Authors: Daniel Boyd
I was getting close to the top of the slope now. And the road. And the Jeep. I could taste salt in my mouth from the snot running out my nose, my hands ached from the chill and my knees even worse. Like I got bit or something every time I put them down in all that misery. Hurt so bad I hated to keep on doing it, but I had to, and I hated it that I had to. The strain of dragging that gas can and shotgun through two feet of snow didn’t help none either, but there wasn’t nothing I could do but just keep at it, keep crawling up through that white grief.
Star of won-der
,
Star of light
,
Star of roy-al
,
Beauty bright….
And I got to say, the guy in the tower didn’t like it much.
I heard a volley of
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!
from up his way, but he must have been getting rattled because I didn’t feel none of them. All I felt was the nasty burning sting of ice-cold air hitting my face, and the hurt in my hands and knees, which had turned to tingling now, almost numb, and I got to wondering would a bullet feel better than this cold, and then next I knew I was back behind the Jeep with Callie.
She looked at me, covered with money bags.
“You.” She gritted the word out through clenched teeth and I saw how she was concentrating, doing everything she could not to shiver. “Quite clever.”
“Stuff they make these bags out of,” I said, hugging close to the car and putting my gloved hands on the tailpipe, feeling the welcome touch of it like the sun on a warm day or a kiss from a pretty woman. “Can’t cut it, can’t even shoot through it. And the money inside takes the shock of the bullet—mostly, anyway.”
“Wonderful.”
It seemed like all at once, she quit shivering, quit concentrating, and I figured that likely wasn’t a good sign. “How you holding up?” I asked.
She thought some about that. “This isn’t nearly as pleasant as I’d been led to believe,” she said finally. “Do you suppose you could hurry things up a bit?”
“Just as much as I can. But we got another problem; there’s a man down there in that car, mostly froze to death, and I don’t think he’s your Captain Scranton. ”
“A policeman?”
“I don’t figure he’s a policeman, no.”
“Is he shot?”
“Naah.” I shrugged under the money-bag blanket and snuck a look up at the tower. “Whoever shot at him shot from that tower; they missed, but the car went down that embankment and hit something that stopped it sudden-like. This guy inside he banged his head, knocked him out.”
“He’s not a policeman?”
“He doesn’t look like one.” I figured it was the cold making her mind lose track of what I told her. “Anyway, I brought him around but I sure couldn’t do much about warming him up.”
“He must be….” She started, then trailed off, like talking was hard, or maybe she just couldn’t keep her mind on it. Then she just started up again, “He’ll have been warmer in that car, but still… We must help him.”
“Crossed my mind, too.”
“You’re going to the tower now?”
“Can’t walk around it.”
“The tower is a hundred and nine feet tall at the tip,” she said in kind of a sing-song voice, like a schoolgirl reciting a lesson. “There are nine levels, not including the cab, which is six feet square. There are twelve steps each for the first two levels, which are four feet wide…”
I looked at her hard, but she just kept going in that say-your-lessons voice.
“…eight steps apiece for the last seven levels, which start at three feet wide, but narrow to two feet, then to eighteen inches…”
I figured this must be the spiel she gave to tourists, and kind of wondered where she thought she was. Made a chill run through me worse than the cold to hear her go on like that. I put my hands around the warm tailpipe again and wished I could put my knees there too.
“…similarly, the platforms at the landings are four feet wide to begin with, but will narrow to eighteen inches toward the top. The tower was built in 1936 as part of the public works project initiated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt…”
I didn’t stick around to hear the rest.
December 20, 1951
1:50 PM
Officer Drapp
Twenty minutes left to get this done. I needed a cigarette, needed it painful hard, but I figured Callie’d likely take it the wrong way was I to stop for a smoke. So instead I just put my face some ways closer to that warm tailpipe on the Jeep, trying not to breathe the fumes of it, and warmed up as much as I could for a few seconds. Then I tried not to think too much about anything as I shrugged the money-bag blanket back over me and started crawling to the tower.
