Phuket

I got back to the cabin just as the wind was really starting to kick up. My fingers were about ready to fall off with the cold, and I didn’t have patience to dick around with the keys, so I gave the door a few hard raps.

“Use your fuckin’ keys!” I heard Jack shout from inside. Probably on the couch in front of the fire with a beer, not feeling like getting up, the lazy son of a bitch.

“I can’t feel my hands!” I yelled back. “Open up, you asshole. You let me die out here, and you can ride out the rest of this bitch sober!”

As I shouted, Lawrence flung the door open, and a flood of blessed warmth washed over me. I could see Jack behind him, feet up on the coffee table with a glass in his hand.

“Hurry up,” Lawrence said as he picked up one of the bags in one hand and a case of beer in the other. “Jack is down to drinking eggnog. I don’t think he’ll make it much longer.”

“Ah, shut it, Lawrence,” Jack scratched his beard and made no motion to get up. “I am but a man of good taste. It’s Howe’s precious little hands we should be worrying about right now.”

I followed Lawrence in with the rest of the bags and shut the door before walking over to place them on the table. Lawrence looked at me.

“Hey, where’s Barney?” he asked.

I began to unpack. Meat, cheese, bread, bullets. “Wait, Barn didn’t come back yet?”

Lawrence looked concerned, and I didn’t blame him. It was practically dark out by now, and the snow was coming down pretty fierce. The blizzard was rolling in hard and unexpected, and the radio had gone static, but the last we heard, we were looking at eight feet overnight.

“No,” Lawrence said slowly. “We thought he was still with you. You guys separated?”

“Ah, shit,” I muttered. “Look, man, we thought it would be faster if we split up. I drove to the store to get the stuff, and he said he was gonna hitch up to the ranger station to see if he could call Louisa. So she could tell Anne and Julie we were riding it out here and they wouldn’t worry about us, y’know? He said he could probably get the rangers to give him a lift after. He’s not back yet?”

“Stupid thoughtful fucker,” said Jack. “Well, he’s probably just crashing the night up there. Road has to be closed by now.”

I was starting to feel pretty anxious, but I told myself there was nothing to worry about. “Not much we can do about it now, I guess.” I started putting the beer in the fridge and tossed one to Jack. “Heads up.” He caught it. I pulled another out for myself, cracked it open, and sipped. Still winter-cold. “We’ll get up there first thing tomorrow and go look. Hopefully the snow will stop by then and they’ll get that road plowed.”

“Yeah,” Jack took a swig. “Hopefully that.”

***

The snow did stop the next morning, and we even got a little sun coming down, but Jack’s truck was buried pretty good. Jack and I took the shovels out and started digging while Lawrence messed with the radio, turning the knob from static to static and walking around to see if he could get it to work in different spots. He was up on the roof when he called down to us.

“Guys, I got something! The ranger station!”

The other end was so faint and broken up that we couldn’t make heads nor tails of it down on the ground, but we listened as Lawrence shouted into the speaker.

“Barnard Holling,” he was repeating. “Is he with you?...Are you sure?...Did you see him? Did anybody come by yesterday afternoon?”

When he came down, his face was pink from the cold and tight with worry. “They said nobody was there. Nobody even showed up at all yesterday after the snow started coming down.”

“Shit,” I muttered, throwing down my shovel. “Well, shit.”

“Think maybe he might've went up to the lodge instead?” Jack wedged his shovel in the snow and pulled one of his gloves off, wiping his sweaty hand on his jeans.

“Maybe,” Lawrence frowned. “Better keep digging. We can go looking once they plow the roads.” But we had no such luck. By noon, a big bank of gray clouds had rolled in and it started snowing so hard we couldn’t see in front of our faces.

“Oh, fuck this!” Jack snarled and threw the shovel against the side of the cabin. When we went back inside, the power was out and Jack stormed off muttering that he was going to go start the “shitty generator” and then come back, get shitfaced, and hibernate like a drunken bear through the rest of this “fucking shitblizzard.”

Lawrence and I sat at the table. We were both freaking out a bit by now. Fucking shitblizzard is right, I thought. I was supposed to be on a damn plane last night. I should have been sipping piña coladas in Phuket. Not shoveling the truck out of the snow and frantically radioing for fucking Barney while enduring Jack’s tantrums and freezing my balls off.

The lights buzzed back on, and a few minutes later, Jack roared through the door and slammed it shut behind him. There was snow in his hair and all in his big black grizzly beard, and he looked like a pissed off yeti. He got a beer from the fridge and practically drained it in one gulp before smashing the empty can on the counter.

“Damn,” he muttered, dragging the back of his hand across his mouth. “I never thought I’d wish for warm beer. But goddamn.” He grabbed another and walked over to us. Then he pulled the radio out of his pocket and threw it down on the table. “Did Barney take the other one?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, I think so.”

