Rook: Snowman (15 page)

The lock flicked open. Cautiously, he reached inside his briefcase, searching for yesterday’s homework. But he couldn’t feel any papers at all. He shook the briefcase, and then he tipped it out over the table to see that twenty essays on ‘The Ball Poem’ had been reduced to nothing but soft, freezing crystals. God knows how cold it must have been inside his briefcase for that to have happened. Two hundred below? Maybe more.

He sifted the crystals through his fingers. This was very frightening. He had already thought that the presence must have an acute sense of smell to be able to detect which water-fountain Jack had drunk from. But to be able to sniff out his scent from a single sheet of paper inside a locked briefcase, that was a sensitivity from which it would be almost impossible for Jack to escape.

No wonder Jack’s father had hung his home with Inuit talismans and given Jack an ivory medallion. They were the
only way to keep the presence from entering his home and finding him while he slept.

Jim showered and then came out and drank his coffee. He was so tired after his long night tramping the tundra that he needed a caffeine jolt. He was just about to leave for college when Mervyn rapped on the door.

“Jim! You must tell me what you thought about last night! Wasn’t I sensational?”

“You were great, Mervyn. No doubt about it. Roberta Flack should eat her heart out.”

“Well,
you
don’t sound very enthusiastic.”

“I do. I am. But I’ve got trouble at college and it’s overspilling into my private life.”

“You mean the luscious Karen Goudemark? Everything you said about her was true. She’s a peach. She’s a peach with strawberry topping and aerosol cream.”

“Thanks, Mervyn. But I think that I’ve scared her off.”

“What’s scary about you? You’re five-eight and your arms look like macaroni.”

“Thank you, I needed some extra confidence.”

“You need to be strong and forceful. That’s what a woman like Karen wants. So what if she’s a biologist? She’s still a woman. She’s not looking for deep or clever or cynical. She’s not looking for occult, either. Women don’t like occult. And you know what you’re like, always babbling on about spirits and werewolves and dead children talking to you by the candy counter in Ralph’s.”

“I have to go,” Jim told him. “Keep an eye on TT for me, will you? There’s something real strange about that cat.”

“Oh, TT and I understand each other. Don’t we, TT?”

TT had finished eating now and had jumped up onto the windowsill, where she sat staring northward, at nothing at all.

“See what I mean? Strange. I mean, what’s she looking at?”

Dr Friendly intercepted him as he hurried toward Special Class II. “James! James! A word, please!”

“I know. I’m late again. I dreamed I was on the Trans-Siberian Express with Mrs Friendly and I overslept.”

Dr Friendly ignored that quip. Instead, he said, in a highly confidential undertone, “I gather from Madeleine Ouster that she’s offered you an educational research position in Washington.”

Jim nodded, and spoke just as quietly in reply. “I said that I’d consider it.”

“Good. Because what I’d like you to do is, consider it.”

“I
am
considering it.”

“But consider it very seriously. In fact, consider it so seriously that you take it. It’s a great offer, by the sound of it. Once-in-a-lifetime. You’ll be able to teach William Faulkner and Herman Melville to dumb gum-chewing illiterate losers all over this great nation of ours, from sea to pollution-ridden sea.”

“And what will you do? Close down Special Class Two?”

“Oh, you bet. Not to mention Special Classes One and Three. And that Thursday-evening drama class for kids who have no natural acting ability whatsoever. It’s about time the resources that go into those classes went to the students who really deserve them. Who’s that black student who always dresses like a bee?”

“Tarquin Tree. Why? He’s extremely gifted when it comes to language.”

“Oh, really? He’s also extremely gifted when it comes to passing wind when he’s walking along the corridor right in front of me.”

“You mean he farted?”

“You could call it that, if you want to be Rabelaisian about it.”

“I’ll have him apologize.”

“No, thanks. He already did, in what-do-you-call-it, rap. ‘Sorry that my gas/ Caused such a fracas’. I can’t remember all of it, thank God.”

“See what I mean? Gifted.”

He was still talking to Dr Friendly when it seemed as a huge dark shadow passed over the college. It was like an eclipse of the sun, or a vast alien spaceship flying overhead. Outside the windows, the sun dimmed, and Jim experienced a distinct shiver of cold. Even Dr Friendly looked around and frowned.