I gotta give this to the guy up there in the cab: he was wising up. I heard three shots all that time I took crawling, but I only felt one of them, like a sharp jab on the back of my butt. Another one hit close to the gas can and shotgun I was dragging at the end of the ropes tied to my wrists, but I didn’t even see the next, so I figured he was shooting for my legs and feet when they stuck out behind me. Smart feller. I made my crawl-steps smaller and the shooting stopped.
There was a snow fence partway around the base of that tower made up from six-foot wooden slats held together with chicken wire, with an opening to park the truck. When I reached it I figured I was too close to the tower for him to shoot down at me, so I stood up—Lord, it felt good to get my knees out of that cold, wet, icy death!—and I saw the snow was drifted up against that fence almost as high as my shoulders. I squeezed past the service truck and then I was under the tower itself. Looked at my watch and saw I’d done the forty yards in three minutes, which wasn’t burning up any speed records, but I was pretty happy with it. I checked the steps overhead to make sure was there nobody coming down them and
Crack!
Damn, but I was getting sick of that noise. I heard a quick
ping-ping!
as the shot ricocheted off the steps above me. I pulled the money bags mostly over my head and peeked out from under.
Near as I could see there was a trapdoor under the cab up there and he was sticking the rifle out it trying to shoot me, which would have been a tricky proposition even in good times. In the middle of a blizzard like this, it was a dope-dream. So I tried not to worry too much about it while I dug the jackknife out of my pants pocket and cut loose one of the money bags to use as a shield.
I say I tried not to worry about it, but the
Crack-ping-ping!
of him shooting at me got on my nerves some while I figured on what I wanted to carry up the steps with me: I wanted the shotgun and the gas can and my Colt .38 in my hand or where I could get it. I’d need to grab the handrail going up those ice-covered steps and hang onto it hard, and I wanted to hold the money bag in front of me, so I’d got to have at least three hands did I want to do this thing right. And then there was the problem with my gloves. I’d sure need them to hang onto that metal stair-rail, but the problem with gloves was that any glove good enough to keep my hands warm was also too thick to get my finger inside the trigger guard of that Colt. So if I had to keep my hands warm and carry the money bag for a shield and still shoot anybody very much…
I suddenly realized I was standing around there in the snow, just thinking. Thinking too much, too long. And too slow. Checked my watch again, and near as I could see I’d just used up another five minutes.
Well damn and double-damn. I reached under my coat, got the .38 out of my flap holster and stuffed it up my right-hand sleeve. Hell of a lot easier to shake it down out of my sleeve than try to dig under my coat and get into my holster for it. Then I cut me some rope and used it to loop the gas can over one shoulder. Cut more rope and looped the shotgun over the other shoulder. That left me a hand to hold the money bag and a hand to grab onto whatever there was to grab onto while I went up the steps.
Crack
-
ping-ping-piinnggg!
Time to start climbing.
Three steps up my feet went out from under me on the icy step and I fell flat on my face. I pulled myself up under the weight of the gas can and the shotgun and the money bag and took the steps slower, trying to keep my body centered over my feet while I climbed, trying to look where I was stepping and look out for something coming down from above all at the same time.
I made the first landing, nice, wide and open, and I almost slipped clean off it getting to the next flight of steps.
Funny what I thought of then: When I was a kid I used to dream I could fly, and in my dreams it really felt like I was sailing around the skies, with nothing under my kicking legs, nothing to hold onto, and everything spinning around me as I just scudded off every which way there was. That came back to me then; that’s almost how it felt climbing those steps, with the snow blowing around me like a crazy-spinning tide, and my feet sliding all over, and everything I tried to hang onto covered with slippery ice.
Look up. Look down. Hold the money bag up. Climb. Slip. Get up and climb again. Underneath me it was like those steps would shift and twist and jerk sidewise on their own, but I knew it was just the wind and the ice. Had to be. They couldn’t really be rolling under my feet like I was walking through a fun-house—could they? I felt myself getting dizzy and closed my eyes to shut out the snow swirling around me like sudsy water running down a drain.
