The Showstopper

by Robin Merrill

  She wondered how to turn the sled around in the narrow trail, pretty sure the old girl didn’t have reverse. After too much time debating her next move, she realized she had to creep ahead until she found a spot big enough to allow a turnaround. She tried to push the realistic worry that such a spot might not exist out of her mind.

  Her frozen thumb pressed the throttle. She was dismayed at how tired the ancient lever made her thumb. She was currently suffering from her first-ever thumb cramp. She crept around a corner and it was a good thing she was creeping, or she would have flattened the angel standing in the middle of the trail.

  “We have a problem,” Bob announced.

  “Just one?”

  A normal person wouldn’t have been able to hear her over the sled’s engine, but it appeared that Bob did. “Otis has fallen through the ice. I can get him out, but I need your help. Follow this trail. I’ll meet you there.” He was gone again.

  Sandra sat there with her jaw slack until the cold made her teeth hurt. Then she sat there with her mouth clamped shut.

  “Come on!” Peter urged from behind.

  But Sandra was still processing. He’d fallen through the ice? As in on a pond or lake? He’d been stupid enough to drive out onto the ice when it was only mid-December? It hadn’t been cold enough for long enough to make that safe. Was he insane? She pressed the accelerator, glad she hadn’t turned around yet; it was bad enough trying to do the impossible once. Maybe Otis hadn’t known he was driving out onto the ice. Maybe he’d just thought it was a field. But he’d known the woods well enough to find a tree stand, a hunting camp, and a snowmobile, so he probably knew where the lake was. She’d always thought Otis was a little off. Now she thought it was more than a little.

  Before she knew it, she had picked up a scary amount of speed. It didn’t matter if the man was crazy or if he had killed Treasure—if Bob thought they could save him from an icy death, then she would do her best. So, she sped along, wondering if the skin on her face was going to survive this, when suddenly she didn’t understand what she was looking at.

  The trail seemed to end. She applied the brakes, and too late realized that this wasn’t the trail’s end—it was a hairpin turn to the left. She yanked the sled hard to port and gave the brake all she had.

  It wasn’t enough. The sled did slow, and it did turn, but before it could find the trail again, her right front track slammed into a tree, sending them toward the ground with dizzying speed. Peter let out a small cry that sounded too far away and then the left side of Sandra’s body was slammed into the snow, which didn’t offer as much cushion as she hoped. The engine spluttered to a stop, plunging the woods into a silence so complete it was eerie. A horrendous pain spread warmth through Sandra’s left leg, which was pinned beneath the snowmobile. Not good. I need that leg for soccer. She took inventory of the rest of her body, thanked God that everything else seemed to be in order, and then asked that Peter would be okay as well. Where was Peter? Why was he being so quiet? She called out his name.

  No answer. Her chest tightened, and it seemed as though her blood itself went cold. She lay her head down in the snow and took a few deep breaths, trying not to panic. Then she called out his name again, and she heard a cry, but it sounded too weak and again, too far away. She had to get to him.

  She tried to pull her leg out from under the sled, but it was stuck. “Bob!” she screamed at the sky with a volume she’d never managed before. “Bob!” she screamed again, hardly giving him a chance to answer her first call. Then she realized it might be more effective to just call his boss. So she said, “God, please send Bob, or anyone else, to get this machine off my leg.” She waited one second, two, and three, and no one appeared. But she did sense that something was different about her leg. It hurt less. Was it her imagination? Or was she just losing feeling in it? Again she tried to pull her leg out from under the sled, and this time it easily slid free, as if it had never been pinned in the first place.

  But she knew that it had. So what had just happened? She slowly pulled herself to her feet. Surely Bob hadn’t come to shift the sled a few inches and not paused to say hello? Had God sent someone else? Or had God done it himself? The leg still hurt, but even that was subsiding. She turned around and called out to Peter, who didn’t answer. She reached to her pocket for her phone, but it wasn’t there. She needed it for its light, but she didn’t want to take the time to crawl around on the ground feeling for it. She wanted to find Peter. She headed off the trail and into the trees, calling his name.

