To and far beyond the limits of his own perception, the land lay encased, deeper than any other day of the year, in the cocoon of winter. Clouds blanched the sky and muted the low southerly sun whose warmth his chapped skin could not feel. Leaving his car behind, he heard only his own footsteps, and the muted crunch of frosted grass. Pausing to regard the lake's frozen surface, there came the faintest low and intermittent hum. First perceiving the sound to be something moving distantly, out upon or perhaps under the land, he soon realized that it was only the flow of blood behind his own ears.
From the oxbow lake he crossed the lowlands, and in ten minutes he came to the shoreline at the river bend, flat and empty from the water back to the trees. He recalled four years earlier when the ground had been scorched beneath burned logs and blackened beer cans. Now he had trouble even finding the spot. In an early morning almost as long ago, having returned in search of answers, he had walked out to the end of the sandbar and turned to face the clearing just passed, as if distance might confer understanding.
When he first saw Tracy that Saturday evening, running towards his car from the front door of her mom’s house, he thought to himself, I can’t believe she’s mine. Her curly hair fell all around her black coat and gray wool scarf and once she climbed into the passenger seat she locked her lips to his. Hey there, he whispered out the side of his mouth. When she finally pulled away she leaned back in her seat and said, let’s get the fuck out of here. For a few minutes they were alone as the flat blocks of the city grid floated by, before he had stopped in front of Chelsie’s to pick her and Emma up, then the supermarket where the girls waited in the car as he went inside to buy whiskey and Coke. He parked next to Nick's truck in the turn-out off the dirt road, leading the three girls across the ground under low overcast in the waning daylight.
Buddy, Nick had said, hugging him with one arm and then taking the handle of whiskey. He poured some into a plastic cup and sipped it as Mike stood tending the fire and drinking a Budweiser. He mixed the girls each a drink but they otherwise stayed across the fire from the guys until Tracy walked over and put her arms around him. As she kissed him, he thought of the party at Chelsie’s a week before, where they had first hooked up, and the time since, during which he had only seen her at her work, on her lunch break, when she had said that she couldn't wait for him to take her clothes off. He recalled the face of Chelsie’s brother Dean when he had found them together in the basement at the party. Don’t worry about him, Tracy had said then, it’s over. Are you sure he’s not gonna start shit, he asked her again, later. Fuck no, he’s a fucking pussy. He’s too chicken-shit to do anything. Sitting around the fire, it was these words that came back to him when Dean was suddenly standing over them, his face flickering orange like a sudden hallucination, holding a gun pointed vaguely upward, as if he was admiring it.
He had told Tracy to come with him, and for everybody to relax as Nick had taken half a step towards him with his arm outstretched and his hand signaling to stop before Dean pointed the gun towards him, and for fuck’s sake Tracy, you get the fuck over here, he yelled. She went willingly, yet Dean yanked her after him by her coat as she had yelled back to the others not to follow and that she would be alright. In a moment, Nick, Mike and him followed the trail in the dark, equally fearful of proximity or distance. When they saw car taillights through the foliage they ran ahead to Nick’s truck and drove after them but they did not catch his car along the road nor could they find it any of the places they thought to look in town. Soon he realized that Chelsie must have told Dean where they’d be, but when they went back to the river both girls were gone. Again they drove into town, searching late into the night but they never found any sign of them, and no lights were on at Chelsie's house any of the times they drove by.
When he confronted Chelsie at her work the next day she was defensive and would tell him nothing and that evening Emma told him it was her sister that had picked her and Chelsie up when they had been left out there. She said that Dean and Tracy had been together and apart more times already than she could count but that she hadn’t talked to Tracy and didn’t know where they were. He reported a missing person to the police and reported Dean for having threatened them with a gun but when he called to inquire about the missing person report on Monday he was told that her family had contested that she was missing. When he went to her house that morning her mother didn’t answer the door though he could see her through the window and after persistent knocking she yelled at him to get off her property before she called the cops.
He called Tracy's phone number every day that week, but there was never an answer, nor a response to any of his messages. He called into work Monday, then Tuesday, lying in bed as the days passed indistinguishably, the outside world no less a prison than his room. On Saturday he ignored phone calls from Nick and Mike, instead driving back to Tracy’s where he parked his car down the block and waited, but there was no sign of her, nor was there later that night outside Chelsie’s. In the early light of morning he drove out to the river and walked back to the spot where they had been, as if the place itself might confer some understanding. He searched his memories for any signs that there was more to what had happened, that she had deceived him in some way, but he could find nothing. He thought, again and again, of a moment that night when Tracy had entreated him to catch her as she ran off into the woods, laughing as he caught up, wrapped his arms around her and swung her around, pressed her against a tree with equal gentleness and pressure, then sank his weight against her, as she breathed into his ear and rubbed his jeans. He pulled back from her for only a second when she had said she was so happy that they had met. No, he said to himself yet again - it could not have been a lie.
From the oxbow lake he crossed the lowlands, and in ten minutes he came to the shoreline at the river bend, flat and empty from the water back to the trees. He recalled four years earlier when the ground had been scorched beneath burned logs and blackened beer cans. Now he had trouble even finding the spot. In an early morning almost as long ago, having returned in search of answers, he had walked out to the end of the sandbar and turned to face the clearing just passed, as if distance might confer understanding.
