Absolute Zero

dressers, armoire, all in cherry. Sweatpants and a T-shirt had been tossed on the bedspread. The faint lily scent was preserved in the damp towels in the adjoining bath.

“He’s just next door,” Jolene said. They went through another doorway into a large four-season porch that was bunkered with books. A cold fireplace was black with soot and smelled of ashes and neglect.

Solemnly, Broker stepped into the room and was immediately startled by Hank Sommer’s brilliant blue eyes and the gravitas with which they blazed point-blank into his own.

Broker.

Hank let his eyes focus for a second. Then he saw Jolene and Allen come through the door behind Broker and he forced his eyes to continue into their elliptical orbit.

The eyes rolled away, caught in the corner of the sockets, and slowly wandered back. Hank’s brow was furrowed, his hair furiously mussed, the eyes, two wobbling ice fires, his beard had been removed, and his chin was shiny with drool. Broker thought of paintings of famous angry men. Moses descending the mount, dashing the tablets. John Brown.

Hank lay on his side in a hospital bed cranked up like a recliner. A pillow was positioned between his knees and a baggy gray gown covered him. A heavy canvas strap buckled his chest and his hands were clenched beneath a large gray cat. Broker divined weariness in the twisted sheets on the narrow cot at the foot of the bed.

“Jesus,” his chest heaved. He’d anticipated seeing Hank sick, his body snarled in tubes and electrical monitors. There was just an IV tree that held a suspended sack of liquid and a tube that snaked into Hank’s gown. There was a bed table with a vase of fresh wisteria and a large TV and a radio tape player on a rolling stand. But basically it was just him, there on the bed. Looking almost normal.

With a cat in his lap.

The cat had avocado eyes and black diamond pupils and a wild, regal guardian demeanor. Vaguely, Broker recalled that the Egyptians worshiped cats.

He cleared his throat. “Kind of throws you, seeing him so normal.”

“He doesn’t need a tracheal tube, it’s the only reason he can be here,” Allen said.

Jolene crossed the room to the bed, picked up a Kleenex, and wiped Hank’s chin. Quickly she ran the suction wand around his mouth. “I keep expecting him to just get up and want a cup of coffee.”

Hank, watching from the moon, from Mars, was amused. Not coffee, Jo. What I’m dying for is a cigarette. He’d thought about this and he’d decided that if someone held a Camel to his mouth and closed his lips around it, he could manage a drag.

And Hi, there, Broker. How you doing? You already know Allen, the assassin. And Earl Garf is lurking somewhere. Abe Lincoln had Earl in mind when he said a certain congressman would steal a hot stove. Right now I’m assuming Jo is a victim of circumstances, but the vote’s out on that, so I’ll just continue to snoop and poop here in the weeds.

The cat stretched on its side and extended its paws and flourished claws at Broker’s approach.

“Watch out, the cat has this habit of leaping out and scratching you,” Allen cautioned.

“Hey, kitty,” Broker easily reached down and tickled the cat under her chin.

“She only attacks certain people, isn’t that right, Ambush,” Jolene said, carefully lifting the cat off the bed. With the cat in her arms she started for the door. “Take as long as you want. We’ll be in the kitchen.”

Now there were two sets of lungs breathing air and two hearts pumping blood in the room. Broker understood he was alone. But he didn’t feel alone. Was that intelligence or just ambient electricity he had seen firing in Hank’s eyes when he first entered the room? Hank gave no clue, he just lay unmoving, blinking, as his loopy stare wandered out the windows.

Broker felt weight press his lungs. Hard to breathe. The air turned heavy. So he turned from the bed and inspected the room. A stiff-backed Shaker chair sat in a corner. Broker got it, brought it over, positioned it next to Hank’s bed, and sat down. Should at least say his name. But his voice balked and he began to sweat.

“This is hard for me,” he began.

