Two buddies drinking and driving, exploring the depths of their lives, finding answers in a snow storm.
The Horn
The snow had been coming all day. First in flurries. Then in steady, heavy wet flakes. It was good packing snow, so I was making snowballs and throwing them at the cows. Not throwing to hit them, but to see how they’d react. The only one that paid any attention was Cybil, the old white cow. She stared at me as the snowballs landed all around her. Her eyes dark and unblinking. She wouldn’t move, and it looked liked someone had walked out into the field and made a cow out of snow.
The other cows had their heads buried in hay. Each of them were wearing white blankets of snow on their backs. At five, when Tom’s Chevette came sliding into the driveway, Cybil put her head down and walked over to the others.
I got in the car and stomped off my feet.
“Why ya gotta bring all that shit in here?” Tom asked.
“The snow? Well, if you haven’t noticed, it’s a goddamned blizzard out there.”
“So, you coulda stomped off outside.”
“In the snow? What good would that do?”
Tom’s face was windburned. He was wearing a red and black checkered, wool hunting hat. It had long, hanging earflaps and a droopy brim. He had the strings of the earflaps tied up under his orange beard.
“You owe six bucks.”
“For what?” I asked.
“Beer.”
Tom reached over the seat and came away with two bottles of Pabst. We popped off the tops with our seatbelts and clanked the bottles together.
“A cheer,” Tom said.
I looked out the window at Cybil the cow. She was chewing and watching us go.
“To Cybil,” I said.
“I’m not drinking to a cow.”
“Why not?”
“Cause she’ll probably be steak before too long.”
“Cybil’s not an eater, she’s a milker.”
Tom shook his head, spun us around in a donut then headed us out of the driveway. The snow was piling up like mad, coming down so heavily that Tom had us slowed to a crawl.
“Fucking snow,” he said.
“Where’d you get the beer?”
“From Stan.”
“Stan Kowalski?”
“Yep, Stan the man.”
“Fuckin’ Stan, what a dope. How’d you convince him to buy for us?”
“I gave him Emily Thompson’s number.”
“You even got her number?”
“What do you think?”
“I think you don’t.”
Tom turned on the headlights and cranked up the heat. The Chevette’s engine sputtered.
“Kowalski’s a dick. He’ll think he wrote down the wrong number or something.” Tom chugged his beer.
“So what are you gonna tell him when finds out it’s not hers? When he gets his big Polish paws on you and is ready to beat your ass?”
“I told him I got the number from you.”
“You asshole! What am I gonna do?”
“I don’t know. You’re a goddamned Pole, he ain’t gonna hurt you. You dumb bastards all stick together.”
I put the Pabst to my lips and sucked it dry.
“Where do you want the empties?” I asked.
“Save em’ for the horn.”
He turned us left onto Oldfield Street. We fishtailed around the corner. I opened another beer.
Tom and I had always traveled the horn. Weekend. Weeknight. Summer, spring, winter, fall. We’d hop in his Chevette and drive the horn, a rough stretch of road that ran off behind the Clifton Cement Plant and alongside Misery Bay. The going was slow no matter what, but since it snowing like hell, the going was even slower.
The road was really named Northpoint Road, but we called it the horn because about halfway into our trip there was this driveway with a big, red ship horn at the end of it. When we neared it, I’d take whatever empties were handy, lean out the window and see if I could throw them into the opening. It wasn’t easy because Tom would speed up or slow down, and swerve all over, so I couldn’t get my timing right. More often than not, the bottle ended up shattering against the horn and the pieces fell into the driveway. It didn’t matter Tom said, because the place at the end of the driveway was just a summer cottage anyway. Owned by some software engineer from Farmington Hills.
Tom and I drank a lot. It wasn’t a big deal for each of us to drink ten or twelve beers while cruising the horn. I never drove; Tom always did. The fact that his dad was an ex-lawyer turned mayor, and that my dad worked at the cement plant had a bit to do with that. Tom’s Dad would bail him out if he got busted for drunk driving, whereas mine would have beaten my ass. Dad didn’t care so much that I drank, but he swore to God he’d kill me if I ever got caught drunk driving. I never argued the point because Dad had his reason.
It had been two days before Christmas when Mom was on her way home from Fishers Big Wheel with a carload of gifts and Willie Lunker hit her head on. From what the papers ran, Willie had worked the midnight shift and five hours of overtime then stopped at Kramer’s Pub for a half dozen beers or so. He killed my mom with his Dodge in the early afternoon as she waited at a stoplight.
