Rook: Snowman Read online

  “Say what?”

  “The evening with Roger and Chuck. It was professional. They were sharing some of their ideas on curriculum presentation and student enablement.”

  “So … no disco dancing? No wopping and a-bopping?”

  “You have an imagination, Jim. I’ll give you that.”

  She started walking back along the corridor toward the science block. “I have to set up a presentation on natural selection,” she said. “You know we’re having this visit this afternoon, from the Department of Education?”

  “Oh, yes. Bruce Friendly told me to make my students look as if they had started to crawl on dry land, at the very least.”

  “Bruce Friendly makes my flesh creep.”

  “Well, mine too. But it’s character-building, having a head of department like that.”

  “No, it’s not. He’s a bigot and a throwback. And besides that, he tried to grope me.”

  “Bruce Friendly tried to grope you?”

  “Oh, he pretended he was reaching for his coat. But who reaches for their coat with a cupped hand?”

  Jim cupped his hand and looked down at it. Then he looked at Karen Goudemark, straight in the face. Standing so close to her, the very word ‘cup’ seemed erotic, and it took a supreme effort of will for him not to lower his eyes any further. “I’m shocked,” he said.

  “No, you’re not. But I appreciate your sympathy.”

  They reached the door of Biology I. Karen said, “This is me. Maybe I’ll catch you later.”

  “Maybe we could have a drink. I’m pretty good on curriculum presentation and student enablement.”

  “I can get all that from Roger and Chuck,” she said; and there was a challenging look in her eyes which he recognized from what seemed a very long time ago. She was flirting with him. “Why don’t you show me some wopping and a-bopping?”

  “Wopping and a-bopping? For sure. It’s Thursday tomorrow. Maybe you’d like to come to The Slant Club and meet my friend Meryvn. And wop. And a-bop.”

  “That sounds fun. What do you think I should wear?”

  They were still breaking off their conversation in little flirtatious pieces when Nestor came running along the corridor, his eyes wild and his spotty face bleached with panic.

  “Mr Rook! Mr Rook! You gotta come quick! It’s Ray!”

  “What’s the matter with Ray?” asked Jim, running already.

  “He’s stuck! He can’t get free! He’s screaming with the pain!”

  Five

  Jim ran after Nestor through the swing doors and out of the building. He saw a crowd of students gathered and he could heard a high-pitched howling, like a run-over dog. He ran across the grass and pushed his way through to the steps by the side of the arts block. Ray Krueger was standing at the top of the steps, holding onto the steel-pipe railing with both hands. His head was thrown back and there were tears coursing down his face. Dennis Pease was standing close beside him, trying to comfort him, while Clarence the janitor was tugging at his wrists. Several girls from Jim’s class were there, too – Joyce Capistrano and Laura Killmeyer and Dottie Osias – and they were weeping with shock and terror.

  “Mr Rook!” Clarence called out. “Whatever you do, don’t go touching the handrail!”

  “What’s happened?” asked Jim, climbing up the concrete steps.

  “It’s cold, Mr Rook. That handrail’s so cold, you’ll get your hand stuck to it like Ray.”

  “Stuck to it? What are you talking about?”

  Dennis said, “He was leaning over the handrail, talking to Laura, and all of a sudden he couldn’t get his hands free. He kept saying, it’s cold, it’s cold, it’s burning me. And we tried to pull his hands away but we couldn’t, and I can tell you something, Mr Rook, this mother is cold, and I mean cold to the max.”

  Jim came up to Ray and held his face in his hands. “Ray! Ray, listen to me, this is Mr Rook here. I’ve come to help you!”

  But Ray’s eyes were rolling up into the back of his head and he was quaking with pain. He looked as if he were going into shock, and it was only because his hands were stuck to the handrail so tightly that he didn’t fall down.

  “Come on, Ray, everything’s going to be fine. Did somebody call nine-one-one? Paramedics and fire department?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Nestor, who was close by his elbow. “They told me six minutes.”

  Jim looked at the handrail that Ray was clutching so tightly. It had a frosty bloom on it, with a few sparkles that caught the sun, and it was so cold that it was actually smoking. From what he could make out, it was frozen all the way along, from the bottom of the steps to the front door of the arts block. Ray’s hands were white except for his fingertips, which were blueish crimson.

