Who's Buried In The Ice? by T.R.Hart

"You'll never catch me Mike!", Eddie yelled as he flew down the slope.

"Don't want to...you're a maniac. See you at the bar!" Mike laughed trying to keep his skis from sliding all over the snow wet by the blinding Sun. "What a beautiful day", he thought, but within an instant all of that would change.

Within seconds of a loud rumble like he had never heard, Mike was inundated in a tidal wave of snow. He gasped, struggled to breathe, and frantically clawed his way through the snow. He managed to make a hole wide enough to stick his face through and cried out: "Eddie!"

Though it seemed like an eternity, Eddie was digging his friend out within minutes and with a great heave pulled Mike out of his wintery grave. "I owe you buddy...don't know how to repay you.", Mike gasped.

"You owe me a beer...can't take my eyes offa' you for a moment, can I?"

"Just think Ed, would have been real stupid to make it outta Korea to buy it on a ski trip." The men started to laugh quietly as they realized how lucky they were. Not far from a small group of pine trees, Mike noticed something sticking out from the snow.

"Eddie there's a hand sticking out of the snow. He might still be alive!"

"Poor Bastard!, Eddie replied. His hand is frozen stiff."

"He couldn't have just froze like that. He's been here a while. We better get the rescue team up here." The two men walked down the mountain and within a few hours a body of a bearded man more than six feet tall was retrieved and taken to the medical examiner.

It wasn't long before the whole town was buzzing with speculation about the man found frozen in the snow. There hadn't been any reports of a missing person for more than twenty years. Could it be "Big Bill Perez?" Bill was a local lumberjack who lived in the area. No one knew what happened to him since a lot of folks moved from place to place during the Great Depression looking for work, but he left his cabin just like he was going to come back at any time.

" Bill was an ornery brute", said the skinny old man smoking the corn cob pipe. "Wouldn't be surprised if somebody killed him!"

"Tough sonofabitch, but if you din't bother him, he din't bother you" replied the fat man with the hint of red in his white beard. " I remember the day some young punk was giving Ol' Bill the dickens. Got the hell beat outta him!"

The skinny man with the pipe remembered that the "sneaky rat" snuck up behind Bill and stuck a knife in his side. "Nearly killed Bill, but he wouldn't go to the hospital...he was an ornery brute."

Deputy Collins burst into the room at the American Legion post where all the townspeople crowded in to get the latest news.

"You folks ain't gonna' believe this!" he panted. "That man in the ice ain't Bill Perez. Hell, it ain't even a man. It's a female!"

"If that ain't a man, it's gotta be just about the ugliest woman I ever seen", cried Eddie. He got a big laugh out of that remark, but within a minute people were ooh-ing and ah-ing and speculating about the identity of the person in the ice.

A small, but dignified man walked into the center of the room and waved his hand into the air signaling to the crowd to quiet down...It was Doc Strickland, the medical examiner.

"It's true... I examined the body myself. It's Bill, or to be more truthful, Becky Perez. The scar that I stitched up that night he got stabbed was still there."

"You see...Bill, or Rebecca Perez, was born in 1890 to an invalid mother and a bum of a father. The only thing he gave her was his name before he left them to fend for themselves. Becky was born with a condition which caused her to produce androgens, a hormone that produced symptoms like excessive facial hair, and other masculine characteristics. "Bill" developed her muscular physique due to the hard life she lived in the backwoods. When her mother died she was all alone. That's when she assumed the identity of "Big Bill" the lumberjack. She managed to keep it a secret until that punk kid found out who she really was. Seems that "Bill" worked for a while in a freak show as a bearded lady performing feats of strength and chopping wood."

"Dang", said the old weasel faced woman in the dirty dress. "I sorta feel bad for all the things I said 'bout him, I mean, her."

"Well, that's it...now you all know why Bill didn't want to go to the hospital. It took a lot for me to convince him to let me treat the wound. That's the only time I think Bill ever cried. She begged me to keep her secret...and I did...for twenty odd years."