I’ve seen the newspaper clipping. Our blue Plymouth station wagon crumpled up into a wad of metal. Fisher Big Wheel bags, new toys and clothing, spread over the pavement. The only thing that makes Mom’s death real, besides the color of the car, is the caption. Scene of the crash, which claimed the life of 24 year old Alpena woman, Tabitha Kausabowski.
“Let’s see if we can finish a few more of these before we get to The Horn,” Tom said.
I grabbed two more beers out of the backseat. I opened them handed him one.
“What’s the hurry?” I asked.
“This weather’s a bitch. If we get stranded out here it’d be nice to have a good buzz on.”
The shoreline of Lake Huron was white. The sky was white. The Chevette trudged along, pushing snow like a miniature plow. I could hear the car’s bottom scraping along the road and I could feel the snow pounding against the floorboards. Tom steered with his knees. I reached down to turn on the radio.
"Don't turn that on!"
"Why not?"
"Because, the less we got going, the less likely this thing will stall. I got the heat on and that's plenty. In fact..."
Tom turned down the heat.
"Now can we turn on the radio?" I asked.
"No, we got the headlights on, and I didn't turn the heat off, I just turned it down."
"That's crazy. The radio's not gonna stall the car."
"I've been driving this car for two years! I know what I can and can't do!"
I sipped my beer. The road, its shoulders, and the ditches were gone. Everything was lost beneath the snow.
The windshield was beginning to fog, so Tom switched the blower from heat to defrost.
"Aren't you afraid that sudden change in power is gonna stall us?"
"Go to hell, smartass."
"You're the one that's going to hell, Tom. Lying to Stan. And then when Emily finds out that you gave out her number, she'll hate you too."
"Emily. What a dame, hey?"
"She's all right."
"What happened when you went out with her?"
"Nothing."
I drank some more of my beer and held it up to Tom in the gesture of a toast so that he would shut up and drink.
"Fine, he said, “You don't want to talk? I pick you up everyday. I get us beer. I drive us around. I take all your verbal abuse, and still you can't tell me what happened with Emily Thompson?"
"A gentleman never tells."
"Tells what? You said nothing happened."
I tried to look out over Misery Bay, but I couldn't see. I wondered if anyone had put their shanties out yet and if they had, I wondered if the ice would be thick enough to hold a man, his shanty, and all of the snow.
"Your old man put his shanty out yet?" I asked.
"I know you're trying to change the subject. You know that I love fishing and you're hoping to get me talking about fishing instead of what did or didn't happen between you and Emily."
Tom reached over the seat, still steering with his knees, and grabbed two more beers. The Chevette kept moving forward, pushing snow.
The Horn was hardly ever plowed. The people who lived on Misery Bay owned summer and winter cars. Sporty Acuras and showy Cadillacs for the steady, warm months. Land Rovers, Chevy Suburbans, and Jeep Cherokees for the cold, unpredictable months. Some of these folks even owned an extra truck, old Dodge Rams, or Chevy Silverados. Full-size and four-wheel-drive, with tires bigger than they needed to be, and usually, they were outfitted with a winch and a plow. These trucks were used for “knocking around”, as I’d heard them say. For towing fishing boats and motorbikes, for going to hunting camp, and for keeping the pavement of their wide, winding driveways clear.
I thought of my Dad driving home in his old Ford F-150, the only vehicle he’d owned since the Plymouth, and I knew that with all the snow it wouldn’t be long before he’d be heading out to plow. He had his regulars that called. Old people living on the outskirts of town who wanted to make sure they wouldn’t slip and fall while walking to the mailbox. And single or divorced women, with kids, women that were afraid of being snowed in because they could never tell when one of their kids was going to get sick, or hurt. Dad told me that they’d invite him in for coffee or cocoa and on occasion, even dinner, but he always refused because he figured that most of all, they were just lonely. And taking advantage of a lonely person’s hospitality was about the worst thing a person could do.
After plowing, I knew Dad would return home and eat the stew I'd made. Beef stew with onion, carrots, and mushrooms. I'd left it on the woodstove, covered, so that it would be warm for him when he got home. I had made mashed potatoes too, because I knew Dad liked to pour the stew over them, but I was disappointed because I remembered that on the note I'd left him saying, Went riding The Horn with Tom. Checking for shanties, I had forgotten to tell him that the mashed potatoes were in the refrigerator, on the second shelf, behind the milk, in a foil-wrapped green dish. As Tom and I moved along, I wished that one night Dad would be lonely too, and that when I got home there’d be a message telling me that he’d be staying the night at some woman’s house because his truck had broken down.
