Snowbound

Joe stopped digging and leaned on his shovel. His chest heaved as he struggled to breathe behind the thick scarf wrapped around his face. Sweat trickled down his chest, his sides and spine under his parka. It was early spring but he still wouldn’t be able to go as deep as he wanted to. His eye traveled to the two snow covered hillocks nearby. Alicia and their son, Josh, lay buried there.

He resolutely began to dig anew but was interrupted by the cry of a wolf summoning the rest of the pack. The howl echoed forlornly down the gorge, rebounded and bounced off the cabin near the creek, before it faded. Another, answering cry followed the same zigzag path. It was uncanny how they knew when to come. He would have to hurry.

Angrily he kicked at the inert bundle, carelessly wrapped in a blanket.

“Why did you have to come? Why did you have to come?” he shouted. With fresh vigor he started digging more frantically, still muttering to himself, “Why did you have to come?”

He remembered that raw, cold day that his family was murdered. He came back from running the trap lines to find the cabin door ajar, Josh dead on the floor. Alicia lay bleeding to death in their bed, her chest rising and falling as she desperately tried to breathe and to tell him what happened; how the derelict had forced his way into the cabin looking for food; how when she refused and ordered him out, he had gone into a blind rage; how when she grabbed an axe to defend herself he took it away from her; how when Josh rushed to defend his mother he was cut down in his tracks. He held himself together long enough to bury them side-by-side before the long winter night settled in and he was snowbound, alone in the cabin.

The heart that once overflowed with love now barely pumped the blood in his veins. He was nearly prostrate with grief. His tears seemed unending. By the time Spring arrived his grief was losing the struggle for dominance to barely concealed anger that raged just under the surface. It ruled his thoughts, his actions. It motivated his every decision as the snow melted, summer came, the leaves began to turn, and once again snow began to blanket the earth.

Joe had been walking just inside the tree line on his way home when he saw him. He knew almost immediately that the seedy looking man coming down the gorge, following the creek was the one. Something about his manner echoed what Alicia had choked out as she was dying in his arms. He watched with slitted eyes as the stranger approached his cabin, nonchalantly kicked open the door and sauntered inside. Joe stealthily crept closer until he was flattened against the wall beside the opening, and waited.

Soon the man came back out into the sunshine stuffing down part of a sandwich Joe recognized as having been left on the table. His eyes registered surprise as Joe swung the axe and imbedded it into his chest; the same axe that killed Josh and Alicia. The man stumbled backwards into the cabin, and fell like a redwood being harvested. Joe didn’t even bother taking the axe back; he didn’t need it anymore. He just bundled up the package and dragged it outside.

Once again, Joe stopped his frantic efforts and stood panting. He looked at the shallow trench he had managed to create; he listened to the howls as they grew nearer. “Why am I even doing this? I think I’ll just leave you out for the wolves.” he snarled. He unceremoniously kicked the bundle into the hole before he shouldered the shovel and called out, “Okay you guys. Come and get it!”

A nearby wolf yipped a reply that was repeated by his pack mates. Without a backward glance, Joe headed for the warmth of the cabin. He slowed as he approached Alicia and Josh, then stopped. He stood there for a moment deep in thought. “Love you guys,” he whispered, his breath fogging in front of him. “We’re all done now.”

He heaved a deep sigh, then turned and walked on. His steps grew longer and more rapid. The gorge echoed with his tuneless whistling that faded as he closed the door.