Rook: Snowman Page 7

  “That’s right. See here, I’m going to ligature all of the severed blood vessels in his arm. Then I’m going to take this flap of flesh and stitch its sides and its end.”

  Rachel was so matter-of-fact that it was difficult to grasp the enormity of what she was doing. She was saving Ray’s life. But he would never be able to feel anything with his fingers any more: never be able to stroke another animal, and feel its fur. Never be able to touch a woman, and feel her softness through his fingertips.

  Jim could see only bone; and gristle; and a complicated array of veins and arteries.

  Rachel sewed up his left arm. She must have been good at needlecraft at school, because she managed to tug the flap back together. The surgical thread made a soft rasping sound as she pulled it through his skin.

  When she came to amputate Ray’s right arm, Rachel found that the frostbite had already advanced beyond his elbow. His forearm was black and crusty, his upper arm was already white, and she had to cut his arm off just below the shoulder. Again, that slicing sound. Again that rasping saw. Then, over an hour since Nestor had first come running up the corridor to tell Jim what had happened, Ray was laid on to a gurney, his two stumps sticking up like the handles of a wheelbarrow, and carried, tilting, down to the ambulance.

  Stretchers are laid out, the mangled lifted

  And stowed into the little hospital.

  Then the bell, breaking the hush, tolls once,

  And the ambulance with its terrible cargo

  Rocking, slightly rocking, moves away,

  As the doors, as an afterthought, are closed.

  Jim leaned back against the brick wall, feeling as if he had been in a fight, every muscle aching. Washington eased himself up and stretched his back and said, “Man … I don’t believe it. I just don’t believe it. Nestor stood with his hands covering his face, as if he could only bear to look at the world through the cracks in his fingers. Ray’s amputated arms, along with Clarence’s glove, remained where they were, frozen, all clutching the handrail.

  The fire chief came up and looked at them uneasily, uncertain what to do. But it was already becoming obvious that the frost was melting. The ice crystals on the handrail faded away – and with an abruptness that startled them all, Clarence’s red industrial glove dropped on to the concrete. In less than a minute, Ray’s left arm dropped off, too, followed by his right.

  Jim said to Dennis and Washington, “It’s okay now. Why don’t you two take the rest of the day off? I think you’ve both done more than enough, and thank you.”

  Washington swallowed and nodded. “I just want to know how this could have happened. And why, man? Ray was the harmlessest guy in the world.”

  Jim gave him a slap on the back. “Being harmless never guarantees that you won’t be harmed. Sometimes the opposite. Now, go on. We’ll talk this out later.”

  As Dennis and Washington went down the steps, Lieutenant Harris came stamping up them, closely followed by Dr Sigmund Fade, from the coroner’s department. Lieutenant Harris was short and stocky, with scrubby ginger hair. He wore a white short-sleeved shirt that was almost transparent with sweat. Dr Fade was tall and pale, with a large complicated nose and hands that fluttered weakly around in the air like butterflies.

  “I’ve seen some stomach-churners, believe me,” said Lieutenant Harris, jerking his head toward Ray’s blackened arms. “But this – well, phwooph. What do you think could have caused that handrail to freeze like that?”

  “No idea,” said Jim. “I guess there must be some kind of scientific explanation, but I’m damned if I know what it is.”

  Dr Fade noisily rolled plastic gloves on to his hands. Then he hunkered down and picked up the severed arms one after the other. “No doubt that it’s frostbite,” he said. “You remember that guy who was shut all night in the meat-chiller at Coolway Packers? Was he black? He came out looking like Al Jolson.”

  “But that was in a meat-chiller and this is right in the middle of the open air on the hottest day of the week.”

  “You should have your forensic people check the inside of the handrail. There might be traces of gasses in it, like liquid nitrogen, maybe. Or even liquid hydrogen.”

  “It still beats me how anybody managed to freeze it like that. And why? Didn’t have any enemies, did he, this Ray Krueger? Anybody who might have wanted to turn him into a human icicle?”