  Next to Ray’s right hand, an empty red industrial glove gripped the railing surrealistically. “That’s mine,” said Clarence. “I tried to pry him free but even my glove got stuck fast.”

  “Ray, listen to me,” said Jim, putting his arm around him. “Everything’s going to be fine. The paramedics are on their way and what we’re going to try to do is warm this handrail up a little to get you free.” He turned to Clarence and said, “Think you can connect up a hosepipe to the college hot-water supply?”

  “Yes sir, Mr Rook! There won’t be no problematical difficulty with that!”

  “Then do it, will you? And bring a hacksaw and a hose connector.”

  He turned back to Ray. Ray had stopped moaning now, but his teeth were chattering and he was letting out little gasps of pain. He was so young, too. He hadn’t started to shave yet, even though his upper lip was wispy with a black mustache.

  “My hands, Mr Rook,” he kept whimpering, rolling his head around and around. “They’re burning. They feel like they’re on fire.”

  Jim heard the sound of sirens whooping in the distance. “Come on, Ray. Just hold on a couple of minutes. The paramedics are almost here.”

  “But they’re burning! They’re burning! My fingers are burning! My fingers are burning and I can’t get them free! Aaaaagggghhhhhhhhh!”

  Jim clutched Ray close to him. He saw the ambulance swerve into the parking-lot, and thought what an irony it was, that he had just been telling them about the ambulance in Karl Shapiro’s poem – ‘wings in a heavy curve, dips down,/ And brakes speed, entering the crowd’.

  At the bottom of the steps, where the handrail wasn’t frozen, Clarence was attacking it with a hacksaw, while two students frantically unrolled a long black hosepipe from the college boiler-house.

  Two paramedics came running across the grass and up the steps. One was Hispanic, with a smooth calm face. The other was a tall red-headed woman.

  “Don’t touch the handrail!” everybody shouted at them, a chorus of fright. The red-headed woman snatched her hand away and said, “What? What’s happening here?”

  “The handrail’s frozen,” Jim explained. “It must be fifty degrees below. Ray put his hands on it and now he can’t get them free.”

  “Frozen?” asked the Hispanic paramedic. “Was this some kind of a practical joke?”

  The woman immediately went up to Ray and inspected his hands. The ends of his fingers had now turned black, and his knuckles were a deathly blueish white.

  “Severe frostbite,” she said. “Both hands are already necrotized right up to the wrists. And it’s advancing fast.”

  “Necrotized? You mean his hands are actually dead?”

  The other paramedic was calling into West Grove Memorial Hospital, telling them what to expect. “Severe frostbite. Yes, you heard that right. Frostbite.” When he was finished he nodded toward Clarence and the other students. Clarence had already sawn through the handrail, and now he was coupling up the hose.

  “This your idea?” he asked Jim. “Good thinking. You don’t want to warm his hands up too quick.”

  Ray was shuddering and bleating and his eyes had rolled right back up into his head, so that only the whites were showing. The woman gave him a shot of ketamine t
o deaden the pain. Then she said to Jim, in a matter-of-fact tone, “I used to work in Chicago. I’ve seen this kind of thing before, people getting frozen to their car-door handles or their front doorknobs. I was walking on Michigan Avenue once and I went blind because my eyeballs had frozen. If somebody hadn’t pulled me into a shop doorway I could have lost my sight.”

  “So what are you telling me?”

  “I’m telling you that if the hot-water trick doesn’t get him free, we’re going to have to cut him free. The frostbite is spreading to his wrists already, look. I don’t know how this could happen, but we have to act fast.”

  “Jesus. But his hands—”

  “I’m sorry. We don’t have any alternatives.”

  Jim shouted, “Clarence! Is that hot water running yet?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr Rook! It’s flowing right now, maximum full top blast.”

  The woman paramedic examined Ray’s eyes, and took his pulse and his blood pressure and his respiratory rate.

  “His body temperature’s way below normal. His blood pressure’s dropping and he’s going into shock.”

