Absolute Zero pb-3, page 11
part #3 of Phil Broker Series
Eyes shut, Sommer’s face jutted under a clear plastic oxygen mask like carved Ivory Soap.
Broker’s lower lip went a little stiff as he recalled the tramp of ritual. Bagpipes at cop funerals. Taps sounding over rows of empty paratroop boots. He had wanted to thank Hank Sommer for saving his life.
But he was just the hired help so he kept his place amid the tragic procession. Sommer’s Ford Expedition was still at the lodge. The keys were hanging on a peg by the fireplace. All three clients had clothes and gear strewn from Ely to Fraser Lake. Clearly the departing friends and family were too preoccupied to collect belongings. He had Milt’s card.
The cortege escorted Sommer to the helicopter medics who loaded the gurney into the chopper. Mrs. Sommer, Allen, and Milt embraced awkwardly. Garf smiled directly into the sun.
Then Garf escorted all three of them to a waiting cab and they drove away. Broker squinted into the bright sky, and the wind sock on the hospital roof hung limp, and the only danger nature posed today was the flash of mild snow blindness.
The helicopter lifted off and in its place, on the far side of the helipad, Amy Skoda stood at attention, her hands balled loosely at her sides. She watched the helicopter, and Broker watched her until the engine faded and the plane itself receded into a dot in the south-eastern sky. Then Amy turned away and came across the parking lot.
Broker coughed three times. Then he sneezed. The sneeze blew the sharply stacked sun-and-shade design of the brilliant day into runny watercolors. Dizzy, he put his hand out and felt Amy’s firm grip steady him.
“Must be hungover,” he mumbled.
She rested a cool hand on his forehead. “I don’t think so. You went swimming in ice water in a blizzard. You fried your resistance paddling out. You’ve caught a cold.”
Chapter Fourteen
It’s all shadows now.
Sinking. Velvet suffocation.
Darkness fills in like ink. Shadows twist. Are they sparks or are they bubbles? Do they rise or do they burst? Don’t know. Ego sorts through the debris and finds the drawers of memory. Ego rearranges and sifts. Robust memory responds. There was icy water, then pain. Now bright lights. Halos of concerned faces hover. Ego assumes personality. Personality discovers some of its baggage.
Hurt. Dying. Dead.
But stuff still moves inside his head. Drowned in the dark, he grows gills and discovers he can breathe the black. Somewhere above, on the surface, murky storms of human weather barge around; garbled people in white coats who move, poke, talk, shine lights.
Better to avoid It. Them. Up there’s where the pain lives. Better to roll over and dive and meander along the bands of shadow where the lacy patterns of light sway like kelp.
Enchantment is not out of the question.
Everything else sinks but life is a stubborn bubble that persists in rising to the glow that is brighter and brighter and like-hey-
See. .
* * *
A kind of seeing. Dream-seeing. A shadow man and shadow woman in fuzzy outline, filled with black. They stand, facing each other, and the man slouches forward heavily. He holds one palm up and with the finger of his other hand, he strikes the palm, sadly counting items off a list.
The woman bows her head and pulls a hand through her hair. Her other hand presses into her chest over her heart.
Still not clear, like peering through screens, veils, mist. Just shapes. Tense, worried shapes. And some precocious part of his mind is piping up that this is how Homer described shades in hell.
A bell rings and they walk away. Now there’s nothing to look at but a shadow couch, a fireplace to the left, banks of windows, and beyond the windows a spidery lacework of barren branches under a slab of veined marble sky. Hello?
The woman returns and stands before the windows. She raises scissors and she could be a figure from Sophocles the way she methodically saws at her long dark hair. Clumps fall to the floor and on her shoulders until all she has left is a plucky cap the color of wine. With a broom, she sweeps the shorn hair into a dustpan. Then she is gone.
His eyes can move but they steer out of control; they roll, tipsy, and hit the curb of his vision and rotate back. His shoulders heave, the muscles of his neck jerk. He hits restraints. Straps maybe. Nothing else moves.