  “He’s one of the best-liked students in the class,” said Jim. “He’s kind of uncontroled, sometimes. It’s a psychological thing: he comes bursting out with all kinds of wacky remarks. But otherwise … no, he doesn’t have any enemies. Not so far as I know. And it strikes me that freezing a handrail is a pretty unreliable way of getting your own back on somebody you don’t like. Just about anybody could have touched it.”

  “How about generally?” asked Lieutenant Harris, mopping the back of his neck with his handkerchief. “Any disaffected students been making threats to the college lately?”

  Jim shook his head. “We’ve been pretty much free of that kind of thing, thank God. We keep a weather-eye on the nerds and the geeks and the loners and we keep a watch for student cults, too.”

  “What do you mean, like neo-Nazis?”

  “Anything. We’ve had some neo-Nazis and some neo-Black Panthers and some neo-Shining Path. We’ve even had some neo-Zapatistas. But so far we’ve usually managed to coax them back into the mainstream of student life. You know what kids are like at this age. Arrogant and shy. Desperate for respect. You only disaffect them if you ignore them.”

  Lieutenant Harris cautiously ran his fingertips along the handrail. “Somebody would have to know science to do this, right?”

  “I don’t know. But it’s probably worth checking all the college laboratories to see if there’s any liquid gas missing. And it’s probably worth talking to Dr Kelley, he’s the head of physics.”

  They both fell silent for a moment while they watched Dr Fade carefully lifting the two severed arms and sliding them into a black plastic bag. A TV news cameraman was standing right behind them, recording every moment in close-up.

  “Don’t you have anything better to do, you ghoul?” Lieutenant Harris asked him.

  “Just doing my job, lieutenant. Same as you.”

  Lieutenant Harris turned back to Jim. “I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “Every time I get called out here, and it’s something to do with you, it’s always weird. It always seems to get cleared up, and I never know how. I think it’s you, Mr Rook. I think you attract weirdness, like a magnet.”

  “Who’s to say what’s weird and what isn’t?” said Jim. He was tempted to mention the mensroom incident, too, but his instinct advised him not to say anything. He thought that Lieutenant Harris probably had enough to worry about, as it was.

  Jim said, “I’d like to be the one who tells Ray’s parents what’s happened, if I can. I know them pretty well.”

  “Sure thing. I appreciate it. Not a job that I was especially relishing. I’ll catch you later.”

  Six

  Jim walked down the steps and along the diagonal path that led back to the main college building. As he did so he saw that Jack Hubbard was still standing under the tree. As he came nearer, however, Jack came out into the sunlight and cut across the grass.

  “Mr Rook?”

  “How’s things, Jack?”

  “I think I need to talk to you, Mr Rook.”

  “Can’t it wait until later? Right now I have to go tell Mr and Mrs Krueger that their only son just lost both of his hands.”

  “This concerns Ray. Leastways, I think it does.”

  Jim continued to walk toward the college entrance and Jack fell in beside him. “Something happened to my dad in Alaska. I don’t exactly know what it was, but it’s been worrying him. Ever since he came back from his expedition, he’s been so jumpy. It’s like he’s been waiting for something bad to happen.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “Something’s happened to me, too. I keep havin
g nightmares, almost every night. I’m caught in a blizzard and there’s something following me. I can’t see it, but I know it’s there. It’s right behind the snow, and it wants to kill me.”

  Jim stopped, one eye scrunched up against the sun. “This is all pretty disturbing. But what does it have to do with Ray?”

  “Maybe nothing. But maybe everything.”

  “Go on, tell me.”

  Jack took off his sunglasses and wiped the perspiration from his forehead with the back of his hand. Now that Jim could see his eyes, he looked far less sinister than he had when he was standing under the cypress tree. In fact he looked vulnerable and frightened.

  “As soon as we moved into the house on Pico, Dad hung up these Inuit fetishes in every window and every doorway. They’re all different, but they all have a seal-skull, and fishbones, and bear’s teeth, and a piece of fur from an Arctic wolf. They’re supposed to keep out evil spirits.