  Chapter 29

  Sandra spent half of her energy praying, a quarter of it trying not to panic, and the final quarter of it straining her eyes to see in the darkness. She called Peter’s name and then started to count to ten before calling to him again, so that he would have a chance to answer. But she never got past three. “Peter!” One ... two ... three ... “Peter!” One ... two ... three ... “Peter!”

  But he didn’t answer.

  Suddenly, a light flickered between the trees and she ran toward it calling out to her son. Finally, she heard his faint voice calling back.

  “Hold still!” she ordered and then he was in her sights, and relief flowed through her like a warm river. She wrapped her arms around his cold body and hugged him like a vise.

  “Mom! It’s okay, I’m fine!” He tried to push her off.

  She finally let him. “You don’t understand.” She was breathless. “I couldn’t find you. I thought the worse. Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

  He laughed. “Mom, I told you, I’m fine. Not hurt at all. I sort of flew off the snowmobile. It was awesome.”

  “Then why didn’t you answer me when I called to you?”

  “I did! But you didn’t give me a chance to answer. You just kept hollering Peter! Peter! Peter!” He started to pull her away, to her right. “I rolled down a bank, and I had to climb back up it.”

  “But why did you take so long?”

  “Take so long? Mom, we only crashed like one minute ago.”

  One minute ago? Really? That was the longest minute of her life. She exhaled deeply. “Okay, then let’s try to find the sled.”

  “Mom, are you okay? It’s right there.” He shone his flashlight to her right, and sure enough, there was the sled, looking so benign, blocking the narrow trail. “I can’t wait to tell Dad you flipped a snowmobile over.” He snickered. “And then walked off in the wrong direction looking for me. Come on, let’s flip it back. Otis is drowning.”

  Still a bit confused and sneaking up on exhausted, Sandra went to his side to help him flip the sled back over, a task which sounded so easy when he’d first mentioned it.

  It wasn’t. She grunted and pushed and heaved and hoed and—nothing. Her winter boots, while blessedly warm, didn’t have great treads, and she spent most of her gumption slowly running in place. Peter seemed to be faring better. At least his half of the sled was jiggling a little. She squeezed her eyes shut and prayed the same prayer again. “Send help, please.”

  “I’ll pull and you push,” Peter said, heading for the back of the sled.

  “It will crush you!”

  “No it won’t. I’m smart enough to get out of the way, Mom.” He put his small hands on the top of the sled and pulled them toward him. “Maybe if we get it rocking.” He grunted and pulled and then let off and it rolled back toward her, and then he grunted and pulled again. Soon, the sled was indeed rocking until on one of those rocks, it swung past the fulcrum and headed toward Peter, who, true to his promise, scampered out of the way. Sandra had no idea if they’d accomplished the task themselves of if they’d received supernatural help.

  She also didn’t care. She collapsed onto the seat, breathing hard. “Come on, let’s go rescue Otis, if it’s not too late.” She reached down for the pull-cord. She would start the thing herself this time. She’d relied on the ten-year-old enough lately. Praise be, it roared to life on her first try.

  “Mom!” Peter hollered into her ear. He shined his li
ght toward the large indentation the sled had left and there lay her phone she still had fourteen payments on. She was so exhausted she thought about leaving it there, but then slowly started to drag herself off the sled. Too late, though, as Peter was on it. He jumped off the sled, grabbed the phone, and was back on board before she would have even gotten her feet on the ground.

  “Thank you.” She had never meant those words more. She shoved the phone into her pocket and then she was back on the trail she never wanted to start down in the first place.

  But for this leg of the journey, they traveled at a more reasonable pace and never encountered another turn in the trail. A long straightaway spilled them out into an opening that sloped down onto a wide flat plane: this must be the pond. She squeezed the brake as Peter jumped off. She wanted to scold him for not waiting for the vehicle to come to a complete stop, but she bit her tongue. She fumbled to get her phone out of her pocket with her frozen-useless fingers, but before she could accomplish this mundane task, a light appeared out on the pond.

  “Over here!” Bob called.

