I start walking again, letting my mind float through the rough outline of my plan. It’s not really a plan, I suppose, more of an idea with a firm beginning, a fuzzy middle, and no clear ending. My drifting thoughts stay away from what that ending might be. I don’t want to go there. Instead, I swat at pesky criticisms and chew on uncooked details. I recall a quote by Sun Tzu about the folly of entering a war without a plan for how to end it, something like: tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. I shoo those thoughts away, but I feel like a man who has just jumped into a river, the current pulling me toward a bend. Around that bend there could be a tranquil pool or a plunging waterfall. I don’t want to know. I don’t care. It’s out of my control—at least that’s what I tell myself.
Trudging through knee-deep snow seems to alter the planet’s gravitational pull. It’s like walking with a cinder block strapped to each thigh. I remember a day when I was a kid and I was walking in deep snow like this. My little brother, Alexander, was following behind me. He was small enough that the only way he could move at all was to step in my tracks. I began taking bigger and bigger steps until his little legs couldn’t reach and he fell in the snow, crying. I thought it was funny until I saw Nancy watching me from the house, a look of disapproval on her face. Then I felt bad.
You’re going to kill him . . .
I stop.
It’s Nancy’s voice again—faint, struggling to find a foothold among the rest of my muddled thoughts. I can’t quite tell if she’s asking me a question or making a statement. Either way, I know she will not approve of what I’m doing. I resume my march.
My mother died when Alexander was born. I don’t remember her; I was too young. But I remember her pictures watching me in almost every room of the house. Even after my dad started dating again, the pictures remained on the walls.
I was five the day I first laid eyes on Nancy Rosin. My grandma—Dad’s mother—had been babysitting Alexander and me the night before, which meant that we played in our rooms while she watched television. The next morning, Alexander woke me up because he wanted to go downstairs. He was only three years old, and the steps in that old house were terribly steep. He needed someone to go down ahead of him to catch him if he fell, which he never did.
As I descended the stairs, I could smell something warm and delicious coming from below. That was, in itself, unusual because my dad switched between instant oatmeal and dry cereal for our breakfasts. This was definitely neither of those.
At the bottom of the stairs, I stopped and waited to catch Alexander, who came down on his butt, plopping from one step to the next. As I waited, I peeked around the corner and saw a woman in the kitchen with her back to me, humming quietly as she poured pancake batter onto a griddle. I had never seen this woman before. I looked around for my dad or Grandma or someone to explain why this stranger was in my kitchen.
Alexander was getting closer to the bottom of the stairs, and he had added sound effects to his plopping, saying “wump, wump, wump” as he hit each step.
I put my finger to my lips to shush him, and instead of shushing, he said, “What?”
I exaggerated my movement, hitting my finger to my lips in the hopes that his child’s mind could understand my obvious signal. He again said “What?” This time he said it loud enough to be heard in the kitchen. I peeked back around the corner, and the woman was looking over her shoulder at me. She smiled and went back to humming and making pancakes.
When Alexander saw her, he froze behind me, holding onto the shirttail of my pajamas. We proceeded forward in a slow shuffle and were almost to the mouth of the kitchen when the woman turned around to look at us. She had a kind smile and soft eyes that made me want to like her.
“You must be Max,” she said pointing at me. Then she bent down to make herself smaller for Alexander’s benefit and said, “And you must be the famous Alexander. I’ve heard so much about you two.”
Right then, our dad came out of his bedroom and walked into the kitchen. He was smiling, which set me off balance almost as much as finding a stranger in our kitchen. He walked up to the woman and kissed her on the cheek and said, “I see you’ve met Nancy.”
He sat down at the head of the table to await his breakfast, without another word of explanation. It took me years to gain enough understanding about adult relationships to piece together that they had been dating for a while and keeping it a secret from us boys. Then Dad figured the time had come for Nancy to move in and brought her home for a trial run.
Those memories give me warmth as I trek across the frozen lake, the smell of her cookies and roasted chicken, the way she used to sway and hum when she played her old blues albums, the gentle glances she would give my dad when she thought he was treating Alexander or me too harshly. The last time I saw her was the day after Alexander graduated from high school—the day she left.
As I enter the woods, those memories give way to the work ahead. The first hill, just off the lake is the steepest. During the chase, we both slid down its slope more than we ran. The climb back up is a slippery affair. I try to walk in the foot holes we made earlier, but they’re too far apart. I pull myself up, grabbing onto tree branches and scrub. Beyond that hill is a valley thick with woods. I can see the portage path cutting through the forest like a scar in a hairline. I follow our tracks back across the valley and to the top of the second hill.
It’s been less than an hour since I left the man lying on what I am now sure is Canadian soil, but it seems like I’ve been walking for an entire morning.
I crest the second hill, stumbling through the snow, and see the snowmobile. The man had turned a corner too fast and one of the skis caught a sprig of aspen, tossing him off the sled. I can see where he landed in the snow and rolled, and I can see his footprints coming back, tromping around the ski that had caught the tree. I bend down to brush away the snow. The ski is not broken, but it’s jammed tightly between two shoots of the tree. He must have briefly tried to dislodge it before taking off on his run north.
I look around the sled and don’t see any obvious damage. I pop the hood. The engine is untouched. It’s a new machine in pristine condition, other than being stuck.
I climb up the crux of the aspen and lower myself between the two shoots. With one foot on the thicker of the two branches and my back pressed against the other, I push. The tree bends. I place my second foot against the tree and push with all I have until I hear a crack. The smaller shoot gives way, freeing the ski.
A thin blanket of snow has covered the snowmobile. I brush it away from the dashboard, find the choke and the starter, and give it a go. After a few wheezes, it starts. I let it warm up as I turn it around on the narrow trail, lifting the ass end a few inches at a time until it faces in the direction of the cabin.