  “Every night before he goes to bed he says this ritual kind of chant. I don’t think he knows that I’ve heard him doing it. I know a few words of Inuit but I don’t know what this chant means. And it was my mother who was Inuit, not him. So why is he doing all this chanting?”

  He hesitated for a moment, and then he said, “My father gave me this.” Out from the neck of his shirt he produced a flat piece of ivory, in a lozenge shape. It had been drilled at one end so that Jack could wear it on a leather thong. Jim lifted it up and peered at it closely. It had been carved on one side with the scrimshaw picture of a figure standing alone – a figure with no face. On the other side there were four vertical marks.

  “What is it?” asked Jim. He was deeply disturbed the four vertical marks, which looked just like the marks that had been drawn on the mirrors in the frozen washroom. And he was even more disturbed by the appearance of the figure, which vaguely resembled the hooded figure on his Tarot card.

  “It’s an Inuit talisman. The fur-trappers always wear them, to protect them against bad luck. He said I had to wear it always, just in case.”

  “Just in case of what?”

  “That’s what I don’t really know. But Dad’s always talking these days about blizzards and snow and things that people can’t see. Every evening I go home and he’s sitting in front of the television watching his video about his journey across the glacier to Dead Man’s Mansion. Sometimes he’s kneeling right in front of the television screen, about three inches away from it, staring into it. It’s spooky. But all you can see in the picture is snow, and these two dark shapes, the other two guys who went with him.

  “And whenever I ask him what he’s looking for, he says ‘nobody’. But he keeps on looking.”

  They entered the college building and walked along the corridor. It was unusually hushed, and from one of the open classrooms Jim could hear the sound of a girl sobbing. He expected that Dr Ehrlichman, the principal, would probably close the college for the remainder of the day. “Come into the classroom,” he said. “I have to get my stuff. Then I really must go see Ray’s parents.”

  Jack followed him back to Special Class II. “I told my Dad about the washroom being frozen. He said, ‘You’re pulling my chain, aren’t you?’ and tried to make a joke about it, but I could tell that he was worried about something. But I showed him that it was true because I still had my sweatshirt in the trunk of the car – you know, the one that was frozen, and it was still hadn’t thawed out properly. One of the sleeves was all ice.”

  “Go on,” said Jim, as they left the classroom and walked toward the college parking-lot. The hot sun hit them as they opened the doors.

  “He acted real strange. He took the sweatshirt and threw it in the trash and said that I should never wear it again. He’d buy me a brand new one. I argued about it, because I really liked that sweatshirt, but he wouldn’t listen. In the end he got so angry I gave it up.

  They reached Jim’s car. Jim threw his case into the back seat and opened the door with a deep crronk sound.

  “So what’s the connection with Ray?” he asked.

  “Ray really dug that sweatshirt because it had a badge sewn onto the sleeve from Dad’s expedition. Maybe you saw it: Dead Man’s Mansion Two Thousand – and a picture of a laughing skull with a fur-trapper’s hat on. So the next morning I took it out of the trash when my Dad wasn’t looking and I brought it to college and I gave it to Ray. I thought – you know – shame to waste it.”

  “So when Ray was stuck to the railings, he was wearing your sweatshirt? The same sweatshirt that was hanging in the washroom when it was covered with ice?”

  Jack nodded. “I was thinking about it and thinking about it, and even though it sounded crazy, I knew I just had to tell you.”

  Jim was silent for a long moment, thinking. Then he said, “I think I’d better take you up on that invitation to visit your Dad. Listen – let me deal with Ray’s parents first. Then I’ll give him a call. And listen – I’ve heard crazier things, and I really appreciate your telling me.”

  He climbed into his car, started it up, and backed out of his parking space. Jack stood and watched him go, and even when Jim reached the college gates and swerved out into the road, he was still standing there, as if he were afraid to move, because the rest of his life was coming to get him.

  Jim walked up the path of the Krueger home on Burnside Avenue and pressed the doorchimes. He looked around while he was waiting. The Kruegers lived in a single-story house with grayish green walls, its roof overhung with flowering bougainevillea. Seashells had been embedded in the concrete around the porch, and there was a handmade ceramic plaque of four smiling faces which was obviously supposed to be the Krueger family. Jim pressed the doorchimes again. It was so hot out here that he had to lick the sweat from his lips.

