Snow Reaper
He clung to the steering wheel with numb hands. The Pinto would take longer to warm up on a night with a wind chill below zero. Cecil whistled relief when the engine finally turned over. The worst winter storm of ’75, he thought.
He checked his watch; eleven-thirty-six. God, how did it get so late? Snow crews had been out in some places. They plowed the ramp onto Highway 17. But Cecil chewed his lower lip. Snow floated down heavily in his headlights. He could drive blindfolded between Tuscumbia Tool and his home in Crocker. Cecil commuted the route every working day. Fifty-one winding miles, as familiar as his palm.
But the falling snow mesmerized him. He shouldn’t have stopped after work at Marshal’s Tap, he thought. Maybe he’d had a few too many. Maybe that’s why the bartender kept staring at him.
In the rear-view mirror, he caught the reflection of his eyes and looked away.
Claire would listen for the sound of the Pinto pulling into the drive. She would rise to reheat the dinner she’d saved him. In nine years of marriage, she’d never troubled him about working late.
“Cecil is dependable. That’s what I like in a man, and he’s always there for the kids,” she repeated the words so often.
The kids. Jacob acted more grown-up at 8 years than Cecil had ever believed possible. And little Kimberly could already read and write at age 4. They were too much, he thought.
“Gifts from God,” Claire had called them.
He imagined his family as a warm comforter. It made him smile how they cushioned him against any fall. But lately, Claire had started to comment on his drinking. What could be show bad about a little drink? After all, it calmed his nerves. She acted like he couldn’t control it.
His eyes rolled lazily. He sensed a looseness in the movement of his wrist, a dullness in his response that he knew resulted from too much booze. She had no right to criticize – no damn right.
The headlights cut a meager shaft through the heavy, cascading snow. Cecil took it slow. As he left Marchal’s, the TV warned of slick road conditions.
“Fourteen to twenty inches is expected in most areas. Only emergency vehicles are permitted on the highways. All motorists should stay home. This, from the State Highway Patrol…,” the local news anchor had said.
Cecil shook his head trying to purge his drunk. He glanced at the rear-view. Something with legs lay in the backseat; Jackson Rabbit – Kimberly’s favorite stuffed toy. He didn’t know how his daughter came up with the name. Holding it up by the ears, he grinned and steered limply.
“Daddy’s best little girl. I would hug you if…”
Cecil sensed the wheels slipping. He dropped the toy in the seat next to him.
At thirty miles per hour? Any slower and I’ll stop, he thought. The highway hadn’t been plowed. The barren snow lay sugar smooth. The purity haunted him. High 17 twisted like a worm. He cursed under his breath, unable to identify the edges of the pavement.
The car slid and pulled in the snow in queasy jerks, but he couldn’t be certain if he imagined it. What if he slid off an embankment…? What if…?
Cecil gasped and clutched the wheel with both hands. His brain teetered as he tried to take command. He blinked, bug-eyed at the speedometer. He braked frantically and felt the Pinto nose erratically. Twenty-eight, twenty-six mph; he flashed a look out the windshield. The wipers creaked as they arced stiffly across the glass against the pelting snow.
Ahead, the headlights fell upon snow-hazed reflectors and a guardrail. The highway curved sharply to the left. Twenty-two, twenty… Cecil panicked, feeling the Pinto slide farther.
He turned the wheel sharply to the left. The car swung sideways toward the guardrail.
You’re supposed to turn into a slide, he recalled. He cut sharply to the right. The car snapped swiftly out of the slide. Eighteen, sixteen, fifteen mph. He heaved a sigh as he placed his foot back on the gas pedal and negotiated the curve. Cecil decided to keep it between fifteen and twenty.
“Three damn hours, Jackson,” the rabbit stared intently out the windshield with stuffed confidence.
“I hope you’re ready for a long journey.”
Maybe talking to a toy rabbit proved he was completely wasted. But he needed any friend he could get.
Claire would understand how the weather had delayed him. She always understood. But would she smell booze on his breath? Would she nag him about stopping at the bar? Surely, she’d be reasonable. Tomorrow he’d have the whole day off to spend with the family.
The wipers tormented with their endless creak. Cecil wondered if they would break. Just what he needed in the worst weather of the winter, he thought. The heat started to fill the car. It dulled his senses even more.
He scratched his chin. He’d observed no approaching headlights since leaving Tuscumbia.
“How dark does dark get, Jackson?”
Mostly farmland spanned Highway 17 between Tuscumbia and Crocker. The highway wound and rolled like a moonscape of crystal powder.
