Gathering my cup of coffee and pastry, I left Bill’s and headed toward the last building on this side of the street, a two-story structure that more resembled a ski lodge than a public library. But it was appropriate architecture for this bucolic community.
As I walked the clouds continued to thicken.
It grew cold and still.
I wanted to be home before the snow began to fall.
The first floor of the library comprised a book collection that was almost endearing in its degree of deficiency. But I hadn’t come to check out books.
I passed by the front desk and climbed the spiral staircase to the second floor which consisted of a study room, the periodical archives, and a computer lab that provided the only dial-up internet access in all of Haines Junction.
I entered the lab and sat down at one of the three unoccupied workstations.
The connection was laggard.
I unwrapped my warm bearclaw and pried the plastic top from my cup of coffee, praying the mean librarian wouldn’t see me with my contraband.
First I checked my email. I had several messages from my Live Journal friends so I spent the next hour reading the new mail and responding.
Years ago I’d have done myself in for even considering making online friends. I thought it to be the telltale sign of a lonely pathetic existence. But I embraced it now as my only channel for meaningful interaction with real human beings.
Because I was in hiding I was forced to keep a distance from my neighbors. No matter how well I liked someone in the village, if I were to form a bond of any sort I’d be jeopardizing my freedom. So in the five years I’d resided in Haines Junction, no one had ever been invited to my cabin for dinner and I’d never accepted an invitation to anyone else’s home. I would’ve loved to have spent Christmas or Thanksgiving with some of the interesting people I’d met while living here but it was too risky. Loneliness was the price of my freedom.
But to my Live Journal community I could bare my heart—albeit cryptically—and they could lay open their souls before me. Their companionship brought me tremendous comfort. I was no longer ashamed of myself and it disheartened me that I ever was.
When I’d sent my last email of the day, I glanced through the window at my back. Though I couldn’t distinguish them from the buildings across the street, the haze of snowflakes was apparent against the distant backdrop of evergreens.
I smiled.
The first snowfall of the season still excited that southern boy in me who’d spent most of his winters in North Carolina where snowstorms are a rarity.
Before leaving I visited the webpage of a local news station in Charlotte, North Carolina. I browsed the website each time I came to this computer lab. It was my only method of checking in on Elizabeth, John David, and Jenna Lancing, the family I’d deprived of a husband and father.
Even if something were to happen to them I’d probably never know or have the chance to prevent it. But it eased my mind to peruse the news of Charlotte and its suburbs, if only for the symbolic gesture of me watching after my best friend’s wife and children.
Once I’d seen that the headlines didn’t reference the Lancings (and they never did) I entered Beth and Jenna and John David’s name into a search engine. Nothing came up. The only successful search I ever conducted concerned Jenna who had turned thirteen in August.
Last winter she’d won the hundred meter freestyle in a middle school swim meet and I stumbled upon the results which had been posted on her school’s webpage. I’d been tempted to send her a congratulatory card. The Lancings still lived in the same house on Lake Norman. But for all I knew, Beth believed that I’d murdered her husband. So I’d settled for merely printing out the swim meet results and highlighting Jenna’s name.
A dogsled magnet still held that page to my refrigerator door.
When I stepped out of the library it was midday and the snowfall had frosted Kluane Boulevard, parked cars, the woods, and rooftops in a delicate inch of powder. I buttoned my vest, pulled a black toboggan down over my ears, and strolled back up the sidewalk toward my Jeep.
The village was so quiet.
I could almost hear the snow collecting like a subconscious whisper.
I anticipated being home and the fire I would build and the peaceful hours I’d spend in its warmth, writing while the forest filled with snow.
God, I loved my life.
6
KAREN Prescott woke, the darkness unchanged.
She sat up, banged her head into a panel of soundproofing foam.
Consciousness recoiled in full.
She felt around in the dark for those familiar invisible objects of her small black universe: the two empty water bottles at her bare feet, the huge coil of rope, the gascan, the blanket.
Her head throbbed with thirst, her jaw was broken, her fingertips shredded from picking glass shards out of her hair. The car was motionless, its engine silent for the first time in hours. Karen wondered if it were night or day and for how long she’d lain in her bathrobe on this abrasive stinking carpet, still damp with her urine.
How far was she from her Manhattan apartment?
Where had the man with long black hair gone?
Perhaps the car was parked in front of a convenience store and he was inside using the restroom or filling a cup at the soda fountain or signing a credit card receipt. Maybe the car sat in the parking lot of a Quality Inn. He could be lying in bed in a motel room watching p**n .
What if he had a heart attack?
What if he never came back?
Was the trunk airtight?
Was she whittling away with each breath at a finite supply of air?
He’ll let me out eventually. He promised. I’ll keep calm until—
She heard something.
Children’s laughter.
Their high voices reached her, muffled but audible.
Karen wanted to rip away the soundproofing and scream her brains out for help.
But her captor had warned that if she yelled or beat on the trunk even once, he would kill her slowly.
And she believed him.
The driver side door opened and slammed.
He’d been in the car the whole time. Was he testing her? Seeing if she would scream?
As his footsteps trailed away, she thought, Spending a Friday night by myself in my apartment isn’t lonely. This is lonely.
7
ME and Josh and Mikey were playing with a slug and a magnifying glass I took from my big brother’s room. My brother’s name is Hank and he’s eleven. I’m only seven and I hate it.
Mikey found the slug on his driveway before he left for church. He isn’t afraid of slugs so he picked it up and put it in a glass jar in his garage. I’m not afraid of them either. I just don’t like the way they feel when you touch them.