Absolute Zero (2002) Read online

  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. Noth

  ing 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 wait

  ing 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, bignosed, 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 volun

  teer 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 fire

  place. 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 Bro

  ker'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 run

  ning 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 sec

  ondary 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 reliabil

  ity 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 met

  alwork. 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.

  "That's me?" Broker gestured offhand. "Food, eat; gun, shoot; woman, copulate."

  Amy planted her hands on her hips. "You know, down in the Cities you might be a bad motherfucker. But up here, guys like you are a dime a dozen."

  "What's that supposed to mean?" Broker drew back, a tad defensive.

  Amy shook her head. "Sort of sad when a guy like you is reduced to bullying overweight drunks, like that guy at The Saloon. That was all out of proportion. Dave and I talked about it."

  "Great. So now it's amateur-shrink hour."

  "Dave thinks it's all coming down on you; your wife takes off, you're getting older, being on your own, not having any—well, structure in your life."

  Broker grinned. "Lucky for me I got Amy Skoda standing here with the structural integrity of a small skyscraper."

  Amy raised an eyebrow and swatted a denim-clad hip. "Check it out. This is not exactly a cornerstone."

  Broker lowered himself to a chair at the kitchen table and mumbled, "I'm old enough to be . . ."


  "I know—my brother," Amy dismissed him with a wave of her hand and plopped into the chair across from him.

  "So how was your day?" he asked.

  "Oh, wonderful. We had a preliminary root-cause analysis session."

  "Sounds grim."

  Amy winkled her nose. "Allen Falken sent a tape-recorded statement. He said he wouldn't come in person because his friendship with Hank Sommer could be perceived as coloring his judgment. He did a beautiful job of making me look like a hick."

  "That bad?"

  "Pretty bad. But friendly, more like. How do you staff for a fivehundred-year storm if you routinely staff for light fishing accidents in the summer. So it's like my fault, but he can sympathize because I'm not really up to speed."

  "Really?" wondered Broker. "Right after the surgery, before it happened, he made a point of telling me how sharp you were."

  "I guess he had a change of heart. So the consensus is that Hank Sommer wound up a vegetable because the nurse-anesthetist miscalculated somewhere and the attending nurse failed to monitor in postop."

  Amy's finger traced invisible water rings on the tabletop. "They're not sure exactly where things went wrong. He was hypothermic and cold is always a weird variable and can effect the way the body metabolizes drugs. Like it could sequester and hoard them in a sluggish circulation system and release them at odd times."