At the halfway point, Exit 10 offered the only twenty-four-hour; a drive of over an hour. Should he hole-up at Travis Diner? The prospect of the long drive in the bitter freeze depressed him.
Cecil detected a shake in his hands. The skate of the Pinto unnerved him, and he eased off the gas.
Twenty minutes passed. The headlights burrored a tunnel of light, and Cecil stared at the hypnotic tumblew of snow. The snared a faint icon.
It marked the snow at the peak of an incline; a place where the shoulder of the highway might be. A thin likeness of a man or woman? He just couldn’t tell in the busy haze of snowfall.
“Hey look, Jackson. Somebody’s flagging a ride?”
He expelled a jittery chuckle and glanced at the stuffed toy. Then he squinted into the blowing snow against the windshield. The headlights took in more of the odd contour.
“What is it?”
Cecil shuddered. It raised a thin hand as the Pinto approached. A hitchhiker wearing a hood, Cecil decided.
“A sorry old fool. Trying to thumb in this weather, right Jackson?”
The car drew closer. The face glistened in the beam, bony and vein-webbed. It rolled back thin, purplish lips revealing a wide row of gnarled teeth. The eyes, a jaundice yellow, sank deep into hollow sockets. Cecil pushed the gas to the floor.
“In the name of Jesus…”
The Pinto whisked by the grim outline in the haze. His wooziness! Yes, Cecil knew he wasn’t thinking clearly and perhaps the play of the light in the snowfall,,, These factors altered his judgement severely, no doubt.
“Jackson, I-I’m not feelin’ right. It’s like I’m comin’ apart.”
His heart pounded in his fingers. Cecil tried breathing slower. He would need to make that stop at Travis Diner – if only they sold brew. A draft would smooth things out. How foolish to venture out in this weather. How careless.
Maybe the snow had twisted him; warped him into a madman. Cecil caught himself wimpering. A breakdown – is this what they meant by a nervous breakdown? He looked abashed at the rabbit in the mirror. Holding his arms taut against the steering wheel, he yanked each time the car slid and chewed on his lower lip.
“I’ll call Claire to explain. Claire willunderstand, Jackson. Course she will.”
Snow covered the sign signifying Exit 10. Cecil almost missed it. A forlorn amber bulb dangled from a utitility pole. The pale lamp glowed over a snow-laden ramp leading off the highway. Flakes whirled about the light, like insects. Snowy haze veiled the black abyss beyond. The unblemished ramp sparkled, like an untraveled ski slope. Where were the plows?
Cecil steered tentatively onto the ramp and began his descent. The Pinto lost traction immediately.
“Damn it, Jackson. We’re done…”
He glared beyond the end of the ramp. The darkened diner sign pitched slowly against the driving snow. The Pinto twisted like a toboggan. Cecil wrenched at the loose brake. The car shimmied sideways down onto the side road.
He studied the empty diner window in disbelief. He strained at the sign rocking above a deserted, snow-bound parking lot; Travis Diner, Open 24 Hours.
Just when I need warmth and refuge, and the reassurance of Claire’s phone voice, Cecil thought.
He grimaced at Jackson Rabbit. The stuffed toy had tipped over on its side. For a moment, he imagined holding little Kimberly in his arms. He avoided the reflection of his eyes in the rear-view. The wind swirled snow around the car.
“We got a hell of a trip, Jackson. We gonna havda work this together, okay?”
He sputtered like a tired horse, and sat the rabbit upright.
Snow drifted as he made his entrance back onto the highway. Cecil rubbed his dry bleary eyes repeatedly as the night wore on. His eyelids grew heavier, facing the hazy light beam beyond the windshield.
He turned the heat down. The endless creak-creak of the wipers seemed to be getting louder. Cecil turned on the radio to distract himself.
The static crackled in loud bursts. He fumbled with the dial and punched the buttons. What happened to Q-109 Oldies? He punched several more times. Nothing. The dim watery echo of distant transmissions melded with the static. He switched it off.
“Due to inclement weather, the world has been deserted. It’s just you and me, Jackson.”
The wipers quivered and lurched across the glass.
“Oh, my God…”
He gasped, pressing his pounding chest. At the snow-hazed edge of the headlights, Cecil delineated a blurred personage; a hooded effigy.
He drove headlong toward it, his hands shaking. The same hitchhiker? Impossible. But the figure stepped into the light. It seemed identical. It stood directly in the path of the approaching Pinto, raising a bony hand as before.
But this couldn’t be the hitchhiker. In the other hand, it clutched a long pole with a curved blade; something like a sickle. Again, that nightmare face. Cecil rubbed his eyes frenetically. Its purple lips rippled back. They peeled apart to bare gnarled, discolored canines.
