Cabin Fever(39)

 

Jaws walks over and sits near my feet. I look down at him and try to smile. Unfortunately, the only thing I’m capable of right now is tears. “I think he’s gone, Jaws. What do you think about that?”

 

Jaws tilts his head and then stares at the cabinet in front of him. He looks about as sad as I feel.

 

I bend down and pick him up, telling myself I can move on with my life and pretend like I didn’t just drive a man out to his death in the snow.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Eighteen

 

 

 

 

 

I TRY TO IGNORE THE idea and images my brain is conjuring up of Jeremy freezing out in the snow somewhere, but as the sun goes down and its last rays are blocked out by more falling snow, I finally give up.

 

“Come on, Jaws, I need your help.” I have every bit of clothing I brought with me layered on my body and mittens over my gloves. “I just need to make sure he’s not lying out in the snow somewhere.”

 

I almost change my mind when I open the front door and the cold air hits me in the face. When I breathe in, the hairs inside my nose freeze. “Holy shit, it’s cold out here.”

 

Jaws takes off down the stairs, leaps from the bottom one, and promptly disappears into a pile of snow. All I can see is the hole where he fell into it.

 

By the time I get the door shut and run down the icy stairs after him, his nose is sticking out, but his entire face is white. He sneezes and sends flakes everywhere.

 

“Come on, little man.” I pull him out of the hole and adjust him in my arms. “I’ll carry you. You’re too tiny for this weather.”

 

We struggle through the snow, making very little progress. My thigh muscles are burning with every step. Talk about a workout.

 

“Jeremy!” I yell, my voice muffled by the echo-dampening, snow-covered trees around us. “Are you out here?!”

 

I’m only ten feet from the porch, but my rate of respiration makes it seem as if I’ve already run a quarter-mile. The bend in the driveway keeps me from seeing either of our vehicles, so I have to keep going.

 

“Jeremy! If you’re out here, I’m going to kill you!” I’m scared by my next thought: if he is out here I won’t need to kill him; he’ll already be dead from the cold. It spurs me on. My shoulders churn awkwardly as I try to stay upright and hold onto the dog at the same time.

 

“Jeremy! Answer me, would you?!”

 

I don’t remember hearing a motor starting up after he left. I pray the sounds were just hidden by the snow and that he’s long gone from here, sleeping in a motel bed with a beer by his head. Just let him be alive, God, and I won’t bitch at him about his drinking anymore.

 

After what seems like way too long, I’m finally at the driveway and the corner of my car is the first thing I see. There’s a thick blanket of snow covering the rest of it. Four more steps forward, and I can see that behind my car is a pickup truck, and its windows have steam on the inside.

 

“Oh, crap.” He didn’t leave. He passed out in there. Is it be warm enough to stave off frostbite? I have no idea, but I have my doubts.

 

I drop Jaws into the snow next to me and he disappears again. “Come on, Jaws, you have to walk on your own.” I put all my effort into moving my body through the path that Jeremy made earlier. Jaws unburies himself and follows in my footsteps, hopping like a rabbit.

 

“Jeremy!” I shout as I make my way toward his truck. “Jeremy! What are you doing, you idiot?!”

 

When I finally reach the driver’s side door, I bang on the window. “Jeremy! Are you okay in there?!”

 

He doesn’t answer, and I can’t see anything through the fogged up windows. Thankfully the door is unlocked. When I pull it towards me, a rush of warm, humid air hits me. And then a body follows. A very heavy body.

 

“Ooph!” I fall ass over teakettle, the weight of Jeremy’s body throwing me into the snow onto my back. Jaws jumps to the side just in time to keep from getting squashed.

 

“Holy shit, you’re heavy.” I wait for Jeremy to say something, but he’s completely silent.

 

Several things run through my head at the same time. Dead? Suicide? Frozen? Passed out again? I have no idea what his problem is, but at this point, I’m more worried about myself than him. If I don’t get his two-hundred pound body off me soon, I’m going to die out here. I can already feel the cold from the snow seeping in through the back of my coat and jeans.

 

“Get off me, you stupid, drunk jerk!”

 

I have one arm free, that’s it. I wave it around and have just enough arm-length to bat Jeremy’s arm with my puffy gloves. It does me absolutely no good at all.