22
CAROLINE
I hold the phone in my frozen fingers and I make a decision.
I put it back.
Not because I forgive him—I don't, not yet. The forgiveness is going to require a conversation, some yelling, and possibly a PowerPoint presentation titledA Mountain Man's Guide to Groveling.
But right now, there is a four-inch furrow seeping through this man's side, and the lecture can wait until he isn't gray as the snow.
I find the first aid kit and clean the wound. I press butterfly closures across the worst of it the way he showed me, then I tape fresh gauze over the whole mess while Afon pretends he isn't shaking.
We rest an hour or so. I force-feed him handfuls of the last of our dried venison, then we get up and walk the last seven miles.
It's a fever dream, a fugue of snow and a downhill slope so steep that it feels like we're walking into hell. But it goes. I don't evenwant to live those the first time through, much less re-live them ever again in my memory. So I commit to forgetting each step as soon as it happens. There's only ever the next step. Some experiences are best left undocumented for the dignity of all parties involved.
I will say this: There comes a point, somewhere in the white howling nothing, when I stop feeling my feet and start having a very calm, very reasonable internal conversation about whether it would be so bad to just lie down. And it's Afon's voice snarling, "No. Eyes up. Look at me. One more step," that keeps me upright.
So we don't get to talk about who saved who. Not on this mountain.
The mountain demands a draw.
Pike Hollow appears out of the storm like a hallucination.
First, there's the Sunoco sign, glowing radioactive red-and-yellow through the snow. Then the dark hump of the bait shop. Then the bench—the scene of the crime, where a white van once swallowed me whole—now wearing a foot of fresh powder.
And then, across the street, a lit window. It's steamed up from the inside, golden, with a hand-painted sign above it that readsPIKE HOLLOW DINERand, underneath, in smaller letters that have clearly been added by a different and more passive-aggressive hand, OPEN WHEN OPEN.
I have never wanted anything so badly in my entire life.
"Is that—" My voice comes out as a frozen croak. "Afon. Is that adiner?"
He stops and frowns. "Looks like it." He looks down at me and attempts a smile, though his lips are so wind-chapped that they crack and bleed. "Do you think they serve beans?"
Laughing deliriously, chaotically, I drag him toward it. Wolf lopes ahead like he, too, has decided that the Hollow Diner is the promised land.
Afon opens the door. A little bell jingles, and we step inside.
Heat.
Sweet, blessed heat hits me like the embrace of a benevolent god. And my goodness, is thatelectricity?!There's a counter with chrome stools, vinyl booths the color of old mustard, a pie case turning slowly in the corner like the most beautiful merry-go-round ever built, and a smell—oh, thesmell—coffee and bacon grease and frying onions, the holy trinity of civilization.
I whine like Wolf.
"Well,therenow." A woman appears from behind the counter, wearing a quilted vest with a name tag that saysBARB.Barb!I almost cry out.We've never met, but I love you, Barb!Barb of the town, Barb of the post office, Barb who was at the dentist the day I got kidnapped. Barb, my hero, Barb, the patron saint of Pike Hollow. "Look what the storm blew in. You two come down off the mountain?"
"Yes," I say, with feeling. "Yes, we did."
"Lordy. Inthis?"
She comes around the counter, taking us in. We must look awful. Me half-collapsed and crusted in snow, Afon hulking and bleeding through a sweater he's keeping turned away from her line of sight. I'm impressed that she doesn't banish us right back out like the ghouls we are.
"Sit, sit," she says. "Anywhere you want. It's not like we're packed." She gestures at the mostly empty diner, where one other customer occupies a stool at the counter, a man in a trapper hat who has not turned around. "Coffee?"
"If you brought me a cup of coffee right now," I tell her, lowering myself into a booth, "I would name my firstborn child after you."
Barb cackles. "Honey, you're frozen stupid. Sit tight. Coffee's coming."
