Authors: Anthony Bidulka
to withstand the pressure of a hundred men hit-
ting it with a stick, why not attack the ailing wood
it was attached to: the door handles themselves.
After procuring another branch, I shoved the nar-
rowest end under one handle and used the lever-
age of my weight to begin a jerking motion meant
to convince the handle to pry away from the door.
Almost immediately I could feel it working. The
handle was loosening! I kept at it and in under a
minute the stressed chunk of wood fell to the
ground releasing the chain. I whooped with joy-
ous enthusiasm. Still no reaction from Jared. No
matter, I thought, we were close to home! Feeling
like Superman and Wonder Woman rolled into
one, I grabbed the edge of the door and gave it a
mighty tug.
Nothing. It didn’t budge.
I pulled and pushed and tugged at it some
more. The door stayed resolutely in its place. I am
not a man easily given to tears, but I was close to
it at that moment. I began to pace back and forth,
every two seconds giving the wretched doors a
hateful kick and tried to figure out why they
wouldn’t open. Were they locked from the inside?
Was there another chain and padlock I hadn’t
seen? Was the devil himself holding them closed?
It was only after I disposed of all those possibili-
ties that I noticed how simple the answer was.
Right in front of my eyes. Over the course of the
storm the blowing snow had drifted up against
374 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t
the building and was blocking the path of the slid-
ing door. It was stuck. The door was stuck! This I
could fix! I fell to my knees like a penitent sinner
on his first day back in church and began digging
gopher-like until the hillock of snow that was
blocking the door was reduced to a small trough
that, hopefully, would make way for the door
panel to slide open. I jumped up and tried again.
And joy of joys, it moved. Stubbornly at first, but
I knew I had it. I had won!
Eventually I made a space large enough to
wedge my arm between the two doors and then
my shoulder and then my entire body. Jared had
fallen into a near solid stupor, his eyes fluttering
as if he was battling to stay conscious. I knelt next
to him, threw his left arm over my shoulder and
coaxed him up. I helped him towards the opening
I’d made and pushed him in like a square peg
through a not-quite square hole. It took some
doing but he was finally inside, and then, so was
I. Ignoring our new surroundings, I focused first
on closing the door to shut out the storm that
threatened to follow us in. I expected a struggle,
but the door slid closed as if it had been recently
oiled, lubed and maintained and had never
caused anyone a spit of trouble in all its days. I
hated that door.
The first thing I noticed was the silence. I hadn’t
been aware until that moment what an unrelent-
ing auditory invasion the winter storm had been.
Who says falling snow is silent? My nose filled
Anthony Bidulka — 375
with a pungent smell unique to old barns—a
tangy mixture of straw, aged manure, rotting
wood and rusting metal. Immediately to my right
I noticed a ratty-looking horse blanket hanging
from a nail on a beam support pole. I yanked it
down and flung it around Jared’s shoulders, low-
ering him to a sitting position on an overturned,
empty five-gallon pail. Although he seemed bare-
ly awake, he shrugged into the warmth of the
blanket, pulling it around himself as if he was
naked. I took that as a good sign.
“You okay like this for a while?” I asked him.
“I want to take a look around, see what else I can
find to keep us warm.”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he mumbled into the folds of
the blanket. He seemed aware but not fully con-
scious.
I gave him a pat on the back and left to investi-
gate. Although it was long past sunset, the barn
was dimly lit by an otherworldly glow coming
through the windows. Likely from moonlight or
its reflection off the copious amounts of bright,
white snow being deposited around the building
like a mantle. Without insulation the inside of the
old barn was not significantly warmer than out-
side, but the lack of wind and falling snow made
it feel like a veritable sauna. I saw that one of the
barn’s stalls was stocked with square straw bales
and another with loose hay. My first priority was
to get some warmth back into our bones and this
looked like just the place to do it. I used a pitch-
fork to shove the hay into the stall where the
bound bales were and spent the next several min-
376 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t
utes rearranging the bales like building blocks, to
fashion a straw fort complete with walls, roof and
a floor lined with the hay. The physical activity
was beginning to thaw me out.
Retrieving Jared from his five-gallon perch, he
shuffled next to me muttering undecipherable
comments on the short trip to our new campsite. I
helped him crouch down and manoeuvre into the
makeshift fort. He lowered himself onto the soft hay
bed with a grateful sigh. Once both of us were
within the small and cozy space, I fluffed up
some of the hay to cover the entrance, leaving us
completely surrounded by the stuff. The smell was
strong, yeasty, but not wholly unpleasant. I lay
down next to him pulling the horse blanket over
us both and snuggled up against him. Gently as
possible I placed a kiss on the soft spot right next
to the corner of his lips. They twitched and maybe
even turned up just a bit. Maybe not. It didn’t mat-
ter. We had been targeted for murder, but we were
still alive and, if not kicking, at least twitching. I
lay my head back on the hay pillow, thrust my
hands deep into my pants to the warmest spot I
could find on my body and fell into a strangely
satisfied slumber.
It never occurred to me that we might never
wake up, having frozen to death in our sleep.