  With a surge of adrenaline, Sandra jumped off the sled and tried to run toward the water’s edge. Her legs weren’t in a cooperative mood, however, and Peter grabbed her to keep her from falling. “Is it safe to walk on?” she hollered out to Bob.

  “Yes! Hurry! What took you so long? It takes a lot of energy to keep this lit.”

  He didn’t know they’d tipped over, which meant he hadn’t helped them, which meant if they’d had supernatural help, it had come from someone else. Was there an angel in charge of the ATV trails? She’d ask Bob later, when he wasn’t so busy. Squeezing Peter’s hand so hard she was probably hurting him, she took a tentative step out onto the ice, and then another. Then she realized what she was doing. “Wait here,” she said sternly.

  “Sorry, Mom. You can ground me if you need to, but I’m not waiting here.”

  When did he get so sassy? And so brave? Fine. She didn’t have time to argue. She headed for Bob’s light and saw that he was standing on the edge of open water. Otis hadn’t fallen through the ice so much as he’d driven straight off it into water that hadn’t even frozen yet.

  Bob shot a hand out toward her. “Stay there. I’ll push him up, and you grab him and pull him out.”

  Pull him out? What did he think she was, He-Man?

  She heard the water moving and knelt down at the edge of the thin ice, peering into the dark depths. The ice cracked beneath her, and she prayed for safety. Before she was ready, Otis’s head popped up out of the water, and then his shoulders. Peter reached out and grabbed one of his arms, jolting her into action. She grabbed the other, and together they grunted and yanked and pushed themselves back across the ice. They’d almost gotten Otis free from the waist up when Sandra lost her grip and Otis rapidly slid back into the water. Peter didn’t let go and he started to slide toward the water’s edge.

  “No!” Sandra dove for Otis’s other arm and caught it just before he went all the way under. She looked at Peter to make sure he was okay, and he appeared to be, so she pulled again on Otis, giving it her all and then some, but he wouldn’t budge. Where was Bob? Could he give Otis another shove from beneath? And then he did and Otis surged toward them. They pulled again, skittering backward until a lifeless Otis lay face-down on the ice. The angelic light blinked out, and Sandra found herself frustrated with her angel. He couldn’t have waited two more minutes? But then the clouds parted and the moon peeked through, giving her enough light to see Otis, and she felt guilty for her frustration. Repenting under her breath, she tried to be gentle and still speedy as she rolled Otis over.

  “He’s not breathing!” Peter sounded terrified, and his teeth were chattering.

  She stared at Otis’s chest. “No, he’s not.”

  Chapter 30

  Am I really going to have to put my lips on Otis’s mouth? She forced herself not to think about it as she bent over his face. His lips were freezing cold, and her body filled with a cold dread. They were too late. They were terrible people. Well, she was terrible. The angel wasn’t a terrible person because he wasn’t a person, and she couldn’t blame her ten-year-old for her terrible decision making or her terrible snowmobile driving. She took another big breath and then breathed into Otis’s lungs. And though she feared it was fruitless, she did it again.

  “He moved!” Peter cried.

  She lunged backward and stared down at him. Nothing.

  “He did! I swear it!”

  She didn’t believe him. Wishful thinking. A trick of the moonlight. She bent in for another breath, and just as she was inches from his face, Otis coughed, sending a small geyser of pond water into the air. She dodged it, but her joy of his being alive was almost crushed by the horror of this narrow miss. She hurried to roll him onto his side, and he grunted. Another good sign. “Peter! Take my phone out of my pocket.” She didn’t want to let go of Otis. She felt her phone slide out of her pocket and that spot on her butt grew colder. “Do we have a signal?”

  “Hang on.” Seconds ticked by. “No, we don’t.”

  “I’ll get him on your snowmobile,” Bob’s voice sounded funny, and she looked up just in time to see him pull some green goo out of his mouth. “I hoped that was a pond, but it was a bog.” He shuddered. “Get him back to Lewie’s Lodge as fast as you can.”

  It took her several seconds to remember what Lewie’s Lodge was. By the time she figured it out, Bob had scooped Otis up and was halfway back to land. Sandra hurried to follow. “All the way back there? Isn’t there somewhere closer?”

