A Christmas Blizzard: A Novel by Garrison Keillor

A Christmas Blizzard: A Novel by Garrison Keillor

Author:Garrison Keillor
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Literary, Fiction, Satire, Holidays
ISBN: 9781101155721
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2009-11-03T11:05:17.760000+00:00


15. James’s inner resolve is sorely tested in the dark waters

James, what the hell you doing out here?” He stepped toward her to give her a hug and warm up a little, and she didn’t hug him back much, it was mostly all him. She was lean, wiry, a cross-country skier, who liked to ski in snowstorms and once, trapped in a storm, she dug a hole in a deep drift and stayed there for four days, wrapped in a thermal sheet like tinfoil, and was able, she claimed, to lower her heart rate and respiration to something like a state of hibernation and thus conserve her strength. A true North Dakota woman.

“Leo said you were shitting bricks about getting snowbound and then you insisted on coming out and staying in Floyd’s shack so I came to make sure you’ve got a decent sleeping bag.” She walked over to the shack—he took a deep breath—and opened the door and did not disappear into the Other World—no Big Hair there, just the lantern and stove and the cupboard with the sleeping bag on it—and she shut the door.“Looks like you’re all set,” she said. She looked him up and down. “Kind of cold to go out without a coat,” she said. “Come on over to my shack, I’m just starting a fire.” Her shack stood closer to shore, an 8x10 structure of weather-beaten barn boards, smoke curling up from the stack. The woodpile next to it stood shoulder high. On the shack he could see several signs, EXTREMISM IN THE DEFENSE OF LIBERTY IS NO VICE and WHEN I HEAR THE WORDS GUN CONTROL I REACH FOR MY REVOLVER and NOW IS THE TIME FOR THE TREE OF LIBERTY TO BE WATERED WITH THE BLOOD OF TYRANTS.

Liz was a rabid Republican who believed that the U.S. government had secret agents on her trail, surveilling her with security cameras and satellites, ready to pounce at any time. She owned a steel helmet that deflected satellite rays and carried two loaded .45 pistols in her yellow down vest. Her house was kept hermetically sealed against bacteria that government agents might spray on the homes of patriots. She was a contributing editor of Freedom magazine and a leader of the citizen militia Possum Comatosis. She used 4xPrime and got along on two hours of sleep a night, a watchful sentry on freedom’s ramparts. He liked Liz. He had always liked her since they were kids and played Three Musketeers in the court of Louis XIV of France and went swashbuckling around and being French, dueling with i nfidels—“Do me the honor, my good lord, of taking your sword from its scabbard,” she cried and crossed swords with a phantom enemy and drove him down into the creek where he slashed her face, Mon Dieu! And she dropped her sword and sank to her knees in abject pain. And then snatched up the sword and drove it through the blackguard’s heart. Allons! “Long live the king.



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