Absolute Zero

Broker crossed his fingers. The more he thought about it, he worried that a county cop would overhear somebody at Timberry Trails Hospital talking about an ostrich-kick casualty. It was the kind of loose grounder that John E. would run out. He was on the verge of calling the sheriff’s office and personally confessing when the phone rang.

The deputy again; they’d found Popeye kicking an abandoned horse barn apart in Dellwood and they had darted him with a tranquilizer gun. Could someone come pick him up?

Amy said her trailer was in Iowa. The deputy said give him a few minutes. He called back and said they’d found a local farmer who’d cart Popeye for one hundred dollars. Coached by Broker, Amy gave the deputy J.T.’s address, fire number, and directions.

An hour later, a Dodge Ram pickup pulled into the yard. Popeye, groggy and twitching, lay in the bed. They backed into the barn, up to the stall, and lowered the tailgate. Broker and Amy helped the driver drag the bird over it. Popeye weakly raised his head, blinked, and resumed his nap. The amused driver took his fee and left.

Walking back to the house Broker and Amy stopped, jolted by a sudden temperature drop of twenty to thirty degrees. Broker hunched his shoulders and squinted into the bitter northwest wind. “Weather Channel,” he said.

Inside, rubbing their red hands, they studied the televised Dopler map. The cold front bulging down from North Dakota and Saskatchewan had purple edges and a bone-white heart.

“Jesus, it’s already ten below in International Falls,” Amy pointed at the map.

There was no snow in the forecast, just polar cold.

Unloading Popeye left them exhausted after their jag of a day. They went into the kitchen and couldn’t face the rest of the ostrich chili in the refrigerator. So they ordered a deluxe pizza. When it arrived they split the bottle of Pepsi, settled down in front of the TV, and raided J.T.’s movie library. They were arguing about whether to watch Erin Brockovich or Contact with Jodie Foster when the phone rang.

Chapter Thirty-nine

Jolene savored Broker’s brief phone message as she ate a quick Healthy Choice microwave dinner. Earl had been moved on down the line. A broken arm. She’d skip the flowers.

Monday, Hank would go to the nursing home, and the vigils, hanging on his every breath, would finally end. Which left the question of Hank’s extended care.

She remembered Allen’s unsaid promise. If it comes to that, I can help.

God, she couldn’t bring herself to think about it directly-but she so wanted to be free of them all.

So she paced in the kitchen and fantasized that her hair was long again and that she was reclining in a salon with other women waiting on her, doing her hair and her fingernails and her toes.

Things were moving ahead, so why was she so edgy? Why did she have this gummy metal taste stuck to the roof of her mouth? Her thoughts felt flimsy, like puzzle pieces jumbled in her skull.

Nervously, she analyzed the sensations and concluded that all the tension and sleeplessness had made her thirsty. She wanted a drink. The dry colors in her head would swell up, go fluid, and run together. Smooth and easy.

So she kept busy. Another trick she’d learned from Hank. She checked all the baby monitors in the house to make sure they were working. Then, in a frantic lurch of mood, she craved a cigarette.

For half an hour she rummaged through the house-drawers, cupboards, the pockets of Hank’s clothes still hanging in the closets. Nothing. Not even one of Hank’s stale Camels. Back in the kitchen, she paced and got weaker. Get in the Accord, drive to the Cenex store up on 95. It would take about seven minutes. She’d have a pack of cigarettes. Twenty diversions.

A cigarette would be bad but it would blunt the deeper urge.

Or would it just lower her resistence so it would be easier to take that first drink? Dammit. She needed more willpower.

But you weren’t supposed to use willpower, you were supposed to work the program, which was basically learning to delay gratification through talking a lot to other people. You were supposed to displace. Because willpower was an idea that got you off alone in your head and. .

Whack! Jolene kicked the Kenmore refrigerator.

Bullshit.

It wasn’t drinking that had her shook up. Goddamit. Hank had turned the TV on and off.

He was in there watching them.

She stared at the circular stairway leading down to the lower level and Hank’s room. She had to go down there and feed him, change him, stay ahead of the bedsores.

He’d turned on the TV for her.

But not for Allen and Garf.

Really spooked now, she had this image of her nerves like pink toothpaste all squirted out of the tube. Like her life now, after Earl and Stovall. No way could she put it back the way it was.

Well, screw this. Hank would have to fly solo for fifteen minutes. She grabbed her car keys and headed for the garage. Ten minutes later, she was sitting in the parking area of a Cenex station inhaling a Marlboro Light.

Nicotine turned cartwheels in her clean blood. It helped.

But not much.

She drove back to the house, parked, walked out of the garage, and shivered in a gust of suddenly cold wind. On the porch, finishing her cigarette, she amazed herself. On one hand, she was losing her mind. On the other, she was turning into a suburban ditz who didn’t want her house to smell like cigarette smoke.

Her house. Stay with that.

She went in, brushed her teeth, swished with Scope. In the middle of this task she realized she really was alone in the house. No music in the basement. No Earl.

Now, with things getting tricky, she suddenly missed him.

No, she missed his function in her life.

But Jolene’s whole idea was not to depend on men anymore. Right?

So, you’re going to figure this out on your own.

Your house.

Your money.

Your life.

No men allowed.

All you have to do is hang on through the weekend. Milt will come to the rescue. This time next week you’ll be visiting Hank in a safe, secure nursing home.

It’s going to be all right.

He had receded far into himself and his vision turned black at the edges, tunneled, like looking the wrong way through two telescopes. The enthusiasms of simply tapping the TV controls on and off a few times had left him mentally drained, and now his fingers were like cold batteries, dead. It was a revelation. He’d had nothing to use to measure his strength before. Now he realized how little energy he had left.

And he saw it as a finite amount, nonrenewable.

And he saw something else. Something approaching with a calm, unhurried tread. A blur of color flickering into the edge of his vision. His heart and lungs were strong but his brain was flaming out.

Dying.

Everything he did from now on had to count.

Jolene steeled herself and entered Hank’s room, determined to be businesslike. Just do the work. She believed in holding up her end of the deal. The deal had been for better or for worse. She could handle two more days of worse.