“We’re on a quest,” Sharon said lightly. “For a tire tube. How lovely.”
“We shall be victorious,” Chemal intoned. “Quieres practicar tu español, Miss Sharon?”
“I don’t know what you just said,” Johnny said. He held up his hands. “But no.”
“Dios mio,” Chemal said. “Lo siento.” He raised his eyebrows and exchanged a look in the rearview mirror with Sharon, and then he backed up to turn the car around. They drove in silence down the long road along the loch toward the ferry, only the occasional “Pah!” rising brightly from the backseat.
The mood improved a bit after the bracing ferry crossing and the pleasant distraction of pointing out a trio of bobbing seals to Lucy across the boat’s railing, but hours later they were still coming up empty-handed in the tire tube department, and Johnny was getting tired of the search. By late afternoon, they’d been to the bike shop in Fort William, which was out of stock, and then all the way to a five-and-dime near Glencoe, which didn’t carry bike parts. Google pointed to an outfitter’s shop in Inverlochy that might carry tubes, according to the sullen clerk in the five-and-dime, but it was—ridiculously—open only on Saturdays. Which meant once Johnny, Sharon, and Chemal went back to Dunedin with the car on Wednesday, Corran would have no wheels with which to get Lucy to her sitter or himself to his job. He’d be resigned to walking every day with the stroller, which was a pretty tough prospect—a good four-mile hike round-trip, and the forecast was calling for snow. It was a problem. But not one that couldn’t be easily solved. And Johnny aimed to solve it, if only to salvage a bit of productivity from a trip that was beginning to reek of failure.
The trouble was that Corran was still acting as if there was no trouble. He was artificially lively, courteous to the point of obsequiousness. Jaunty. Jokey. He had to know that Johnny had come to Port Readie with an olive branch, but he was stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the significance of his father’s visit. In fact, he’d evidently scuttled the value of his relationship with his father down to approximately the same level as one he might have with a necessarily proximal but slightly annoying neighbor. Like Jerry, Johnny thought. The realization was as maddening as it was humiliating. Worse, it neatly undercut Johnny’s plan to launch a discussion that in any way implied reconciliation. Corran’s attitude made it clear: There was nothing to reconcile. No need to bother.
Now they were sitting in a chippie’s just outside Fort William, trying to warm up. The heat in the rented Polo was hamstrung by a stuck blower motor, and after a day spent running into and out of shops, they were all feeling the chill, so they’d headed into the chip shop for a cuppa. They squeezed into a tiny booth along the front window. Johnny assessed the tableau: Corran was humming and staring at his cell phone across the table; Chemal was feeding Lucy bits of biscuit from a plastic baggie; Sharon was rummaging in Lucy’s diaper bag. She fished out a bottle and wiggled from the booth, then asked to use the microwave in the back to warm the bottle. Lucy’s cheeks were pink and her eyes were bright. God, she was a sweet little bairn. Johnny made a face. She grinned. Johnny caught Corran watching him.
“It’s gone Baltic, of a sudden,” Sharon said, returning with the bottle. She rubbed her shoulders. “We should have brought Lucy another sweater.”
“Sí,” Chemal said. “Hace frío.”
“Sí, amigo!” Sharon said, delighted. “Yo comprendo!”
Johnny looked at Corran and rolled his eyes, hoping for commiseration. Corran looked away. In the booth behind Johnny, two women were chatting.
“My husband can fish a little,” one was saying. “But it doesn’t come second nature to him. Not like my first husband, who died. He could fish.”
“What’s a saveloy?” Chemal said, squinting up at the menu board behind the counter.
“You hungry again?” Johnny said.
“I could eat,” Chemal said defensively. “Don’t you ever get hungry?”
In fact, the smell of fried food was making Johnny a bit nauseated, but he decided against mentioning it. It wasn’t going to improve anything.
“What’s a saveloy?” Chemal said again.
“Sausage,” Sharon said.
“Pig brain sausage,” Corran said. He grinned.
“No way,” Chemal said. He looked horrified. And fascinated.
“Corran, stop it,” Sharon said.
“It’s true,” Corran said. “Pig brains.”
