“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.”
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“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.