“Did you feel that?” he asked. “It was like somebody walking over my grave.”

The temperature in the corridor dropped and dropped and continued to drop; and the day grew darker and darker. The noise from the classrooms suddenly abated, as students became aware of the gloom and the sudden cold. Jim heard shouting from outside the building someplace, and a strange cracking sound, really loud, as if somebody were breaking up timber.

“What the devil’s happening?” Dr Friendly exclaimed. “It’s an earthquake! Do you think it’s an earthquake? Here – we’d better go stand in a doorway!”

But Jim had seen the star pattern in the sky last night and he could guess what it was. “It isn’t an earthquake,” he told Dr Friendly. “Do you feel the ground moving? No. It’s something worse than an earthquake. Call nine one one and ask for everything – fire, paramedics and police.”

“Are you out of your mind? Call the emergency services here
again
? Dr Ehrlichman’s going to go apeshit!”

“Very beautifully put. Gifted. Now, please. Call them, and tell them it’s urgent.”

With that, he dropped his briefcase and ran off along the corridor. As he ran, he almost collided with students coming out of their classrooms, clapping their hands together and complaining about the cold.

“Mr Rook!” called out Laura Killmeyer. “What’s going on, Mr Rook?”

“Evacuate the class, Laura. All of you, get the hell out. And tell all the other classes to evacuate, too.”

“I don’t understand. What’s happening?”

“If my guess is right, the coldest snap in Southern California since the Ice Age. Now, go! As quick as you can!”

He ran on. As he reached the steps that led up to the double exit doors, he heard more shouting and somebody screaming. The cry was so agonized that he couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. Then he heard more cracking, much louder this time; and a deep, underlying crunching noise, like something very heavy being dragged over gravel. Pushing his way out on to the patio at the back of the Liberal Arts building, he saw an incredible sight.

The sky above the college was the bruised color of tarnished copper. Out of the sky a very fine shower of ice-particles was falling, so sharp that they prickled his face. The temperature must have been close to fifty degrees below, and everything was frozen – the flowering shrubs, the yuccas, the eucalyptus trees. The brick pathway was already covered with a nubbly coating of slippery ice and the windows in the science building were breaking as their frames contracted, which was causing the cracking, splintering noise.

The outdoor swimming pool was frozen over with rearing pillars of ice. Two students were caught in it – one was frozen up to his shoulders right in the middle, and he was screaming in agony. The other had been just about to lift
himself out of the pool and was caught by one ankle: he was Jack Hubbard. At least twenty other students were milling around, shouting and crying and calling out for help. They were wearing only bathing-costumes, and the abrupt drop in temperature must have given them a severe physical shock.

One of the boys was screaming, “There’s more of them under the ice! I can see them! They’re all trapped under the ice!”

Jim instantly turned around, stumbling on his unglued shoe-sole. He went back through the doors to the glass case where the fire-ax was kept. Smashing the glass with his elbow, he took out the ax and galloped back up the steps, yelling out, “Everybody go in and find your clothes! Do it now! Then evacuate the college!”

He saw Dennis Pease and Christopher L’Ouverture standing close by, and said, “Dennis! Christopher! Are you okay? I need help to get these guys out of here! Go to Clarence’s storeroom and bring whatever you can – pickaxes, shovels, anything. And get Clarence here too!”

With that, he jumped down on to the icy surface of the pool and started to make his way toward the student who was trapped up to his shoulders in the middle. Jack called out, “Help me, Mr Rook! I can’t move!” but Jim said, “You’ll have to wait a couple of minutes! This guy needs me more!”

He half-ran, half-slid to the student in the middle. The boy had stopped screaming now, and he was choking for breath. It was Waylon Price, his face blueish black from suffocation. In the same way that pack ice had crushed the ships of so many Arctic explorers, Waylon was being gradually compressed – his ribs breaking, his lungs constricted.

Waylon stared at Jim with bulging eyes. “
Others
,” he gasped. “Others, underneath. I felt them pull my feet.”