“Not anymore, love,” Sharon said to Chemal. “That was the old days.”
“My God,” Chemal said. “That shit would not fly in Detroit.”
“Just get cod and chips,” Sharon said. “You can’t go wrong.”
“I’ll wait,” Chemal said. “I’ve lost my appetite.”
“Can you please keep your voice down?” Johnny said.
Chemal sighed. “Yes, Mr. Freeze,” he whispered.
“It’s a little disappointing,” the woman behind Johnny was saying. “There’s just something about a man that can fish, am I right?” He pivoted and pretended to scratch his shoulder to get a look at her. She had one of those asymmetrical haircuts he could never understand. You’d think you’d feel off balance. “Your John can fish,” the woman said to her companion. “You know what I mean. Am I right?”
Johnny checked his phone for messages. Seeing none, he texted Roy. How ye doon? he wrote. The waitress came, and they were all absorbed for a time with the liturgy of the tea.
“All right,” Johnny said finally. “Now, look. Let’s just go back to the bike shop. We’ll buy a new bicycle.” It certainly seemed a reasonable plan to him. After all, he’d looked at the bike Corran had been using and was astounded it was still operational at all; it was rusted, busted, dented, and battered. The flat tire seemed the least of its failings.
“That’s daft,” Corran said lightly. “I don’t need a new bicycle. I just need a tube.” He sipped his tea and grinned at Johnny across the teacup. Johnny grasped for patience. Was his son difficult just for the sake of it, or what?
“Well, you’re not going to get a tube today,” he said. “And so you’re in a pickle. How about a bike?”
Corran shook his head. “No, thanks,” he said. “I’ll try to patch the tube.”
“How would we get a bicycle back to the house?” Sharon said. “Would it fit in the car?”
“We can fit it in the trunk. We’ll tie it in,” Johnny said.
“I don’t need a bicycle,” Corran said again. “No worries, Da.”
“How are you going to tote a baby four miles a day?” Johnny said.
“I’ll figure something out.”
“That’s fucking potty,” Johnny said.
“Watch your language,” Sharon said. “This poor baby,” she sighed.
“Seriously,” Chemal said. He looked sternly at Johnny. Johnny’s phone buzzed on the table. He picked it up and looked at Roy’s return text.
Another day in paradise. When you back?
Thursday, he typed. What’s going on?
Beer bottle caps on the ops floor. Pissing me off.
Go get ‘em, Roy.
They’re going to wish they hadn’t done that. How’s your head?
Still attached. How’s OSHA?
Call Pauline … Roy texted. Johnny watched the three dots blinking in the text field. Roy was still typing: appeal scheduled.
Shit! The hearing was scheduled? Why hadn’t Pauline called him? And why, in the name of God, did this sudden jolt forward in the whole OSHA mess have to happen while Johnny was in Scotland, just as Pauline had feared it would? He wasn’t sure what was more upsetting—the knowledge that the appeal hearing was finally on the docket, or the knowledge that Pauline herself was in possession of this information and had yet to call him with it. She was furious, no doubt. And she was right—the trip had been terrible timing. A terrible idea all around, in fact. She was always right.
When? he wrote to Roy.
November 15.
Pauline okay?
; I think you better ask her that, Roy wrote.
“Iceman, you are texting like a prom queen over there, dude,” Chemal said. Johnny pocketed his phone. “Sorry,” he said.
“And you lecture me about my manners.”
“I don’t lecture you about your manners,” Johnny said. “I lecture you about wasting your life.”
“Chemal, too?” Corran said. “My, you’re expanding the effort.” This he said with an annoying grin on his face. Johnny held Corran’s gaze for a beat. Then he got up and walked outside the chip shop to call Pauline. Still no answer on her cell. He called the factory, and Rosa put him through to Pauline’s office.
“November 15?” he said immediately when she picked up the phone.
“Yep,” she answered. “Right after your surgery. Nice, huh?” She didn’t sound angry. She sounded sad.
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“Broke my phone,” she said, which hardly seemed an adequate reason. He didn’t press it.
“I wonder if we can get a postponement,” he said instead.
“No dice. Already asked.” There was an off-putting tone of resignation in her voice, something Johnny could not remember hearing before.
