The Ice at the Bottom of the World by Mark Richard Page B

or nine holes here, any one could have been the only one Bill needed. When I say what I say about him doing it, in my mind and in what I write down he did do it, whether this suffering man pulled the trigger or not. Then, sounding like his raised voice would waken Bill, he said to Powell, Son, this is a suicide under what you yourself said were family circumstances. You didn’t call the sheriff, you called me. What does that tell you to yourself?
    Powell looked down at the pistol he was still holding.
    Doc sat down hard on the bed, shifting Bill almost over the edge before Doc pushed him back onto the pillows. Bill did this, said Doc. Call Claudia so she can get a head start home and then call the sheriff. I’ll go down and see to Miss Louise. Leaving the room, Doc pulled the bookmark from the pages of the bedside paperbackthriller, losing Bill Doodlum’s place in it forever.
    Powell called Claudia, already overdue down from art college for the holidays. Powell called the number three times to make sure it was the right one, and each time before the leave-a-message tone he heard over and over only the trumpeting call of elephants. The Mary Beth Hudgins Doodlum Walker Mackenzie now bouncing gene of notions had struck Claudia Doodlum too, her notions carrying her through a room of men in a way that made them shift with their shirt collars suddenly too tight and an itch to flare nostrils in a scent of some sort, irritating a nervous urge to either murder or make love, and in Claudia’s case maybe both. When Powell first met her at a roadside bar, in his That Man days, he looked from Claudia to Lisa Lee back to Claudia again, instantly thinking, Jesus God, I got the wrong one, until he began to see how her clothes barely contained her, like her lips could barely contain her rippling tongue as she talked in lower and lower growls about anything slick, fast, or hard, Powell recognizing the exciting little lethal dangers in Lisa Lee he loved fullblown and free of rein in Claudia, out of control, Claudia, in Powell’s That Man days, barging in on him and Lisa Lee on the couch into it as far as shirtless, Claudia begging wildly, Strip me naked and tie me up, strip me naked and tie me up and make me watch something
horrible!
and Powell and Lisa Lee, complying, strappingher into a kitchen chair, sitting her in front of the television, switching it to “History of the Harmonica Part 4 of 6” on Public Broadcast. Even then Claudia moaned and struggled with her bonds, complaining when they would come loose. Powell left a message to come home after the final elephant blast, hanging up, remembering suddenly an old hurt in Lisa Lee’s voice saying one time Claudia had always been Bill Doodlum’s favorite.
    In the den, Doc had Louise Doodlum in a headlock on the couch and Lisa Lee was turning his bag out on its side, digging under Doc’s directions. Louise had suddenly begun to pull everything out of the den closet and was flinging it across the room, some of Bill’s books, a Panama have a box of family photographs. Louise took down a balsa-wood clipper model Bill had started and never finished and hammered her heel through it until the hull was flattened, crying, Lisa Lee letting her until Doc said, Enough is enough, Louise, and opened his bag for a shot. This isn’t exactly what I had in mind but it will do, Doc said, slipping the needle into Louise Doodlum’s arm that began to relax and turn fleshy again. This will make you tell us all your secrets, Doc said, noticing his watch and making a motion for Lisa Lee to turn on the color television in the corner. Yes, Louise, said Doc, straightening her legs on the sofa, you’ll be telling us everything you know, every little Doodlum-hearted secret. A green and red smear in themiddle of the television screen opened like a flower into a Christmas show winding up in song. Powell and Lisa Lee gathered up the closet-thrown things and settled Louise Doodlum in on the sofa with blankets and