by Joel Arnold
Here. The stupid thing should be around here someplace.
I dropped to my hands and knees and felt around the igloo in a wider path, plowing through the snow with my gloved hands. Damn it, where was it? Turning in circles on my hands and knees like a dog searching for its tail, I swept my hands back and forth, trying to feel something other than the cold, feathery powder.
Nothing.
It reminded me of the summer before my sister Jill was born, when my family stayed at the Moose Lodge on the shores of Lake Superior. Only four at the time, I played on a stretch of beach in front of the lodge, while my parents watched from old wooden rocking chairs on a low, shaded porch. The beach – if you could call it a beach – was rough and rocky, and the water was choppy, frosted with whitecaps. I sifted through the rocks, searching for just the right ones to add to my piles of crap at home.
At one point, I found a patch of cool, wet sand right at the edge of the beach, and burrowed my hands through it, creating furrows, scooping holes, fighting against the chilly waves that only wanted to smooth the sand back out. The wet sand, the cool, coarse particles pressing against my palms and between my fingers felt good. I could have sat there for hours, doing just that, except as I ran my hands through the sand, a buried shard of glass said ‘surprise!’ to my middle finger and sliced a gash from the fingertip to my second knuckle before my mind even registered the pain.
I jerked my hand out of the sand, saw the blood and screamed at the top of my lungs until Mom and Dad had the wound sterilized and wrapped with gauze from the first aid kit they kept in the car.
But out here in the snow, I remembered all of that in half a heartbeat, and damn it, what I would’ve given to hit something – something – other than the soft snow. Even if it meant slicing my finger from its tip to the second knuckle. At least it would be something. And something – anything – was better than this maddening, empty, soft nothing.
Screw it, I thought.
Readjusting my ski mask, I stood up once again. When I turned around, the igloo was gone.
Chapter 13
For a moment, I was completely lost. Panic crept up my throat. I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth to quell the urge to scream.
But of course the igloo wasn’t gone. The strengthening blizzard merely hid it behind a swirling white curtain.
Leaning into the wind, I trudged forward. At least I knew the direction the igloo should be in.
I hoped.
The snow danced madly. The wind picked up, stinging my face. My eyes watered. When I wiped the moisture away, I made out the outline of the igloo a few feet away. The wind quickly swallowed my hoarse cry of joy. This was no longer fun.
Had it ever been fun?
The wind howled. Circling toward the entrance, I kept my head down and one hand on the igloo. But something stopped me. A noise. Another noise over the howl of the wind. What was it? I strained to see, to hear.
There it was again. A low moaning sound. Fresh chills raced through my body. What was it? Was it just the wind blowing through the pine boughs? The blood racing through my ears? Some animal starving for dumb teenagers to slowly chew and swallow?
When I heard it again, I forgot about the cell phone and ducked into the entrance, scurrying inside like a mole.
Vince poked at the fire with a stick.
“There’s something out here,” I panted, yanking off my ski mask.
Vince looked up. “I know,” he said. “Snow.”
“I mean there’s something alive out there.”
“Like what? A bear?” He chuckled.
“I don’t know. But I heard something.”
“The wind.”
“No. It wasn’t the wind. It sounded like moaning.”
Vince rolled his eyes. “It’s the wind.”
“Come out here,” I insisted.
“I just took my boots off.”
“Put them back on.”
Vince sighed and started tugging his boots back on. I backed out of the igloo and stood once again in the blinding snow, listening.
There it was again. A low moaning sound.
Vince emerged from the tunnel. “Maybe it’s your stomach.”
“Just listen.”
For a while, there was nothing. Vince shuffled and stomped in the snow. “It’s too cold out here to be listening for bogeymen,” he said. He turned to go back inside the warmth of the shelter, but the sound came again.
Vince stopped and turned.
“You heard it?” I asked.
He cocked his head, listening. Then he shook his head. “It’s just the wind.”
The sound came again. Followed by a more familiar sound.