Jack began flipping through the channels until he got to ours. He took another gulp of beer then brought the radio up to his mouth, “Barn?” he said. “Barn, can you hear me? We’re pretty stressed about you, man. Let us know you're okay, man.”

There was no reply. Still, Jack kept calling. Pounding beer, calling, and pounding beer, until he was lying with his head on the table, slurring, “Barney! Barney! Come on, you fucker, this isn’t cool. You fucker, Barn. Come on, say something.” Lawrence and I couldn’t think of much else to do but look on at the sad sight of him and keep our own nerves inside our bodies while Jack vomited his all over. The way he was going, I reckoned it wouldn’t be long before the real vomiting started, too. If we were lucky, that hibernation of his would kick off sooner rather than later.

Finally, Lawrence said, “I think you need to give it a rest, buddy.”

Jack exploded. “Give it a rest? Give it a rest? Fuck you!” he jumped up, knocking the assembly of cans in front of him to the floor. “He’s our friend! Well, he’s my friend, at least. My friend. Since kindergarten. But you don’t give a shit, huh, Lawrence? Right? I mean, maybe he’s out there froze to death or carved up in the back of some fucking psycho’s truck, I mean, who gives a shit right? We’ll just have to wait and see, huh?”

Little bits of boozy spittle had landed all over his glasses, but Lawrence managed to maintain his composure. “All I’m saying,” he said calmly, “is that he is clearly not hearing you on the radio, and maybe we should just wait for things to settle before we freak out. That’s all I’m saying.” Ah, Lawrence. Ever the level-headed one.

Jack was not persuaded. “Fuck you, Lawrence,” he hissed. Then he turned on me.

That was when it got really bad.

“And you,” he muttered. “What kind of an idiot are you? Send your friend out by himself to hitchhike in a goddamn blizzard? What the fuck were you thinking?”

I never did have Lawrence’s patience for bullshit. Not for Jack’s, not for anybody’s.

“Oh, shove it up your ass, Jack,” I said. “He’s a grown man, like you and me. I didn’t send him to do anything.”

“You hated him!” Jack screamed. “I know you did! Ever since the settlement, you hated him. All because he wanted you to give him what was his! That money was his! You stole it. You stole his ideas. You robbed him. Living in that fucking mansion of yours, you know he could barely even pay his child support? You robbed him! You took food out of his fucking kids’ mouths!” Jack snatched the radio off the table. “Barney, Barney, you there? Didn’t Howe fucking rob you? Hey, Barn! Did Howe make you go out there? Did he kick you out of the car? Did Howe kill you, Barn? I bet he killed you, didn’t he?”

That was it. I’d had enough of him. I grabbed the radio out of Jack’s hands before he could react, and threw it hard against the wall. When it fell to the floor, the antenna was snapped clean and the dial had gone careening off to god-knows-where.

“You broke it!” Jack slurred. “You fucker!”

I didn’t even say anything back. I just fucking decked him, harder than I even knew I could deck someone. It sent him reeling backwards, but not for long. In a second, he had me by the collar and I was up against the wall with his breath pouring hot and sour into my face. Intoxicated as he was, Jack was a far bigger man than I, and I was pinned.

“Jack,” Lawrence spoke in a soothing voice. “Let him go, Jack. This isn’t going to resolve anything. Just wait for the storm to die down and then we can—”

Jack did not even glance at Lawrence, With one hand still pinning me to the wall, he reached out the other, shoving Lawrence hard to the ground. He landed on his side, his glasses skidding across the room until they hit the wall and came to rest beside the broken radio.

“Nobody. Hits. Me.” Jack growled. “Nobody.”

Before Lawrence could get on his feet, Jack dragged me over to the hall closet and shoved me inside, shutting the door. I heard the key turn in the lock and click. The lock always had the key in it. Why did the lock always have the damn key in it?

I tried the knob to be sure. Definitely locked. I pounded the door. “Are you serious?” I called. “Are you actually fucking serious?”

I could heard footsteps and scuffling outside. Heavy ones, receding. Jack’s. Then Lawrence’s lighter rush, his thin voice. “Come on, Jack, man. Give me that. Give it to me.”

I heard what sounded like the front door, opening briefly then slamming shut again. But Jack did not leave. His footsteps got closer again, then I could hear them moving up, going up the stairs, before stopping somewhere over my head.

“Are you fucking serious?” I yelled again.

“Howe,” Lawrence said on the other side of the door. “Howe, you okay?”

“I’m fine! Just let me out of here! And put a tranq dart in that motherfucker’s neck!”

“I...I can’t,” his voice was muffled. “Let you out, I mean.”