Tom stopped the car. He shut off the wipers, the defrosters, and started to get out.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"I gotta piss."
"You just gonna leave the car here in the middle of the road?"
"Christ, ain’t nobody coming! Nobody will be down this road for another half hour. Not in this weather, anyway."
Tom slammed the door and jogged off the road into a stand of pines. I watched him until he vanished into the sagging, snow covered boughs.
I reached down and turned on the radio. The Chevette didn’t stall, but I wondered if it was because Tom had shut off the defroster. There was nothing but static playing and I didn’t want to chance getting stranded in the snow, so I shut if off. I thought of Emily instead. I thought of her and the things I could not tell Tom about the Saturday she and I shared.
It was the end of December and Emily had said she wanted to have a picnic. The day was clear and cold. The ground covered in crusty snow. And I didn’t believe that she really wanted to have a picnic until I pulled into her parents’ driveway and she was carrying a cooler and a backpack.
"What's in the cooler?"
I tried to take it from her, and offered to take the pack, but she refused.
"It's a surprise, mister! You just keep your hands off!"
I went around and opened the trunk. I shoved aside my hunting rifle, my ice fishing rigs, and made room for the cooler by the spare tire.
"You hunt?" she asked.
"Yeah, but not much. I just like being outside, I guess."
"That's what they all say. Killing poor, helpless animals. You’re all brutes, as far as I’m concerned." She smiled and got in the passenger side. I closed the trunk.
Emily looked classy. Her form fitting, gray wool coat. Her black hair hanging down and tucked around her neck like a scarf. She looked like a catalogue girl, one that had been made up for hours on the account some photo shoot. Me, I’d been fishing the pike run that morning and hadn’t had time to shave or shower. I was wearing my hunting boots, a quilted flannel, and a knitted hat. I’d barely had time to drop the pike off at home, let alone get gussied up for a picnic. And as we rode out into the sunny, fresh, snow covered country, and she talked about moving to Chicago to go to medical school, I wondered how I had managed to land a date with her.
We had been in the car, driving and talking for about an hour before we stopped.
“This is good,” she said. “I like this place. It’s pretty. What do you call it?”
“It’s Trumbull’s Mill.”
“Why’s it called that?”
“It’s the name of the guy that used to own the property. I think it used to be a wood mill. Logging and stuff. If I’m not mistaken, this path we’re on is an old logging trail. See how it dips down there to the stream?”
Emily unbuckled her seatbelt and leaned forward. She stared down to the place where the stream bubbled through the ice. My heater didn’t work and she looked cold, so I was surprised when she let her hair loose and began to unbutton her coat. She shrugged off the coat then tossed it into the backseat. Something fell from a pocket and onto the floor.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“It’s my cell phone. Never know when
I’m going to need it, especially when parked in the woods with strange boys.”
She giggled and smiled as she reached down to pick up the phone. She put her hand on my leg, and moved it up my thigh.
She glanced back at the stream.
“It’s awfully small for logging.”
“It used to be a river, but since the cement plant put up their hunting club back in the woods, the water’s slowed to a trickle here. Rumor has it that the cement plant execs had the stream rerouted so that the water flows through their property.”
“Oh, it’s not a rumor. It’s true . I’ve seen it. I’ve stood in it. Up to my knees, trying to catch crayfish. My Dad and his buddies are always out there drinking beer and playing cards. Sometimes I go back there to play with them. I’m surprised you’ve never been back there. Your dad does work at the plant, doesn’t he?”
I pictured her dad and the rest of the cement plant execs. Wearing their khakis and their weekend hikers, drinking imported beer, and talking about how they would head out at the crack of nine and make a killing, trolling Lake Huron with downriggers, depth finders, and navigational systems on their boats named Money Talks or Dollar’s Wake. And right then I knew that I wanted nothing to do with Emily Thompson. Not a picnic, not a conversation, not anything. And that’s how I worked up the nerve to lean into her and give her lips a try.
Tom jumped into the car and it rocked from the weight of his body. Snow fell off him onto the steering wheel, onto the dashboard, and onto me. He was beaming.
