by Daniel Boyd
“Very welcome.” I could feel warm air starting to blow from the heater in there, and I wanted to climb in and sit down beside her and rest my weary bones while I told her the sad story of my life. But there was work to do. I decided to split the difference and lit a cigarette and took a deep draw on it, feeling it kick my heart some and give me that false sense of well-being you get from having a smoke at the right time.
Then a thought hit me—and I mean to say it crossed my mind like a runaway train: I’d just lit a cigarette. And I was standing outside.
I looked around me. Sometime in the middle of all this, when I didn’t think to sit up and take notice, the snow had stopped and the wind quit.
That meant my time was going to start running out, and damn quick, too.
“You lie down here,” I said. “Keep yourself still. I got some things here need finishing up.”
I’ll give her this: she laid down like I told her to. But she said, “The man down in the car. Can you get him up here by yourself?”
“Hadn’t thought about it,” I said. “Guess I’ll have to, anyhow.”
“Use the—” she started, then winced with pain a couple seconds before she could get on with it, “—the Jeep. Get rope from the truck if you need more. Then use the Jeep. ”
“Thanks,” I said, wondering what the hell she was talking about, ‘use the Jeep.’ “You just lie here a spell, and try not to bleed any more than you can help it.”
I took the rope from the back of the truck and it was stiff from cold but useable. And there’d be more in the Jeep, which is where I headed.
On the way back over there I looked in on Captain Scranton again. He was coming right along, lying there in the snow, reeking from the spilled gas all over him. His left hand was pressed up to his shoulder where I’d shot it, and he had his mostly limp right arm down at his leg, pressing hard as he could up to the hole I’d put in it. I guess he’d stopped the bleeding some but we both knew he couldn’t keep it up long.
“Git some bandages on me, you dayyam yankee.” Again with the corn-pone talk. Maybe I couldn’t blame him was that the best he could do, come a time like this. “You gotta stop this bleeding ’fore you take me in, damya!”
I stood there and looked down at him a minute.
“Y’all gonna let me freeze to death?” He snarled it out like he was giving me orders. Maybe he was.
“They say that’s an easy death,” I said.
Then I took a last drag off my cigarette and tossed it down onto his gas-soaked coat.
Chapter 33
Five Hours and Forty-Seven Minutes After the Robbery
December 20, 1951
2:47 PM
Officer Drapp
Back at the Jeep I tried to figure what that crazy ranger-lady meant when she said use the Jeep. Didn’t make sense, from what I could see. A few years later they put winches on a Jeep which you could mount on the front and haul stuff up to it—or more likely hook to a tree and pull yourself out when the tires won’t do it. But that wasn’t invented yet back when I’m telling this, so I guessed she was just talking fever-talk. I looked in the back anyway, though, to see was there a clue in there maybe about what she said.
Nothing there but more of that rope I used before to tie the money bags together. Lots of it, coiled up nice and neat like they teach you in the Boy Scouts. So much I wondered did she put it there for something and just now thought to tell me about it. Must have been near a half-mile just of rope.
I got it.
I picked up as much as I could and hoisted it over my shoulder.
Then I grabbed some more and headed back down the slope to the wrecked car, mostly by sliding and falling.
The guy inside was still kind of just staring off into space, but he looked a little sharper. I barked his name.
“Walter! Hey Walter! Over here!”
Slowly—and I mean real slow—he looked over at me with blank stupid eyes.
“Whuh?”
So he still wasn’t much for conversation.
“Walter, wake up,” I said. “I gotta get you out of here, Walter, and it’s going to hurt.”
“It hurts,” he said like that idea come to him for the first time right this minute. “Cold. Hurts.”
“Yeah I know,” I said, “that’s why we gotta get you out of here. Can you move your legs okay?”
I waited a half-minute while he got his mind around the notion of moving his legs, and then he actually started moving them. Maybe like frozen molasses, but he was moving. Good sign.
“Good job, Walter.” I got him out and away from the car and laid him down in the snow.
Callie was right. He was too heavy for me to get up that slope and he sure wasn’t going up there on his own.
“Walter,” I said, “this is going to hurt some more. Can you take it?”
That bucked him up a little. He looked at me kind of like it was a challenge, but all he said was, “What’s that noise?”
“It’s the wind.” I looped the rope under his arms and tied it off good and solid in a bow line knot: the kind that makes a loop that won’t tighten, and I still had plenty more to play with.
“Sounds…” He squinted, like maybe he thought squinting would make him hear it better. “Sounds like somebody screaming.”
“Yeah,” I said, “it does, kind of.”
I hand-hauled the rest of the money bags out of the car, dragging them out lined up in the snow. Then I threaded the rope through the handles—like I was stacking keys on a chain, with Walter there at the bottom. I looked over at him, lying in the snow with a rope around his chest.
“How you doing there?”
“Burns.” He said it high-pitched from the hurt of it. “It burns. Why they burn me?”
“Hell, that’s a good sign.” I hoped so, anyway. “It’s the cold burning. Means you’re gonna be all right.”
