The Winter People(14)
She reached over and took Buzz’s hand, entwining her fingers with his, which were rough and callused, always stained black with grease, no matter how much he washed them. She studied him in the dim light of the dashboard—baseball hat with the alien’s face on it pulled down low, his eyes squinting out at the snowy road, battered Carhartt work jacket with its pockets stuffed full of all things Buzz: smokes, lighter, Leatherman multi-tool, bandanna, mini-binoculars, penlight, and cell phone.
These were her favorite times with him, when they were off alone in his truck. He’d take her up into the mountains to go UFO hunting. They’d park for hours, sharing a thermos of spiked coffee or a six-pack of Long Trail, while he told her about what he and his best friend, Tracer, had seen once, out behind the Bemis farm. A strange light that winked and pulsated, starting up by the rocks, then moving down to the cornfield. Then he claimed they saw a little creature almost flying through the cornstalks: pale and quick, its movements too fast and erratic for any human.
“I know what I saw,” Buzz swore. “It was an alien. A Gray. Tracer was right there with me—he saw it, too. It was real short, like four feet or so, and it had on this kind of dresslike robe that flowed out behind it when it ran. I bet you anything that’s what got those sheep and cows. They use livestock for experiments—drain all their blood, remove their organs with surgical precision—no animal can do anything like that.”
Tracer was a good guy, but Ruthie didn’t understand how one individual could smoke the amount of pot he did and still function. She had no doubt they’d seen the little Gray alien after doing copious bong hits in Buzz’s truck.
Still, even without Buzz’s story, there was plenty of creepy talk about the woods and the Devil’s Hand.
“Uh-oh,” Buzz said when he pulled up to the bottom of Ruthie’s driveway.
“Great,” Ruthie slurred, looking up to see that the kitchen and living room were illuminated, the light streaming through the uncurtained windows. Her mother was awake. Ruthie reached into her pocket again for the roll of breath mints and chewed up three of them. She pushed up her sleeve, held down the button on her big digital watch, and blinked at the tiny screen: 1:12 A.M. JAN 2. She was screwed.
Ruthie leaned over and gave Buzz a sloppy kiss. He tasted like weed and schnapps. “Wish me luck,” she said.
“Luck,” he told her, winking. “Call me tomorrow and let me know how bad the fallout is.”
Ruthie opened the door and jumped down out of the cab, her boots sinking into the fresh four inches of snow. She did a slow walk toward the house, stepping with the great care of a drunk trying not to stagger, taking great gulps of cold, woodsmoke-scented air. She shouldn’t have had all the schnapps on top of the beer. Emily’s killer weed hadn’t helped, either. She slapped at her face with her mittened hands. Sober up. Sober up. Sober up.
Her mother was going to eat her alive. She’d be grounded. Not allowed to see Buzz for a month.
Ruthie made her way to the front door, keeping her eyes on the windows. She saw no movement inside. No way would her mother go up to bed without turning off the lights—wasting electricity was a serious offense in their house.
She took in one last deep breath and opened the front door slowly, stepped into the entryway, and eased the door shut behind her, bracing herself for attack. But there was no mother waiting to pounce.
She froze, listening.
No footsteps. No Do you have any idea what time it is, young lady? Just the sleeping house. So far, so good.
Ruthie shrugged off her parka and kicked off her boots. She shuffled into the kitchen, got herself a glass of water, and chugged it, leaning heavily on the counter, blinking in the harsh overhead light.
The dinner dishes were washed and put away, but there was a full cup of tea on the table. She touched it. Stone cold. Beside the tea was a slice of apple pie with one bite missing, the fork left resting on the plate. Never one to pass up a piece of her mother’s pie, Ruthie gobbled it down and set the dish in the sink.
She switched off the lights and went into the living room to turn off that light, too. The woodstove had burned down to coals. She threw on a couple of logs, banked it down for the night, and headed for bed.
As she crept up the steps, as quietly as she could, using the banister to keep her balance, head swimming from booze, one happy thought rose up above everything else: she was home free. She almost laughed aloud in triumph.
Halfway up, she stepped in a small puddle and stopped. There were several dirty puddles on the wooden stairs. It looked like someone had come up without taking their boots off. Annoyed about her wet socks, Ruthie climbed the rest of the stairs to the carpeted hall.
The door to her mother’s room was closed, no light underneath. Fawn’s door was open, and she could hear her little sister sigh in her sleep. Roscoe came out of Fawn’s room and trotted over to Ruthie, purring, his big fluffy tail waving in the air like a please-love-me flag.
Ruthie smiled down at the ash-gray cat, whispered, “Come on, old man,” and slipped into her room, the cat right behind her. The bed was unmade, her desk a messy pile of textbooks and papers from the semester that had just ended: English Composition, Intro to Sociology, Calculus I, Microcomputer Applications I. Though they hadn’t posted grades yet, she knew she’d aced all the classes, even if they had been as boring as shit.
“It’s so easy a trained rat could get a 4.0 GPA. It’s a subpar education,” she’d complained to her mother. “Is that what you want for me?”