“Does the wind cough?” I asked.
Chapter 14
Vince scurried back into the entrance. “I’m getting flashlights.”
“Hurry up,” I said, not wanting to be left alone. I called out into the darkness. “Hello? Is someone out there?” The snow swallowed my voice, absorbing it like a sponge absorbs water. It sounded like I was talking beneath a pile of heavy blankets. I turned slowly, trying to see beyond the flakes, trying to see through the darkness. The snow crunched silently beneath my boots. Whatever – no, whoever – was out there coughed again. It was impossible to judge the distance the sound had traveled. Maybe it came from a mile away. Maybe only a few feet away. There was no way to tell.
Damn it, Vince, where are you?
I expected a hand to grab me, to shove me; a huge mouth full of sharp teeth to appear from nowhere and clamp down on my neck.
Okay, maybe I did watch too many horror movies.
Vince finally emerged from the igloo and stumbled toward me. He pushed a flashlight into my hand. The beam didn’t travel far, reflecting only on a thousand blowing flakes.
“Hello!” I called again.
“Come on,” Vince said. “Stay close.”
He stepped cautiously ahead. I followed, my hand on the back of his coat. He stopped and listened.
There it was again. A moan. A few more coughs.
“Hello?” Vince said. “Who’s out there?”
For the first time ever, I heard the confidence in Vince’s voice waver. “Maybe we should just go back,” I said, tugging on his coat.
He ignored me, and took another cautious step forward. The wind seemed to pick up, tossing bucketfuls of white on us, around us, making it impossible to hear anything other than the sound of my own heart beating in my ears, impossible to see anything but the flashlight beam on the hypnotic white swirl.
Then Vince’s light flashed on something blue. We both stopped walking, but my heart wanted to burst from my chest and keep on going in the same direction.
“Here,” Vince hissed. “Shine your light here.”
I aimed my light where Vince pointed.
A man, half buried in snow, sat slumped against the trunk of a tree. His eyes were closed, and he shivered violently. He was bald, except for a layer of stubble on his head and chin. There was a cut on his left cheek, and the smear of blood there looked black in the flashlight’s beam. The blue that Vince’s light had found was his blue corduroy jacket.
“Holy shit,” I whispered, staring, shivering, wondering somewhere near the edge of my mind if he was going to jump up, snarl and yell, “Boo!”
Chapter 15
“We’ve got to get him into the igloo,” Vince said, the confidence back in his voice with a vengeance. “We’ve got to get him warm. We’ll have to drag him.”
We each took a leg and pulled him through the snow. The trail we’d made only a few minutes earlier was nearly gone, and it was hard to know which way to go. The snow grabbed at our boots, pulling my left one off, and we had to pause a moment so I could slide it back on.
The half-frozen man didn’t struggle, or move at all, but when we neared the entrance, he moaned again. He tried to sit up. I could see his mouth moving in the darkness, but no sound came out.
“Don’t worry,” Vince shouted at him over the
wind. “You’re safe, now.”
Vince scurried ahead into the igloo and pulled him in by the feet, while I pushed his shoulders. His lips and eyelids were dark blue. I looked at his bare hands and winced. They were covered with patches of black. Frostbite. He’d stopped shivering. Frost coated his ears.
He no longer moved. He looked dead.
“Is he breathing?” I asked.
Vince peeled his ski mask up over his face and leaned over the man, his cheek almost touching the man’s blue lips. Vince closed his eyes, trying to feel the slightest hint of breath. “I think he’s breathing,” he finally said. “Unzip my sleeping bag. Let’s get him covered.”
I skirted the dimming fire on my knees and pulled up Vince’s sleeping bag. It’s bottom made a tearing noise as I yanked it from the snow-packed floor. I scooped it up in my arms and brought it around next to the frozen man.
“Hurry,” Vince said.
My cold fingers struggled with the zipper, but finally it moved. I covered him. “What else?”