“I don’t want ’em to burn me.” He sighed it, kind of dreaming or something.
Well, I had work to do.
It was a long trek back up the slope, playing out the rope behind me, but I made it up to the tower and under one of the round metal legs, then over to the Jeep where I tied the end of the rope to the tow hook in back. Tied it solid.
And then I got in the Jeep and angled it just right, down what was left of the tracks that car had made going down the slope, set it in low, let out the clutch, and jumped out just as I felt it start to move down the slope.
Worked like a wonder dog. The Jeep went down, tugging the rope out as it went, Walter and the money bags came up, pulled by the weight of the Jeep, and I was there to cut everything loose when they got where I wanted them.
Then I looked down and saw the Jeep hit the back of that car down there and push it past whatever it was hung up on at the edge of the lake. I watched as the car cruised out onto the ice, slipping sidewise, and then I saw the snow over the lake start to shake and shift and then the car just disappeared under the ice.
About time something came my way easy today.
Walter got into the truck mostly on his own but I had to lift Callie’s legs up since she was still lying across the whole bench seat and set him under her bent knees. I couldn’t see that she’d bled any onto the seat, and I figured that was likely a good thing.
I made introductions. “This is Park Ranger Callie Nixon. Callie, this is the guy from the car down there. The one you told me how to get him up here.”
She cleared her throat, winced some from the hurt of it, and said, “Welcome to Boothe National Park.”
“Ummah-gummah,” he replied.
She looked up at me. “You said he was in the car down there.”
“That’s right.”
“But that looked like a police car.”
“And I’m a policeman,” I said. “See how it works?”
“But he’s not a policeman.”
“That’s right.”
“He was in the car, though.”
“I’ve got things to do,�
� I said, “I’ll be back in a minute and tell you all about it.” I was just about to get away when she grabbed my sleeve.
“What was that awful noise?” she asked.
“It was the wind.”
“It’s stopped now.”
“That’s right.” I looked over at the traces of smoke and steam still rising from the black smudge in the snow where Captain Scranton used to be. “It’s stopped now.”
Chapter 34
Six Hours and Fifteen Minutes After the Robbery
December 20, 1951
3:15 PM
Officer Drapp
It took some doing, but I finally got us rolling. We were in the truck with Callie’s head on my right leg and her knees bent across Walter’s lap and eleven bags of money loaded in the back of the truck.
Nice work, but it wasn’t going to be real easy pushing through snow all the way to Bootheville General Hospital, which was where we needed to go did I want to keep that woman on my leg alive.
That woman on my leg. She moved a little and looked up past my elbows at me.
“I’m not sure how long I can stay awake, and I need to tell you this.” Her voice was still refined and classy, but it sounded far-off.
“Better just rest,” I said. “Tell me later.”
“I’m not completely sure I may be here later. And I’m quite certain you won’t be.”
“Don’t talk dumb,” I said. “You’re going to be fine and we’ll have plenty of time to talk it all over once I get you to the hospital.”
“No, I’m not dying; dying is a sign of weakness, and I’m not about to permit it, but when I wake up I rather think you’ll be gone.”
“How come?”
“Because you’re the bank robber, you know….”
“Sounds like you got your brains froze out there,” I said, “I’m Officer Drapp, Willisburg Police.”
“No,” she said, “you’re the bank robber.”
“There wasn’t any bank robber,” I said. “Those guys I was after, they hit an armored car. So they’d be armored-car robbers.”
“You said that back at the Office and I told you then it was neither here nor there, and it’s in rather the same place now.” She stopped to take a breath. “Bank, car or Cracker Jack box, I believe you’re the robber.”
“I still say your brains is froze.” I slowed for a curve, easing up on the pedal and working the clutch, which wasn’t real easy with her big ugly head on my leg. “But how you figure?”
“It seemed a bit odd, back at the office when you arrived in a farm truck, you’ll admit that.”
“Yeah, I told you it was better for—“
“Better for driving in the snow, you said that.” Even on a half-tank of blood she ran right over what I was saying. “And then you didn’t call for other police officers when you should have.”
“I thought I told you about Chief Peanut back there.”
“Yes, and I listened politely but I didn’t actually believe you, you know.” She stopped real quick, like she wanted to make a noise or something to do with the hurt she was in. But then she just bit it back and kept talking. “And then when we found the car, it looked a bit like a police car and you didn’t seem at all surprised.”
“Couldn’t really see it that good.”
“Nor were you surprised at this man who is not a policeman being in the car. And you knew it was full of money. You got the idea of going down there and using those money bags as a shield—because you knew they’d be there.”
“Like I told you. I was following the getaway car.”
“Which looked a bit like a police car and here you are…” She stopped a second, like the talk was wearing her out. I sure hoped so. “…dressed as a policeman,” she finally finished it.
“I told you how all that happened,” I said, “and I’m dressed like a cop because I happen to be one: Officer Drapp, Willisburg Police.”
“I rather doubt it. But you confirmed my theory when you stood up.”
“Hunh?”
