Snow

I stood on tiptoe to find Bonnie. There she was, halfway down the meatcase headed for the dairy section. Those blond spiral curls were spottable in any crowd but were not necessarily the reason Bonnie was easy to see. Nor was it Bonnie's height towering her over surrounding patrons. She was flamboyant in carriage and demeanor. She was surrounded by an aura of natural beauty, an aura which exuded an enjoyment and fulfillment of life even as it consumed an enjoyment of life.

"Wait up, Bonnie!" I called out. Shoppers scowled at me as I maneuvered the shopping cart through the obstacle course of elbows, knees and shopping carts.

I received less positive attention when I was with Bonnie. This attention resulted from the very fact that I was with Bonnie: a droll, ordinary woman tagging along in the shadow of the Goddess Athena. Most of the attention directed towards the two of us together was the perplexed and questioning glances of people wondering about the contradictions in our personalities. Bonnie and I were equally perplexed by the reactions of people towards us.

I caught up to Bonnie, leaning over the egg case for the eggs, her bottom half protruding into the aisle. I leaned over so only Bonnie could hear my wisecrack. "Stick that thing out far enough, somebody's gonna grab it and throw it in their grocery cart."

Bonnie came out of the egg case laughing. It was not a ladylike laugh; it was a laugh that traveled up from her diaphragm and burst forth from her. The laugh was neither undignified nor unpleasant. It was a rich, throaty sound echoing Bonnie's obvious exuberance in everything around her.

"Yeah, well, I'd just like to see 'em try and scan this!" Bonnie slapped her ample bottom as I trembled with quiet laughter. Bonnie always claimed she was five pounds overweight. The only place I ever saw it was in the rounded curve of her backside.

As Bonnie opened the lid to inspect the eighteen eggs within, I said, "We haven't seen the first snowflake yet. What are all these people doing here?"

"They're stocking up on bread and milk." Satisfied that no eggs were broken, she placed the carton into the front section of the shopping cart.

"Like they could subsist on bread and milk for three days," I scoffed. My exasperation mounted as a woman reached around me to grab a gallon of milk from the adjacent milk case.

"According to the weatherman, it may be longer than three days, Tyger." Only Bonnie called me Tyger.

"You know the weathermen in Atlanta. They're right about one percent of the time."

Bonnie reached around me for some milk. "Yeah but that one percent is a real doozy. Remember the blizzard of '93?"

"Okay. Except for that one doofus who said it wouldn't stick, the weathermen were right about that one."

Bonnie laughed and grabbed the front of the cart to maneuver through the throng of people. "They say this blizzard will make that one look like powdered sugar."

"What's left on the list, Bonnie?"

Bonnie grinned. "Anxious to leave, Tyger?"

I shifted in my leather jacket. "You know how I feel about crowds, Bonnie."

"Just some sugar for Mom and some sodas for the boys."

"Mara isn't going to have the boys for the weekend?"

"What? And be snowed in with her own kids?"

"What about your brother?"

Bonnie rounded the corner of the sugar aisle almost colliding with a harried male shopper. The man was about as tall as Bonnie with salt and pepper hair, beard and mustache. Judging from the fit of his winter coat he was, as Bonnie would say, "pleasantly put together." As I watched the two exchange apologies the expression on the man's face was one of sheer delight at speaking to this attractive blond woman exuding such positive energy. Bonnie barely gave him a passing glance. She was more concerned with completing her grocery errands. As Bonnie maneuvered us up the sugar aisle, the man ogled after her. That is until his female companion caught up to him.

"Watch where you're going," she snapped. She noticed he didn't respond right away and followed his gaze as it followed Bonnie's attractive figure. This woman's face, too, carried an appreciative expression. Many women would trade their bodies for Bonnie's attractive pear-shaped one. This woman, short and plump, dour of face and negative in thought judging by her actions thus far, would have traded her own body and everything in her grocery cart to have Bonnie's shapely figure.

It was no surprise when this woman's admiring look was quickly replaced by envy. "Watch where you're going," the woman repeated, "and not where she's going."

