Ted Wood: Murder on Ice aka The Killing Cold

My head was racing. Around me men were weeping, praying, some pushing themselves back, vainly, on hands and heels. I knew I had to load the dice my way if I could. I broke in on his speech.

"Don't listen to this punk. He's nothing more than a jailhouse queen acting butch."

He pointed at me with his right hand. "You sent me in there, you sonofabitch. I was straight as an arrow up to then."

"Gearbox!" I roared it. "The only way you can bang anything is with a grenade."

It worked. Instead of tossing the grenade he hurled it directly at me, hard as a line drive in baseball, hard as the hockey slap-shots I used to grab out of the air when I played goal for Sudbury my last year in high school. I was ready. It was all slowed down as if I were on dope. The lever catapulted away in a series of slow lazy loops. I counted in my head, the seconds booming like cannons.

One! Grab the grenade out of the air, swinging my arm back and spinning completely around to take the force without shocking the load any further.

Two! Shout "Fight" to Sam, who jumped for Margaret Sumner who was struggling to bring the gun up to a firing position while her son pushed her toward the lobby door and I leaped toward the door of Puckrin's office, dodging the flat bodies of men who groveled there, willing themselves smaller.

Three! Into the office and over the desk.

Four! Roll the grenade into the open safe with my right hand and slam the door with my left.

I hit the floor as the grenade exploded, muffled by the walls of the safe but loud enough to deafen me. Without pausing, I shook my head and came back into the hall on the run in case Sam had failed to pin Margaret Sumner.

She was tugging back against his jaws clamped on her right arm, trying to reach the trigger with her left hand. Tom was looming over and around her, punching at Sam. Sam was ignoring him, snarling, holding, ignoring the punches. Then as I sprinted toward them, I saw Tom making a dagger of his thumb and stab down, going for Sam's eyes. I let out a roar of fury and drove right into him, smashing him up under the chin with the edge of my left hand.

He flew backward and I turned and punched Margaret in the abdomen, a clean, short click of a punch that doubled her over and let the gun clatter to the floor. Rachael was cowering back, covering her eyes with her hands. I pointed to her and told Sam "Keep" and he jumped in front of her, snarling, poised to leap.

I glanced at Tom but he was out of it, clutching his throat, gagging, dying. I knelt and patted his pockets-they were empty-then his mother's. She lay looking up at me sightlessly, and then her breath came back in a long, howling whoop.

I stood up. I was trembling all over. In that second I could have wept, but slowly, one breath at a time, I calmed myself and stood looking down at Tom, who was going blue in the face. Then I felt the first man at my elbow. I turned and recognized Dr. McQuaig. He said nothing, just dropped to his knees beside Tom. "Quick. Your knife," he commanded. I took out my clasp knife, black from the smoke of the chimney of hours, years before when I had straddled the roof of the cottage. He opened it, pausing to wipe the blade on the front of his shirt and made a small incision in Tom's throat. Blood welled out and the doctor shouted, "Quick, a ballpoint pen."

I was too stunned to move but he shouted it again and someone ran up holding a pen. He unscrewed the body and tossed aside the mechanism, then crooked his finger around the exposed windpipe, slit it, and inserted the tapered end of the tube into the slit. Tom kicked and tried to grab it but the doctor held his hands. "Leave it alone and ye'll live," he shouted. Then to me, "Bennett, hold his hands."

I took one, Walter Puckrin took the other, and the doctor sat on his legs and slowly Tom's kicking subsided and air whistled in through the pen body. His color came back. The doctor looked at me and grinned.

"Haven't seen so much excitement since the day we landed in Normandy," he said. Other men came in to take over holding Tom and we all stood up. The doctor retrieved my knife from the floor, wiped the blade on his handkerchief, and said in a voice as Scotch and clear as Irv Whiteside's beloved J & B, "I believe the rascal will live."

"Thanks, Doc." I reached out and shook his hand and as we shook he added, "Y'know, there are times when I wish I weren't quite so damn handy at m'job."

Slowly it was all put back together. Men went out and brought the women back into the Hall. Other men took turns holding Tom's hands and feet while the doctor supervised. Me, I took off my burnt, itchy leather hat and went to the bar. Men were clustering about me, banging me on the back, trying to shake my hands. I was the King. I was the guy who had saved their lives, made good triumph over evil, and most important of all, given most of them the only exciting memory they would ever have. All of which would be forgotten the first time I had to write them a summons for failing to come to a complete stop at the stop sign on the highway.

The barman pushed the bottle of Black Velvet at me, with a tall glass. I poured myself a solid drink and took a good long pull on it. I nodded my thanks and walked over to Sam, who was watching both the women. Margaret had her breath back by now and Rachael was sitting with her knees drawn up and her hands over her face. I ignored them both and stooped to fuss Sam, tickling him under his good ear and telling him he was a good boy.

And then I heard a sudden angry bellow behind me. Moving on reflexes I stood up, holding my glass low, ready to pitch it at the face of the man if he attacked me. I saw Walter Puckrin striding toward me. His face was black as thunder but he was laughing as he came.

"You crazy, dangerous bastard," he roared. "You know what you just did?"

"I saved a bunch of asses," I said. Modesty was taking second place to truth now I had taken a good taste of my rye.

"That's just the half of it." He held up his hands and trickled out a cloud of scorched confetti. "You just blew eight hundred and ninety-three dollars to rat shit."

We saved Elliot. Dr. McQuaig had his bag in his car. Norah Puckrin had been a nurse in the naval hospital at Halifax during the war so the kid was lucky enough to get two knowledgeable people with all the training needed to care for wounds like his. We all took off down to the cottage on a fleet of snowmobiles and stormed in. The room looked like a slaughterhouse, but Elliot's arm was sealed with a tourniquet. He was moaning, but the bleeding had been stopped almost immediately.

"He didn't put this on himself," the doctor said. He was filling a needle with morphine as he talked, his neat gray suit smeared with Elliot's blood. "The bastard who cut his arm off must have done this."

I left the doctor to it while I relit the stove and got other men to fill the log box and bring blankets from the bedroom. Norah made sweet tea for Elliot and McQuaig pumped him full of antibiotics and gave him a tetanus shot and checked the tourniquet again. Elliot screamed for a while but the morphine took over and he drowsed off. I looked at the tourniquet. It was a good piece of bush-worker's first aid. A nylon sock had been tied loosely over the end of the stump and a piece of kindling pushed through it and twisted until the blood flow stopped altogether. Tom must have done it, using the skills he had learned in some pulp-cutting camp where injuries are a way of life.

We left a couple of men there, with Norah, to keep the stove going and to take care of the kid when he came around. The rest of us backtracked my night's adventure, examining the bodies of Irv Whiteside and the man I'd shot and the dead girl at the motel. It was too much for the other men. Most of them dropped out of the party after looking at Irv. Others when we went to the Lakeside Tavern and they saw the boy who'd tried to kill me. He was older than Elliot and tougher in appearance. But he was cold dead, and one of the men threw up at the sight. It was too much, after holding everything in at the sight of Irv Whiteside.