“I just saw a big, fat hound wearing a bell!”
“What?”
“A big, fat hound wearing a bell!”
“You’re either drunk or snow crazy.”
“Man, I know what I saw! And we ought go out and find him!”
“For what?”
“We could stick one of these rich fucks for a reward, that’s why! We could probably get fifty bucks for him!”
“Tom, you’re losing it. It’s a hound. It’s probably halfway home by now.”
“Come on!”
“No. I thought we were gonna just drive the horn and drink, and that’s what I came to do. Besides, it’s cold out, and the wind’s really starting to blow. It’s starting to drift, and if we go traipsing through the woods we might end up lost. I’m not freezing my ass off for some dog.”
Tom shook his head.
“That’s just it. You always got your head up your ass. Anytime some great opportunity comes along like this, you shirk it off. Like Emily. I bet you didn’t even kiss her, did you?”
Both of us were quiet. We drank and listened to the wind as it blew up off the lake and screamed around the car. I could feel the car shaking in the gusts.
“It’s not letting up any. Maybe we should head back,” I suggested.
“No, we’re almost to the horn. Besides I gotta get the Emily scoop outta you yet.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
Tom leaned back in his seat and steered with his knees.
“You should’ve seen that hound. A good hunting hound like that, I know we could get a reward! He had his damned nose stuck to the ground, pushing through the snowdrifts! It was the prettiest thing I ever saw!”
We drank more and moved alongside Misery Bay. I tried to look out my window and see shanties, but the glass was coated with moisture, and I got to thinking of Emily again. How everything - the windows, the steering wheel, our bodies – had gotten so steamy so fast.
The air was stinking of sweat and dirty floorboards. The radio had been kicked on by a stray leg and was buzzing a staticky song. Emily’s body was pressing hard against mine. Her mouth was hot. One of her wild legs pounded the radio again and the staticky song buzzed louder. Her hand was fighting my zipper, and suddenly the heat, the seatbelt, Emily’s hands pulling flesh and hair, was suffocating. I unbuckled my seatbelt and eased the seat back to get enough distance from her so that I could take off my coat, but by the time I had one arm out of its sleeve, Emily was unbuttoning her shirt and shoving her breasts into my face. They smelled like a mixture of oranges and baby powder and it was too much. I lifted her away from me to catch my breath and she stopped.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I couldn’t breathe.”
She leaned back against the steering wheel and covered herself with her arms.
“Is it me?”
I sat upright and tried to hug her. She shoved me back against the seat.
“You think I’m a whore, don’t you?”
“What? No. I couldn’t breathe.”
“All you fucking guys think I’m a whore! That’s why you ask me out! That’s why you all drive me out to some fucking trail in the woods!”
She reached for her shirt and hit her head on the rearview mirror. Tears flooded her eyes. She scrambled into her seat, snatched up her phone and began to dial.
“If you don’t get us out of here and take me home this instant, I’m calling my father!”
Without another word between us, I started the car, backed us out of Trumbull’s Mill, and raced us toward her home.
I can’t remember if we said anything during the drive back, but I remember wanting to ask if she had any beer in the cooler, partly as an ice breaker, but partly because I was serious and thought both of us could use a drink, and that maybe if we did, things would be okay again. But in the end, we got to her place and she was out of the car and heading into her house before I was even able to remind her to take her backpack and cooler.
I thought about keeping her stuff, but I knew better. Eventually, I would have to see her again, and the date had been bad enough already. So I grabbed her pack, her cooler, and set them inside her old man’s Land Rover, but not after taking a peek. I had thought about leaving them on the steps, or in the breezeway, but I figured Emily’s Dad might be interested in knowing his daughter a little better. I opened her pack enough so that he’d be able to see her stash of condoms, and I left the cooler open too, so that he would know who had been stealing the Dewar’s from his liquor cabinet. With all that done, I looked at the sky and was thankful that it was still clear and light because that meant there was still plenty of time to go fishing.
Tom tossed his empty bottle into my lap and it startled me.
“We’re almost there dipshit. Get ready.”
I stuck a bottle on each finger of my left hand and held another one in my right. I turned sideways in the seat and opened the window. When I leaned out into the snow, the wind felt like it was cutting my face. I could hardly breathe as snow rushed in all around me.
“Can’t you block some of that shit from getting in?” Tom yelled.
“Just keep her steady!”
