by Joel Arnold
Maybe I’d look like Lon Chaney in Phantom of the Opera.
And Vince – how was he doing? Was he still next to me? I had to squeeze him to make sure he hadn’t dropped away at some point. But he was still there. Still trudging along. Was he still thinking of his mom and dad? Still thankfully trying to prove that this was nothing compared to what they went through?
I’m not sure why I laughed out loud – maybe I was going crazy – but I did.
A moment later, Vince asked in a raspy voice, “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” I gasped. “I was just thinking…when we get back…we should make a slasher movie.”
A few steps later – “Yeah?” Vince asked.
Another few steps – “Yeah,” I replied.
“That’d be cool,” Vince said. “How would…we pay…for it?”
“Haven’t thought…that far ahead…yet.”
That’s when I tripped on something.
I plunged forward. Vince fell next to me. At least the snow was soft. Comfortable. Like a down-filled blanket. Maybe we could just stay there awhile. Just a short rest. Until our strength came back. I didn’t feel cold anymore. My chest still hurt from the burn, but lying in the snow – it wasn’t so bad.
“Hey!” Vince hit me on the back. Hard. He motioned with his head for me to look behind us. I slowly turned my head.
The thing…
The thing we tripped over…
It was a body.
A body Vince and I both recognized.
Chapter 38
For the sake of argument, let’s say the man who just tried to kill you is lying half-frozen in the snow with a blizzard raging around him. What do you do?
A – Leave him?
B – Give him a few good kicks to the head?
Or C –
“Son of a bitch,” Vince croaked.
“Is he dead?” I asked.
We crawled over to Quinn and kneeled next to him. Vince brushed the snow off his face.
He looked so still. So frozen.
But there was moisture in his eyes.
Vince leaned over his chest and put his cheek to Quinn’s mouth.
“Is he breathing?” I asked, shifting my weight from one knee to the other, clapping my gloved hands together.
“Can’t tell.”
“What do we do?” I asked.
Vince looked behind us, then ahead. He looked over at me.
Although I’m positive that both of us had the same thought cross our minds – that thought being something like, Let the bastard lay there and freeze rock solid – neither of us said it.
Instead, I stood and hoisted Vince up. “You still got a few good hops in you?” I asked.
He smiled. “How would I know? I’m a dumb jock, remember?” He turned and began to hop on his one leg.
I walked around and stood behind Quinn’s head. I squatted down and grabbed him under the shoulders, sliding my arms beneath his armpits. I pulled.
He was heavy. Dead weight. But I pulled.
Damn it, I pulled.
For the sake of argument, let’s say –
You’ve just escaped a sinking ship. There’s one more space available on your life-boat. 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 hands, pulling him from the water. And as you lift that man from the wreckage into the safety of the boat…
Pull. Rest.
Pull. Rest.
One.
Two.
One.
Two.
As you pull that man from the wreckage of his life into the safety…
Pull. Rest.
Pull. Rest.
You see…
Pull. Rest.
One. Two.
That he is a man. A human being.
A human being.
One. Two.
One. Two.
And you feel.
Pull. Rest.
The humanity in yourself. So you try your best.
Pull. Rest.
Pull. Rest.
To lift. Him. Up…
I’m not sure, but at one point, it felt like he was watching me. It felt like his eyes softened just a little. And he didn’t fight back or struggle or try to escape.
One…
Two…
It felt like I’d been dragging him forever. But I didn’t stop until I heard a strange noise behind me. I became bathed in a bright light.
I turned into the light and squinted, shielding my eyes. Would I see my grandparents waiting for me at a bus stop?
But then a smell reached my nostrils. My mouth watered. It was the delicious smell of exhaust. The mini-van. Slowly, I made out a shape behind the windshield. The hum of the running van was one of the sweetest sounds I’d ever heard.
I turned back to Quinn and dragged him to the side of the van. I slid open the door. A blast of warm air surrounded me and made my eyes water.
“It’s about damn time,” Vince said. His eyes watered, too, but I quickly understood that they were not just thawed ice, but tears. I hoisted Quinn up and in.
“He still alive?” Vince asked.
I looked at Quinn. His eyes were moist. He started shivering violently.
I nodded.
“Buckle him in,” Vince said.
