A Cold Morning After

The worst part, I decided in the car, is the wind.
While snow, it blinds, it covers, it chills,
It still has innate serenity.
Things sleep in a heavy snow,
Wait for better days.
There isn't much else to do.
Wind, on the other hand. . .
Wind breaks, howls, wrestles.
You have to be a heavy sleeper not to notice a high wind
Especially in winter.
Things that might otherwise sleep
Wake restlessly
And remember they're hungry.

I had never seen Pete Barnum
Afraid.
Two tours
Made that go away,
I thought.
He is white in a way the cold can't make you.
As I climb out of the Jeep
He greets me
Hurriedly,
Looking back at his porch.
A red blanket,
Draped over something
Lies in the snow at his feet.

"Is that Rick Muldoon?"
"Yeah. Sheriff asked me to cover him 'til you got here, so my girls wouldn't see. It didn't seem right to leave him alone."

The figure underneath is gray from cold and exposure,
Not even the blood on his back is red anymore.
Rick lies outstretched
Mittenless hand grasping for Pete's door.
There is no hat
And hoarfrost wisps gracefully from his hair
Eyebrows
Beard.
You'd almost think he froze to death
But for the blood.
I pull out my camera.

"Jesus. What happened?"
"Dunno. I found him this morning when I came to get the paper. I talked to him last night, and he was fine. Asked me how my furnace was."
"Where's the sheriff?"
"He and Sadie are next door."
He pauses awkwardly. Word does get around.
I say nothing.
"Coffee?"
"Please."

I can't help being an artist.
Not even here.
Angles
Contrast
Lighting
All these things have been stamped in since undergrad
And they come out with the camera.

I would have made his t-shirt darker.
I think the wound could have waited until afternoon for better lighting.
Rick never liked having his picture taken,
Not even for Christmas.
I wonder what he'd think now.

Something crunches under Pete's foot as he returns,
Red and rusty against the snow.
"Is that your horseshoe?"
"No, I don't think so."
The camera snaps.

One hundred yards
From Rick Muldoon to his front door.
That's a long way on a winter night
When you're being chased.
The trees are quiet, but for a bird or two,
Air dry and crisp.
There's not a cloud in the sky anywhere.
The town ambulance is parked behind the squad car,
Next to the family pick-up.
Dave stands next to it,
Sipping Dunkin Donuts
Hopping from foot to foot
Breath silver in the morning.

"Is that a good sign or a bad one?"
"Which?"
"You're standing outside rather than inside helping."
"Bad so far," he says darkly. "You?"
"I prefer Christmas photos."

It's a joke.
This job is more interesting.
One day maybe I'll move to the big city, and put all the photos from this job in a gallery.
'Morbid Pays the Rent,' I'll call it.
It'll be a hit.

The barn stands wide and silent.
Rick must have had a half-dozen milking cows.
One of them lies in the doorway, stiff and cold as her master.
A single delicate bolt protrudes from her eye.
The artist in me knows what happened here,
What I will find.
Snap, goes the camera.
I hope I'm wrong.
Snap.

The screen door is closed
But it is loose and battered,
Latch wind-worn and broken long ago.
It's the type of thing I never would have gotten around to fixing, either.
Snow has drifted in the front room,
Door wedged by the coat stand.
I wonder what they were looking for,
To leave nothing unbroken.
I can't see a pane of glass bigger than my thumbnail.
I wonder if they were even looking for something.
Snap.

"In here."

Gary.
Worn and gray,
Badge dinted and passed down.
Alive, still.
There's not enough coffee in all the world, say his eyes.
Or liquor, for that matter.

Sadie.
She'd be pretty if she ever smiled.
Not much chance of that now.

Gran Muldoon was a proper Scattish woman:
Never drank wine
When the blood of an Englishman would do.
She used to describe a family recipe
That called for grinding bones.
It always sounded pretty good to me.
She serenely against the cellar door,
Amongst the wreckage of the kitchen,
Iron poker bent and bloody
Matted with silver hair.
Whomever came into her house
She gave them Hell
The likes of which I can't imagine.

"The cut to her throat killed her, I think.
Three more on her arms,
One on her face.
Something very sharp did this. Surgical steel, or glass, maybe."

Sadie is always direct like that.
Analytical.
It's why she's good at being an investigator.
It's why we didn't work.

Gran let me photograph her once.
I loved the proud set of her mouth and chin
The line of her nose
The ice in her eyes.
Hers are some of my favorites;
They remind me of my own gran,
Who almost forgave my da for being Irish,
But not quite.
She's as proud as ever,
Just as set;
All she's missing is the sky-blue paint.
I fancy there's a smile to her.
Snap.

I wonder what her obituary will say.

The are shards of black glass
Mingled with the wreckage,
Razor sharp, each one.
I point them out
Snap a picture
And leave them for Sadie.