Nothing moves.
Paralyzed?
. .
Maybe just broken. Say broken.
Okay. Fix broken later.
. .
No color. Everything grainy, gray on gray-ashes after fire. The air itself is a mist of blowing soot. Hell again, a dream without sound. At the bottom of the dream two bare feet stick out from a sheet. They sprawl on the edge of a mattress covered with a crinkly cover. The kind of rubbery thing that goes on a baby bed to protect it from getting wet. The feet aren’t attached. They are just more shadow furniture, like the couch.
Feet. Not feet.
Here. Not here.
The situation calls for discipline. A point of origin.
Ego. I.
Me.
Hank.
. .
From the angle of his vision he cannot find the rest of himself.
He tries real hard. He can feel his chest rise and fall as his lungs fill and empty, and he can hear the drumbeat of his heart. He can see arms, inert; just lying there. He sees the coral snake tattoo on his wrist from that night in Columbus, Georgia, after he got his jump wings.
So. You are stuck.
Just asleep. Just asleep. Stay calm.
Wake up. Wake Up. WAKE UP!
. .
The bubbles lied. No up, no light. Still stuck in between. Not awake, not asleep. Just entombed here inside this living suit of a body.
And he senses a wry flutter behind his eyes. A. .
Smile. Because isn’t everyone trapped inside themselves?
Okay, be serious.
Stuff is connecting up. His mind scurries for a fix. You cannot move today. One day at a time.
But his imagination and intelligence are running more in step now-more like him-and they are running scared because they’ve already made the leap. What has no body and can see? Five-letter word starts with G.
No longer merely a camera/recorder, the voice inside is his voice now and can still laugh at a joke.
Hey man, it’s like you’re dead.
And then. What if you are dead?
How would you know? You’ve never been dead before.
C’mon cut the Buddhist shit, this is serious.
What’s that? Tunnels of sound. Drains unclogging. Whoosh.
“Jesus.”
Jesus. Someone said “Jesus.” An echo like. .
Wait a minute here.
Oh, shit, oh, shit, what if Aunt Louise is right and Jesus is waiting at the end of the long, dark tunnel to pull me over and stick the God flashlight in my face and check the expiration on my spiritual ID-not the historical Jesus who was some right-on, squat, big-nosed, splay-toed, swarthy rabbi who was bucking the system. No, it’s the Anglo-Saxon, blue-eyed Baptist Methodist Catholic Lutheran Episcopalian Presbyterian Jesus, the only man in ’50’s America allowed to have long hair, and Eisenhower is God and heaven is really a white-church picnic in Mississippi.
“So when they nailed Jesus to the cross. .”
Oh, shit, oh, God. Somebody was talking out there, not in here. No bullshit. Shadows talking out in shadow land. Two shadows talking close.
“No. No. Take my word, it just wouldn’t work that way.”
“But that’s how they show it in this painting. And this book costs. . look at this, a hundred and forty-five bucks.”
“That painting’s from some religious Flemish fanatic’s imagination three hundred years ago. Absolutely incorrect. It would never happen. Spikes through the palm would not support the weight of the human body. They’d tear right out.”
“Hmmmmm,” shadow number two said. “You’re saying they just made it up.”
“I don’t know about that. Crucifixion was practiced by the Romans as a form of state execution. And the Romans were, above all else, engineers. They were always very practical in their planning.”
“So how would they have nailed him up, you know, live?”
“Live?”
“Like, in real life.”
Real life. Real life. Bodies that move. Hey. I’m here. I’m-listening.
“Probably they just used rope and strung them up. It would have been more efficient and cheaper. What killed them was exposure, starvation, and the hanging, the cramping of the shoulder and chest muscles disabled the lungs until the condemned person slowly asphyxiates.”
“Like they couldn’t breathe anymore.”
I can breathe. I can breathe.
“That’s right.”
“But if they did nail them up what would be the ideal way to do it? Give me your best-case scenario.”
