Free Spiked by Mark Arsenault Page A

of ice had broken off under his weight and had dipped below the water. It bobbed back to the surface like a raft, with Eddie on board.
    He recognized the walls of a mill canal on either side of him. A spiked wrought-iron fence ran along the top of the wall. Parts of the Worthen Canal had such a fence, he recalled. That canal flowed through low-income housing along the western edge of the Acre, into an industrial area, and then under the street where the police had found Danny.
    On the ice, a few inches from Eddie’s face, a rat was posed on the spot it had died. Its greasy gray hair looked brittle, like glass. Its pink tail snaked out under a coating of ice. The rat had stopped here long enough for its tail to become frozen in place. Why would it stop? Maybe for a last meal before a death struggle against its own tail. How long did it suffer?
    Eddie was still.
    A harsh whisper from above said, “If you tried all day, could you
be
any more stupid? It’s floating away on the goddam ice.”
    â€œMust you use the name of our Lord that way?” said another voice.
    â€œShut up. Get a rock.”
    Eddie thought about General VonKatz. The cat could drink from the drip in the tub. And he could live hungry for a week, couldn’t he? Longer, maybe. Somebody would check the house by then. Melissa would remember him. Eddie thought about the General’s last ear infection. He wouldn’t take his pills. Eddie had crushed them into some gravy and added catnip to hide the medicine smell. Would anybody think of that?
    Something splashed beside his head.
    Eddie hadn’t the strength to swim. And even if he did, the water was too cold, the walls of the canal too sheer. To slip off the ice would be to drown. He tried to fuse himself to the ice with his will. Shivers shook blood from Eddie’s head. The red droplets ran like bugs on the wet ice.
    There was a bigger splash. The ice wobbled. An archway of rough stone appeared above him.
    â€œYou missed again, you idiot,” said a voice. “Now it’s floating under the bridge.”
    â€œForget it,” the other voice answered. “It’ll sink before it comes out the other side.”
    Two car doors slammed and an engine purred off.
    Eddie clung to the ice a while. It seemed a long time.
    He thought about the Red Sox. If they could just add one decent starting pitcher this off-season, and one infielder who could run. He thought about Nowlin, floating face down in this canal with no ice under him. He thought about Bruno, his barber, dialing Eddie because the dive team was scrambling. Eddie’s mind heard his phone ringing with the barber’s tip. But nobody would answer it.
    There was no more pain, not from his hip, nor the cold, not from the wounds that had bloodied his hands. Eddie was glad to be feeling better. His shivering went away. There was no sound beyond his own breath, so soft and calm, like a sleeping child without grown-up worries.
    He studied the rat. Its eyelids were open and the eyes frozen white.
    My eyes are brown
. He was glad to be feeling better.

Chapter 9
    â€œHey Gab! Help me—this one is alive. Get him up.”
    â€œGod, Leo, what a mess.”
    Hands pulled at Eddie. He saw two blurry faces.
    â€œPut the shawl over him.”
    â€œEew! Look at that rat.”
    The hands passed Eddie around. They stretched him into a cross—arms out to the side. His face flopped forward; the ground passed under his feet. Eddie’s shoes scuffed on the asphalt. The heads under his armpits wheezed and coughed as they carried him. Eddie smelled foul breath; these heads were rotting from the inside out. His shoes knocked against railroad tracks. The rails were polished like silver and they reflected the moonlight. The head under Eddie’s right arm yelled out, “Kent? Snake? Get over here.”
    â€œKent’s on the nod—he’s long gone,” called another voice. “Did you get the