“God damn you bastard! Move!”
Cecil hammered the horn with his fist.
The eerie body stood fast, waving its skinny palm as the heavy snow tumbled around it. Cecil would not be duped into stopping, not now, not for this sinister idiot. He thought he would pee.
Hitting the horn again and again, he shook his fist and cussed.
“I’ll just plow the prune-face into the snow!”
But Cecil knew better. After all, he was a family man. He panted like a dog. What would happen if he veered suddenly? He couldn’t even tell where the pavement was.
He jammed the brake pedal too hard. The Pinto became a weighty sled coasting toward the caped form. Stupid, he thought. He cut the wheel sharply and gunned the gas. The Pinto wavered and snaked, tightly averting collision with the fluttering dark cape in the bluster.
Instantly, the Pinto glided into a tailspin. It careened and spun wildly. Cecil moaned and shut his eyes, feeling propelled in the twirling bumper car. It slammed broadside into a guard rail. He clenched his jaw at the jolts along the guard rail. He heard the gritty rub of metal, holding his foot to the brake. The guard rail sheared the Pinto until it finally came to a halt. Catching his breath, Cecil sweated lead. Covering his face, he lost track of time. Finally, he noticed the hum of the engine. Snow accumulated rapidly on the windshield. He played with the wiper switch. The wipers resisted like dead fish on the glass.
He brought this all on himself. Hysterical – he detested the word. But he knew it suited him aptly.
He might imagine the strange cloaked profile at any moment, and what would he do? He detected nothing in the blind haze. Certainly, the stress, the alcohol had affected his senses.
Cecil rolled down the window and stuck his arm out. Reaching over the windshield, he jerked the nearest wiper as he played with the switch on the dash.
The wipers were lifeless. Cecil wouldn’t risk any further delay. He knew the car was probably badly damaged. He didn’t have time to check. Everything about the journey had been creepy. He would inspect the Pinto at a more sober moment, he thought.
“Just about twenty more miles. Let’s go home before I go completely nuts, Jackson.”
Jackson Rabbit peered attentively over the dash. The car scraped harshly against the rail as it pulled away. He would be forced to clear the windshield by hand. This meant he would have to stop every so often.
Cecil threw on the defroster, turning up the fan to maximum, hoping to melt the snow off the windshield. He moved the Pinto at a painful crawl. The wheels lost contact with the pavement in the blowing drifts.
The buildup on the windshield forced him to stop many times. But Cecil pushed on. At the railroad crossing, he would be close to the Crocker turnoff. Everything looked different in the wan blanket of white.
He wondered if Claire would wait up. She would be a welcome sight in spite of everything. He gleamed over at Jackson Rabbit.
“She’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”
He pictured Claire and smiled. Then her face… It somehow lost its soft proportions. Gradually, it took on the emaciated glare… the hooded profile. No! Cecil rubbed his eyes and shook his head.
The Pinto climbed a long, slow incline. Cecil knew this hill. He was almost home. Soon, he would cross the railroad tracks and exit off the highway. He eagerly kept a lookout for the tracks. As the wheels started to spin, he eased off the gas and shifted into low.
“C’mon, baby. You can make it. We’re practically in the driveway. Right, Jackson?”
Snow walled off the windshield. But he refused to stop until he reached the tracks at the top.
Abruptly, Cecil rocked forward in his seat. Something heavy jarred the front of the auto.
“What in the hell…”
He hit a deer or a dog, maybe. He couldn’t be sure. The loud, metal pounding persisted. On the windshield, fingers dug into the snow and brushed it away.
The caped effigy straddled the front of Pinto on its knees. Cecil choked on his breath. The shrouded specter glared through the windshield with a malignant glint.
“Awwwwwwwww!”
Slack-jawed, he released the wheel and covered his eyes. The moribund face contorted into vascular purple and yellow. Cecil convulsed as the form raised the scythe in its bony clutch and cut a jagged line in the glass.
Incredulous, Cecil watched the curved blade pierce through the windshield. He helplessly stared into the grotesque face. The car careened forward on spinning wheels. The creature rippled back its lips repulsively, baring its tainted, crooked incisors.
“Oh God in heaven! No! No!”
Cecil’s mind raced, groping to understand. He must shake away this drunken fester! He seized the steering wheel, tugging in a wild frenzy. The Pinto weaved and staggered. The effigy held fast, cutting through the windshield with the scythe. The hood dropped from its head, and a mass of long pale hair fanned out like a writhing mop of tentacles.