When he first saw Tracy that Saturday evening, running towards his car from the front door of her mom’s house, he thought to himself, I can’t believe she’s mine. Her curly hair fell all around her black coat and gray wool scarf and once she climbed into the passenger seat she locked her lips to his. Hey there, he whispered out the side of his mouth. When she finally pulled away she leaned back in her seat and said, let’s get the fuck out of here. For a few minutes they were alone as the flat blocks of the city grid floated by, before he had stopped in front of Chelsie’s to pick her and Emma up, then the supermarket where the girls waited in the car as he went inside to buy whiskey and Coke. He parked next to Nick's truck in the turn-out off the dirt road, leading the three girls across the ground under low overcast in the waning daylight.
Buddy, Nick had said, hugging him with one arm and then taking the handle of whiskey. He poured some into a plastic cup and sipped it as Mike stood tending the fire and drinking a Budweiser. He mixed the girls each a drink but they otherwise stayed across the fire from the guys until Tracy walked over and put her arms around him. As she kissed him, he thought of the party at Chelsie’s a week before, where they had first hooked up, and the time since, during which he had only seen her at her work, on her lunch break, when she had said that she couldn't wait for him to take her clothes off. He recalled the face of Chelsie’s brother Dean when he had found them together in the basement at the party. Don’t worry about him, Tracy had said then, it’s over. Are you sure he’s not gonna start shit, he asked her again, later. Fuck no, he’s a fucking pussy. He’s too chicken-shit to do anything. Sitting around the fire, it was these words that came back to him when Dean was suddenly standing over them, his face flickering orange like a sudden hallucination, holding a gun pointed vaguely upward, as if he was admiring it.
He had told Tracy to come with him, and for everybody to relax as Nick had taken half a step towards him with his arm outstretched and his hand signaling to stop before Dean pointed the gun towards him, and for fuck’s sake Tracy, you get the fuck over here, he yelled. She went willingly, yet Dean yanked her after him by her coat as she had yelled back to the others not to follow and that she would be alright. In a moment, Nick, Mike and him followed the trail in the dark, equally fearful of proximity or distance. When they saw car taillights through the foliage they ran ahead to Nick’s truck and drove after them but they did not catch his car along the road nor could they find it any of the places they thought to look in town. Soon he realized that Chelsie must have told Dean where they’d be, but when they went back to the river both girls were gone. Again they drove into town, searching late into the night but they never found any sign of them, and no lights were on at Chelsie's house any of the times they drove by.
When he confronted Chelsie at her work the next day she was defensive and would tell him nothing and that evening Emma told him it was her sister that had picked her and Chelsie up when they had been left out there. She said that Dean and Tracy had been together and apart more times already than she could count but that she hadn’t talked to Tracy and didn’t know where they were. He reported a missing person to the police and reported Dean for having threatened them with a gun but when he called to inquire about the missing person report on Monday he was told that her family had contested that she was missing. When he went to her house that morning her mother didn’t answer the door though he could see her through the window and after persistent knocking she yelled at him to get off her property before she called the cops.
He called Tracy's phone number every day that week, but there was never an answer, nor a response to any of his messages. He called into work Monday, then Tuesday, lying in bed as the days passed indistinguishably, the outside world no less a prison than his room. On Saturday he ignored phone calls from Nick and Mike, instead driving back to Tracy’s where he parked his car down the block and waited, but there was no sign of her, nor was there later that night outside Chelsie’s. In the early light of morning he drove out to the river and walked back to the spot where they had been, as if the place itself might confer some understanding. He searched his memories for any signs that there was more to what had happened, that she had deceived him in some way, but he could find nothing. He thought, again and again, of a moment that night when Tracy had entreated him to catch her as she ran off into the woods, laughing as he caught up, wrapped his arms around her and swung her around, pressed her against a tree with equal gentleness and pressure, then sank his weight against her, as she breathed into his ear and rubbed his jeans. He pulled back from her for only a second when she had said she was so happy that they had met. No, he said to himself yet again - it could not have been a lie.
One night three months later he saw her walking out of the mall with Dean, and despite what he had long suspected, his hair stood on end as he sat frozen in the driver’s seat of his parked car, unable to move. Another year later, Nick heard from Chelsie that they had moved up north to a cousin's place. The following summer, word came that they had broken up and that she was back in town. In those days, she lingered in the back of his mind, like an unexplored notion, and though he scanned the faces in every crowd for her, he never saw her again. It wasn’t a big town but apparently it was big enough.
After her disappearance he fantasized about her just as he had when they had been together – all her skin that he had not yet seen, the places he had not yet touched. He recalled a series of dreams after her disappearance wherein everything he touched was electrically charged. After witnessing her at the mall he fantasized not about her body but about the conversation they might have if they were to again meet, the things he might come to understand, the wounds he might close.
Each year since, some particular day would catch him just so, haunting him with these notions - a day when the cold of winter had descended - and he would think of this place. And yet, for four years he had not returned, for what he might discover of her, or himself, or perhaps what he wouldn’t. Now, with the deliberateness of ritual, he walked out upon the sandbar, turning to trace the shape of the icy shoreline as far as he could see, upstream, then downstream. Once returned to the car, he placed the key in the ignition, but when he turned it there was no sound – there was nothing at all. He sat and looked out the windshield at the skeletal branches upon the sky growing dim, pale yellow into slate blue above. On his way back to the car he had halted in the same shallow drainage where he had found her scarf the week after that fateful night. He had taken it home with him, touching it, smelling it each day – was it still in the back of his closet? When he had found it lying there, tangled in branches and matted with dead leaves, it was as if she were reaching out to him from wherever she had gone - the past, or the future, he couldn't tell which.
