Gene Wolfe - Free Live Free

Captain Davidson tossed the keys to Evans on the stoop.

“Double indemnity. Beneficiary’s his wife.”

“That’s what I thought I heard,” the shivering man said. He was nursing a styrofoam coffee container. “One of the guys was talking about it when I came up. I had him—” He paused to wipe his nose.

Glasser pushed him aside. “Look, you’re leaving, right? Malloy, right?” He thrust out a hand, and Malloy took it. “Nat Glasser. You got nothing to lose, so tell me. What kind of a presentation did he go for? Man-of-the-world? Serious? We’ve got something opening up that—”

“How do you know I don’t have a concussion?” Sergeant Proudy asked argumentatively.

“Do I look like God?” the old doctor said. “I don’t know.” As a matter of fact, he did look like God. He was a small, elderly man who sported a little white beard and an even whiter mustache; the collar of a tattersall shirt—an almost infallible sign of the presence of deity—peeped above the collar of his overcoat.

“Suppose I do have a concussion?”

“You’re blacking out? Seeing spots?”

“No.”

“Dizzy?”

“Not much.”

“Your fingers are numb. You drop things.”

“Not since I dropped that flashlight, and that was before I got hit.”

“Then supposing you have a concussion, I’m ordering you to go home and go to bed. In the morning, see your regular doctor and tell him what happened.”

“That’s what you said before.”

“I noticed it myself.” The doctor glanced at his curved needle and put it away. “Concussion is a bruising of the brain. It can be so slight there’s practically no symptoms at all. The main thing is to leave it alone until it gets better. Don’t play football. If you see somebody trying to hit you with a ball bat, duck. (Nurse, let me have some tape.) If you want to find out for certain if you have a concussion, we’ll perform an autopsy. If you think you might have a fractured skull, go to the emergency room of the nearest hospital and tell them that. They’ll zap your head with a few X-rays, and it’s a poor X-ray man that can’t find a little crack someplace if he looks hard enough. He’ll tell you to give up football until the bone knits. Okay, all done, put on your hat and you can go home.”

“You’re through bandaging?” Sergeant Proudy’s fingers groped at the gauze.

“Why do you think I was pulling you around while I was talking to you? I warn you, if you press it, it’s going to hurt.”

Candy Garth said, “Here,” and extended a pink plastic hand mirror. Proudy accepted it and inspected his bandage.

“I made it look worse than it is. If a dressing doesn’t look bad, nobody ever believes the patient is hurt.”

“I’d hate to be hurt as bad as that bandage looks.”

“You’d be dead.”

Candy asked, “Is it going to leave a scar?”

“I’m afraid so. He’s losing hair up there. Of course a plastic surgeon could erase most of it.”

“I’ll keep it.” Sergeant Proudy rubbed his hands together. “When some rookie asks me what happened, I’ll just tell him I got it in the head with a fire ax. You got any aspirin?”

“I never carry it. My theory is that any patient too dumb to buy his own is too dumb to live anyway.”

“I’ll get some,” Candy said. She bustled out, and they heard the stair groan beneath her weight.

Barnes said, “That girl enjoys nursing. You ought to hire her, Dr. Makee.” He stood with his back to the fireplace, where the wreck of a table burned.

The physician shook his head and snapped his bag shut. “There was a time when I would have taken you up on that. Now I’ve had to learn restraint.”

Sergeant Proudy stood, swayed, and gripped the back of a chair to steady himself. “How much do I owe you, Doc?”

Dr. Makee winked at Stubb. “I can always tell when they’re getting better. They call me Doc.”

“How much? If it isn’t more than I got on me, I’ll pay you now.”

“Ten dollars. Quite a few years ago, I swore I’d never charge more than ten dollars for a house call.”

Stubb said, “Nobody else even makes house calls.” The bloody fire ax lay across his knees.

“I don’t either. I’m retired, or that’s what I keep telling people.”

“Here’s the aspirin,” Candy announced. “I’ll get you a drink, if the pipes aren’t frozen yet.” To Barnes she added, “Madame Serpentina’s packing. I listened outside her door.”

Stubb glanced at the dark and silent television. He whispered, “Where’s Free?” but Barnes only shrugged.

Sergeant Proudy gulped down two aspirin tablets and wandered across the room to look out the window.

“There he is!” Sim Sheppard shouted.

Everything stopped. Everyone turned to look. For perhaps twenty seconds, the prominent nose and small eyes of Sergeant Proudy appeared at the parlor window, still recognizable beneath a rakish cap of white surgical gauze.

Sim’s coffee was trampled in the snow. Steve Marshal’s attache case came unattached. No physicist could say how hard the front-runners struck the door. They were weighty men, most of them, police and sales alike; they had been sprinting, and they were unable to brake on the ice. Behind them were a dozen more even weightier and equally unable—or unwilling—to stop.

The weakened door made a sound much like that of a large model plane jumped upon by a small boy.

“You too, huh?” Barnes asked.

Stubb looked around at him. “Yeah, me too.”

It was night, and snow clouds hung over the city; there was no light anywhere that was not mankind’s. It might have been a city of clouds, with a few stars peeping through. They might have been in some vast, dark, rolling country, a land of hills and black pines.

“I thought they’d have more down.”

“It was almost quitting time when they got Candy out.” Stubb chuckled.

“What was that gunk under her robe?”

“Baby oil, I think.”

“I’m the one who’s supposed to know about novelties. If I had greased the floor in the hall …”

“They probably would have dropped her and broken her neck.”

“Or she would have gone through to the basement. How much does she weigh?”

“How the hell should I know? Two hundred, maybe.”

“Two hundred and fifty, at least. Maybe three hundred.”

“Maybe three hundred,” Stubb conceded. “Who gives a damn?” He tossed his cigarette into the snow. “It’s God-damned cold out here, Ozzie. You got a new place to stay?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Not me. They let me put my bag behind the counter in the Sandwich Shop up the street, and I’m still looking around.”

“Yes,” Barnes said again.

“We kind of worked together this afternoon, right? And it didn’t go too bad. Hell, with Candy it almost went good enough.”

Barnes nodded.

“Ozzie, I was wondering whether I could bunk with you. Just for tonight. I’ll get a place of my own in the morning.”

There was an instant’s silence, then the soft voice of the witch said, “Ozzie has no place to stay, Mr. Stubb.”

Both men whirled. “Where’d you come from?” Stubb asked.

“I fear he lied to you. He is here, staring at this ruined house, for the same reason you are. He wonders if he might not occupy his room one night more. Do not do it, gentlemen. It is very cold tonight. You would freeze.”

Stubb asked, “What about you, Madame S.?”

“I am here because I was forced to leave behind certain belongings. I have returned to fetch them.”

Stubb said, “We’ll help you carry ’em. Where are you going?”

“What is the nearest hotel of good quality?”