Sudsy water. Down the drain.
I could almost see the bubbles, white and round and sparkle-shiny as they swirled around and down and around and down and around and down.
Damn.
I made myself open my eyes again. Just in time for
CRACK
-
ping-PING!
I swear I felt metal fly past my ear, and one thing I’ll say: it woke me up some, it did. I set down the bag, pushed the handgun out my sleeve, aimed between the steps, and squeezing best I could with my gloves still on, put a shot up overhead. Didn’t hit anything. Didn’t look to, but it sure shut up that noisy neighbor upstairs.
I jammed the handgun back up my sleeve. Time to get going again. How high up was I? I’d lost track of steps, landings and what-else, and when I looked down it made me too dizzy to count.
So nothing for it but to climb up some more steps. Like there was nothing in the world anymore but steps to climb. Hold on tight, try not to think about it when my foot slipped close to the open side of the stairs and my weight started to shift out into thin air—I pulled back and kept climbing.
Two more flights up I made the mistake of looking down. The sight of all that snowy open underneath got me sick to my stomach. I felt the dry-heaves start, and I fought them back.
No time to get sick right now; save it for later, and vomit when you can sit back and enjoy it
.
The steps were getting narrower, the landings smaller, the turns tighter as I squeezed around them, holding that moneybag up where I figured it to do me some good. The guy upstairs took another shot but I didn’t hear it even hit nothing, so he was likely getting bothered-up some. I sure hoped so. I looked overhead and saw I only had maybe two more flights to go, and just then the trapdoor slammed shut, so I guess he decided to quit shooting and just fort up in the cab there.
Which made the next part of my job easier. I got up those last two flights quick as I could—which wasn’t real quick at all—set the gas can on the step under the trapdoor and unslung the shotgun from behind me. Took off the glove from my shooting hand. Then one last time I checked my watch.
December 20, 1951
2:12 PM
Officer Drapp
I was too late.
It hit my cold-numbed brain like a snowball in my face. I’d used up all my time and more getting up this damn stairway to hell, and even could I shoot this bastard now and get on with it, well, it’d be too late; by the time I got back down to her, that ranger-lady, she’d be froze to death or close enough to make no difference.
I felt myself going into that mad-crazy feeling, like I had when I’d seen her get shot: all wrenched up inside me, and maybe I was screwy from the cold, but I swear I could feel my fingers around the neck of that guy I’d never even seen, the man on the other side of the floor over my head.
I turned it off.
Just turned it off. Made myself stop and breathe and get rid of all that hot hate. Was I going to do this—and that was a long ways from a sure thing—I better stay cool at it. Keep my feelings out of this, sell him on the notion of coming out where I could shoot him easy, then kill him fast and efficient. And maybe dance on his grave some.
I looked at the gas can set there on the top step and called out, “Howdy up there.”
No answer.
“I’m Officer Drapp, Willisburg Police. We ain’t been introduced, but I’d guess you to be Captain Scranton.”
No answer.
I went on, “Well Captain, I’d sure like for you to open that trapdoor—just so you do it slow, real slow—and toss out that rifle and your sidearm. Then ease yourself down out of there with your hands out where I can see ’em.”
Still no answer. Maybe it was time for some of that sharp police-method questioning.
“So whatcha doing for Christmas this year?” I asked. “You got any big plans or just a bunch of parties?”
That finally got me an answer.
“Why’nch y’all come up and get me, copper!”
Come up and get me, copper
?
“You need to get out to the movies more,” I said. “Nobody talks like that these days.”
“Ah said come on up in hyah.” The voice had that smooth, Deep South honey-sweet ring to it, that way of talk that sounds real down-homey and inviting sometimes. But right now it was hard, raspy, and just a little bit the other side of plain crazy. “Or mebbe you ain’t got the guts, yah yeller sumbitch!”
I guess he was trying to get me mad again, maybe as mad as he was. Well, I knew better than that.