Her eyes were greenish gray, the color of the sky edge before a storm, and her black hair shot off in all directions and curled over her ears. I stood with her in the doorway, keeping an eye on the hall and the stairs, and that was when she wrapped a hand around my finger and squeezed.
You see pictures all the time of little babies’ hands, and often they are juxtaposed against the much larger grip of an adult. Often these pictures are used by anti-abortion groups or posted on Facebook by self-righteous rich girls with some moralistic message—but I will tell you that there is true power in that little hand. I will tell you it stopped my heart cold when I felt her clutch. I looked down at her and knew I would not be leaving her in that house. I rocked her and whispered until the crying finally quieted and went even in her lungs.
There was a backpack on the floor beside the bassinet and I held her with one hand and rifled through the bag with the other. There was a change of clothes inside, some diapers, a bottle, a canister of powdered formula, and a rattle.
Jenna started to squirm and I unzipped my hoodie and slipped her inside. She was in desperate need of a change, but it wasn’t the time or place. I covered everything but her mouth, put the backpack on over my shoulder, and eased us down the hall.
I held my breath as we passed the dog and watched as Jenna lay perfectly still inside the hoodie. Her eyes were peeled wide open and she looked at me flatly and with what appeared to be the certainty of her trust. The song on the stereo was on repeat. I was sure of it now.
Speak up, the man sang. I can’t hear you.
There were wet spots on the stairs from where I’d dropped snow, and I looked carefully at each step as we went down. I noted the worn patches of wood and felt the old house settling in the wind. I put a hand flat against the wall to guide us where the steps turned into the landing and hoped we wouldn’t be betrayed by a creak in the floorboards.
I would leave out the back and head straight for Portis’s place. My truck was just as far away from the farmhouse as the cabin, and all of it uphill. If Shelton or the girl bothered to notice the baby was gone they’d fire up the sleds and the truck and head right for the road I’d come in on. No, the best thing was to go and get Portis. Have him drive us to the hospital in his Ranger.
Potter and the girl hadn’t so much as stirred. They were lying exactly as I had found them as I hurried through the kitchen and out the back door into the wind and snow-swirled dark.
My flashlight wasn’t much use outside, not after I’d cleared the rutted trails close to the farmhouse and the dark spiraled out and grew deeper. I walked for some time, worrying when Jenna cried, and worrying worse when she didn’t. I walked until my legs began to wobble and a sweat had broken on the small of my back. I carried Jenna with both arms and carefully cradled her head.
I had on my combat boots, which I’d bought on a discount at the army-navy store. They were made in Bangladesh and were actually for boys at a military academy, rather than being U.S. Army issue, which the crazy militia man had explained to me as he passed them over the counter like a bag of fruit-rotted garbage. I thought he was trying to shame me into a steeper purchase, but he was right to sneer at my sorry boots. I had my gym socks pulled up around my calves but I could still feel the cold leaking through the eyelets and the tongue.
I pushed through the drifts, but of course the snow found a tiny crease of skin beneath the boot lining and decided to pile up there and rub me raw. And that’s the problem with the winter in Cutler County—it’s not so much the cold, it’s the fact that at some point the ass kicking feels personal.
Even worse, I started to wonder if I was wandering circles through the fields. The farmhouse was only a half mile from Portis’s and it felt like too much time had passed since I left Shelton’s. I couldn’t find the cabin and I couldn’t tell one drift of pitch-black snow from the next.
Of course, if Carletta hadn’t stopped paying Sprint I would have had my phone with me and I could have checked the time while I called for help. I could have called 911 the second I found Jenna, but Carletta quit paying the bill two weeks before she disappeared and my phone was in a desk drawer at home, right beside my prepaid that was all out of minutes.