Vince looked around, trying to decide how to proceed. “Okay, next. Next, next, next…” He pointed to his backpack. “There’s a pot in there. Pour some water in it and get it warming over the fire. We need to slowly raise his body temp.” He took off his ski mask and placed it gently over the man’s bald scalp. “We can’t warm him up too fast or he might have a heart attack.” Vince’s eyes scanned the igloo, searching every inch. He frowned.
“What?” I asked.
Vince shook his head. He gritted his teeth and scowled. “The damn cell phone,” he said.
I didn’t feel it was a good time to say ‘I told you so.’ As I pulled the metal pot from Vince’s backpack and filled it with water from one of the jugs, Vince leaned over the man, listening and feeling once again for the man’s breath. An odd look came over him. A worried look, something I’d never seen on Vince.
“What?” I asked again.
“He’s stopped breathing.” Vince pressed his ear to the man’s chest. “No heartbeat, either.”
“You sure?” I asked. My own heart beat like a jackhammer.
Vince unzipped the man’s corduroy jacket, but when he tried to unbutton the stiff flannel shirt beneath, the buttons were cemented to the buttonholes with ice. He grabbed each side of the shirt at the collar and pulled. The shirt tore apart, the frozen buttons popping off like popcorn.
There was a sweatshirt beneath that.
Vince pulled it up. “Jesus.” He paused.
“What?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
Then I saw it. Beneath the sweatshirt was something bright orange. A bright orange jump suit.
The kind prisoners wear.
Chapter 16
For the sake of argument, let’s say –
You’ve just escaped a sinking ship. There’s one more space available on your lifeboat. A man struggles nearby in the frigid water. As waves pound your boat and the wind howls around you in the darkness, you stretch out and grab the man’s calloused hands, pulling him from the water. But as you lift that man from the wreckage into the safety of the boat, you catch a sudden glimpse of his…
…clothing.
And you see…
You see…
There was a number printed on it.
“What the hell?” I said.
Vince ripped apart the top of the jumpsuit as well. Crude tattoos in blue ink covered the man’s chest. An iron cross. A swastika. The head of an eagle poked up from beneath the orange fabric.
Vince hesitated only a moment. He put his head to the man’s chest and listened. “His heart’s still beating,” he said, his voice quiet and strained, as if he’d had the wind knocked out of him. He felt again for the man’s breath. He shook his head. “Nothing,” he said.
He looked at me. Then he took in a deep breath, tilted back the man’s head, put his lips to the man’s icy blue lips and exhaled. The man’s tattooed chest rose. Vince wiped off his mouth and breathed for the man again. And again.
I trembled as I watched.
Suddenly the man jerked and gasped. Vince fell back, only inches from the fire. He scrambled aside. The man put his hands to his throat. Vince quickly reached over and pulled the guy’s flannel shirt together to cover his chest.
The man kept gasping, looking wildly around the igloo.
“You’re safe,” Vince said. “Calm down. You’re safe.”
Slowly, the man’s breathing slowed to normal. His eyes fluttered and came into focus. He winced. “What is this place?” he slurred. He squinted at Vince. “You – you – you…” The man closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Are you – an Eskimo?” he asked.
Chapter 17
Vince once told me about how in junior high school this guy who was a year older than him used to call Vince a gook whenever he passed by.
“I didn’t know what it meant,” Vince explained to me. “And he said it so casually – ‘Hey, gook!’— like he was being all friendly, like he was saying, ‘Hey, Vince, how’s it going?’ But instead, it was always, ‘Hey, gook!’ Finally, I asked my dad if he knew what a gook was, and he said it was nothing. I told him this boy at school was calling me that, and he said, ‘Just ignore him.’ So this guy kept passing me by, saying, ‘Hey, gook!’ and when he had friends with him, they’d laugh and started saying, ‘Hey, gook!’ too. So I asked my mom, ‘What’s a gook?’ and she said, ‘It’s nothing, Vince. Ignore it.’ But by now, I knew it was not nothing. I mean, you can tell after a while when someone’s teasing you, and by now it was pretty obvious. So I finally asked my math teacher, Mr. Davies, what a gook was. He looked at me, all apologetic-like, and said – ”
– and here’s where Vince lowered his voice and sounded all professorial –
“‘Vince – a gook is a derogatory term that GI’s used to call the Vietnamese during the war in Vietnam.’ And so I told him, ‘But Mr. Davies, I’m not Vietnamese. I’m an American. Cambodian-American.’ Mr. Davies shrugged and said, ‘I guess some people are just idiots.’”
