact. She was having little luck. Finally, she managed to come upon an oldies station and settled for Little Anthony and the Imperials crooning through the static.

“So what’s your son’s name?” Kate asked, settling back in her seat.

“Justin. He’s seven.”

“You got a picture of him?”

He propped himself up on one buttock and fished his wallet out from the back pocket of his jeans. “In here,” he said, tossing the wallet into Kate’s lap.

She opened his wallet and examined the catalog of tiny pictures housed in their little plastic sleeves. “He’s adorable,” she said. “Does he look more like you or your wife?”

“Ex-wife,” he said automatically. “Most people think he looks like me. But that was when he was younger. He looks like his own person now.”

She flipped through more photographs. “And he lives permanently in Des Moines, huh?”

“Permanently. With his mother.”

“That must suck, what with you living in New York.”

He shot her a curious look, then turned back to the highway. “How’d you know I live in New York?”

She held up his wallet. “Driver’s license.”

“Ah. Very industrious of you.”

She turned to the last picture and a folded length of stiff paper eased out of the wallet and into Kate’s lap. “Whoops,” she said, scooping it up. “Wallet contents abandon ship.” She picked up the folded bit of paper and was about to stuff it back into the wallet when she noticed the dried bloodstains on it.

“What’s this?”

Todd knew what it was just from glancing at it through the periphery of his vision: a horse-racing form. The dried blood on it was his. He reached over and plucked it out of her hand.

“It’s a reminder,” he said.

“Was that blood?”

He said nothing.

“I’m sorry. It just fell out.”

“Don’t worry about it.” He stuffed the form into the breast pocket of his coat. On the radio, Little Anthony and the Imperials were replaced by The Guess Who. Intermittent bursts of static cut through the song.

Perhaps in an effort to change subjects, Kate turned and looked out the passenger window. “Snow’s letting up.”

“It’s been slowing down for the past twenty minutes or so…which is a good thing, because we’re making shitty time.”

“And the road’s beginning to disappear.”

“Yeah,” he said, a hard lump in his throat.

For the past several minutes, the thin white powder that had covered the blacktop had increased substantially; now, the pavement was completely gone, hidden beneath a hard-packed blanket of pure white snow several inches thick. The driving had become more treacherous and Todd could feel the steering wheel pulling all over the place as the Cherokee advanced through the worsening terrain.

“I don’t see any more tire tracks,” Kate marveled, peering through the front windshield now. Then, echoing Todd’s thoughts from earlier, she added, “We must be the only fools out driving on a night like this.”

“Don’t remind me,” he said, hoping he sounded more lighthearted than he felt.

The roadway seemed to narrow to one lane just up ahead, the snow encroaching on it from either side. The Cherokee bucked and groaned and, once, scraped its undercarriage against an undulation of packed snow. Todd slowed the vehicle down to a cool forty-five. The tires spun freely, then caught and pulled the Cherokee along.

“Check the map,” he said to Kate. “Make sure we’re still on the main road.”

“I never saw a sign to get off,” she said, unfolding the map across her thighs. “I can’t even see the mile markers out there. They’re buried under the snow.”

“We’ve just been going straight. I can’t imagine how…”

Todd paused. He leaned farther over the steering wheel, squinting at a brief flare of reflective light he thought he’d caught up ahead in the darkness. But it was a fleeting glare, there and then gone.

“What?” Kate said. “What is it?”

“Thought I saw something.”