style="font-size:15px;"> ‘You rather we leave it out there – get all torn up or some animal make off with it?’
‘No … just rather keep my job, is all. Rather we didn’t have him back there. Guess he’s better than some of the shit chuckers we drive around with.’
Wally slides the slot door closed. ‘It’s not a him anymore.’
The two men are sitting in the cab, wrapped in the coarse wool of the emergency blankets, breath already frosting over the windows. The gunfire rattle of hailstones has slowed. It’s quiet, almost peaceful. Wally feels his eyes shut.
Then out of nowhere – a woman singing. He opens his eyes and sees Fisher fiddling with the tape deck.
‘What the eff is that?’
‘It’s my Crystal Gayle.’
‘Fish!’ Wally slams the eject button. ‘We might need the last of the battery for the radio.’
‘Oh.’ Fisher wipes his nose and rolls the snot nervously between his thumb and pointer finger. ‘We gonna freeze to death in here, Kag?’
Wally takes in his partner, sees the joke but feels the concern underneath it. ‘They say if you wanna make it through a cold night up north, best thing is to hunker down in a bag naked with someone else.’
Fisher looks at him with a big grin that moves back some of the worry he’s been sucking on. ‘Love to see them find us all here in the morning – three buck-naked men in a van.’ He puts his chair back, reclining, scratching his smooth chin with a bare hand before shoving it back in the mitt. ‘Drive em, drop em off and drive back, but goddammit, Kag, if you didn’t have to stop on the coldest day of the year. Just you getting cold feet, I guess.’
‘What the hell about?’
‘Your date.’ Fisher giggles like they’re thirteen years old.
‘I don’t have a date. It’s just lunch. Anyway, you were the one hollerin.’
‘Cold feet is why you stopped, is alls I’m saying.’ Fisher sighs and the joke’s gone. ‘Be eating dessert right about now, I guess. Celia’s apple pie, apples off her dad’s farm, still warm. She probably did a fresh loaf of bannock too – never ate the shit growing up, but she makes it so thick and flaky, it just melts. The side, she’s got some carrots with butter and a bit of honey … ’
Wally listens to Fisher working his way backwards through this meal, sharing each dish, the smells and textures, his voice becoming thicker with every slice of rare steak, mouthful of garlicked potatoes, murmuring into the easy ritual of setting the table, the hiss of a beer cap coming loose. Opening the front door, the warm rush of air as you cross from the rest of the world into your own little piece of it.
When Fisher moves off to sleep, Wally breathes on the window, drawing a circle with his glove and rubbing a porthole through the frost. He’s hoping for the moon, a few stars, just a bit of light so he can know which way this van is pointing. But he can’t see anything. Only this great hungry darkness.
He thinks about the body in the back and tries to make a story for this man. Thinks about the lonely kind of life you’d have to live for this lonely kind of end to it. A plain face, no identifying marks on the body, no identification of any kind, nothing to call his own. Probably middle-aged, halfway into some kind of life, some kind of career. Nothing really fulfilling. A failed relationship, the usual wreckage. No kids. Colleagues, people to shoot the shit with – talk about the hockey game – but no real friends. Drinks too much. Watches too much television. Spends too many evenings alone. No devastating failures but no real sense of accomplishment. Had some potential at one time, now no real value. No real loss.
He pulls off his gloves, blowing into the bowl of his hands. As he pulls away to rub them, he sees his fingers already going yellow-white with the cold and then the shine of the ring he probably shouldn’t be wearing anymore.
A wind is kicking up outside, gently rocking the van like a cradle.
Wally wakes because the feeling’s gone out of his hands and feet. His fingers feel thick as he pulls them out of the gloves, jams them under his armpits and holds them there. Then he takes off his boots and socks and rubs at his feet, unsettled by the feeling of not feeling when his numb fingers touch his numb toes. Nothing he’s doing brings the sensation back. He looks over at Fisher, head rolled on his shoulder and a line of drool down to his chin.
There’s the creak of metal from the back, and Wally turns his head to the slot to listen. A sudden cold gust, like an exhalation, seems to leak in around the seams of the slot and he wonders if one of the rear doors has been left open.
He reaches out and fumbles with stiff fingers at the slot, finally getting the catch and sliding the door open to see two marbled eyes pressed up against the opening, staring at him. A second exhalation from the other side and Wally is hit by a coldness he’s never known.
He slides the door closed again.
He falls back into his seat, his breath coming out in a cloud, already disbelieving. He wants to open the slot, to prove it’s just his twisted imagination, but he is paralyzed by what he might find instead. The numbness crawls from his fingers and toes inward, turning his legs and arms to stumps.
It takes minutes or hours, but the cold seeps deeper into him, silencing each organ, stopping his blood, shrivelling his penis, slowly turning his body into a great weight. His head is being dragged down by this weight, to stare at this pale, useless thing attached to it. He knows the flesh is dying, but all he can feel is this great fatigue at the long road being put behind him. No real value. No real loss.
Lights and colours reel around him, igniting this useless body, and when he finally hears a knock at his window, Wally finds he can move again.
The cavalry is an asshole named Simpson who makes a lot of noise about taking their badges and dumping them back on the side of the road before he finally gives them the boost they need and tells them to take the corpse in anyway. There’s light coming over the hills as they take off down the road to swing onto Highway 17 and head back east into the city. Fisher’s been driving and talking a mile about his big plans for the future: ‘ … I get back I’m gonna put in for the big time – provincial, city, don’t give a damn. No offence, Kag, driving with you is fine, but I’m just done with all this shit. Don’t know how you put up with it so many years.’
Wally nods and checks the speedometer. Fisher’s all amped up and driving too fast as usual, but this time he doesn’t say anything about it, turning to the window instead. He puts his hand on the glass, thinking through this sensation, the cool surface against his palm. Outside, a light snow has begun to fall, settling on tree branches and dusting the highway.
‘They don’t hurry up, not gonna find out anything about this guy’s story.’ Fisher adjusts the mirror and brushes at his hair. ‘The first snow covers everything.’
Wally slides the slot door open and looks into the back. The hold has a padded bench on each wall and a bucket under one of these benches for emergencies. The first rays of sunlight are coming in at an angle through the rear windows, splashing across the floor. He notices he’s been holding his breath only when he sees the body laid out, a thin vapour rising as it thaws.
He turns back to the window, watching for the big coin monument on the hill to let him know they’re home.
2