  “Look,” said Jim. The blueish whiteness had spread up Ray’s wrists to his forearms now, and his hands were black, as if he were wearing gloves.

  “Where’s the goddamned fire department?” asked the Hispanic paramedic, impatiently.

  “Can’t you just saw this section of the handrail off?” Nestor suggested. “Just this section that he’s holding on to.”

  The woman shook her head. “At this kind of temperature, the hacksaw will probably freeze to the rail. But we could try it.”

  “Clarence!” called Jim. “Fetch that saw up here, will you?”

  But at that moment, with a loud rubbery bang, the hose connector burst away from the handrail, and the hose lashed from side to side like a cornered snake, spurting scalding-hot water in all directions. Several students were caught by the spray, and there were screams of pain and hysteria.

  “Pipe’s busted free, Mr Rook!” shouted Clarence. “It’s all blocked up inside of that handrail, blocked up with solid ice. Going to take something more than hot water to clear that out! Look!”

  Jim looked down, and saw thick, brownish slush dripping from the severed handrail, the consistency of marrowbone. The cold inside the handrail was so intense that the hot water from the hose had started to freeze, almost as soon as Clarence had connected it up.

  Ray suddenly sagged. The woman paramedic said, “Keep him upright! I don’t want him to tear his hands off!” Jim shifted around so that he could hold him under his arms and heft him up higher. The woman paramedic said, “He’s gone into arrest!” and the man opened up his first-aid box and picked out a hypodermic. With complete calmness, he filled it with adrenalin and passed it over to the woman. She lifted Ray’s sweatshirt and jabbed the needle directly between his skinny ribs, into his heart. He convulsed, and threw his head back, but his pulse started again, and he let out a thick, cackling breath, and then another.

  The woman paramedic checked his arms. The dead whiteness had reached almost up to his elbows, and the grayish black tinge of death was relentlessly following it, like Indian ink staining a blotter. She said, “I’m sorry about this. I don’t have any choice. The speed this frostbite is spreading, we have to get him free right now, right this minute.”

  The other paramedic turned to Jim. His face was smooth and his eyes were as placid as stones. “You have to look at it this way, sir. If his hands were trapped in a fire, you’d have to make the same decision. I can’t imagine how this handrail got so cold, but we have to release this boy or else we’ll be going to his funeral.”

  Jim nodded. “Okay. Go ahead. Just don’t let him suffer too much.”

  “He won’t suffer, sir. The ketamine’s kicked in. And Rachel’s the best there is.”

  The woman paramedic said, “Find me a table. Quick as you can. Something to rest his elbows on. How about you, sir? Do you think you can manage to keep on holding him up?”

  Jim said, “Sure. Washington – can you help me?”

  “No problem,” said Washington, and bent down so that Jim could seat Ray on top of his back.

  Nestor came out, dragging a small wooden table behind him. The Hispanic paramedic took it, and slid it under Ray’s elbows to support them. At the same time, the woman paramedic was collecting out of her bag everything that she would need for an amputation. Jim saw the sun glint on her saw, and he had to turn away. He found himself looking at a grinning skull badge sewn onto the sleeve of Ray’s sweatshirt. God, he thought. How appropriate.

  Deftly, the woman paramedic laid out all of her instruments – saw, scalpels and needles, as well as swabs and pads. As she was doing so, the first firetruck arrived, honking and wailing, and a crew of firefighters came waddling across the lawn, carrying axes and breathing equipment. But by now there was nothing they could do. The Hispanic paramedic had already strapped a transparent plastic mask over over Ray’s face, to give him oxygen and anesthetic, and the woman was tightening tourniquets round each of Ray’s arms, just above the elbow.

  “Do you have to amputate them so high up?” asked Jim. “At least if he had his elbows—”

  The woman paramedic said, “He’s deep-frozen right up to the middle of his forearm. Unless we amputate right up here, there’s a strong chance that we’ll leave some necrotic flesh, which will mean that he’s very susceptible to later infection. Gangrene, which could kill him.”

