Absolute Zero

cruiser-“I’ll kill you, motherfucker, if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

Now here was Rodney shifting a bat in his ham-sized hands. Teamed up with Earl. Getting his wish.

Not good.

But then-Rodney developed instant eloquent possibilities as a mime; recognizing Broker, he shook his head, pleaded with his eyes, and took a step back all in the same second:

You don’t know me, I don’t know you; this is a mistake; I’m outa here.

Broker nodded ever so slightly and Rodney started backing away, flipping a very abbreviated wave good-bye, close to his hip and behind Earl’s back.

“What’d you bring him for, Earl-to block the sun?” Broker asked, encouraged by the changing odds. His eyes took in everything in the barn garage in half a second and came up with a plan. He had one chance not to wind up in an emergency ward, or worse. Even with Rodney opting out, barehanded, even in his prime, he couldn’t go up against a bat wielded by a street monster like Earl and hope to come out unscathed.

“I don’t like it,” Rodney yelled, backing away. “I highly suggest we get the fuck outa here.”

“No way; it’s gonna cost him at least a knee.” Earl stepped forward in a modified batter’s stance, gauging his target.

Broker was not about to show Earl anything like fear. He was pissed about his spat with Amy. And he could still smell burnt chili. So he stuck out his chin and taunted, “Earl, be a good little computer nerd and take his advice, because this is just the wrong time to mess with me.”

The facts of his situation were far less nonchalant. So, as he moved back to keep the same amount of distance between himself and Earl, he raised the bucket of feed to port arms, to protect himself. He was exactly where he wanted to be-within an easy reach of the dead bolt that fastened the gate to Popeye’s pen.

J.T., buddy; I hope you weren’t putting me on.

Earl stepped forward, menacing. The bat gleamed in the overhead sodium vapor light. Brand-new, not a scratch on the scripted logo or the clean-grained ash. Earl heaved his shoulders, feinting a swing. Broker moved as Earl moved, tossing the feed bucket at Earl’s face.

Whack! Earl swung. Feed pellets exploded from the shattered plastic container.

“Yeah,” Earl giggled, an hysterical wheezing giggle on the far edge of control. He had feed pellets in his hair, he had a pale, berserker light in his eyes. Broker instinctively realized why Earl had brought Rodney as extra muscle.

It wasn’t to help work Broker over.

It was to pull him off when he lost control and was beating Broker to death.

But Rodney had disappeared out the door into the gray afternoon and Earl, sans backup, had cocked the bat again. Trembling with pleasure and rage, he took another step forward.

Okay. Life had become very simple. If he tried to close the distance and grapple, Broker would for sure take at least one blow going in. So that was out. He needed to get something between his skull and that bat. Broker’s hand reached back, seized the bolt, yanked it, and pulled the thick, chest-high gate open.

Earl let go a blinding overhand swing and Broker went to his knees, ducking as the bat smashed down, denting the framing on the top of the gate just above and behind Broker’s head. As Earl recovered, Broker scooted around to the other side of the gate and pulled it full-arc on its hinges, so he was squeezed behind it, tight against the plywood outer wall of the pen.

“What a chickenshit,” Earl sneered, trying another overhand swing that harmlessly glanced off the gate and thumped the wall. Broker was contorted sideways, one shoulder back, flattened against the wall; his other arm folded against his chest, his hand gripping the simple handle under the bolt, holding the door against him.

Earl could prod into the limited space with the bat, but he could no longer swing. So he tried to pummel Broker, but Broker grabbed at the end and tried to twist it away. With difficulty, Earl yanked it back out of the cranny.

“Give it up, Earl!” Broker yelled. “Walk away now and you won’t get hurt.”

“Can you believe this guy, Rodney. .” And then, “Rodney?”

And then.

The high hissing sound Earl and Broker heard was all the more unnerving because its source was not mechanical but animal, because it issued from the quilled throat of an infuriated four-hundred-pound male ostrich. Popeye’s massive thigh muscles trembled, tensing, at about the same level as Earl’s shoulders. The bird’s wings flung up, rampant, and the stiff plumes lashed the doorway of the open stall.

“Now what the fuck is this?” Earl muttered as he looked up into Popeye’s bloodshot eyes. Fearlessly ignorant of his situation, he taunted Broker, “Won’t work, hiding behind Big Bird. Uh-uh.”

Broker came up to look over the gate as Earl shifted his feet to take a swing at the hissing bird. He let go an indolent one-handed swat aimed at Popeye’s head.

Like shoo.

The ostrich’s right leg cocked and shot straight forward, the scaley big toe with its claw knuckled. Earl was lucky; because of his wide haymaker swing he was rotating and Popeye struck him a glancing blow in the chest, ripping buckles and buttons off the leather trench coat. Even off target, the kick connected like an electric shock and sent Earl flying back against the tractor, and then rolling on the floor.

He scrambled to his feet, holding his ribs with one hand and reaching for the dropped bat with the other. “Son of a bitch,” he gasped.

The bird stepped into the garage and Broker lowered himself eye-level with the top of the door. Popeye’s ominous grace was an optical illusion. His long legs seemed to be moving in slow-motion when in fact they weren’t. They were lining up on Earl again.

Less bellicose now, Earl’s face was working overtime on the proposition that a mere bird could kill a man. He gripped the bat and assessed the distance to the open garage door. Instinctively, he tried to go around the high- stepping bird.

“No, no,” Broker yelled, safe behind his thick gate. “Stay in front of him. They kick to the side.”

Wide-eyed, shaken, Earl changed direction.

Dumb shit.

This time Popeye hit Earl squarely in the left upper arm. Earl screamed as he smashed against the concrete. The kick shredded the trench coat sleeve. Dots of blood stippled the floor. Earl’s ragged shoulder flopped like a rag doll’s.

Serves you right.

Then someone turned his name into a high-pitched, infuriated indictment: “Bro- KER!”

Amy stood in the doorway waving her arms to distract Popeye.

“Do something, he’s gonna to get killed!” Amy hollered.

Popeye’s tiny head rotated on his long neck, big-eyed and comic in contrast to his lethal feet, which shifted on the cement. Amy continued to wave her arms. Earl, his left arm useless, lay collapsed against the tractor tire like the statue of the Dying Gaul.

Broker would have liked to see Popeye get in a few more licks. But now, worried that Amy would get within Popeye’s kicking radius, he scrambled from the shelter of his plywood gate and saw the long-handled bar shovel leaning against the wall of the pen.

“Please. .” Earl moaned.

“Get behind that tractor,” Broker shouted at Amy.

“What about. .?” she shouted back as she took cover.

Broker sprang for the shovel, grabbed it, and thrust it at the bird. J.T. had told him that male ostriches were territorial. No way Popeye would just walk away.

He shouted to Amy, “I’m going to distract him. You gotta come under the tractor and pull Earl out of range, get him outside, and close the door. Do it.”

Amy darted under the big John Deere. “Crawl toward me,” she shouted at Earl.

“Huh?” Earl shook his head, confused.

Broker advanced with the shovel extended. Popeye gauged this new intruder’s approach, shifted his stance, and stepped back into a tangle of loose wire that lay on the floor.

The bird kicked to free his foot from the coils. Old tin cans threaded in the rusty wire made a racket when