“I need to thank you for saving my life. Which is funny because I figured I was there to take care of you.” He exhaled some of the heavy air and his voice sounded hollow and shaky, alone and not alone in the room. He laughed nervously. “Sort of what I did all my life, look out for people. So you surprised me. And the fact is, I wasn’t-am not- in the best shape. The fact is I’m going through this thing with my wife. .”

Broker felt his lips start to tremble, and his carefully constructed, all-purpose mask of a face, the one he’d worn to hell and back a few times, began to crumble. The wave of failure and remorse welled up in his chest again and this time it threatened to rise through his throat and lap past his eyes. Jesus. Talking to a dead man.

“You see, I thought I had it all figured out. And then it turned out, I didn’t.”

He had to do something physical. Now. Or he would liquefy into a puddle.

His eyes tracked the room. Books, files, a computer, of course. And a few framed photos on the walls. Broker got up and walked the shelves. Scanned the pictures. Teenage Hank in a ducktail hairdo, lean and tan, standing in front of the obligatory ’57 Chevy. There was a black-and-white framed cover from Life magazine from the forties. And Hank again, a few years older, in faded jungle fatigues squatting with a group of soldiers who wore Screaming Eagle patches.

Then he walked to the black maw of the fireplace, where a damp log had drowned in a slush of ashes. Nobody had cleaned it. There was no room for oxygen to circulate under the grate, the wood couldn’t burn.

The wood box was empty. The least he could do was clean out the fireplace and bring in a load of wood. He took the ash bucket and a small shovel and brush from the fireplace that sat next to the hearth. Methodically, he shoveled out ashes, filled the bucket, and used the stiff wire broom to sweep out the hearth stones.

He took the bucket to the sliding patio door, opened the door, and stepped out onto the deck. Side stairs led to the lawn along the bluff and the back of the garage. As he carried the ashes toward the bed of frost-killed ferns and hosta next to the garage he walked past the kitchen windows and glimpsed Allen and Jolene, two shadows illuminated by the light over the table.

When he dumped the ashes he saw the heaped rounds of unsplit oak and the empty woodshed built along the side of the garage. Instinctively, his hand reached out and easily unfroze the heavy splitting maul with one hard slap and a yank. Then he kicked aside the damper sections of oak at the top of the pile and found several drier pieces. He put one on top of the chopping block, planted his feet, hefted the maul, and swung. The cold oak shivered and divided like balsa.

For several minutes Broker lost himself in the rhythm of the work, keeping warm, swinging the maul. Then more carefully he spilt several of the pieces into smaller strips. When he had a pile of kindling, he loaded an armful, turned to the deck, and saw Jolene standing on the steps watching him. Allen stood inside looking out the kitchen window.

“You don’t have to do that,” she said. She had pulled a bulky blue sweater around her shoulders and wore a pair of scuffed leather slippers that were many sizes too large.

“Kind of hard to have a fire without wood,” Broker said.

She hugged herself. “Hank brought in this stuff before he went on the hunting trip and it’s just been sitting.”

“You have at least two cords of good oak there,” Broker said as he carried his load up the deck back to the studio. Jolene ran ahead to hold the door. Inside, Broker filled the wood box and found a hand hatchet next to the wood box which he used to splinter off some tinder.

Jolene stood over him with her arms folded across her chest. A pile of old newspapers lay next to the hearth and Broker crumpled several sheets in the grate, added the tinder, and stacked smaller pieces of wood, pyre- fashion, spacing them so the fire could breathe. He took out his lighter, lit the paper, and set the flue. The hot flame from the newsprint was sucked up the chimney. In a minute he had a good fire crackling.

The flicker from the flames put a hint of color in Jolene’s face. “Nice to have a fire,” she said.

Broker stood up and dusted off his hands. When he turned he had another of those uncomfortable impressions that Hank Sommer was watching him. Almost like. . But when he looked more closely he saw that Hank’s eyes were wandering and rotating. The eye business engaged his curiosity. He needed more time, here, in this room. He needed a reason to come back.

“I have to get going. I’m going to need a ride. It’s not far; I’m staying at a friend’s farm about eight, nine