Shadow took the coffee with both hands. On the side of the mug was a picture of a mosquito and the message, GIVE BLOOD—VISIT WISCONSIN!!
“Thanks,” he said.
“It’s what friends are for,” said Hinzelmann. “One day, you can save my life. For now, forget about it.”
Shadow sipped the coffee. “I thought I was dead.”
“You were lucky. I was up on the bridge—I’d pretty much figured that today was going to be the big day, you get a feel for it, when you get to my age—so I was up there with my old pocket watch, and I saw you heading out onto the lake. I shouted, but I sure as heck don’t think you coulda heard me. I saw the car go down, and I saw you go down with it, and I thought I’d lost you, so I went out onto the ice. Gave me the heebie-jeebies. You must have been under the water for the best part of two minutes. Then I saw your hand come up through the place where the car went down—it was like seeing a ghost, seeing you there ...” He trailed off. “We were both damn lucky that the ice took our weight as I dragged you back to the shore.”
Shadow nodded.
“You did a good thing,” he told Hinzelmann, and the old man beamed all over his goblin face.
Somewhere in the house, Shadow heard a door close. He sipped at his coffee. Now that he was able to think clearly, he was starting to ask himself questions.
He wondered how an old man, a man half his height and perhaps a third his weight, had been able to drag him, unconscious, across the ice, or get him up the bank to a car. He wondered how Hinzelmann had gotten Shadow into the house and the bathtub.
Hinzelmann walked over to the fire, picked up the tongs and placed a thin log, carefully, onto the blazing fire.
“Do you want to know what I was doing out on the ice?”
Hinzelmann shrugged. “None of my business,”
“You know what I don’t understand ...” said Shadow. He hesitated, putting his thoughts in order. “I don’t understand why you saved my life.”
“Well,” said Hinzelmann, “the way I was brought up, if you see another fellow in trouble—”
“No,” said Shadow. “That’s not what I mean. I mean, you killed all those kids. Every winter. I was the only one to have figured it out. You must have seen me open the trunk. Why didn’t you just let me drown?”
Hinzelmann tipped his head on one side. He scratched his nose, thoughtfully, rocked back and forth as if he were thinking. “Well,” he said. “That’s a good question. I guess it’s because I owed a certain party a debt. And I’m good for my debts.”
“Wednesday?”
“That’s the fellow.”
“There was a reason he hid me in Lakeside, wasn’t there? There was a reason nobody should have been able to find me here.”
Hinzelmann said nothing. He unhooked a heavy black poker from its place on the wall, and he prpdded at the fire with it, sending up a cloud of orange sparks and smoke. “This is my home,” he said, petulantly. “It’s a good town.”
Shadow finished his coffee. He put the cup down on the floor. The effort was exhausting. “How long have you been here?”
“Long enough.”
“And you made the lake?”
Hinzelmann peered at him, surprised. “Yes,” he said. “I made the lake. They were calling it a lake when I got here, but it weren’t nothing more than a spring and a mill pond and a creek.” He paused. “I figured that this country is hell on my kind of folk. It eats us. I didn’t want to be eaten. So I made a deal. I gave them a lake, and I gave them prosperity ...”
“And all it cost them was one child every winter.”
“Good kids,” said Hinzelmann, shaking his old head, slowly. “They were all good kids. I’d only pick ones I liked. Except for Charlie Nelligan. He was a bad seed, that one. He was, what, 1924? 1925? Yeah. That was the deal.”
“The people of the town,” said Shadow. “Mabel. Marguerite. Chad Mulligan. Do they knowT
Hinzelmann said nothing. He pulled the poker from the fire: the first six inches at the tip glowed a dull orange. Shadow knew that the handle of the poker must be too hot to hold, but it did not seem to bother Hinzelmann, and he prodded the fire again. He put the poker back into the fire, tip first, and left it there. Then he said, “They know that they live in a good place. While every other town and city in this county, heck, in this part of the state, is crumbling into nothing. They know that.”
“And that’s your doing?”
“This town,” said Hinzelmann. “I care for it. Nothing happens here that I don’t want to happen. You understand that? Nobody comes here that I don’t want to come here. That was why your father sent you here. He didn’t want you out there in the world, attracting attention. That’s all.”
“And you betrayed him.”
“I did no such thing. He was a crook. But I always pay my debts.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Shadow.