Dead of Winter

Come back home, Louis, Phillip had said. Just until you get your feet back on the ground. We’re worried about you. Loon Lake isn’t the answer.

The snow was starting to let up. Louis glanced at his watch. It was four-thirty.

He straightened in the cold vinyl seat, his teeth chattering. A green reflector sign caught the headlights: WELCOME TO LOON LAKE, GATEWAY TO THE WINTER WONDERLAND.

The pines parted, opening onto a two-lane residential street cast in the soft glow of old-style street lamps. Neat frame houses lined the street, with swings on the porches, smoke curling from the chimneys, and snowmen standing guard in the yards. In the dusk, ruddy-faced men shoveled their driveways. Louis drove past a redbrick school. Kids were sledding down a hill on cafeteria trays, chased by a barking golden retriever.

Louis continued down Main Street. There were garlands of lights festooned across the street and the store fronts were filled with signs announcing Christmas sales. Women stood in knots on the sidewalks, holding babies and packages.

“Jesus,” Louis muttered. “It’s Bedford-fucking-Falls.”

The thought made his mind trip back suddenly to childhood. It was a long-buried memory, and the suddenness of it was so acute, so unexpected, that it brought a sting to his chest.

It was 1967. He had been just weeks past his eighth birthday and had come to the fifth in a string of foster homes, arriving in the middle of a blizzard a few days before Christmas. There had been four other kids, all foster children and all white.

He had spent the day off by himself, eyeing the Christmas tree and the presents, knowing there would be nothing under there for him. Later, he picked at his dinner and moped while the other kids played stupid games only they seemed to know and talked of things Louis knew nothing about.

A man had come in, a very tall man. Louis knew he was the man who owned the big house, another strange face, another foster father. The man told them all to sit in circle. He handed each of them two Christmas cookies and a glass of milk then turned on the television. Stale cookies and some stupid old black-and-white movie about some stupid white guy who worked in a bank.

Louis had stood up. The tall man asked him, gently but firmly, to sit down. He refused and the man repeated his request. No one was watching the movie. They were all watching him and the man. When the man told him a third time to sit down, Louis kicked the paper plate, sending the cookies skidding across the floor.

“Testing me, Louis?” the man asked quietly.

“I don’t wanna be here.”

“Where do you want to be?”

“Home.”

“This is your home now.”

“I don’t like it. I hate it. I hate it.”

The man came over to Louis, slipped an arm around his shoulders and guided him over to the sofa. Louis sat stiffly on the edge, staring at the TV screen. Finally, the man pulled Louis’s rigid body into the crook of his arm and neither said another word for an hour. When the movie was over, Louis stood up, walked to the broken cookies and cleaned up the crumbs.

He didn’t understand the movie and he sure didn’t believe in angels. But after that, very slowly, he did come to believe in the tall man. He came to love Phillip Lawrence.

What was the name of that damn movie? Shit, it was all over TV every Christmas. It’s a Wonderful Life. That was it.

A sign for the police station lay ahead. The station was nearly obscured by pines and evergreens. Louis swung into the lot and cut the engine. The building was made of logs, like a ranger station. A smoking chimney reached into the gray sky and two bare maples formed a spindly tunnel over the sidewalk.

Louis got out of the car, stretching his stiff body. He was struck by the smell of the air – pine and smoke. He bent and checked his tie in the sideview mirror. He had spent almost eight hours on the road. His trousers were wrinkled and he felt dirty. What a way to appear for a job interview.

He stepped into the station, the heat from a ceiling vent raining down on him. The interior was paneled in a coffee-colored wood, and a brick fireplace in the back crackled with a healthy fire. A polished pine counter and a long railing separated the work area from where he stood in the lobby. Behind the counter,on a closed door was a gold plate that read: CHIEF OF POLICE.

Louis went to the counter, glancing at the large tray of Christmas cookies. An officer sat at the rear desk, his blond head bent over a report.

“Excuse me…”

The young man looked up and smiled. He stacked his papers neatly, positioning them exactly parallel to the edge of the desk. He rose and came to the counter.