“I don’t think he’s in any shape to hurt us,” I said, adjusting the back of the seat so that it lay almost flat. I pulled the buckle around him and snapped it in place.
“It’s for his protection, brainiac,” Vince said.
“What do you mean?”
“There’s no way I can drive this thing,” Vince said. “Are you ready for your first driving lesson? Your first real driving lesson? From a pro?”
Chapter 39
I didn’t drive off of any cliffs into any rivers. In fact, I think I did a pretty good job driving to the police station with an escaped convict in the back, a blizzard blowing outside, and the pain in my chest hurting like hell.
After all of that, did I still have to actually take the driver’s test? Didn’t seem fair.
While Vince and I sat in separate rooms with separate detectives in the police station, going over and over our stories while the detectives coaxed out every last detail they could, someone at the station called my parents, and by the time I emerged, Mom and Dad snatched me up and squeezed the bejeezus out of me, crying and cursing and yelling and telling me how much they loved me, and oh God, oh Jesus, you could’ve been killed!
I was grounded, then ungrounded when they saw how hurt I was, and then my mom knelt in front of me, crying, examining my burns and frostbite.
“We have to get you to the hospital,” she cried. She turned to Vince and gasped, knelt down in front of him and looked over his wounds. “We have to get you both to the hospital.”
“You should let Tommy drive,” Vince said. “He’s getting pretty good at it.”
My mom ignored Vince and elbowed my dad in the ribs, and when he didn’t move, she shouted, “Get the car ready!”
He seemed to come back to reality then, his mouth snapping shut as he dug his keys from his pocket.
We spent a few hours at the emergency room, too. I was dehydrated, and there was the burn, of course. The tip of my nose had suffered some minor frostbite. But nothing too serious. Vince was fine. At least physically. I mean, how could something like what just happened to us not make you a little screwed up in the mental department? But anyway, Vince didn’t even need any stitches where the bottle had struck him, and frankly, I don’t think I have to worry too much about Vince’s mental facilities after all. He was a firm believer in the whole ‘Whatever doesn’t kill you…’ deal.
After a good day of rest, I told my parents everything, even the part about signing our names on the igloo with our own pee. I figured if we were going to be on the news the next day, and in the papers, they’d want to hear it from me first. Even if we weren’t in the news, I wanted to t
ell them.
Vince’s parents flew back a day early from their trip, and they weren’t happy in the least about that. His driving privileges were taken away for a month, so he actually had to walk the two blocks to my house whenever he wanted to come over. But at least he got a new prosthetic leg out of the deal to make the trip a little easier.
We’re still friends. We still jam in the basement, me on drums and Vince on his electric Gibson guitar. I still call him a dumb jock and he still calls me brainiac.
I’ve got a scar on my chest from the burn. It’ll be there the rest of my life, but it’s not too bad.
Things are pretty much as they were, except that Vince doesn’t give me as much crap as he used to about being a couch potato and all that. Good thing, too, because I might just be tempted to yank his leg off and beat him over the head with it.
“I’ve done it before,” I tell him.
We both get a good laugh out of that.
Now at school, the jocks seem a little less jocky, and the band geeks seem a little less geeky, and I just passed my driver’s test, so I can take Mom and Dad’s car out for a spin now and then.
Quinn Francis Bacon, as we later learned was his whole name, survived. And hey, with a name like that, it’s no wonder he was a bit screwed up. He’s in a federal prison somewhere in Texas. The strange thing is that there’s this want inside of me – this need – to go visit him someday. To ask him…
No, to tell him…
I’m fine. Vince is fine.
Not to gloat, but just so he knows.
And I’ll ask him how he is.
And I’ll ask him if he realizes that there are good people in this world, and that he should try – he should still try – to be a good person.
Maybe I’m just naïve.
Chapter 40
But…
I have one more question for you.
For the sake of argument, let’s say you’ve escaped death. Now all that’s left to do is live the rest of your life.
What do you do?
About the author:
Joel Arnold lives in Savage, Minnesota with his wife, two kids, dog, cat, rat and a variety of fish. He received a Minnesota State Arts Board 2010 Artists Initiative Grant, and has participated in the Carol Connolly Speculations reading series. He’d love to hear from you at [email protected].