Two Alone

The jugs of whiskey had been among the Gawrylows’ supplies. Cooper had discovered them the day they cleaned out the cabin. He had smacked his lips with anticipation. That was before he tasted the whiskey. He had tossed back a healthy gulp and swallowed it without chewing—the stuff had looked viscous enough to chew. It was white lightning, moonshine, rotgut, and it had crashed and burned inside his stomach like a meteor.

Rusty had laughed at his coughing, wheezing spasm. He wasn’t amused. After he’d recovered the use of his vocal cords, he had darkly informed her that it wasn’t funny, that his esophagus had been seared.

Until now, he hadn’t touched the jugs of whiskey. This time, there was nothing funny about his drinking it.

After he had built up the fire, he uncorked a jug of the smelly stuff. Rusty was surprised, but said nothing as he took a tentative swig. Then another. At first she thought he was drinking it in order to get warm. His expedition outside had been brief, but long enough to freeze his mustache. He was no doubt chilled to the marrow.

That excuse didn’t serve for long, however. Cooper didn’t stop with those first two drinks. He carried the jug with him to the chair in front of the fireplace and drank what must have equaled several cocktails before Rusty called him to the table. To her irritation, he brought the jug with him and poured an intemperate amount of the whiskey into his coffee mug. He sipped from it between bites of the rabbit stew she had cooked.

She weighed the advisability of cautioning him not to drink too much, but after a time, she felt constrained to say something; the regularity with which he drank from the tin mug was making her uneasy.

What if he passed out? He’d have to lie where he fell because she’d never be able to lift him. She remembered how much effort it had taken to drag him out of the crashed fuselage of the airplane. A great deal of her strength then had come from adrenaline. What if he ventured outside and got lost? A thousand dreadful possibilities elbowed their way through her mind.

Finally she said, “I thought you couldn’t drink that.”

He didn’t take her concern at face value. He took it as a reprimand. “You don’t think I’m man enough?”

“What?” she asked with bewilderment. “No. I mean yes, I think you’re man enough. I thought you didn’t like the taste of it.”

“I’m not drinking it because I like the taste. I’m drinking it because we’re out of the good stuff and this is all I’ve got.”

He was itching for a fight. She could see the invitation to one in his eyes, hear it in his snarling inflection. Rusty was too smart to pull a lion’s tail even if it was dangling outside the bars of the cage. And she was too smart to wave a red flag at Cooper when his face was as blatant a warning of trouble as a danger sign.

In his present mood he was better left alone and unprovoked, although it was an effort for her to keep silent. She longed to point out how stupid it was to drink something that you didn’t like just for the sake of getting drunk.

Which was apparently what he intended to do. He nearly overturned his chair as he pushed himself away from the table. Only trained reflexes that were as quick and sure as a striking rattler’s kept the chair from landing on the floor. He moved back to the hearth. There he sipped and sulked while Rusty cleaned up their dinner dishes.

When she was finished, she swept the floor—more to give herself something to do than because it needed it. Unbelievable as it seemed, she’d come to take pride in how neatly she had arranged and maintained the cabin.

Eventually she ran out of chores and stood awkwardly in the center of the room while deciding what to do with herself. Cooper was hunched in his chair, broodily staring into the fireplace as he steadily drank. The most sensible thing to do would be to make herself scarce, but their cabin had only one room. A walk was out of the question. She wasn’t a bit sleepy, but bed was her only alternative.

“I, uh, think I’ll go to bed now, Cooper. Good night.”

“Sit down.”

Already on her way to her bed, she was brought up short. It wasn’t so much what he’d said that halted her, but the manner in which he’d said it. She would prefer a strident command to that quiet, deadly request.

Turning, she looked at him inquisitively.

“Sit down,” he repeated.

“I’m going—”

“Sit down.”

His high-handedness sparked a rebellious response, but Rusty quelled it. She wasn’t a doormat, but neither was she a dope. Only a dope would tangle with Cooper while he was in this frame of mind. Huffily, she crossed the room and dropped into the chair facing his. “You’re drunk.”

“You’re right.”

“Fine. Be ridiculous. Make a fool of yourself. I couldn’t care less. But its embarrassing to watch. So if you don’t mind, I’d rather go to bed.”

“I do mind. Stay where you are.”

“Why? What difference does it make? What do you want?”

He took a sip from his cup, staring at her over the dented rim of it. “While I’m getting plashtered, I want to sit here and shtare at you and imagine you...” He drank from the cup again, then said around a juicy belch, “Naked.”

Rusty came out of her chair as though an automatic spring had ejected her. Apparently no level of drunkenness could dull Cooper’s reflexes. His arm shot out. He grabbed a handful of her sleeve, hauled her back, and pushed her into the chair.