My eyes watered like crazy and I blinked again and again to keep them from freezing. I could hardly see the big, red horn through the swirling snow.
“How many bottles you got?” Tom asked.
“One in the barrel! Five in the chamber!”
I dangled out the window and readied my aim. The cold bit to the bone. My skin felt like it was being pelted with rock salt. I could hear Tom yelling something, but it was drowned by the sound of howling wind.
We were about 25 yards from the horn when I let the first bottle go. It veered to the right and was sucked away into the white. I reloaded quickly and threw two more. Both of them sailed over the horn and disappeared. Tom was yelling something again and suddenly the car was swerving all over the road. I dropped two of the bottles down the side of the car, and as I struggled to get the last one off my thumb, Tom braked hard. My head slammed into the door frame as the Chevette bounced over something in the road and spun sideways. Tom screamed as he wrestled with the steering wheel. Bottles, tools, and Tom’s fishing gear went airborne all around me. My body lunged forward into the windshield. When I heard glass shattering I closed my eyes.
Tom was pounded his fists on the steering wheel. “It can’t be! It can’t be!”
I was still, slumped against the dashboard, thinking of Mom, Dad, and Emily. What if it all had been different? If Mom hadn’t died? If I hadn’t forgotten to tell Dad about the mashed potatoes? If I had just gone and done it with Emily? I opened my eyes. There was blood on my hand. This was what it was like, I thought, to die. Then Tom punched me in the arm.
“Get up! It’s just a scratch!”
I sat up and looked around. Red and white fishing jigs were lodged in the seat and carpet. The air stank like beer. Tom was out of the car, running down the road, back toward the horn. I looked at my hand. Part of the bottle neck was still stuck on my thumb. Blood leaked from a small cut on my index finger. I could feel a bump rising on the side of my head.
I got out of the car and walked toward Tom. The outline of his body was a shadow in the snow. He was kneeling down in the middle of the road like he was praying. Ahead of him a ways I could see the headlights of a car shining like flashlights through a cotton sheet.
“What are you doing? There’s a car coming! Get out of the road!”
Tom was still, hunched over in the road. I looked back at the Chevette. It was sitting lopsided, up to the middle of its wheels in snow. I shoved my hands into my armpits for warmth and dragged my feet through the heavy drifts. Inside I felt something had happened and that something had been happening since I’d been standing at home, throwing snowballs at Cybil, waiting for Tom to show.
By the time I got to Tom, I was numb, so seeing him there, crying and touching the dead hound was strange. The dog’s body was stretched out in the snow. Its eyes were closed and one long ear was flipped back over its head filling up with snowflakes. Tom was fingering the shiny, golden bell on the hound’s collar.
“She won’t be running no more,” he said.
I knelt down beside him. The wind blew up all around us. Snow fluttered down the back of my neck and the chill of it felt good.
“I don’t think that car is gonna see us, Tom. We better get her out of the road.”
Tom brushed the snow away from the hound’s ear. I slid my arms under her and lifted. Besides a single spot of blood on the snow, all that remained was the imprint of her body. Tom kicked snow into it then we walked off the road. The dog was heavy and warm in my arms as we watched the headlights come near. Three white faces peered through the windshield of a high-riding, black four-wheel-drive Dodge. It was a young woman with two small children. A boy and a girl. The woman’s head dropped. The children’s mouths gaped open. And I knew that they must have been out looking in the storm for a long time.
My eyes squinted and watered as the wind blew up into my face. My nose and lungs filled with snow and cold. I could hardly breathe as I wondered how I’d got there. I could’ve waited at home for Dad then went plowing driveways with him. Ones that belonged to old folks and single women. I could have went through it all with Emily and maybe I could’ve been at her house, watching a movie on her big screen T.V., drinking the Dewar’s she’d stolen from her old man’s liquor cabinet. Or if things had been really different, I might have been home with Mom. I tried to imagine her carrying a steaming kettle of mashed potatoes to the kitchen table, but it didn’t work because I couldn’t remember her.
Soldier's Gap is a non-traditional mystery with literary elements. The high school principal is brutally murdered, but Deputy Sheriff Dave Jenkins's search for meaning and love is a much more significant theme.
"Murder isn't usually this fun
High school student Kevin Borden has a secret and his name is Louis Lannegan. He also has an overbearing mother. A tale of coming out in the shadow of parents and friends. Award winning novella.
