with These Hands (Ss) (2002) (6 page)

A plane had come, crossed over the area and gone. He must, he told himself, appreciate the significance of that.

It meant his last chance for rescue was gone. They would not cover the same ground twice. As he prepared his meal, he considered that, using the two yellow roots and his prize ... an Arctic hare found in a snare set that very morning.

All right then. No rescue. If he was to survive until spring and then walk out, he must do it on his own. Dru Hill was surprised to find that he did not view the situation with alarm. He could survive ... he had proved that . . . and if he could trap a caribou, he would have a good supply of meat. He could trap two if he could trap one. He could dry or smoke the meat and so build supplies for spring. He could make a pair of snowshoes and, now that hope of rescue was abandoned, he could afford to go further afield for food, not needing to remain near the crashed ship.

He took a deep breath and thought of the miles of wilderness that surrounded him. He didn't have much but the woods could provide, they had shown him that. He no longer thought of this Arctic forest with fear. It was beautiful, the trees comforting, the vast expanse of tundra a wonder and a challenge. His hearing had become supernaturally acute, his sense of smell delicate. He could survive.

This was something he never could have imagined two weeks ago. A man needed lights, an automobile, the complex comforts of the modern world. He, in his chosen profession, had provided the electricity, the gasoline, and the plastics to provide those comforts.

He grinned to himself. Farther afield there might be better hunting grounds, berries, perhaps more game. He thought of something else ... of the change in himself.

Here he was, calmly and with confidence considering surviving the entire winter where a few days before he had doubted his ability to survive a few hours. But he was right. His doubts were gone, and justly so. This place was warm and could be made warmer. He could take some metal from the plane for heads for a spear and for arrows.

He could ... he heard voices.

He pushed aside the door and thrust his head out.

Three men, two of them in Canadian Air Force uniforms, and the third was Bud Robinson, were slogging down the path.

He stood there and they stared at him, and then Robinson said, "By the Lord Harry! It's Dru Hill!"

Robinson looked around curiously. "We never dreamed anyone would be alive, but when we flew over this morning, Gene thought he saw a black spot on the snow. Only it was not on the snow, but where the snow had melted off the trees over your fire, here."

"We flew clear back to the post," Gene explained, "but it kept nagging me. There shouldn't be anything black after all that snow falling, so we took a chance and came back. It's lucky for you that we did."

Hours later the plane dropped down onto the runway of an airfield surrounded by warehouses and industrial buildings. Nearby a pipeline ran toward the distant sea.

Dru Hill was hustled across the field and into a waiting ambulance. He insisted on sitting in front with the driver and at the hospital they gave him a clean bill of health, something he had not doubted.

They left him alone finally, the reporters, and doctors, company representatives, and police, in a brand-new motel room near the airfield. The walls and roof seemed strangely close. He paced the odd green carpeting far into the night. To Dru Hill the room smelled of cleansers and cigarettes and wallpaper glue. It was uncomfortably warm.

He opened the window, letting in the cold night air and a small shard or two of ice. Beyond the parking lot was a line of scraggly pines obscuring a set of trash bins and the highway. The sound of engines and tires on the asphalt filled his ears. The air outside smelled like gasoline. Gasoline and garbage.

But then the wind blew and after a moment it carried away those smells, replacing them momentarily with the smell of the great Alaska beyond. Beyond the suburbs, the trailers, the gravel pits and oil wells. He remembered how, as the plane lifted itself from the snow, he had looked back. The trees at the edge of the forest were only a dark line. The place where he had built his hut, staked his furs, and piled the wood for his fire could no longer be seen.

But he knew it was there.

*

She was sitting just around the curve of the bar, a gorgeous package of a girl, all done up in a gray tailored suit. The hand that held the glass gave a blinding flash and when I could see again, I got a gander at an emerald-cut diamond that would have gone three carats in anybody's bargain basement. Yet when she turned toward me, I could see the pin she wore made the ring look cheap.

No babe with that much ice has any business dropping into a bar like the Casino. Not that I'm knocking it, for the Casino is a nice place where everybody knows everybody else and a lot of interesting people drop in. But those rocks were about three blocks too far south, if you get what I mean.

At the Biltmore, okay. At the Ambassador, all right. But once in a while some tough Joes drop in here. Guys that wouldn't be above lifting a girl's knickknacks. Even from a fence there was a winter in Florida in those rocks.

It was then I noticed the big guy further along the bar.

He had a neck that spread out from his ears and a wide, flat face. His hands were thick and powerful. And I could see he was keeping an eye on the babe with the ice, but without seeming to.

This was no pug, and no "wrassler." Once you've been in the trade, you can spot them a mile off. This guy was just big and powerful. In a brawl, he would be plenty mean and no average Joe had any business buying any chips when he was dealing.

"Babe," I said, to myself, "you're lined up at the wrong rail. You better get out of here-fast!"

She shows no signs of moving, so I am just about to move in-just to protect the ice, of course-when a slim, nice-looking lad beats me to it.

He's tall and good-looking, but strictly from the cradle, if you know what I mean. He's been wearing long pants for some twenty-odd years, but he's been living at home or going to school and while he figures he's a smart lad, he doesn't know what cooks. When I take a gander at Blubber Puss, which is how I'm beginning to think about the big guy, I can see where this boy is due to start learning, the hard way.

Me? I'm Kip Morgan, nobody in particular. I came into this bar because it was handy and because there was an Irish bartender with whom I talked fights and football.

Like I say, I'm nobody in particular, but I've been around.

