by Ted Wood
She yawned and stretched, like a cat. “Not me. I'm just starting to realize that producers really do earn their dollar.”
“You go on ahead then. I'll put Sam out for a minute and join you.” I clicked my tongue at Sam and he stood up. I touched Fred on the forehead lightly as I passed her chair, and she smiled at me, but somehow everything seemed a little strained and out of tune.
It was bitterly cold outside. I slipped my parka on and then my boots, not lacing them, and stepped out with Sam. The sky was clear and the stars were big and bright, even through the competition from the streetlights. I walked to the roadway and let Sam wander for a minute. There were a couple of cars parked on the street and I guessed they belonged to miners who hadn't felt like shoveling out their driveways now that the plow had been through, again, adding to the four-foot wall of displaced snow along the curb.
After a minute or two I patted my leg and Sam came back to me. We went indoors and I shut off the outside light. I hung up my parka in the front hall and settled Sam in the kitchen under the table. Then I went through to the bathroom, switching off the lights in the front of the house. When I got to the bedroom, Fred was already in bed. She put her arms around my neck as I got in alongside her. We kissed and I held her without saying anything. Finally she eased her arms out and we composed ourselves for sleep. Then she said suddenly, “Oh, I forgot to tell you. Mrs. Schuka says that Sgt. Ferris did have one set of good friends in town—that woman who works at your office and her husband. Sheridan, I think their name is.”
“Suspicions confirmed,” I said. “That would tie everything together neatly. He's in charge of security at the mine. And Ferris was also tied up with Nunziatta.”
“Down boy,” she said sleepily. “Even Sherlock Holmes had to rest sometimes.”
She fell asleep first, breathing softly. I lay and counted her breaths. I was up to maybe sixteen when my own eyes closed.
I wasn't sure how long I slept before Sam woke me with his barking, a second before the crash. I sat up in bed and saw the edge of the bedroom door outlined in light. Then the roaring of flames.
I pulled the covers off Fred. “Up. There's a fire.”
TWENTY-TWO
Fred sat up, half asleep and foggy. “What?”
“Fire,” I shouted, struggling into my pants and shirt. “Throw some clothes on and grab all your heavy clothes out of the wardrobe.”
I put my back to the bedroom door and turned the handle, bracing myself. I had to get Sam out, but I knew there might be a smoke explosion if I let air into the blaze.
I was lucky. The flames were hot enough to eat up most of the smoke they were creating, and the door opened easily. Beyond it I saw the fire spreading like a liquid across the floor and I smelled gasoline. Sam was at the door. As I opened it he pushed through to my side, still barking.
Fred was half dressed. “Out the window,” I shouted. I picked up the side table and threw it through the glass, then grabbed the counterpane and wrapped it around my arm and swept out all the shards of glass that still clung to the putty. One of them pierced the cloth and stuck in my arm. I pulled it out, working by feel, and grabbed Fred by the arm. She already had her slacks and sweater on and I hoisted her onto the sill. I knew it was about six feet above ground level. “Jump and roll,” I shouted. “You'll be okay in the snow.”
“What about you?” she half screamed.
“I'm right behind you.” I let her sit on my arm in its protective counterpane and then prodded her in the back. “Jump.”
She yelled and jumped. I took a moment longer to throw all the bedding out of the window, along with the clothes Fred had taken out of the wardrobe. Then I called Sam who was still standing by the door barking. “Up,” I commanded, patting the windowsill. He leaped up and I shoved him out after the clothes. He landed and stood barking while I scrambled over the sill and jumped down.
Fred was already standing on one of the blankets, struggling into her thickest coat. “Good.” I dug in my pocket for my keys. “Start the car and turn the heater on full. Blast the horn until somebody calls the fire department.”
“Where are you going?” She screamed it and clung to me.
“Downstairs,” I said. “Mrs. Schuka's down there.”