“There’s an anatomy book on the reference shelf over there. Go get it.”
Get it, get it. I’m here. Can’t really see them yet. Like behind Venetian blinds. Come out, come out.
“Okay, here are the bones of the forearm and hand. The logical place to pin the arm is through a foramen.”
“Forearm, right.”
“For-a-men.”
“Say what?”
“A natural opening in the body. And on Hank, that would be here, see?”
Oh, God. Touching. Touching me.
“At the terminus of the radius and ulna bones. Above the wrist. See this opening in the tendon? Called the interossesous membrane.”
“You mean, ah, here?”
I can feel that! I can feel that. They’re touching my left wrist. Poking it. I can feel it and I can breathe and I can hear.
“Right here, there’s a natural opening between the bones.”
“Just give it the old kabosh right there and nobody’s going anywhere, right?”
“Not unless they tear through a lot of nerves and soft tissue, and especially not if the nail has a head on it.”
. .
Gone. They’re gone. Come back.
I’m here.
Me, Hank.
Come back.
Chapter Fifteen
“I don’t suppose anybody brought in the other canoe, did they? I’d hate for it to sit out there all winter. Freeze-up will probably stove it in.” Uncle Billie was calling long distance from Arizona golf heaven and when Broker didn’t respond, Billie continued on, “Well, I guess not. Don’t worry about it. I’ll write it off. And the tents. And all the gear. .”
Several seconds ticked by during which Broker did not volunteer to go back into the canoe area and round up Billie’s lost items. Billie cleared his throat and resumed talking. “Just goes to show you. Hell, kiddo, we all figured it’d do you good to get out in the woods. Get some fresh air, work out your heebie-jeebies.”
“Yeah, yeah, go cut a rug,” Broker shot back in Billie’s Kilroy lingo. “Let me talk to Mom.”
Irene Broker came on the line. “How are you doing with all this?”
“I got a cold,” he said, avoiding the question.
“Heat up some cider, lemon, and vinegar.”
“I know, I know; listen, Mom-have you, ah, heard anything? I know she’s got the number out there.”
“No calls.” He waited while his mother searched for the right words. “Maybe she’s waiting for you to call her. You have numbers for her over there.”
“Right. How’s Dad?”
“He’s taking a nap, should I get him up?”
“No, just say hello; look, someone’s here, I gotta go.”
“Take care.”
He placed the phone back in its cradle. No one was here at the moment, but Amy was on her way, bringing supplies to the shut-in. He just didn’t want to talk. Being sick mocked and trivialized him, and his darkest thoughts all ended in a comic sneeze.
He stared up at the stuffed moose head over Uncle Billie’s fireplace. Damn thing was too big for the main room and it swooped out with horns like the wingspread of a Stone Age bat. The glass eyes followed him.
And he kept seeing Jolene Sommer being led off by Allen Falken and that Earl character. He wondered how she was doing with all this.
It was four days later. The weather had turned dismal and Broker’s cold exaggerated all his doubts. Between Kleenexes, he scourged himself with shoulds: Should have been more responsible on the trip. Never should have been caught in open water by the weather like that.
Never should have unloaded on that slob in The Saloon.
More specifically, he never should have thumped the guy in front of Amy Skoda, who now worried that he was extra-deeply troubled, which added a mighty tweak to her caretaking instincts and brought them up to full erect. So she dropped in every day to check on him, to bring groceries, provide company, and offer her strong but also very soft and warm shoulder to buoy him up. Taking some vacation time from work in the aftermath of the “event,” she reminded him that she was just a call away. .
He made camp in the lodge’s main room with the moose. He’d folded out the sleeper couch in front of the fieldstone hearth and surrounded himself with tissues, tea, and lemon, cough drops and VapoRub. Days unwashed, his hair was a greasy thicket. He lived in baggy long johns and Uncle Billie’s ancient blue wool robe.
