Absolute Zero Read online

  The plows had left the parking lot iglooed with piles of snow. As they threaded toward Iker’s truck, Broker, feeling achy and fogged over, reached for a cigar.

  Amy laughed.

  “What?”

  “The eyebrows. And the cigar. You look like a cross between Sean Connery and Groucho Marx.”

  Broker grumbled, threw the cigar away, got in, started the truck, and drove into town through a convention of yellow county snowplows. All around, Ely’s residents wore Minnesota weather-cowboy grins and were chipping away at the drifts with shovels and snowblowers.

  A block from the hospital Amy touched his arm. “Better let me out here. It probably won’t look right, us walking in together.” As she got out of the truck they heard the whack of a helicopter on approach at the hospital helipad.

  The chopper had triple tail fins, which made it a BK 117 American Eurocopter; it was dark blue with white diagonal stripes and the letters smdc on the fuselage. It carried a pilot, a registered nurse, and a paramedic.

  It was the kind of expensive ride only real sick people take.

  Broker drove through the shadow of the Eurocopter and into the lot where the plows had created white cubbyholes with twelve-foot walls. He parked in one of them as the chopper landed on the other side of the white maze, and he got out of the truck and walked toward a knot of people standing on the hospital steps. Milt, wearing a borrowed sweat suit under his parka, his arm in a sling, with a barely civil smile on his face, stood like a man on a mission. He was listening to an officious-looking woman in a pants suit. She was talking but she was clearly on defense, arms crossed over the briefcase clasped to her chest.

  Nearer the door, in the shadows, Allen slumped against the brick wall in his blue parka and baggy loaner jeans and a sweatshirt. His hair drooped to complement his sunken eyes and the twenty-four-hour beard that darkened his face.

  The stunned woman standing next to Allen looked like all the mothers Broker’d ever seen who had lost their children at the state fair.

  Jolene Sommer, the trophy wife, was not the Barbie Doll Broker had expected. She was neither blond nor tanned. Her dark hair, olive skin, and restless green eyes flew Mediterranean flags against her white-trash name. In her bittersweet glance, he glimpsed something rare that had been shattered when she was a kid and cheaply put back together.

  She was in her early thirties, stood about five eight, and weighed maybe 120 pounds. The dark hair twisted in natural curls around her shoulders, and her cheekbones were wide under the broken emerald eyes, and her lips were full and her nose straight. She wore no obvious makeup to complement the quiet shades of gray and charcoal of her turtleneck sweater, slacks, tailored wool coat, and the soft leather of her boots. She had removed her gloves. A simple gold band marked her left hand.

  Broker instantly disliked the young guy wearing shades who stood next to her; he disliked the way they looked so good together; he disliked their palpable aura of familiarity.

  Further, he disliked beauty in a man; the torch-singer glow of a Jim Morrison or a young Warren Beatty who hid cocaine secrets behind aviator sunglasses. He disliked the casually tousled thick blond hair, every strand of which seemed individually groomed and placed. He disliked the insouciant hip-slouched promise of youth, the easy sex in either pocket. And he disliked the man’s flat-bellied athleticism, so innocent of aches and pains.

  Mostly, he disliked his own disapproval.

  This had to be the old boyfriend. Broker was painfully reminded of all the lean young army ranger officers who rubbed elbows and flirted with his wife half a world away.

  Ex-wife?

  Whatever.

  If Jolene was Bonnie, this had to be Clyde. Okay. He was a six-footer and python-smooth and strong. Looking more carefully, Broker found his flaw; this was a guy who couldn’t maintain his cool. It was the way he’d dressed for this occasion that gave him away. His black suit, black shirt, black tie, and the glasses looked like an early Halloween costume or the garb of a limo driver who’d booked a really good ride. And in contrast to the other people gathered here, he put out such a fulsome cloud of barely suppressed well-being, he almost sparked.

  Allen crooked his arm and summoned Broker with a nervous wag of his finger, shouting to be heard over the helicopter.

  “Broker, come over here, Hank’s wife wants to meet you. Jolene, this is Phil Broker, the guide. He paddled us out to get help.” Allen’s voice was controlled and grave and his eyes stayed focused at knee level.

  “Heads up, Jolene; this is the canoe guy,” echoed the young man in black as he took her elbow and steered her. Allen immediately acquired her other elbow and both of them attempted to squire her forward. It looked like a tug-of-war over the spoils, and Hank’s brain wasn’t even cold yet.

  Broker felt the heat go to his hands. He had no right to be indignant. But he was.

  He became more irate as they continued to hang on her arms as Jolene Sommer reached for his hand. She moved like a person really eager to meet new people, and her sweaty clasp was more a grab for something solid than a handshake. “I truly appreciate what you did,” she said, searching Broker’s face.

  Broker wanted to convey something but, rather than grope for words, he remained silent and Jolene continued to hold on to his hand. Looking too deeply, almost impolitely, into her eyes, Broker blinked and stepped back. She still had Allen holding one elbow, the smooth young guy clamped on the other.

  His impulse was to pull her away, take her aside.

  But he was the stranger here so he nodded, released the handshake, and stepped farther back. The guy in black then effortlessly moved in, squeezed Broker’s elbow, and took a long billfold from his inside jacket pocket. With one-handed flash he manipulated three $100 bills and tucked them into Broker’s hand. “For your trouble, fella; thanks again.”

  He’s dealt blackjack, thought Broker, who wanted to see his eyes.

  So, slam-bam-dismissed. Okay. But old radar started to track. While he studied what was wrong with this picture he remained low-key. He slipped the bills into his pocket, like they expected a humble canoe guide to do, and folded his hands below his waist like an usher, and waited.

  Milt concluded his nontalk with the lady in the pants suit, who retreated inside the hospital. He spotted Broker and walked over with the forward momentum of a slightly damaged armored vehicle. They shook left hands. Milt extracted a business card and said, “I’ll be in touch. I can reach you at the lodge, right?”

  Broker nodded, took the card. “Who’s the lady you were talking to?” he asked.

  “Oh, her? She’s small-fry. The risk management flak for this place. Fortunately, they’re part of the Duluth system and Duluth has deep pockets.”

  “Lawsuit,” Broker said.

  Milt narrowed his eyes. “Word is two nurses heard the anesthetist admit she took the breathing tube out too soon.”

  Broker nodded politely—like it was all over his head— and then pointed toward Sommer’s wife and her sleek companion. “How’d they show up so quick?”

  “Charter out of St. Paul.”

  “Who’s the guy?”

  Milt narrowed his eyes a fraction tighter, as if this were more information than a loyal canoe guide needed to know. After a beat he said, with a ripple of distaste, “Earl Garf, he’s the remnant from her checkered past we discussed.”

  “Uh-huh. What’s he do now?”

  Milt shrugged. “What all the smart young ones do, computers.” He adjusted his sling, turned: “Well, ah, Christ, here comes Hank.”

  An ambulance pulled out of the garage toward the waiting helicopter.

  “Got to go, thanks for everything,” Milt said; quick handshake, fleeting eye contact. He was leaving Ely and the tragic vacation, locking back into the gravitational pull of his high-speed, high-stakes world. They all were. He stepped back to join Jolene and Allen as the gurney bearing the blanketed mummy bumped toward the helicopter door.

  Eyes shut, Sommer’s face jutted unde
r 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.