This nice lad who's moving in on the girl hasn't cut his teeth on the raw edges of life yet. The babe looks like the McCoy. She's got a shape to whistle at and a pair of eyes that would set Tiffany back on his heels. She's stiff with the boy at first, then she unbends. She won't let him buy her a drink, but she does talk to him. She's nervous, I can see that. She knows the big lug with the whale mouth is watching her.

All of a sudden, they get up and the boy helps her on with her coat, then slides into his own. They go out, and I am taking a swallow of bourbon when Blubber Puss slides off his stool and heads toward the door.

"Bud," I tell myself, "you're well out of this."

Then I figure, what the devil? That rabbit is no protection for a job like that, and Blubber Puss won't play pretty.

Also, I have always had confidence in what my left can do to thick lips.

They walk about a block and take a cab. There's another one standing by, and the big Joe slides into it. I am just about to figure I'm out of it when another cab slides up. I crawl in.

"Follow those cabs, chum," I say to the cabbie.

He takes a gander at me. "What do you think this is-a movie?"

"If it was, you wouldn't be here," I tell him. "Stick with them and I'll make it worth your while."

We've gone about ten blocks when something funny happens. The cab the Blubber is in pulls up and passes the other one, going on over the rise ahead of us. While I am still tailing the babe and her guy, and trying to figure that one, I see his cab coming back, and Blubber isn't in it.

Then, we go over the rise ourselves and I see the girl's cab pulling up at the curb near a narrow street. They get out, and we slide past and pull in at the curb. Their side of the street is light, mine is dark, so I know what to do.

The cabbie takes his payoff, and I slip him a two-dollar tip. He looks at it and sneers.

"I thought they always slipped you a five and said keep the change."

I look at him cold. I mean, I chill him. "What do you think this is-the movies?"

The cab slides away and I go around the corner into the same narrow street where the babe and her guy are going, but I'm still on the dark side and there is a row of parked cars along the curb.

It doesn't figure right. If Blubber goes on ahead, that can only mean he knows where the babe and her guy are going. If that is true, that figures Blubber and the girl are working it together. That means mama's boy is headed for the cleaners.

Only the doll doesn't fit. She doesn't look the type.

There is more in this, as the guy said eating the grapefruit, than meets the eye.

The babe has pulled up in front of the side entrance of an apartment house and is trying to give her young Lothario the brush. He is polite, but insistent. Then the big lug steps from the shadows and moves up behind the kid.

When he starts moving, I start. The big guy has a blackjack and he lifts it.

I yell, "Lookout!"

The kid wheels around, his mouth open, and Blubber Puss turns on me with a snarl. Get that? A snarl. The big ape will have it for days, I figure. When he turned, I plastered it right into his teeth, then fired another into the big guy's digestion.

You know what happened?

Nothing.

It was like slugging the side of a building. That stomach, which I figured would be a soft touch, was hard as nails. I'd thrown my Sunday punch and all I got was rebound.

Now brother, if I nail them with my right and they don't go down, they do some funny things standing up- usually. This big guy took it standing and threw a left that shook me to my socks. Then, he moves in with the blackjack.

The kid starts for him then, but-accidentally, or otherwise-the girl's dainty ankle is there and the kid spills over it onto the sidewalk. I blocked the blackjack '' with my left forearm and then made a fist and chopped it down to the big lug's eye. I was wearing kid gloves, and : they cut to the bone.

Before he can get himself set, I let him have them both in the digestion again. No sale. He tried the blackjack and we circled. I stabbed him with a left, then another. He I ducked his head and lunged for me. I caught him by the hair and jerked his face down and my knee up.

When I let go, he staggered back, his nose so flat he had no more profile than a blank check. He was blood all over, and I never saw him look so good. I set myself then and let him have both barrels, right from the hip, and my right smashed his jaw back until his chin almost caught behind his collar-button.

He went down. I'd a good notion to put the boots to him, but I always hate to kick a man in the face when there's a lady around. Doesn't seem gentlemanly, somehow.

I rolled him over on the pavement and he was colder than a pawnbroker's heart. I turned around. The kid is standing there, but the babe has taken a powder.

"Listen," he said, "thanks awfully. But where did she go?"

"Pal," I said, "why don't you let well enough alone?

Don't you realize that the doll brought you here for a trimming?"

"Oh, no." He looked offended. "She wouldn't do that.

She was a nice girl."

"Buddy, I tailed you and the girl out of the bar because I saw this big mug watching you. Until this guy passed your cab and went ahead, I figured he was after the girl's ice.

But he came here, and that could only mean he knew where she was going."

"Oh, no. I don't believe that," he said. "Not for a minute."

"Okay," I answered. "Better scram out of here before the cops come nosing around."

He scrammed. Me, I am a curious guy. The big potato was still bye-bye, so I gave him a frisk. He was packing a gun, which he might have used if I'd given him time. It was a snub-nosed .38. I pocketed the weapon, then found what I wanted. It was a driver's license made out to Buckley Dozen.

Well, Buckley was coming out of his dozen, so I turned away. Then, I saw the diamond pin.

Somehow, the doll had dropped it. Probably when her ankle had tripped the kid. I lifted it off the pavement, went around the corner, and made a half block walking fast. A moment later a cab came streaking by, and Buckley Dozen was in it. But he didn't see me.

For a couple of days after that I was busy. Several times I looked at that ice. I figured no dame like that would be wearing anything nearly as good as this looked, so decided it must be glass, or paste. Then I dropped in at the Casino Bar and Emery, the bartender, motioned me over.

"Say, there was a guy in here looking for you. Nice lookin' kid."

His description fitted the youngster who'd been with the girl.

"Probably figured things out," I said, "and wants to buy me a drink."