He turned away from the telephone, picked up the TV remote, and clicked to CNN on satellite feed. He watched the news until they showed the gritty color images of corpses in a weedy ditch for the tenth time today. Kosovo: UN monitors expelled, refugees running to the mountains, winter coming on. He averted his eyes from the image of a dead child.
He tapped off the remote, went back to the phone, and punched in his voice mail at home. No new messages.
He swore out loud, which caused him to have a wracking coughing fit. When she’d heard his cough, Amy worried about secondary infections and had mentioned pneumonia. She wanted him to go in and have it checked.
Pneumonia was for infirm old people.
He drew the line at pneumonia and antibiotics.
Onward.
He went to the kitchen where two large kettles simmered on the ancient Wolf stove, and turned the heat up under the smaller one. When the loose sage and eucalyptus in it bubbled, he draped a towel over his head tent-fashion and inhaled the steam. He was trying to think positive when he heard a car.
He crossed to the windows and saw Amy’s green Subaru Forester pull up the drive and park. Her choice of vehicle revealed a lot. Knowing her a little better now, he gathered she was a serious student of Consumer Reports. Impulse-buying was not in her nature. She did her research, budgeted her priorities, and then moved decisively to get what she wanted.
And if Consumer Reports posted an index for independent, thirty-something women she would rate first in her class in reliability and crash-worthiness.
And persistence.
Hatless, wearing a tidy blue parka with gray sleeves, she swirled in from the cold with her freckles and her hair bright as Celtic metalwork. She carried a shopping bag in her arms and a saddlebag purse slung over her shoulder.
“How are you feeling today?” she asked, heading for the kitchen.
Broker coughed hello.
“I think you should go in and have that checked,” she said over her shoulder.
“In all due respect, I won’t be going near a hospital for quite a while, thank you.”
“Fine.” She dumped the bag on the kitchen counter.
“You get it all?” he asked, hobbling after her.
“I bought all the hippie cures they had in the co-op.”
“Think you know everything, don’t you?”
“I know some of this stuff has merit as prevention but you’re full-blown. I know a serious lung inflammation when I hear one.”
Grumbling, Broker unloaded the bag: Vita-C, cider, vinegar, oranges, limes, lemons, echinacea, goldenseal, and Siberian ginseng. Cough drops and two boxes of Popsicles. He put the Popsicles in the freezer.
She went to the stove, avoided the cloud of sage, and sniffed the other pot, picked up a hot pad and lifted the cover. “What’s cooking?”
“I found some venison in the freezer so I’m making stew.”
She covered the pot and took off her jacket and hung it on a kitchen chair. Her sweater and jeans were practical and lived-in. He wondered if she ever wore a dress. Probably not. She crossed her arms, looked around at the cozy stocked shelves, the pots and pans dangling on a steel butcher’s rail, and said, “Kitchens.”
“What?” Her tone of voice put him on guard.
“My dad always said you have the best talks in the kitchen.”
“What?” he repeated.
“Your Uncle Billie and my dad are hunting buddies, you know.”
“Uh-huh,” Broker said.
“Well, they talk.” She paused. “About you.”
“Jesus,” Broker grinned awkwardly.
“Well, it doesn’t hurt to talk.”
Broker scrubbed his knuckles in his frazzled hair. “Like about my life, up to and including the present train wreck with Sommer?”
Amy shrugged her shoulders agreeably.
“And talking about it is going to make it better?” Broker nodded his head. “Usually when women say that, it means they’ll feel better if they get you to talk. Okay, let’s talk.”
“Fine. Tell me about your marriage,” Amy said.
“That’s easy. My wife has this Joan of Arc complex. She intends to be a general. Does anybody ask what it’s like to be the general’s husband, home taking care of the kid? Or at teas with the officer’s wives?”
“Women did it for years, why can’t you? Where are you at with being separated from your daughter?”
“I’ve been with my daughter every day for two years. She’s probably due for some full estrogen immersion.”
“Aren’t we light and breezy today, and so adept at small talk,” Amy said.