"Have you found anyone else?"
"No. There's no one upstairs or anywhere else in the house. Laura, little Abby, and her brother James, all missing."
"Mind if I look around?"
"That's your job, isn't it?"

The upstairs fared no better,
The big bed is rumpled and broken
The mirror shattered in its frame,
Clothes tossed about
Drapes shredded
As if by some great cat.
The string of black pearls Laura wore
On special occasions
Lie scattered like marbles on the floor.
Snap.

In the next room, a crib sits by the open window
Almost untouched
But for the fact it is empty.
The window is shattered like the rest of the house,
Staring balefully at the backyard and black treeline.
There is no glass in the snow-white blankets.
Snap.
I see something else, too.

"Did you find anything?"
"Yes."

Above the old back door,
There is the faded imprint where the horse shoe hung.
The wood smells of pine and new varnish
And sticks when I push.
Swelled, protesting wood squeaks
Rusted steel screams
And nearly fall face first
Down the steep, soft steps.
Gary and Sadie blink owlishly
But I'm up and pointing.
The prints are hours old and wind-swept like the rest of the county,
But there they are,
Straight as a highway
From stoop to trees.
Gary sees and takes off.

"Maybe we'll find them."
Sadie sounds as hopeful as I feel.
No one could survive long in a night like last.
I don't say anything.
We'll never find James;
Cradles are their specialty,
Laura, maybe Abigail.
But not James.

Frozen flesh and porcelain never seemed all that alike to me.
Standing here, though,
I can see how someone might think so.
As long as I live
I'll never see anything
To awe me as Laura is awed,
My eyes will never be so wide,
My face so wondering.
I'm kind of jealous,
To be honest.

Gary claims she froze to death;
I can see the house from here, in spite of the trees.
Her tracks are clearer here,
Out of the winds.
Hers, and hers alone.

Gary calls it in.
I'm frustrated by the thin light.
Sadie examines.
Laura stood here a long time,
Until the cold took her.
I wonder if she even noticed.
There's no fight here,
No struggle at all,
Not like Rick, or Gran.

Gran. . .
I feel cold, and the camera falls.

"Did you check the cellar?"

She is huddled against the ancient furnace,
Little Abigail
Blue and shivering in her night shift.
The heavy red nail she holds like a cross,
Then a dagger
When it will not keep us away.
She's got a good arm.
My lips will need a stitch or two,
And I should get checked for tetnus.

Her screams are heartbreaking.
Heartbreaking.

Dave was always good with kids
But even he
Can't calm her down,
Until she is wrapped in his coat,
Carried off in his warm arms.

"Are you done here?"
Gary is rushed and anxious
As Abby is loaded into the ambulance.
Sadie goes with her.
He wants to be gone.
I can't fault him.
"Not yet. But I can finish on my own."

When the squad car pulls out,
I stand a moment
On the broken porch
Tasting the silence and the cold.

The nail is lying on the dirt floor,
Red with rust and my blood.
Snap.
Into my pocket it goes.
The poker will be missed,
But I can fathom a better use for it.
Prying it from Gran's
Cold, dead fingers
Is as easy as it sounds.
I stand in the back doorway
Listening for a moment,
Then I'm off.

There's thin places in the world
If you know where to find them.
Places that lead
Elsewhere
Elsewhen
Where things can cross over to us
If you tweak the circumstances just right.
In the Old Country, you always knew where those places were:
Old stories passed down from father to son,
Mother to daughter,
Stories a thousand years in the telling.
Don't venture into that valley on the new moon,
That grotto at high tide,
That ring of stones at all.
Stories told until they became legend
More than anything,
And the weight of Disbelief scabbed the thin places over.

Then we came here
And our Disbelief came with us,
Except we didn't know where the thin places were,
Didn't know how to guard them,
Forgot there were places to guard.
They didn't forget us, though.

They don't forget.
They just got bored waiting for us to come to Them.
Bored enough to cross oceans looking.
And the Natives that weren't ready for us
Weren't ready for Them, either.
Reap what you sow, I guess.

Closer than I expected,
Just a tumble of rocks
Just Beyond-the-Woods-I-Know.
It's a small space,
Three large stones stacked just so.
Above it a crude bear carved painstakingly into ancient stone,
Deep scratches marring it
Like graffiti.

There's barely enough room for a child to squeeze through.
I couldn't fit if I wanted to,
But that's not why I'm here.
It's deeper than it looks:
To the End of Time, almost
Or the Beginning.
I wedge the poker
Iron, blood, hair and all
Into the crevasse
Plunge the red nail into the snowy earth.

The iron won't hold Them forever,
Maybe not even for long
But it sends a message:
We remember.
Next time, we'll be ready.

I turn away.
My film needs to be developed.