On the veined, sunken face, the thin lips stretched like a rubber band. The macabre grin peeled open, and bleached bone appeared from inside. The mouth dilated into a huge arc. The skin of the face lifted and wrinkled up further, like a rubber mask. Gradually, skin and scalp slid back, exposing the bare chalk-white skull, like a peeled pear.
It pressed its chilling aspect through the broken glass as shards of windshield spilled into the car. Tears poured from Cecil’s eyes.
His hands locked onto the wheel. The Pinto swerved sharply, and he looked long into the vacant sockets of the skull. The car rocked sideways and halted.
Without warning, the shape shadowed and evaporated. Through the windshield, Cecil blinked at a brilliant light. His trembling heart slowed. Gasping and soaked with sweat, he watched the light get larger. It all made sense for the first time. It had never been more clear to Cecil.
“Listen, Jackson, they’re blowing the trumpets! I’m being called.”
The mournful refrain could not cover the diesel drone or the shrieking brakes.
“Oh Lord, I pray you are merciful. Please forgive me! Deliver me from my sins.”
Cecil looked down at the stuffed animal, thinking of Claire, Jacob, and little Kimberly.
“Goodbye, Jackson Rabbit. Tell them I will always love them.”
He opened his arms wide. His tearful eyes flowed in the growing light, as the trumpets blasted their call. Metal wheels rumbled a slow beat on the tracks. The rhythm passed between boxcars.
Claire Holden sat before her vanity mirror, combing the graying wave in her hair. Maybe it was time for her to consider hair color, she thought. Her daughter appeared at the door behind her. Catching the young woman’s reflection, Claire beamed with pride. Kimberly had turned out so right.
“Aren’t you ready yet, mother? Jacob and his family are waiting out in the car.”
“I’m sorry, dear. I’ll be right there.”
“Uh, Mother, the kids want to see where their grandfather is buried… Do you mind if we stop at the cemetery after church?”
Claire’s face turned pale in the mirror as she stared uneasily at her daughter’s reflection. Kimberly felt the familiar icy silence. She knew how it always filled the little house whenever the subject of her father’s death was broached.
Kimberly sighed. Mother never changed.
“It’s over twenty years since the accident. Surely now you’re able to see past your grief, your fears…”
“That’s enough.”
Claire flashed an angry glare at her daughter. How could she explain it? Even her grown daughter needed protection.
Kimberly noticed tears forming in her mother’s eyes. But she would not be cowed.
“I’m tired of the secrets, God-damn-it. Why won’t you discuss Father’s death? Why won’t you visit his grave – why do you insist on keeping that stuffed rabbit here on your dresser?”
Claire looked alarmed. Two decades had contributed to the wear of the rabbit. It slumped over the side of the dresser like an old rag, and still bore all the rips from the accident. She rose suddenly and moved toward her daughter.
“You’ve gone far enough! Your favorite toy as a young child. Easy enough for you to forget, no doubt. But to me, it represents a piece of those final moments when Cecil felt totally alone. It is like a connection; a clue to the missing pieces of the puzzle…”
“Puzzle? Mother, tell me what you mean.”
“Never mind, Kim, it’s best not to discuss…”
“Mother, I have a right to know…”
“It’s best not to peer into the final moments of your father’s life. A mystery to me over the years… I – I find it troubling… No dear, I will not – cannot discuss it. I am unable to visit the cemetery. I’m sorry.”
Claire buried her face in her hands and began to weep. Kimberly wanted to scream; she was so angry, but she knew it would do no good.
“Everyone is waiting… We’ll be late for church,” she said at last.
“Leave without me. I’m just not up to going.” Claire dabbed her red eyes with tissue.
“I’m sick of secrets, of this house. Sick of you, Mother.”
Kimberly stormed out of the house. Claire heard the car back out of the drive.
She turned toward the vanity mirror and studied her tear-streaked face. How could she describe her nauseating bouts of terror to her daughter, or explain the images invading her sleep for decades?
Her memory of the coroner’s office returned, and the horrible moment the sheet was pulled back. Her repugnance at Cecil’s disfigurement was unspeakable. Yet, another element lodged in her recall; one that had festered all these years, one that the coroners and police were at a loss to explain.
It was the way the corpse lay open-mouthed with his eyes rolled up, the way his entire head had been bound in a monk’s hood. The hood-shaped flowers dangled from his face in a cruel mockery!
The memory gnawed at her stomach as Claire examined her tired reflection. She had tried her desperate best to protect her children from the dissolute shadows plaguing her dreams like a curse.
Wiping her eyes with tissue, she pulled open a drawer on the vanity. Her hands fumbled as she lifted the amulet attached to a chain and placed it around her neck.
Published: Baltimore Lite Literary Magazine 1998
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