I picked up the same counterpane and wrapped my arm so I could punch in the basement window. Smoke rolled out of it, oily and poisonous. I took a deep breath and eased in over the sill, gouging my chest with another shard of glass. It was a long drop to the floor, and I had to brace in the window and swing my legs around to let myself down without injury.
The smoke was rushing out past me, but it was rising to escape. Down on the deck I could still breathe. There was carpeting under me, but I didn't know which room I was in. I lifted my head an inch or two and shouted. “Mrs. Schuka! Fire! Where are you?”
There was no answer, and I crawled on, keeping my nose against the carpet, breathing in shallow little puffs. I came to a wall and lay for a moment, remembering which way I had entered and where the door was likely to be. I figured it was to the left and edged over that way, keeping one hand against the wall until I found the doorjamb. I reached up but could not feel a hinge, so I took on as much air as I could and half crouched up, patting the wall beside the door until I found the light switch and clicked it on.
I dropped down again and opened my eyes. The light was glowing faintly, far away from me it seemed, dull brown in the smoke. My eyes watered, but I saw that this was the living room of the flat. I shoved the door open, seeing the smoke thicken instantly, almost totally blanking the light. I could hardly get any breath at all and was weakening with every move, but the heat was still not reaching me. Faintly outside I could hear the blaring of my car horn and then shouts. I gathered all the breath I could muster and called again, “Where are you?”
This time I heard a cough. It gurgled once and stopped but I could tell it was coming from the right, close to me. I crawled forward until I found a bed. It moved as I touched it, a convulsive shaking as if someone were writhing on it. Still keeping as low as I could, I reached up over it and found a form lying under the covers. I took in all the air I could in one convulsive gulp and crouched up to grab her, still swathed in blankets. I half stood and stumbled back the way I had come, following the ugly curling of the smoke that was pouring through the living-room door and out to the open air.
The woman squirmed in my arms and whined like a puppy, but I pushed forward, past the light, up against the outside wall of the house. Then a burst of flame erupted behind me, slamming me against the wall and letting me see for an instant which way the smoke was pouring out. It was six feet to my right. I reached it and stuffed my bundle out of the window, using up the very last of my strength.
I shoved at her feet, aware that there were people outside, shouting, coughing, reaching for the bundle of bedding. And then nothing. I passed out. Later I found that it had been only a few seconds, but all I knew was that I opened my eyes, feeling almost blissfully content. My face was against the wall, nose down to the carpet. There was air in the space there, lying under the smoke. I lay still, breathing gently, aware of the growing brightness on the wall in front of my eyes and of the noise, the roar of flames and the frenzied shouting of somebody above me. It must have taken thirty seconds before I understood where I was and what was happening. Then I slowly gathered myself together, overbreathing the foul-smelling air, preparing to stand up.
I knew it would be difficult. You can black out from standing up suddenly, and I was already in some kind of oxygen debt. The heat of the fire was clawing at my back.
Slowly I pulled myself up, allowing my body to compensate for the change until I was erect, open-eyed, facing the wall. The window was off to one side of me behind its curtain of roiling smoke. I stretched as far as I could until I found the edge of the sill, away to my left.
Someone outside shouted, and I felt someone touch my hand and start tugging my fingers. I eased over in front of the window, eyes tigh
t shut against the smoke, not breathing. When I reached the window I realized it was at neck height. I had no strength to climb but suddenly another man grabbed my other hand. I felt myself being pulled out, bruising my chest on the sill, until I was able to gather new strength and brace my knees against the wall on the inside, arching myself to make their pulling easier.
Outside everything was a glare. I coughed and gasped as my rescuers dragged me clear, face down in the healing cold of the snow, then sideways, away from the column of smoke that had followed me out of the window like a genie from a bottle.
“He's alive,” someone said. I heard Sam keening when he saw me, but I couldn't see him. I relaxed about him then. Cold doesn't bother him; he would curl down in the snow like a husky until I came for him later.
I was in shirtsleeves and the cold was cutting as deeply as the broken glass had cut. I shuddered and then found myself rolled into a blanket and carried like a carpet. I didn't move until they set me down, on something soft.