“But are we going to be ready?”
She didn’t answer right away, and he was afraid he’d lost the connection. “No,” she said finally. “We’re not.”
“Hasn’t Tulley gotten anything together yet? Some sort of argument? He shouldn’t be sitting around looking at work logs, for God’s sake. He should be pressing the police to bust the druggies, get us some documentation of meth-making.”
“That’s nice,” she said.
“What?”
“You got his name right.”
“Pauline,” he said, frustrated. “You don’t seem exactly plugged in here. You sound like you’re giving up.”
“I am.”
“You can’t.”
“Why can’t I?” she demanded. “You’re not here to help me fight this. And even when you get here you’re down for the count, am I right? Let’s be realistic. We don’t have it in us right now to fight this thing. Neither one of us. We don’t have the evidence. And we don’t have the energy to find it. Bottom line: We failed.”
“I’ll be back in two days,” he said.
“I’ll be waiting for you,” she said. Her voice caught. “And so will the surgeon. And when we get you past this, Johnny, I swear to heaven, we’ve got to figure out what we’re going to do. About money. The ice plant is going under. It’s over.”
She sounded like a different Pauline. He’d never heard her so defeated. He told her to keep the faith. And he told her to get the damn lawyers to put more pressure on the police. He hung up the phone. A tidal wave of panic swept over him. The ice plant. God damn it, OSHA! The ice plant! They couldn’t lose it. It was their livelihood. With the house remortgaged to pay for Corran’s rehabilitation expenses, the only equity they had was in the ice plant. If the federal government wiped them out with fines and foreclosure, where would they be? And if the fingerlike growths were real, and if they continued their wicked march until Johnny was dead and gone—which could happen sooner rather than later, according to what Johnny had read about brain cancer—then where would Pauline be? My God. Pauline. She’d be penniless and alone, that’s where. Right back where Johnny started.
And whose fault was all of this? Johnny stood on the freezing street in Fort William and looked back through the window of the chip shop, where Corran sat bantering lightly with Chemal. Corran’s words from earlier in the day came back to him: Sorry you came all this way, Da. You needn’t have. Oh, Corran, he thought. You’re on the thinnest ice you’ve ever been on, laddie. Johnny banged back into the chip shop and sat down at the table again.
“How’s Pauline?” Sharon said.
“Fine.” Sharon’s face tightened. He could tell she was reading the fury in his voice, but he didn’t care. He stared at Corran relentlessly until his son finally looked up and caught Johnny’s eye.
“Let’s go back to the shop and get a bicycle,” Johnny said.
“Let’s not,” Corran said. “And while we’re at it, let’s back the fuck off.” He stirred his tea. Johnny had an impulse to reach across the table and slap him. Sharon lightly kicked Johnny under the table. He looked at her and she shook her head. She was reading his mind. Damn it, Sharon! Do you always know everything? She shook her head again and glared at him. We got him out of Easterhouse, Sharon, he wanted to say. And look at the thanks we get.
“I think we’re finished here,” she said pointedly. “And I think it’s time to get Lucy back for a nap.”
Chemal leaned in and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper to the rest of them: “The ladies back here,” he said. “Can’t stop talking about fish. It’s weird.”
They finished their tea in silence and bundled into the Polo for the long ride back to Corran’s cottage. On the way, the freezing rain returned. Johnny remembered once having a conversation with Pauline about freezing rain.
“Isn’t that the same thing as hail?” she’d said.
“No,” he said. “Hail’s already frozen. This is in the process of freezing. It doesn’t crystallize until it makes contact with something. Happens all the time in Scotland.”
She looked at him. “So over there you have snow, and hail, and freezing rain.”
“Yes.”
“And sleet, whatever that is.”
“Yep.”
She shook her head. “Lord, I don’t know how you survived it as long as you did,” she said. He clenched his jaw at the memory of that conversation. Ah, Pauline. Florida girl. The world, for you, has been nothing but warm. How he wished he could keep it so. Chemal took a turn rather abruptly and Johnny’s stomach swiveled. He put his head in his hands. Keep it together, Ice. You ain’t dying. Not today, brother. Not today.