This was the typical reaction of people upon encountering Bonnie. Her good looks brought to one's mind a fresh spring morning in a rustic log cabin beside a lake. Her oval face was not unblemished but there was an ethereal glow about it. The glow that most women could not attain with the use of makeup came naturally to Bonnie. Her positive attitude in the face of adversity enhanced the luster of her appearance. Both sexes admired and appreciated her beauty even though the female of the species harbored a twinge of jealousy for it.

As we continued up the aisle, I glanced back over my shoulder. The man was now watching me, a look of bewilderment on his face. This, too, was a typical reaction. I had once been likened to a street hood by someone with not so favorable a disposition towards me. Oddly, men were jealous of me. They could not understand why someone like Bonnie would rather be good friends with the likes of me than lovers with the likes of them.

"Hey, Bonnie, where's your brother going to be during this big blizzard?"

Bonnie elbowed her way between people and carts to grab a five pound bag of sugar. "He said he got some work to do out of town."

"You don't believe him?"

Bonnie shrugged as she resumed guiding the cart. "Why should I? He's no better parent than Mara."

"So just you, your mom and your nephews."

"That's about it."

"At least you know they'll be safe with you and your mom."

Bonnie's stride skipped a step. She didn't respond or turn to look at me, but I knew the expression on her face. The sadness in her eyes and grim countenance were familiar to me.

"I'm sorry, Bonnie."

Bonnie turned and smiled at me; a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "It's okay, Tyger. I just still miss her."

Bonnie maneuvered our way up the soda and chip aisle. She grabbed two two-liter bottles of soda and placed them atop the pile in the cart. "Done."

"Great! Think you guys will be able to survive on this?" I waved my hand over the stuffed cart.

"If not, I guess we'll cook up one of Mom's cats."

I laughed. "Cat stew, for sure!"

Bonnie's feigned light-heartedness pierced my skin.

"If it's okay, I'll go outside for a smoke while you check out, Bonnie."

* * * * * *

I tapped my cigarette against the flip-top box in my hand. The slight chill in the air was enough to soak through my faded blue jeans. An unexpected gust of winter air tossed debris across the shopping center parking lot creating a whirlwind in the corner of the l-shaped building where the grocery store met with the video rental store. In addition to these two businesses there was a locksmith, a pizza place, a Chinese restaurant and a nail salon. The small video store appeared to be as busy as the grocery store. Two people walking around the far corner of the store to the woods in the back caught my attention. I watched as they rounded the corner, then cupped my hand around my lighter as the flame kissed the end of my cigarette.

I opened the driver's side door, leaned into the car and flipped the ignition switch to the auxiliary position. It wouldn't go any farther without the keys. I dialed the radio to a rock'n'roll station.

As I stood against the back of the big older model Mercury Cougar, I caught my reflection in the glass front of the video rental store. My figure lacked the attractive attributes of womanhood, resembling, instead, a matchstick. There I stood, my faded jeans flapping slightly about my frame in the winter breeze; a black cable-knit sweater beneath a black leather jacket; black leather boots; my short-cropped brown hair tossed in whatever direction the wind blew and a cigarette dangling from my mouth. The description of street hood was not only apt; it was well-deserved.

My mind's eye conjured a likeness of Bonnie standing beside my own reflection. I barely reached the chin of her five foot ten inch frame. The scenario before me summoned a cloud framing my own projection while Bonnie's image was bathed in the winter sun; a sun which enhanced Bonnie's natural glow while casting the merest backlight upon my own self-deprecating image.

I shook myself out of this reverie and stood beside the driver's door. I couldn't see my reflection from there.

It was amazing that Bonnie and I got along. I was the town bully in third grade when this new little blond girl challenged and overthrew my authority.

We'd been there for each other ever since. Bonnie stuck by me through my two year stint in jail for selling cocaine. I went with Bonnie to the funeral of her three month old niece.

It was an accident. That's what the report said. The truth of the matter was that Mara was doped up and driving. She spent six months in jail for the death of her infant daughter. Mara's father bought time off for her. It was the way things worked in Mara's family.

Bonnie hated it when her nephews spent time with their mother.

They always came back home with cuts and bruises and cigarette burns - accidents. Sure, kids are always falling down, falling off of things, applying lit cigarettes to their arms. Happens all the time.