  Eventually a thin, pale-faced woman came to the door, wiping her hands on her apron. She looked washed out and tired, and her hair was straggled by the heat. Jim knew that Ray Krueger’s father had suffered a crush injury at work when he was loading palettes, and that his mother had to support the whole family on his redundancy money and whatever she could earn as an office cleaner. Ray had wanted to go out to work, too, to help her: but she had been adamant that he should improve his reading and writing.

  “Why, Mr Rook!” she said. “What a surprise! And just look at me, all hot and bothered!”

  “Hallo, Mrs Krueger. Is your husband home, too?”

  “He’s always at home, since his accident. Why don’t you come on in?”

  Jim stepped into the small hallway, crowded with photographs of the Krueger family; and then through the door into the living-room, where Mr Krueger was sitting in front of the television with a rug over his knees. He was a bull-headed man, with a thick neck and a deep torso, but Jim could tell that all of the strength had gone out of him. His cropped hair was prematurely white and there were dark circles of suffering under his eyes.

  “Mr Rook, what brings you here?” he said, picking up the TV remote and switching off the baseball. “Ray aint been in no trouble again, has he?”

  “He’s been doing his homework religiously,” said Mrs Krueger. “He sits down at seven and he doesn’t move from the table till he’s finished it.”

  “He is improving, aint he?” asked Mr Krueger. “You haven’t come here to tell us that he’s going to flunk English?”

  Jim’s mouth was dry. “It’s nothing like that. I’ve come here to tell you that there’s been a serious accident at college. Ray’s lost both of his arms.”

  Both of the Kruegers stared at Jim as if he had spoken something in a foreign language. Slowly, Mrs Krueger raised one hand to her mouth, and her eyes began to fill up with tears, but Mr Krueger still seemed totally perplexed.

  “You’re saying what? You’re saying Ray’s lost what?”

  “I’m desperately sorry, Mr Krueger. Ray’s arms were trapped. The paramedics had to amputate to get him free. Otherwise he would have died.”

  “Trapped? Trapped, like how do you mean, trapped?”

>   As simply as he could, Jim explained what had happened. But how can you explain frostbite on a hot day in June? How can you explain flesh that dies in front of your eyes? He could see that neither of the Kruegers really understood what he was talking about.

  “He’s very seriously hurt. But right now, he needs your optimism, more than your tears. He could still be a vet. When he’s recovered, he could still do almost anything. He’s been through a terrible experience, Mr Krueger, and he’s going to suffer shock and emotional trauma but he’s going to need us all to give him hope.”

  “Hope?” said Mr Krueger. He clutched the arm of his chair and slowly managed to heave himself on to his feet. His pelvis had been shattered and he could only walk with a rolling, laborious sway, like Captain Ahab on the deck of the Pequod. “He’s the dumb kid of a couple of dumb parents, and he never had a chance, right from the moment that he was born. Now he’s lost his arms and you’re talking about hope?”

  He staggered over to the sampler that hung over the fireplace, Blessed Be We. He lifted his right fist and Jim knew what he was going to do; and Mrs Krueger probably knew, too. He smashed the glass, and the broken picture-frame dropped into the hearth.

  Mr Krueger stamped on it, until it was completely shattered. Then he looked up at Jim and said, “There aint no hope, Mr Rook. All of those things that I was going to do. All of those things that I was going to be. I never had the brain for it. And then what happened, when I found the stupidest job on earth, just to make a honest living? I got crippled. But I always thought that Ray was going to do better. Ray was going to lift himself out of this life. Ray was going to make good where I never could. But God dumps on people like us, generation after generation. There aint no hope, Mr Rook. And the worst thing is, pretending that there is. That’s what kills people. Not the hope. But pretending that there is.”

  There was a long silence. They stood amongst the shattered glass. Mrs Krueger stood with her face covered with her hands.