Vince stood up and went to his closet. He rummaged around and pulled out a well-worn t-shirt, holding its back to me. He smiled. “So I had this made. And I wore it to school all the time.” He turned it around.
In bold, black letters, it read, 100% American Gook.
“Jesus,” I said. “You wore that?”
Vince nodded. “Damn straight.”
“It didn’t make things worse?”
“Yeah, they kept giving me crap for awhile, but I made more of them and gave one to every Cambodian and Vietnamese kid in school. I explained why I wanted them to wear the shirts, and even some of the white kids began wearing them. At least until the principal cracked down on it. Told us we couldn’t wear shirts with derogatory words on them. I tried to tell him we were doing it to teach the assholes a lesson, but he didn’t buy it. But that was my taste of good old fashioned American racism.”
“You used the word ‘asshole’ in front of the principal?”
Vince grinned.
“Man,” I said. “For a rice-eater, you sure got a pair.”
Vince’s arms shot out, grabbed me in a choke-hold and rubbed his thick knuckles in my scalp until I cried uncle.
But now…here…
The man who nearly froze to death asked, “What happened?”
“We found you out in the snow,” Vince said. “Name’s Vince, by the way.”
“He’s not an Eskimo,” I added.
The man tenderly felt his head, as if to make sure it was still there. The color started coming back into his face. “What is this place?”
“An igloo. Me and Tommy built it.”
The man slowly nodded. “That right?”
Vince and I looked at each other. We’d just saved a man’s life! Okay, it was Vince, mostly, but…
What a rush!
But…
Who was this guy?
I thought of something that I should’ve thought of right away. “Was anyone else with you?” I had an aw
ful vision of more out there, frozen in the snow. Maybe he was like that Harrison Ford character in the movie The Fugitive. Maybe he was being transported and there was a train crash or a car wreck.
But…
Those tattoos.
The man shook his head. “No. Just me. Where’d you find me?”
Vince said, “Tommy heard you moaning outside. You were laid up against a tree, covered with snow.”
The man scratched his chin. He frowned, and carefully touched the rest of his cheeks and forehead. “I can’t feel parts of my face,” he said.
Vince nodded. “Frostbite.”
The man held his hands in front of him and turned them this way and that, examining them. “Man. Look at me,” he whispered.
“What did you say your name was?” Vince asked.
The man stared at Vince. “I didn’t say,” he said. “But you guys saved my life?”
Vince nodded. “Looks that way.”
The man looked from Vince to me. “Thanks. I’m grateful.” He shook his head, as if clearing it of dust. “Name’s Quinn. You guys drive here?”
I looked at Vince. Should we answer that? I mean – would he –
But Vince nodded. “Yep.”
Quinn sat up slowly, grimacing. “Man, that cold did a number on me.” He blew into his hands and shook them. “They’re still numb. How far away’s your vehicle?”
“You’re not in any condition to go out there,” Vince said. “Not yet. Not during this storm.”
Quinn looked from me to Vince, then looked down at his hands. “No, I guess I’m not. What about a phone?”
I was about to make a crack about Vince’s pitching arm, but Vince shot me a look. “Nope. A phone kind of spoils the whole camping experience.”
Vince ruffled through his backpack and pulled out a Tupperware container. He pried off the lid and pulled out half of a sandwich. He handed it to Quinn. “Ham and cheese.”