  She looked at Jim sharply. She had green eyes and ginger freckles across her nose and there was a determination about her which Jim found both daunting and reassuring. If she had the courage to cut off Ray’s arms above the elbows, to save him from dying, then he guessed that he had the courage to help her.

  “All of this external tissue is dead,” she said, prodding the black scabby skin that covered Ray’s fingers and forearms. “In most cases of frostbite, the dead tissue is not much more than a shell, and when it peels off, which it eventually will, you’ll have nothing but pink babyskin. Excruciatingly sensitive, of course. But at least it grows back.”

  “But this skin isn’t going to grow back?”

  “Not in my opinion, no. What’s spreading in his body here is total frostbite. All of the muscles, bone and tendon are frozen solid. Here, look.”

  She picked up a scalpel and cut a deep slit in Ray’s wrist. She opened it wide with her fingers, and even Jim’s inexperienced eye could see that his flesh was white and solid, like deep-frozen pork, and that his veins were filled with crystals of crunchy maroon blood.

  “At the rate this frosbite is developing, it’s going to reach his shoulders in fifteen minutes.”

  The West Hollywood fire chief came up – a short, bristly man with a walrus moustache.

  “Hi, Rachel. Cómo le va?”

  “Muy bien, gracias. Y usted?”

  “Muy bien. What the hell’s happening here?”

  “Major surgery, I’m afraid. Can you just ask your people to clear all of the students out of here? This is going to be something that they won’t want to see.”

  “You want us to cut that handrail free? We’re carrying hydraulic cutters. Won’t take us a minute.”

  “Sorry, chief. It won’t make any difference. And every second counts.”

  Jim was fascinated by the way in which she could talk and work at the same time. She picked up her scalpel and started to cut into Ray’s left arm, just above the elbow. The tourniquet was so tight, and his arm was so frozen, that he hardly bled at all – just one big red droplet which rolled down on to his elbow and dropped onto the table underneath.

  “Madre mia,” said the fire chief. “I think I’ve seen it all now.”

  “Please,” Rachel asked him; and it was almost a command. “Please tell all of the students to go back to whatever it was that they were doing before. We don’t need a crowd of hysterical spectators, not now.”

  The fire chief saluted. “Yessir ma’am,” and went back down the steps.
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br />   Rachel continued to cut into Ray’s arm. Dennis turned his head away, but Jim watched in horrified fascination, even though he couldn’t stand the soft, slicing sound of it. Rachel dissected a large square of skin and fibrous tissue from the underlying muscles. The flesh was scarlet, like raw chuck steak. She picked up her shining saw and started to cut through Ray’s humerus bone, just above the place where it flared out to meet the elbow. Jim closed his eyes but he could still hear the sharp, kvetch-kvetch-kvetch of the sawblade, cutting through human bone. When he opened them again, he saw that Ray’s arm was completely detached, leaving his frozen left hand still gripping the handrail.

  He swallowed hard, but his mouth filled up with bile and half-digested Chex. Almost all of the students had been cleared away by the firefighters, but he saw a figure underneath the shadow of the large cypress tree in back of the main college building. He strained his eyes, and he could see that it was Jack Hubbard, in his black jeans and black shirt, his eyes invisible behind his sunglasses, watching. A firefighter called out to him to leave the area, but he ignored him and remained where he was.

  But Jim didn’t have time to worry about Jack Hubbard. His back was aching from holding up Ray’s unconscious weight, while Rachel was bent over in concentration, doing some incredibly fiddly needlework.

  Ray shivered, but Jim knew that he was deeply unconscious. Washington shook his head and said, “Oh, man. I don’t know whether I can take this. Oh, man.”

  “Please, Washington. Hold on a little longer.”

  “I’m trying to, man. But, man.”

  Rachel said, “In the old days, when they didn’t have anesthetic, they used to use the circular method for amputation. You cut off the skin, muscles and bone at successively higher levels, so that the skin met afterwards over the other tissues. It was quick, that was the best thing about it, but it didn’t always give you a satisfactory stump. The method I’m using here takes a little longer, but it gives you a much better stump.”

  “A much better stump? Oh, sure.” Jim began to feel faint, and to see tiny prickles of light in front of his eyes. “The flap method, huh?”