Absolute Zero

“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.”