The trouble with someone like Mara is that there's lots of suspicion, but little proof. Bonnie once consulted a lawyer about getting custody of her two nephews. The lawyer informed her she would need to prove Mara an unfit mother and the court system needed more than a few cuts or bruises or cigarette burns to make a case stick against the natural mother.

"Snowdrifts as high as nine feet in some northern and midwestern states. And that weather front is headed our way. Overnight lows in the lower teens. Bundle up, y'all."

I switched off the radio as Bonnie walked out of the store.

"You know you can smoke in the car," Bonnie said. "It's too cold to be standing out here smoking."

"You don't smoke," I said. "So you know I won't smoke in your car." I squatted down and rubbed my cigarette butt out on the pavement and put the butt into my cigarette pack. I helped Bonnie put the bags of groceries into the trunk of the car.

"Ya ever feel like we're a married couple, Tyger?" Bonnie teased as she slammed the lid of the trunk.

"Ya mean we're not?" I shot back. "I thought there was something funny about that judge that married us."

Bonnie laughed as she slid behind the steering wheel. It was good to hear her laugh, even at an old joke.

As I slid into the passenger side of the car, Bonnie switched on the ignition. From the radio blared "Murder By Numbers," by The Police.

"Aw, Tyger," Bonnie groaned as she laughed and changed radio stations. "You and your rock'n'roll."

"Aw, Bonnie," I groaned back as Mary Chapin Carpenter's "I Feel Lucky" filled the interior of the car. "You and your dang twangy country."

Bonnie laughed and put the car in gear. "Do you know them, Tyger?"

I followed Bonnie's gaze. The two people I had spotted earlier going behind the store walked across the parking lot. "Nope. Not familiar to me."

Bonnie pulled the car out of the parking space. "I'm glad you don't go back there any more, Tyger."

I shifted my position in the seat. "Yeah. Me, too."

* * * * * *

I hung my leather jacket in the closet off my foyer. My apartment was small but neat. The little kitchen across from the closet was rarely used. The living room contained a sofa, two chairs, a thirteen-inch color television set, a coffee table, a stereo system and two full floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Off of the living room was a bedroom with attached bath.

I switched on the stereo for some music.

"This weather front isn't just going to pass through. It's going to pull up a chair and stay for awhile. And it's going to get cold, folks. Temperatures are expected to dip into single digits with wind chill factors in the negatives before it's all over with."

The voice of the announcer was smooth and silky but I was tired of weather reports. I switched off the stereo and sat on the sofa in my living room.

The saving grace of my apartment was the sliding glass doors which opened onto a balcony. The granite edifice of Stone Mountain was framed within the glass of the doors. On clear days with the azure blue sky behind it, the mountain loomed monumental; a spectacular homage to the cooperation of man and nature.

Today, the mountain dissolved into the granite-colored clouds looming behind it.

I lit a cigarette and guilt fell like a stone against my heart. I hated lying to Bonnie. But I hated even more the thought of shattering the image she constructed of me.

My mind meandered to the beginning of our friendship. It was a few days after the little blond girl got the better of me on the playground. We were in the school lunchroom. She walked over to my table and placed a carton of chocolate milk in front of me.

"This should help your bruised ego," she said and proceeded to sit directly across from me. I scowled at her but she was undeterred. "My name is Bonnie. What's yours?"

"Trish."

"Short for Patricia?"

"Nope. Just Trish."

Bonnie wrinkled her nose.

"What?" I said. "You don't like my name?"

"It doesn't fit you. You don't even look like a Trish. And you don't fight like one, either."

"So what do I fight like?" I was both amused and annoyed.

Bonnie thought for a moment. "A tiger. You fight like a tiger." I laughed. "That's what I'll call you."

"What?"

"Tiger. Tiger, Tiger, Tiger, with a 'y'."

"Why with a 'y'?"

Bonnie shrugged. "To be different."

Fast-forward to three a.m. several years later The phone call. Bonnie crying at the other end of the line. "Bonnie? Bonnie, what is it?"

Bonnie, alternately hiccupping and crying, stuttering words. "It's-it's Emily."

