“Don’t thank God,” he said. “Thank me.”
Portis’s Ranger was snow-buried, but parked right where he said it would be. He hurried ahead, tossed his snowshoes in the truck bed, and snapped his rifle into the rack on the rear window. He wiped the piled snow from the driver’s-side door, then climbed inside to start her up. I stood and listened as the engine heaved and wheezed and I swear I didn’t draw a breath until it finally caught and turned over. Then Portis jumped out and waved me over.
“Never a doubt,” he said, and went to work the windows with his ice scraper.
He cleared my side first and told me the heat was pumping. I got in the truck with Jenna, but left the door open to ask him if he wanted me to drive. I knew it would piss him off but it had to be said. If nothing else, I had to try.
He stopped scraping and looked at me and shook his head.
“Shit,” he said.
“I’m just saying,” I said. “You’ve been drinking.”
“You want to ride in this truck at all, I would suggest you shut up and sit in the passenger seat with that baby.”
“It was just a question,” I said.
“And I have given you an answer,” he said, and kicked my door shut.
Portis chipped ice and when the air turned warm I held Jenna close to the vents to soak up the heat. I was worried Portis was pissed for real, which might affect his driving, but then he dropped to one knee and played some air guitar with the scraper. I couldn’t help but bust out laughing. He was as glad as I was to be getting the hell out of the north hills. To finally get Jenna to safety.
“Crazy ass,” I said, when he got in.
“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe that’s right.”
“This heat feels good.”
“You ain’t kidding,” he said.
“How far to the main road?”
“Not very,” he said, and dropped the truck into gear.
We pushed through the snow and I was surprised by how little drift there was. I was going to ask Portis about it, but realized it would only lead to a lecture on how his keen instinct and knowledge of the hills had directed him to park exactly where he had. How he’d had the foresight not to bury himself beneath a foot of snow by parking on a slope.
In truth, Portis probably had no idea the truck was going to clear the trail until the second we pushed onto Grain Road in a spray of powder. I couldn’t have cared less. We were out of the goddamn woods. I was so happy I decided not to mention the swell of heat I felt on Jenna’s forehead, and the way it flashed against my palm like fever.
Chapter Ten
Shelton didn’t know how long he slept on the floor with Kayla, but he woke in a panic for having slept at all. He looked outside and the sky was still gray above Jackson Lake, but it was no longer snowing. He’d lost precious time and didn’t even bother to slip Kayla another V before heading out. He just took a piss and hurried for the truck with his nitrous tank and party balloons.
He started his Silverado and then cleared the windshield with a push broom he had on the porch. The truck was parked in a little rut and when he got back in the cab he started to rock her out. He tapped the gas and shifted into reverse, then tapped the gas and shifted forward. Gas, reverse. Gas, forward. Gas, reverse, and he was out! It was an art form, really.
He crossed the lake and then took Grain Road out of the hills to Highway 31, where he turned toward town and drove along Lake Michigan, his Silverado swaying a little in the wind off the bay.
He wished it were somebody else that had crossed him and stole Jenna. Anybody but Little Hector. Shelton thought he had a good relationship with the Mexicans, and particularly the hardworking Hector Valquez. Hector was a good kid, and he had reliably moved Shelton’s methamphetamines to his friends and family, his familia, by the quarter gram.
Frankly, Shelton preferred Hector to the spoiled shitty white kids he sometimes had occasion to work with. Hector didn’t complain, didn’t peddle as much in excuses. And even as mad as Shelton was, as violently angry as he felt, he knew that beneath that rage was no small amount of hurt. He’d trusted the little spic, and he was not above suffering the pain of that betrayal.
He passed the cement plant, still in the throes of its theatrical decay along the shore, and Shoreline Estates, the trailer park home of his youth. Then the highway bent around town and he could see the sleepy downtown and the steeple of the Methodist church. He could see the softly lit homes on the snowy streets and remembered when they had everything decked out for Christmas and Cutler looked like a little train-set village in the snow.