“What? Why the hell not?”

“He...uh...he threw the key away. Out the door. In the snow. I’m never gonna find it in a million years.”

I started laughing then. Just crazy laughing. “Oh, this is beautiful. Just fucking beautiful!” I was supposed to get on a plane last night. I should have been in Phuket doing lines off a hooker’s ass or something. Goddamn it.

“Just hang tight for a bit, okay?” said Lawrence. “I’ve got this.”

“What? No!” I screamed. “No! Not okay! You go find the damn axe and tear this goddamn door down, I don’t give a fuck!” I could hear him walking away, walking upstairs. “Oh, no. Oh, hell no. Lawrence! Lawrence you piece of shit! What the hell? Where are you going? Lawrence!”

I slumped down onto the floor and sat against the wall with the hem of a camo parka brushing my forehead. A bit in Lawrence lingo must have meant quite a while, and at some point while I was in there, the shitty generator finally bit the dust, and I was immersed in complete darkness. Beautiful.

The darkness is a strange place to be, no less so for having been shoved into it by an inebriated maniac you sincerely regret inviting on your hunting trip since he should probably be legally barred from handling firearms. In the darkness, you find things you only ever looked past in the light. What I found in the darkness was a tool bag. Inside the bag, I found a hammer. I sat in the dark, caressing it, feeling its weight, the cool metal. It calmed me. I rested the head against the thin wood of the door, then pulled it back...no need. No need. I could wait.

Eventually, Lawrence did return. There was a metallic scratching, then the door creaked open. He looked exhausted. Miserable. I can’t imagine I was in much better shape. The broken-off piece of antenna from the radio was jammed in the lock.

“I’m so fucking sorry, Howe,” he said, reaching out a hand to help me up. “I figured you’d probably be safer in there with him going on like that. He’s passed out upstairs now. Last thing we need right now is to start killing each other, right?”

“Oh, you practical asshole,” I sighed as he pulled me to my feet. I pulled him into a hug and clapped him on the shoulder. “Fuck, Lawrence. I am so sorry.”

“No, no, man. Seriously, I'm sorry.”

“Believe me, I never meant for it to be like this.”

“Oh, jeez, Howe, don’t worry about it. I don’t blame you at—”

My hammer took him hard in the temple, and he went down like a bag of rocks. I nudged his head with my foot, turning his face to expose the side that had been hit in the dim light. No blood. Good, I thought. I could not imagine cleaning up blood in the dark would be much fun at all. I checked his wrist. Still a strong pulse. Sighing, I rolled him onto his back and, pressing all the weight of my body onto his chest, closed my hands around his throat.

Lawrence took a long time to die. I never did the proper research on strangling someone. I was never supposed to do any strangling. I was supposed to be in Phuket, eating ganja pizza and covered in baby oil. But eventually he was a goner. That one didn’t feel so good.

But I didn’t have time to feel too bad, either. I was too busy thinking about what I was going to do to Jack. Oh, I was going to enjoy that one. I couldn’t let myself enjoy it too much of course, what with not wanting to clean up in the dark and all that jazz. I was pretty sure Lawrence already crapped himself at the end, which was unfortunate. And it would be best not to wake the bear-man, seeing as I had not gone this far to end up with my windpipe crushed by a drunken neanderthal. No, I would have to control myself. Perhaps a plastic bag over the head. Tie it off around that thick neck, then sit back, crack a beer, and watch the drama play out.

Moving him would not be fun either. And I had to move them; this would be the first place the cops would come looking. I thought it would be best for them to find Barney first, out in the woods with the back of his head hanging open, but even that would take some time. Eight feet is a lot of snow. The storm seemed to be subsiding again. With some work, I could dig out Jack’s truck just enough to get the bodies in the back. Throw some firewood on top of them. Once the roads were cleared, I figured I’d take Lawrence out to the overlook and bury him in the snowbank. He always liked it there. He never deserved this. Jack...well, fuck Jack. I would just dump his ass into the first remote ravine I could find. Far enough away from here that nobody would think to look there for a while.

As soon as they plowed the main roads, I’d go ditch the truck in town and call the girls to let them know we planned to stay a little longer, to get a few deer and make up time for the fucking shitblizzard. Then I would catch a shuttle down the mountain, and get myself on the first plane out of the country, all set with my new passport, new credit card, new name. A new man. By the time they’d found the bodies, one, two, three, they would not be sure where even to start looking for four. By then, Howard Cuffaro would be as dead as his friends, but he would leave no body. Maybe I would grow a beard. Shave my head. Get a tattoo or ten. The possibilities were endless. Before they could even legally report me missing, I would be lying on the beach, soaking up the sun, and drinking out of a coconut in Phuket with all the time in the world.