"What's wrong with Emily?"

"Oh, Tyger. She's dead. That bitch was coked up and had an accident with Emily in the car. Emily's child seat wasn't even buckled in!"

That memory transformed the stone of guilt into a lead weight. Of course Mara was coked up when she had the accident. I sold her the cocaine.

I turned myself in after the funeral.

Bonnie forgave me.

I didn't.

I couldn't.

I quit dealing cocaine altogether once I got out of jail. It was a promise I had silently made to myself and openly made to Bonnie. Now I only sold weed.

I couldn't stop dealing altogether. Dealing was about the only thing I was ever any good at. Truth was, it was the only thing I knew.

I had it organized down to a science, keeping tabs on all my customers' needs. I inherited some of the customers from my old man when he passed on. He was a tough old bastard, outlasting the doctors' cancerous predictions by at least a couple years. But as he always told me, death levels the playing field for everybody. Once you're dead it doesn't matter how you lived your life because dead is dead.

"Ya see," the old man lisped without his fake front teeth in, "If you're rich when you die or if you're poor when you die makes no difference. When you're up there, standing in front of your maker, He don't care if you're rich or poor."

The old man hesitated here to take a swig of his beer. "The maker is gonna judge you just how he wants to judge you. And nothing will bring you back. Not the money you've earned or the friends you've made. It just doesn't matter. So you may as well do what you're best at and let death take care of the rest."

He usually gave me a quick slap upside the head after that little gem of wisdom. Not for any reason other than he just felt like it.

I wasn't the town bully for nothing.

By the time the pager in my belt loop vibrated a couple of hours had passed. The granite clouds had almost swallowed Stone Mountain whole. Or maybe it just appeared that way through my tear-clogged eyes.

I wiped my face on the sleeve of my shirt and looked at the code flashing across my pager. Each of my customers had a code telling me who, what, how much, where and when. It was an old code flashing there. I told this person not to contact me again, they'd have to get coke somewhere else.

I sighed and put my head against the back of the sofa. I thought about ignoring the page. Let 'em wait there in the woods behind the grocery store all night. Let 'em freeze to death for all I cared.

I took a long drag off my cigarette and blew the smoke out slowly.

The gray cigarette smoke melted into the grayness of the mountain which dissolved into the grayness of the clouds.

In all that grayness, I began to see something. A solution to a problem. A light glimmered within the murkiness of both the weather and my thoughts. An idea, morbid and somehow intriguing, began to form in my head.

I turned on the stereo. Maybe there was something to those weather predictions.

* * * * * *

In the woods behind the grocery store there was a dried-up creek bed, about four or five feet deep with banks on both sides. In the middle of this creekbed was an uprooted tree stump. It was on this tree stump where I sat and waited.

My breath billowed in clouds from my mouth. The temperature had plummeted since Bonnie and I went to the grocery store just a few short hours before.

I pulled my leather jacket tight around me. I had a flashlight in one pocket and a brown paper bag in the other. Both felt like leaden weights pulling at the collar of my jacket.

Some would interpret this for guilt. But this was no more nor any less than any other transaction. I wasn't thinking about morals or issues or guilt or blame. I thought about the long shot I was playing and my newfound faith in weathermen. I thought about Bonnie, working so hard to take care of her elderly mother and her two nephews, keeping them fed and clothed, warm and sheltered. I thought about forgiveness and marveled at people who doled it out as easily as candy.

I thought about the night Emily was born. I was there at Bonnie's request. She put the bundle into my arms and I held a newborn baby for the first time in my life.

I don't know - I guess no one does for that matter - what babies think or how they feel about people when they are held. But as I held this little baby and cooed and purred to her, I swear, she looked at me and smiled.

I know babies can't see things clearly. But maybe this strange new creature felt something about me that few people do. Few people tried to get past my defenses. That little baby girl did it with just a smile.

And now she was gone.

That stone of guilt weighed heavy on my heart again and I wondered who was the more to blame: myself or Mara?

It didn't really matter. Either of us accepting blame would never bring Emily back.

I heard a rustle of leaves in the woods. I turned my flashlight on and pointed it in the direction of the approaching footsteps.