Jim frantically used the side of his hand to rub away the opaque ice particles from the surface of the pool. He bent his head downward, and shaded his eyes with his hand, and to his horror he could see at least four or five shadowy shapes struggling in the milky-colored water below. There must have been a narrow air-pocket directly beneath the ice, because they kept bobbing upward and pressing their desperate faces upward. He thought he saw Suzie Wintz down there – he recognized her new red gingham swimsuit – and Mandy Saintskill, too. In this temperature they wouldn’t last longer than a couple of minutes.

“Shut your eyes, Waylon,” Jim told him, and lifted the ax. His first blow did no more than chip off a thin triangular piece of ice. But he struck again, and again, and with each blow he became more and more angry at what had happened to his students. They were freezing, they were drowning, they were dying, and all that Dr Friendly would think was that they were dumb gum-chewing no-hopers and that the world was probably better off without them.

Jim gripped the ax in both hands and hacked at the ice in front of Waylon’s chest. It was even thicker than it looked from the surface, but at last he managed to break off a sizeable lump, and heave it out of the water, and then another. Then he was able to kick away bigger and bigger lumps with his feet.

More teachers had arrived now, and Clarence, too. They gathered round and lifted Waylon out of the water, while others knelt beside the broken hole in the ice and grasped the hands of the students who had been trapped underneath. One by one they brought them out of the freezing water, white with cold, their eyes as scarlet as zombies. They were helped or carried to the edge of the pool where blankets and stretchers were waiting for them. At the same time, Jim heard the sound of sirens. The paramedics were here again.

Clarence was breaking free the ice from Jack’s ankle. Jim was quickly making a head count of all of his students. They all seemed to be there, but where was that red gingham swimsuit?

“Is Suzie Wintz there?” he shouted. “She’s wearing a red swimsuit, checkered!”

“Not here!” Mr Davies shouted back. “Maybe they’ve taken her inside!”

Jim thought:
oh, no, not Suzie
and peered back into the hole in the ice. He couldn’t see anything at all but the gelid, chlorinated water. Maybe they had lifted her out, but he couldn’t remember seeing her. Jesus, what if she’s still down there, trapped under the ice, breathing from an air-pocket and waiting for somebody to rescue her?

Mr Davies was walking across the ice toward him. “I’ve sent one of the boys to see if they took her to the infirmary.”

“Too late,” said Jim. “We don’t have the time.”

“What?”

Without another word, Jim held his nose and jumped into the water. He knew it was cold, but he hadn’t been prepared to have all the air knocked out of his lungs. He gasped and struggled and floundered around, and at last he managed to kick his way up to the surface again. He spouted out water and took three deep breaths.

“Jim, come out of there!” yelled Mr Davies, reaching out his hand. “It’s too damn cold, you’ll be frozen to death!”

“Mr Rook, the firemen are coming!” said Clarence. “You don’t have to take such a risky chance!”

Jim took another deep breath, shook his head, and dived under the water again. He swam around in a circle, trying to catch a glimpse of red gingham through the freezing murk.
Through the water, he could hear the clonking sound of bubbles, and people walking on the ice above his head, and somebody trying to hack the sides of the hole to make it bigger. He hoped that he could remember where the hole was. Everything looked the same down here: a dim pearly world beneath a white, cave-like ceiling.

He began to realize that his lungs were aching. Not only that, his arms and legs were growing numb, and he was finding it more and more difficult to make them go through the motions of swimming. He knew that he would have to go up for more air, and that he wouldn’t have the strength to come back down again.

Just as he turned around, he suddenly bumped into something soft and pale and cold. He almost gasped in shock. It was Suzie Wintz, her blonde hair floating around her in a halo, her eyes wide open, staring at him through the water from only inches away.

He knew that he was risking his own life to try to get her back up to the surface. But people who drowned in very cold water had a chance, didn’t they, if the paramedics could get their hearts beating soon enough?

He seized her, and held her under his left arm, and struck for the surface. His head pounded and his back muscles ached and he couldn’t even feel his hands and his feet. He had forgotten where the hole in the ice was and he didn’t think that he was going to make it. But at least they wouldn’t be able to say that he hadn’t tried. That was the whole point, trying. And Dr Friendly would shed a tear at his funeral and secretly smile because that would the end of Special Class II.