Bert felt his thick wool sock catch a raised nail and tear. He cursed under his breath. Someone oughta take a hammer to this place. He never would. The floor of the lodge was full of them. Bert watched his feet as they snuck over each other to the kitchen. He smelled coffee.
“Bert, do you know what time it is?” called a voice to his right. He neglected to meet her eyes, instead darting to the green numbers flashing on the microwave. Christ.
“You oughta run, you’ve probably only got another good hour if that.”
Bert rushed to find his thermos in the cedar cabinet above the sink. He pulled it by its handle from behind the mug that Ed’s son made for him and siphoned coffee from the stained pot on the stove. He picked up the mail, fitting it snugly under his right arm as his now free hand searched in the closet for his coat. He felt the familiar wool lining and yanked it out, setting it down on the chair in front of him. The mail was packed into his shoulder bag right next to his thermos. Arms into the sleeves of his coat. The scarf tied carefully. He did these things with ease; his mind was somewhere else.
He’d had a dream, something real bad that he couldn’t remember. One of those dreams that forces open your eyes but makes you stay in bed hoping you’ll forget. He couldn’t tell you what happened to him in the dream. He’d tell you that he hoped he never remembered, that he never felt that way before and that he hopes he never feels that way again. Her voice brought him back to the foyer. She thought he’d left already. Didn’t he know what time it was? He didn’t. He slipped away from her and out the front door of the lodge.
The purr of his snowmobile was comforting, and he started to feel better as his hands grasped her handlebars. His thumbs met his fingers, now cushioned by his rabbit fur lined gloves. Gifts from his cousin, the one who married that mousy woman and who was blasted apart into a tree in the war. God bless his soul. They always said that about boys who were blasted apart in the war. He was lost in thought but his body knew the way. He started to rediscover his surroundings, climbing up and sailing down the hills he knew well. It felt like no time before he found himself at the lookout, what he recognized as the middle of the trip. He stopped his ride and turned to look out over the park. The sun was low in the sky now, the last of the bursts of purple light fading to a warm condensed blue. It was nice to anticipate the sunset; he’d seen months of overcast skies whose darkness snuck up silently behind you. He took his bag off his shoulder and took out his coffee. He drank about half of it before shouldering the bag and restarting his ride.
The storm whipped up, and Bert stopped a minute to wrap a pair of orange goggles over his hat. He chased the very last few specters of light through the white of the storm. He started to feel the extra cold of the dark set in. It made him feel his bones. Once out of the cover of the trees he saw the short, wood paneled mail building and slowed his engine.
The man winked at him through the plexiglass window as Bert edged his snowmobile next to the slot and unloaded the day’s outgoing mail.
“How goes it Bert?” The man’s muffled voice reached him through the glass. Bert gave the a-okay. He assured himself that he’d make it back to the lodge in under fifteen minutes, that when she had those harsh words she’d saved for him he’d be able to stand up and tell her to check the scorecard and treat himself to a warm nap. He waved at the man behind the glass and turned his ride around to re-enter the park.
He drove low now, looking up to see the dark heads of the trees stare down at him. He met their gaze as he started the incline. His snowmobile started to putter. It made him a little nervous.
It was at the peak of this hill, which he climbed slowly, much to the protest of his failing engine, that he finally remembered his dream. The whole mess played back to him and it felt real, like a standout memory from early years that marks an era of forget. He was making his trip to the office in a storm, he couldn’t see more than a foot in front of him. He stopped to wait for the air to clear, and it was then that he first noticed dark shapes moving around him. He saw cold breath find powerful life in clouds that even pierced the sharp white of the storm. Buffalo, a big group of buffalo sitting around his snowmobile. And when he saw all those buffalo like that suddenly he knew this really bad thing. At first he couldn’t figure out what it was, it confused him but he knew that it was something awful, that it was something that was so bad that he didn’t even want to know it. He just sat with the thought for a minute. Then he felt it. All the buffalo around him were really people, these silent people hiding in furs. He knew that they were people, but when he looked at the beasts all he saw where the living, breathing bodies of buffalo. He knew that they were there for him, he knew that they were there for something really really bad. He didn’t know how he knew it, but he knew that it was the biggest truth he knew. The memory of his dream filled his stomach with a tight fear. Real visceral fear that made his arms bumpy and made him breathe faster. In his head he could see their cold eyes look into his and their shiny teeth. He started to sweat. He couldn’t stop thinking about their teeth, those crooked teeth reflecting the unnatural light shining through the storm.
And now, as he heard the last dithering of his poor engine and as his snowmobile stopped cold in the flakey snow, he felt his grip on the bars tighten. He found his nerves in the skin on his neck, where he’d always get a little tingle at night as a kid, when he’d put his head down to sleep and the beating of his heart was so loud in his ears that it sounded like out of place footsteps through the old hallways of his house.
He knew that they would be there.
He looked up from his hands. They shook tirelessly, his clenched fists digging crooked fingernails into the palm of his hand through his gloves. His heart was in his ears.
They were all around him now. He could see the ghosts of their breath crystallizing against the sheet of snow coating his vision. Huge buffalo, each a godly brown like the ones in his dream. It was only a matter of seconds, but the sounds of their heavy feet crunching in the snow echoed for hours. He said a prayer. He didn’t know any prayers, so he just thought about his mama. The hesitant growl of his snowmobile roused his silent dread. He edged forward and over the peak, leaving the circle of buffalo behind him. Their calm eyes watched him go.