Instantly the blanket was pulled away and I found I was in a living room with two men unwrapping the blanket from me and Fred standing between them, leaning down over me, her face streaming with tears.
I pulled her to me and we both spoke in the same breath. “Are you all right?”
I squeezed her tighter. “You first. Are you okay?”
“Not a scratch,” she said. “Oh Reid. How about you?”
“I'm okay.” I let go of her and saw the blood on her front. “You're hurt.”
“No, that's you. You're bleeding.” She grabbed me again and unbuttoned my shirt with trembling fingers. When she saw the gouges she gasped and stood up. “You have to go to the hospital, Reid. You're hurt.” She tugged at the arm of one of the men. “Can you take him, please? He's cut badly.”
I tried to stand but a sudden wave of shock hit me, making a soft whooshing beat in my ears, clouding my vision. I sat back. “We all need to go to the hospital,” I said softly. “You, me, and Mrs. Schuka. Was that her in bed? I didn't look.”
“Yes.” Fred was looking around frantically. “Where's your wife?” she asked one of the men.
“With her mother. I'll get her.” He left the room, with Fred talking a couple of paces after him, then turning back on her heel to stoop over me again. The other man was looking around in the cupboard and he let out a little aha of delight.
“How about some of this?” He turned to Fred, holding a bottle of rum.
She shook her head. “No. Liquor is a depressant,” she explained. Then, typically, she added, “But it's a nice thought. Thank you.”
The man said, “Think I'll have a drop anyways.”
A woman came into the room and Fred swooped over to her and they left, the woman staring anxiously at my chest which was leaking blood, probably on her living-room rug. She was back in a few seconds with a box of sanitary napkins. She ripped my shirt away and pressed a couple of the napkins over the cuts.
“Hold them in place,” she told Fred. “I'll tear up a sheet for a bandage.”
“I'm going to owe you,” I said, but she brushed it aside.
“You pulled Mother outta that fire,” she said. “You can have the top brick off our chimney.” She got up, resting her hand on Fred's shoulder in a sisterly fashion, and walked out.
Fred had a tight, frightened look. She was concentrating very hard on my cuts, and I tried to josh her out of it. “Promise you won't tell the other boys what you're using on me,” I kidded, but she wasn't amused.
“Quit being so goddamn macho,” she said angrily. “You could have died in that basement.”
“Sorry.” I put my hand over hers as she pressed on my chest and she sniffled and pushed her head against my shoulder. The man who had found the rum bottle quietly left the room. We were alone.
“I'm sorry I'm being so crabby,” she said, her voice muffled against my shoulder. “I'm just so worried about you.”
I pressed her hands with my right hand, reaching around her shoulder with my left, hugging her to me. My eyes were closed, and a part of my mind was working outside my body, witnessing the start of the fire once more, seeing the puddle of flame spreading out over the rug in our rented house, smelling the gasoline and hearing Sam's fearful barking. As I lay there, holding onto my wife and relishing being safe and alive, I was coming to grips with the fact that someone had tried to murder us, both of us. And I knew what had to be done.
“Fred, I want you to do something important. It's unpleasant but there isn't any other way.”
She moved her face back an inch or two from my shoulder, peering down into my eyes. “Don't tell me you want me to go away,” she said fiercely.
“No. Just go along with me. I'm going to act.”
I just got the words out before the other woman came back with long strips of bandage trailing from one hand. “How are those pads going?” she asked.
“One of them is leaking,” Fred said. “Put another one on top.”
The pair of them bent over me, concentrating on the gashes as if I were deaf and dumb, a wound rather than a man.
I groaned. Fred glanced at my face. “Are you all right, darling?” She never calls me darling. We both think it's a phony word. It was her cue that she was in character as I'd asked.
“Chest feels tight,” I said weakly.
The other woman stopped pressing the pad on me. “Is it the bandage? Am I pressing too hard?”