  “No. I just checked.” Bob’s clothes were dripping wet.

  “Can you get him back to the camp faster than that? I don’t know if we’ll make it in time.”

  Bob dropped a floppy Otis onto the sled, and then gave Sandra a grave look. “I am not God. My power is limited. Go. As fast as you can.”

  Confident that this was a very bad idea, Sandra climbed back onto the sled and turned the key. Bob draped Otis’s body over her so that Otis’s head lay on her shoulder and his icy hands were in her lap, and she realized that all this time, she hadn’t been cold at all. Now she was cold. So cold, in fact, that she feared for her safety.

  “Now you sit behind him, and hold him on to him,” Bob said to Peter. “She’s going to drive fast.”

  She didn’t understand the angel’s confidence in her.

  He yanked on the pull cord and the machine came to life. “Now go!” He slapped the back of the sled like it was a horse, and off she went, slowly at first, and then faster and faster. She could see farther ahead of her now that there was moonlight. Miraculously, she remembered where the turns were, and she slowed for those, but on the straightaways, she really opened up, surprising herself. It wasn’t that she was worried about Otis dying. It wasn’t even that she was worried about her son getting frostbite, though this was a possibility. She was spurred on by the fact that Otis kept moaning into her ear, and that sound was driving her insane.

  When she reached Lewie’s small dooryard, she was so unprepared that she almost sped by it. She squeezed the brake and shut the engine off before the sled had even stopped moving. In the moonlight, Bob came toward them from the cabin. Light spilled out after him. Good. The camp wasn’t so rustic that they didn’t have electricity. “I’ve got him.” Bob wrapped his arms around Otis and heaved him over his shoulder. Limited power or not, the being was strong as a lumberjack. “You get inside. I built a fire.”

  She doubted that he’d built a fire so much as he’d snapped his fingers and the fire had just been.

  Either way, the warmth of the fire was the most exquisite sensation she’d ever felt, and, totally forgetting about the soaking wet drowning victim, she pulled her son closer to the flames. Bob laid Otis down behind them, and then returned seconds later with a stack of blankets. The cabin wasn’t warm by any stretch of the imagination, but it was above freezing, and that felt glorious. Bob stood with his hands on his hips. Sandra noted that ange
ls too had to catch their breath after exertion. “Probably still no signal, right?”

  Without much hope, Sandra watched her son pull her phone out of his pocket. His eyes widened. “We have one bar!”

  The miracles just kept coming. “Call 911,” Sandra said. “Call right now.”

  Chapter 31

  Twenty minutes after Peter ended the 911 call, there was still no sign of paramedics or police. The cabin was finally offering some real warmth, and Otis was sitting up and speaking actual words. His first were, “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” Sandra said.

  He looked around the cabin. “Thank God for Lewie.”

  Lewie and Bob, Sandra thought. “Yes, thank God for Lewie.”

  Otis chuckled and shook his head. “You sure are a persistent one.”

  The odd compliment pleased her, and she wondered if it would be weird to thank him. Would it be impolite not to?

  “You were my biggest fear,” he muttered, staring at the floor. “I thought, ‘If only that soccer ref lady wasn’t here, I might be able to get away with it.’ I knew you’d caught that drug lord last fall.”

  She didn’t think the man had been a drug lord, but she let it go.

  “That’s why I hid your son.” Without looking at Peter, he said, “Sorry, kid. I thought it would distract her.” He pulled the blanket tighter around him. “I didn’t know it was possible to be this cold.”

  With the exception of her toes, Sandra wasn’t cold anymore, but she hadn’t driven Lewie’s sled into a bog. She glanced at Bob to see how he was faring. Since he was sitting in a chair and not hugging the fire as they were, she assumed he was doing okay.

  “I don’t know if I’ll ever get warm again.” He let out a long sigh. “Not that I deserve to.” His voice cracked. “I couldn’t stand that woman, it’s true, but I swear, I didn’t mean to kill her. I just wanted to get that blasted phone away from her, and she tried to hit me with a hammer. It was self-defense.”