"Hey! Dim that, will ya?"

I aimed the light onto the ground in the creekbed. My customer walked into the circle of light until she stood in the backwash. She looked whacked. Dark circles beneath her eyes stood starkly against her pale skin. Dressed in tattered blue jeans and a faded pea green Army jacket, she was drawn and thin, a hyped-up junkie too involved with her habit to eat, too busy snorting to comb her tangled mass of mouse-brown hair. Her eyes swam in her head, unable to focus, concentrating just enough to know the business at hand. Oddly enough, despite the haggard, desperate look of a wired-out junkie, she maintained her smug attitude. She held fast to her façade of defiant victim, even as she slurred her speech and swayed from side to side, incapable of standing straight at this point.

"You got the stuff?"

"Whaddya think, I stand in the woods for my health?" I looked her in the eye. "You got the money?"

She hesitated. Perhaps a brief flash of cognizance penetrated the haze covering her brain. But the flash was gone and she pulled some bills from her pocket.

I pulled the bag from my pocket and handed it to her.

She handed me a wad of bills which I put into my pocket without counting.

"What's with the gloves?" she asked. Her eyes wavered in and out of focus as she eyed the black leather gloves covering both of my hands.

"It's cold. Or haven't you heard?"

Her attention returned to more important matters. "This is the good stuff, right? I don't want any of that cheap crap."

I watched her fingers twitch as she contemplated opening the bag. "It's the good stuff, all right. Have I ever steered you wrong?"

"You sure?"

I shrugged. "You're welcome to try it. You don't like it, I'll take it back."

"Money back guarantee, huh?" She eyed me with a touch of suspicion - as well she should have - even as she opened the bag. She took one of the small plastic bags from within, removed a straw from her jacket pocket. She plunged the straw into the white powder. She inhaled deeply. She sighed. She inhaled again. Sigh. Once more. There was a look of ecstasy on her face. She had her fix.

Her ecstasy was short-lived as panic crossed her face. She dropped the bag and clutched her throat. Her eyes bulged and focused sharply with the realization of what was happening to her. Dry heaves issued from her throat. She began foaming at the mouth as her body twitched uncontrollably. A thin strand of blood trickled from her nose. A sheen of sweat covered her forehead.

She reached out for me but I took a step back. She fell to her hands and knees, gasping for breath on the way down.

I searched my heart for sympathy or compassion for this person on her knees before me, looking up at me, beseeching me for help. I found none.

"Something . . . in . . . the coke," she gasped.

I bent down so that I could look her in the eye. I wanted her to have a good look at my face. Her breath stank; it smelled putrid like a corpse lain too long in the sun. She dry-heaved as more spittle escaped her mouth. I didn't back away an inch. Her eyes focused on me, imploring me to help.

My voice was low and rasped with every ounce of rage I felt in my body. "I'd tell you to give my love to Emily," I said, "but you're not going where she went."

Her eyes widened in recognition, a full cognizance that was interrupted by her heaving blood on the ground in front of her, over her hands and Army jacket.

I stood and took a few steps back as she tried to crawl towards me, reached for my feet, made an attempt to hang on to something, anything, to keep from dying. She lay face down upon the ground, her body spasming.

After a few moments, the convulsions lessened in degree until there was one final gurgle.

I took the wad of bills she had given me from my pocket and tossed them carelessly toward her inert body. I watched as they caught the air and swirled down around her like lazy snowflakes.

I turned and walked away.

I knew two wrongs don't make a right. That's what my mother always said. I knew it wouldn't take long for forensic specialists to figure out what chemicals were in that cocaine. But I also knew it would take quite awhile before her body would be discovered beneath the snow. And that it was possible any traces I may have left behind would never be found.

I knew I had no right to do what I did and I will never be able to justify my actions. I knew it was murder. But I also knew I'd pay for it someday, whether in my lifetime or after death leveled the playing field for me.

Those little boys wouldn't hurt any more. No more cigarette burns. No more bruises. No matter the price, for better or worse, what's done is done.

I only regretted not doing it before Emily died.

As I stepped out of the woods and into the parking lot of the grocery store, snow began to fall.