Chapter 20
WAKING UP ON A BED OF STRAW with my friend’s
partner in a barn in the middle of nowhere justifi-
ably made that particular Christmas Eve day the
most peculiar I’d ever had. Many of my friends,
especially the gay ones, profess to prefer the peri-
od leading up to Christmas rather than the actual
two days, being Christmas Eve and Day. I think
this is because they often end up having to spend
those two days being dutiful sons and daughters,
brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, aunts
and uncles at a whirlwind of family events, often
without the most important member of their own
family—their partner—with them. Since I rarely
spend holidays with relatives, I am spared all that
nonsense. So consequently I quite enjoy December
24th and 25th. I usually spend the twenty-fourth
ODing on carols and eggnog, lounging beside a
pine-scented fire while calling out-of-town loved
ones on the phone and making last-minute prepa-
rations for my annual come’n’go on the twenty-
fifth. This year however, it was becoming quite
apparent my plans would have to change just a
wee bit.
I looked over at Jared whose eyelids were half-
open, revealing the golden green beneath. Our
faces were so close that the tips of our noses were
almost touching. I could see in his eyes that he
was well. I sighed relief.
“What was that for?” he asked. His voice had a
378 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t
sexy morning sound to it. “The sigh?”
“I was just glad to see you looking better. You do
feel all right, don’t you? I’m worried about you.”
“How could I be anything but with you look-
ing after me?”
I noticed he hadn’t moved his face away from
mine. It was still chilly in the straw house I had
built, but definitely warm enough to survive with-
out necessitating such closeness. I too did not
move. I focused on the cut on his forehead. “Head
feel okay?”
“I’m fine, Russell. I can’t believe this…this
place. It’s terrific. And warm. I can feel my toes
again.”
I was coming to realize that our arms were
around each other, my right and his left under
each other’s heads, my left on his chest and his
right on my hip.
“Thank you, Russell,” he said with gentleness
and kindness in his eyes—eyes that stared deep
into me. “For everything you did.”
I nodded a curt response, my throat having
grown dry. Despite our still desperate circum-
stances all I could think about was that I was sud-
denly feeling inappropriately aroused. Hard to
disguise. Damn male anatomy!
Our noses touched.
Our lips came close and touched. I could feel
his hand move a little further down my side, from
hip to thigh. We kissed lightly.
“You’re welcome,” I croaked. Oh shit, oh shit,
oh shit, were the only intelligible thoughts that
came to mind.
Anthony Bidulka — 379
Quiet.
I grinned and pulled myself into a sitting position.
“Time to get up?” he asked innocently.
“I’m just gonna go check things out.” I could-
n’t lay there with him any longer. For many rea-
sons—most of which were unclear to me but
shouldn’t have been. I only knew it was time to
get out. I carefully shifted to a crouching position,
mindful not to disturb the roof of our lodging and
rearranged the horse blanket around Jared who
watched me with wide, untelling eyes. “Stay
warm,” were my wise parting words.
Like a series of identical pale grey postage stamps,
the windows were frosted over but letting in even
more light than they had the previous night when
we’d arrived. Everything else appeared
unchanged. The stalls, the cream separator, the
rolls of wire; all still there. I don’t know what I
expected. Maybe an espresso machine, toasted
bagels, a pile of fuzzy blankets and a snow blow-
er? But there was
something
different. I just could-
n’t put my finger on it. I made my way to the
malefic door I’d battled the night before. I leaned
my head against it listening for sounds of the
storm. That was it. That was what was different.
No wind. No howling, no rattling rafters, no roof
preparing for flight. Was the storm over? I pulled
on the door and met with resistance. Oh shit! Not
again! I could guess what the problem was. I’d
dug away the snow to let us in, but it had contin-
ued snowing and obviously piled up again mak-
380 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t
ing the door immovable once more. But this time
we were inside and I wouldn’t be able to get to the
snow to shovel it away.
Freaked at the thought of being locked in, I
grasped the door again and pulled with all my
might. It yielded so easily I stumbled into a heap
on the floor. Recovering quickly I pulled it shut
again to keep the cold out, leaving a space only
big enough to stick my face through. There was
good news and bad news. The good news was
that indeed the storm had abated. The bad news
was that it had apparently obliterated the rest of
the world leaving only this barn in the middle of
a blaring white void. Either that or everything was
covered in snow.
“What do you see?” I heard the voice from
behind me.
I pulled my head back into the barn and turned
around to see Jared, swathed in the horse blanket.
“You should be in bed,” I told him.
He chuckled lightly. “I think I need to walk
around a bit, get rid of the kinks. So what’s out
there?”
Again I felt a sense of gratitude to see my
friend up and about, clear-eyed and rosy-cheeked
and well. “Take a look for yourself.”
I stepped aside and let Jared take his turn with
his head out the door.
“What do you think?” he asked when he fin-
ished perusing our surroundings and pulled
closed the door. “Any ideas on what to do now?”
“Well, I think I’m going to go out and take a
look around, get a sense of where we are.”
Anthony Bidulka — 381
“I’ll go with you.”
“No, you should stay as warm as possible.