I shook my head and said nothing. The woman quickly looped the bandage around my chest once more, then tore the end and tied it around my shoulder to hold it in place. “Keep him quiet,” she told Fred and went out of the room.
I winked at Fred and gave her a tight little nod. She gave no indication that she had seen anything. Then the woman came back in with two men.
“He has to get to the hospital right now,” she said. “Al, warm the car up. Pete, wrap him up in lots of blankets and then the two of you get him off to the hospital. Okay?”
“I'm going with him,” Fred said.
“You can't go barefoot,” the woman said. “What size boots do you take?”
“Eight,” Fred said anxiously, then added, “please.”
“No problem.” The woman left the room. Fred bent over me. She licked one fingertip and wiped it over my face, then ran it over my lips. “They should be blue,” she mouthed. “Soot will help.”
She wrapped the blanket I was lying on around my shoulders, wiping my face with the end of it to smudge her finger marks. By the time the others came back she was well in character, sitting holding my hand, her finger on my pulse.
“Please hurry,” she said to the men. “His pulse is awful fast.”
“We'll be right there.” One of them gripped me around the waist and hoisted me erect. “Take his weight,” he said to Fred. “We have to make a seat.”
I leaned against Fred, trying to make it look real without overdoing it. She completed the pantomime, and the men clutched their wrists to make a seat for me. Fred eased me back and they took my weight, leaning into me to support me.
The woman was bending down to help Fred on with a pair of snow boots and she ducked quickly to pull them on. I let myself relax as far as I could, but tried to miss nothing as we came down the steps of the house and went to the car at the end of the drive. I found we were across the street from the blaze. The fire engine had just arrived and the first man was hitting the fire with a hose while two others were uncurling another one. The fire was way out of control. Nothing would be saved—that was clear. There was a police car down the block, but I couldn't see the officer. Scott, probably, I thought. He was on night shift.
I let myself be lowered into the backseat of the car, then Fred scrambled in after me and the two men got in the front. As they tried to back out, the policeman appeared at the side window. I still couldn't see who it was but recognized Scott's voice and heard the driver's response. “We gotta get to the hospital. The cop from that house is hurt bad.”
Fred leaned forwar
d and half screamed out of the window. “Let us out. For God's sake. My husband's having a heart attack.”
Scott must have stepped aside because the car jumped forward and sped down to the corner, leaning on the horn to blare his way through the crowd that had gathered.
“Hold on, buddy,” the driver said over his shoulder. “Soon have you there.”
Fred sat with her arm around me, whispering encouragement. “Not long now. Hold on.”
I lay back and let it all happen. At the hospital I was whisked out and shoved into a wheelchair. I let myself droop slightly but sat tight until they pushed the chair into an examining room and the two men hoisted me onto a table. Fred thanked them, I didn't catch the words, and they both left.
She bent over me, mouthing, “You seem okay. Your pulse is close to normal.”
“Keep the others away when the doctor gets here,” I mouthed back. She nodded and waited, her unbound hair flowing down over her face.
The men came back with Dr. Frazer and the friendly nurse I had met before. Fred was on top of the scene, improvising to cover everything.
“Doctor, there was a fire. He's having a heart attack.” Then she turned to the men. “Where's Mrs. Schuka? She should be here. Oh God. I'm sorry. You should have brought her as well.”
They looked at one another startled. “Hey, yeah. Never thought about her when he started gettin’ the pains. We better bring her in,” one said.
“Right.” The other one led the way out of the door. Fred followed them to it, calling out her thanks, then closed the door behind them.
Frazer looked at me, then Fred. “What happened to you? A fire?”
“Yes,” Fred said. “I'm fine; I got out before the smoke got thick, but Reid was in it for ages, saving the landlady.”
He went to her first, checking her pulse, glancing into her eyes. “You seem fine,” he said. Chivalrous, I thought. Or more? Was he sweet on her?
Then he came to lean over me, putting his stethoscope into his ears. I held up one hand and sat up. As I did it I felt the cuts in my chest start flowing again.