She had to take another breath before she went on. “When we were first fired upon and we took cover behind the car. When we weren’t certain who it might be up in the tower. Then you stood up and waved and let him see you. Because you thought it might be your partner up there.”
“Yeah, but he near killed me for it.” I worked on my driving and balanced her head on my leg. “Or did you forget that?”
“That’s when you knew it was my captain up there,” she said, “and that’s when I became certain that you were the robber. Or rather, you were one of the robbers. Is this other gentleman your partner?”
“When he comes to, I’ll ask him.” I chewed my lip and tried to think at what she said and move a truck full of sick, injured, and money all at the same time, and finally I came back with, “But I guess it’s like you said; it ain’t neither here or there.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Listen,” I said, “I’m Officer Drapp. Like I told you. But even was I wasn’t, what’s the difference?”
“The difference is rather obvious, don’t you think?”
“The difference is I’m the guy who pulled you out of the snow and took care of that bastard—excuse me—that Scranton guy that shot you open and then I got you in the truck here and I’m taking you to the hospital. Be I a cop or be I a robber, that’s me and this is what I’m doing. You maybe saved my life back there and now I’m saving yours, and I don’t figure you’re going to arrest me or nothing, so what does it make for shucks am I a cop or a robber?”
That stopped her a minute and I went on, “But I happen to be Officer Drapp and I wish you’d remember it, does anyone ask.”
“Cops and robbers,” she said it all dreamy-like, then she kind of looked up past me and her voice got funny and she said, “I’m going away now.”
Her eyes glazed up and the lids fluttered. Her whole body seemed to go limp as running water all at once, and she made kind of a funny sound. I’d heard it once before, and I hadn’t heard any sound like it since the war, one time when a non-com got shot and fell over and died right over top of me: it was the death rattle. The sound of air bubbling out the lungs one last time. The sound a body makes when the soul goes away wherever it’s going and leaves just an empty place where a person had been.
She gave out with that, and it was long and deep and lonesome sounding.
It got quiet in the truck. And awful still.
And then she gave the death rattle again.
And then it was quiet in the truck.
Till she come out with that godawful noise again and it came to me she was snoring.
Chapter 35
Seven Hours After the Robbery
December 20, 1951
4:00 PM
Helen
Helen Mortimer clutched at the old GI overcoat and tried to close it as much as she could with the zipper broken as she sloshed across the snow-packed street, grateful for the rubber boots—an early Christmas present from the nuns at Saint Francis. Another gust of freezing wind and snow slapped her in the face as she got to the curb, and she pulled the olive-green wool-lined cap down tighter across her dark hair. She knew the hat made her look stupid. She resented the need for going out looking like this at all, but—
She bucked the wind as far as the Top Hat Bar and Grill and pushed open the worn oak door, then stopped for a second just inside, luxuriating in the warm, beery heat as her eyes adjusted to the darkness.
She scanned the room carefully.
He wasn’t here.
Nothing but that damn Christmas music:
…Oh what fun it is to ride
In a one-horse open sleigh—hey!
Jingle Bells,
Jingle Bells….
Weary, weary from a lot more than just walking all over town through the snow on a day like this, she shambled over and leaned against the bar. The young-looking guy behind it served a martini to a well-dressed man, then smiled at her and came up to that end.
/>
“Hiya, Helen.” His smile was just a little crooked, but in the dim light behind the bar no one could see it was from a series of scars running down one side of his face. “Get you something?”
She tried to smile back at him—Fred was a sweet guy, and it wasn’t his fault to come back from the war all banged up like he was—and then discovered she was just too tired to make the effort.
“You seen Mort?” she managed.
“Get you some coffee.” Fred looked straight into her eyes, easy and untroubled, and she knew he hadn’t seen Mort. She appreciated the coffee though, as he set the steaming cup on the bar and she warmed her hands on its sides.
“Now I think at it,” he said slowly, “I might have seen him coming from Brother Sweetie’s earlier today. He still wears that hat? The grey felt one?”
“I knew it.” The crumb of hope seemed to nourish Helen and she took a sip of the hot coffee. “I knew he was tied up with that stinking fat mick.”
“I don’t know from him and Sweeney, Helen.” Fred’s smile was patient, almost loving. On the wall behind him there was a picture of the Bootheville Warriors varsity football team from 1940, and he was in it, somewhere well towards the back. And in the front right side was a teenage girl in a cheerleader outfit who looked a little like Helen.
“All I’m saying,” he went on, “is I maybe saw Mort coming out of Brother Sweetie’s this morning when I was out shoveling the sidewalk the first time. That’s all.”
“Yeah, Mort went out this morning early and said he had a job. Figured it was with that lousy mick.”
“You ask Brother Sweetie?”
“Just now.”
“So?”
“So that crooked Irish wouldn’t talk straight if you paid him good money for it.” She drank a big gulp of the coffee. “But just because I know he’s lying doesn’t mean I can make him tell the truth.”
“Gee that’s tough.” Fred tried to look sympathetic, but not so much as to get pulled into anything that would put him up against Brother Sweetie. On careful consideration, he decided to steer the conversation elsewhere. “So what are you folks doing for Christmas?”