Sharon and Chemal worked up an early dinner with a packet of curry and a bag of frozen chicken breasts they’d picked up at the Tesco in Fort William. Johnny found it hard to eat. He was too angry, for one thing. Plus, the nausea from the steroids had yet to abate, and in fact he was wondering if it was getting worse. He was, however, managing to ingest quite a quantity of Tennent’s lager. Which might not have been such a great idea.
The problem with alcohol, Johnny had learned, wasn’t that it muddled you up. On the contrary—the problem was that it was a clarifying agent. At least, that’s how it worked with him. There you were, for ten whole months, all mixed up with anger and grief and regret and hope and fear and guilt and love, and what happens after you knock back several cans of Tennent’s lager on one rotten evening in the cramped confines of a Highland crofter’s cottage? The whole shooting match resolves itself into one pulsing hot beat of … well, basically, batshit fury. At Corran. For fuck’s sake. Examine the facts, he said to himself. Johnny had tried hard to come to terms with, and even edge toward forgiveness for, the unspeakable theft of Pauline’s ring. He had dropped everything, including a massive crisis at the factory, to travel over here, against doctor’s orders and against Pauline’s wishes, to attempt a reconciliation with Corran, and what did he get for his trouble? A bunch of sarcastic fucking lip from a thirty-year-old man who was behaving like a spoiled adolescent. That’s some chip you got on your shoulder there, Corran, he wanted to say. I don’t know how you can handle the weight of it. Never in his life had Johnny seen someone so stubborn. Oh, he got the picture: Corran was as defiant as ever about Pauline’s ring. And in his defiance, no matter how badly he needed help, Corran was not going to accept a lick of it from Johnny.
But a bicycle! A fucking bicycle! What was the big deal? It was October. Corran was actually planning to live up here in the Highlands all winter without a car or a bicycle, and with a nine-month-old baby to care for? It was ridiculous. And inconsiderate, the way he was putting all this pressure on Sharon every weekend to come up here and help him. Unbelievable.
And. Also. How on earth did Corran think he was justifi
ed in being so resentful of Johnny? What had Johnny ever done to anger him so? Think of it: Johnny had covered every expense his son had ever incurred growing up and even well into Corran’s adulthood, including all that wretchedly expensive rehab! When other people Johnny’s age were talking about retirement accounts and investments, Johnny was signing promissory notes against his home to pay for methadone and group therapy. And yes, great, Corran was clean now, but do you think he’d credit any of Johnny’s efforts for that? Ah, no. Corran was an island unto himself. I can do it by myself! Just like when he was a little toddling kid. He’d fly solo, by God. Yes, St. Corran did the whole thing all on his lonesome. Heroin? Not a problem. Cold turkey as soon as he saw his little daughter. A beautiful story. Bye-bye, drugs. What a wonderful young man. And so independent!
Johnny told himself not to drink any more beer. He was sitting at the kitchen table. He spent some time on his iPhone trying to figure out if he could get his and Chemal’s flight changed to go home earlier, but had no luck. He would have even paid the airline’s exorbitant change fees, but there were no seats available on an earlier flight. Well, fine. Today was Monday. They couldn’t fly till Thursday. He’d talk to Sharon as soon as he got a moment alone with her, tell her he’d decided to cut his losses here in Port Readie; they could ride back to Dunedin tomorrow. She could get back to work and he and Chemal would just kill some time in Glasgow for a couple of days, maybe ride up and have a look at Stirling Castle. Play tourists. Eat wine gums. Try not to think about brain surgery. He opened one more beer. Last one.
It wasn’t even six o’clock yet, but Johnny had the feeling it was the middle of the night. In the living room, where everyone else was sitting, the TV flickered with something or other, a house decorating program, it seemed, but the volume was turned down and it didn’t appear that anyone was watching. He picked up his beer, then walked over and turned the television off.
“Play us some music, Corran,” he said. He gestured at the keyboard in the corner of the room and then lowered himself a bit unsteadily onto the sofa next to Sharon, who had the baby on her lap. She was teaching Lucy patty-cake. Chemal was on the floor at their feet. Corran was slouched in a chair across the room.
The Ice House Page 28