When the coughing passed, he unscrewed the tap on the lantern’s reservoir and went looking for a funnel. He didn’t find one, so he tore off a strip of aluminum foil and fashioned a half-assed funnel from that. The fumes wanted to start the coughing again, but he controlled it until he got the lantern’s little tank filled. When it was, he let go and bent over the counter with his burning forehead on one arm, hacking and choking and gasping for breath.

The fit eventually passed, but the fever was worse than ever. Getting soaked probably didn’t help, he thought. Once he got the Coleman lit—if he got it lit—he’d take some more aspirin. Add a shot of headache powder and a knock of Dr. King’s for good measure.

He pumped the little gadget on the side to build pressure, opened the tap, then struck a kitchen match and slipped it through the ignition hole. For a moment there was nothing, but then the mantles lit up, the light so bright and concentrated it made him wince. He took the Coleman to the cabin’s single closet, looking for a flashlight. He found clothes, orange vests for hunting season, and an old pair of ice skates (he vaguely remembered skating on the brook with his brother on the few occasions they’d been up here in the winter). He found hats and gloves and an elderly Electrolux vacuum cleaner that looked about as useful as the rusty chainsaw in the equipment shed. There was no flashlight.

The wind rose to a shriek around the eaves, making his head hurt. Rain lashed the windows. The last of the daylight continued to drain away, and he thought this was going to be a very long night. His expedition to the shed and his struggle to get the lamp lit had occupied him, but now that those chores were done, he had time to be afraid. He was stuck here because of a book that was (he could admit it now) starting to unravel like the others. He was stuck, he was sick, and he was apt to get sicker.

“I could die out here,” he said in his new hoarse voice. “I really could.”

Best not to think of that. Best to load up the woodstove and get it cranking, because the night was going to be cold as well as long. Temperatures are going to fall radically when this front comes through, wasn’t that what the scruffy weather geek had said? And the counter woman with the lip stud had said the same thing. Right down to the same metaphor (if it was a metaphor), which likened temperature to a physical object that could roll off a table.

That brought him back to Deputy Jep, who was not the smartest kid in the classroom. Really? Had he actually thought that would do? It was a shitty metaphor (if it even was a metaphor). Not just weak, dead on arrival. As he loaded the stove, his feverish mind seemed to open a secret door and he thought, A sandwich short of a picnic.

Better.

All foam and no beer.

Better still, because of the story’s western milieu.

Dumber than a bag of hammers. About as smart as a rock. Sharp as a marb—

“Stop it,” he almost begged. That was the problem. That secret door was the problem, because…

“I have no control over it,” he said in his croaky voice, and thought, Dumb as a frog with brain damage.

Drew struck the side of his head with the heel of his hand. His headache flared. He did it again. And again. When he’d had enough of that, he stuffed crumpled sheets of magazine under some kindling, scratched a match on the stovetop, and watched the flames lick up.

Still holding the lit match, he looked at the pages of Bitter River stacked beside the printer, and thought about what would happen if he touched them alight. He hadn’t quite managed to burn down the house when he’d lit up The Village on the Hill, the fire trucks had arrived before the flames could do much more than scorch the walls of his study, but there would be no fire trucks out here on Shithouse Road, and the storm wouldn’t stop the fire once it took hold, because the cabin was old and dry. Old as dirt, dry as your grandmother’s—

The flame guttering along the matchstick reached his fingers. Drew shook it out, tossed it into the blazing stove, and slammed the grate shut.

“It’s not a bad book and I’m not going to die out here,” he said. “Not going to happen.”

He turned off the Coleman to conserve the fuel, then sat down in the wing chair he spent his evenings in, reading paperbacks by John D. MacDonald and Elmore Leonard. There wasn’t enough light to read by now, not with the Coleman off. Night had almost come, and the only light in the cabin was the shifting red eye of the fire seen through the woodstove’s isinglass window. Drew pulled his chair a bit closer to the stove and wrapped his arms around himself to quell the shivers. He should change out of his damp shirt and pants, and do it right away if he didn’t want to get even sicker. He was still thinking this when he fell asleep.

21

What woke him was a splintering crack from outside. It was followed by a second, even louder crack, and a thud that shook the floor. A tree had fallen, and it must have been a big one.

The fire in the woodstove had burned down to a bed of bright red embers that waxed and waned. Along with the wind, he could now hear a sandy rattling against the windows. The cabin’s big downstairs room was stuperously hot, at least for the time being, but the temperature outside must have fallen (off the table) as predicted, because the rain had turned to sleet.

Drew tried to check the time, but his wrist was bare. He supposed he’d left his watch on the nighttable beside the bed, although he couldn’t remember for sure. He could always check the time and date strip on his laptop, he supposed, but what would be the point? It was nighttime in the north woods. Did he need any other information?

He decided he did. He needed to find out if the tree had fallen on his trusty Suburban and smashed the shit out of it. Of course need was the wrong word, need was for something you had to have, subtext being that if you could get it you might be able to change the overall situation for the better, and nothing in this situation would change either way, and was situation the right word, or was it too general? It was more of a fix than a situation, fix in this context meaning not to repair but—

“Stop it,” he said. “Do you want to drive yourself crazy?”

He was pretty sure a part of him wanted exactly that. Somewhere inside his head, control panels were smoking and circuit breakers were fusing and some mad scientist was shaking his fists in exultation. He could tell himself it was the fever, but he had been in fine fettle when Village had gone bad. Same with the other two. Physically, at least.

He got up, wincing at the aches that now seemed to be afflicting all of his joints, and went to the door, trying not to hobble. The wind tore it from his grasp and bounced it off the wall. He grabbed it and held on, his clothes plastered against his body and his hair streaming back from his forehead. The night was black—black as the devil’s riding boots, black as a black cat in a coalmine, black as a woodchuck’s asshole—but he could make out the bulk of his Suburban and (maybe) tree branches waving above it on the far side. Although he couldn’t be sure, he thought the tree had spared his Suburban and landed on the equipment shed, no doubt bashing in the roof.

He shouldered the door shut and turned the deadbolt. He didn’t expect intruders on such a dirty night, but he didn’t want it blowing open after he went to bed. And he was going to bed. He made his way to the kitchen counter by the shifting, chancy light of the embers and lit the Coleman lantern. In its glare the cabin looked surreal, caught by a flashbulb that didn’t go out but just went on and on. Holding it in front of him, he crossed to the stairs. That was when he heard a scratching at the door.