“What?” Corran said.
“The keyboard. Play us something. You still play, right?”
“Oh, Corran plays beautifully,” Sharon said to Chemal, who nodded appreciatively.
“Nah,” Corran said. He shrugged. “I don’t really play.”
“Oh, you do!” Sharon said. “Go on, Corry.”
Corran didn’t move.
“He’s being modest,” Sharon said to Chemal. “You should hear him play. He used to do recitals, everything. And then he was in bands. He’s wonderful.”
“I hardly play, Mum,” Corran said.
“I got you started on that,” Johnny said. He knew he was drunk, but he didn’t care. He did get Corran started on piano. He knew he did! That day in the Jacksonville Airport. The Moonlight Sonata.
“I got you started,” he said again.
“You did not,” Corran said quietly.
“I did. I saw you loved it, so I told Mum. And I sent the money for lessons. Didn’t I, Sharon?”
Sharon had stopped playing patty-cake with Lucy. She was staring at Johnny. “It was a long time ago, Johnny,” she said. She was giving him a look.
“I’d love to hear you play,” Chemal offered.
“Sorry, mate,” Corran said. “I’m rusty.”
“I got you started,” Johnny said. The room was silent.
And then: “You wrote a check, Ice,” Corran said. “Anybody can write a check.” Johnny had never heard his son call him that before.
“Not anybody,” he replied. “Not you.” Corran looked away.
“Play the Moonlight Sonata,” Johnny said.
“I don’t know it.”
“I bet you do.”
Corran shrugged. Sharon got up off the sofa. “I wish you two would stop it,” she said. She walked Lucy into the kitchen.
“I dare you to play the Moonlight Sonata,” Johnny said. Corran was silent. “I know you can play it,” Johnny said.
“I can’t.”
“I know you can.” The Tennent’s was rushing around in Johnny’s head. He imagined it marinating the tumor. (Cyst!) Go ahead, he said to the cyst. Get yourself pickled. I sure am. “You can do it, Corran. You’ve had training. We got you out of Easterhouse, and you had the kind of life where you had piano lessons. Not everybody gets that, laddie. Did you know that? Not everybody gets out of the schemes.”
Corran still didn’t reply.
“I’ll give you a hundred pounds right now,” Johnny said to Corran, “if you’ll play the Moonlight Sonata.”
“No.”
“Two hundred.”
“No.”
“I’ll give you a thousand pounds.”
“Johnny, stop it,” Sharon said. She was standing at the threshold of the kitchen, Lucy on her hip.
“Dude,” Chemal said to Corran. “Do it. I’d do it.”
Johnny stood up. He walked over and stood next to Corran’s chair. “I’ll give you five thousand pounds,” he said, looking down at his son, “if you’ll get up off your ass right now and walk across the floor to that keyboard, right there, and play Beethoven’s fucking Moonlight Sonata.”
“Put your superhero cape back into your suitcase, Da,” Corran said. “I don’t need to be rescued.”
“You sure about that, Corran?” Johnny said.
“Johnny,” Sharon said. Her face was flushed. “You’re being childish.”
“Imagine the formula you could buy,” Johnny said. “Imagine the diapers.”
Corran stared at him.
“Wow, Iceman,” Chemal said. “Jeez.”
“Stop it,” Sharon said. She was starting to cry. “Would you stop it?”
“Play the Moonlight Sonata,” Johnny said. “And I’ll write you a check.”
The room fell silent, save the sound of the pattering rain on the rooftop. Oh, why was he doing this? Johnny looked at his son—those round, brown eyes, that broad, open face. Let me in, Corran, he thought, and quick, before I die.
“Play it,” he said. He willed his voice not to crack.
“No,” Corran said slowly. “I don’t know how to play it.” He stood up. He walked over to Sharon and took Lucy from her. He went into his bedroom, closing the door softly behind him. And then Johnny was left with his Tennent’s empties, with Chemal’s downcast face, and with the sounds of Sharon’s crying from somewhere that seemed far, far away.
A reasonable man would probably have called it a night right there. But for Johnny, reason, along with logic and temperance, had left the building somewhere around an hour ago. He looked at his watch: six-ten. He opened the browser on his iPhone and checked Google: The bike shop stayed open until seven. If they hit the ferry just right, they’d make it.
“Driver,” he said to Chemal. “Tonight, we ride.”
“You’re being a bastard, Johnny,” Sharon said, sniffling.
“Oh, come on, Sharon,” he said. “Let she who is without sin cast—”
“Oh, piss,” she snapped. She wiped her eyes with a paper napkin. “I don’t know where you’re going, and I don’t care. But don’t you dare wake that wee one when you come back in here.” She walked to the couch and started pulling at the cushions. She turned around. “And Chemal, you drive safe. You’re evidently the adult tonight.”
“Yes, ma’am, Miss Sharon,” Chemal said.
Johnny and Chemal left the cottage and drove toward the ferry in silence. A few miles down the road, the rain let up. Johnny opened the sunroof.
“You wasted?” Chemal said finally.
“Not wasted,” Johnny said. “But a bit off, I’d say.”
He put his head back on the seat and looked up at the sky. Here and there, the clouds parted and presented a glimpse of stars clearer and brighter than any Johnny could recall seeing in Florida. Well, it made sense. They were farther north. Forget that tropical bullshit. Caledonia! Higher up! Closer to the heavens, wasn’t that right? He thought of something else then.
“You know about Voyager 1?” he asked Chemal.
“Oh, yeah, I saw a show about that once,” Chemal said. “That shit is awesome.”
“You know it’s gone now?” A few years ago, when the Voyager 1 space probe ended its thirty-five-year jaunt around the solar system and entered interstellar space, NASA overlooked the occurrence for some time and didn’t announce it for more than a year. Johnny found the delay emotionally bothersome in a way he could not have anticipated. After all, he had paid attention to Voyager 1, all those years.
How could he not? It had been launched on the day of his father’s death. He remembered it vividly. Johnny and his mother sat in metal chairs next to Charlie’s hospital bed and watched the BBC news coverage on a color television mounted on the wall. The probe was fitted to an expendable rocket and propelled into the atmosphere against the stunning blue backdrop of a Florida sky. Johnny was riveted, both by the technological wizardry of the process and by the glimpses of exotic terrain around Cape Canaveral. Fat palm trees with heads like pyrotechnics. Spindly pines sprouting from wide swaths of sandy brown earth. And everywhere that blue, blue sky. It was Johnny’s first picture of Florida. When the rocket ignited and Voyager lifted off, it seemed to Johnny that the whole place was on fire, that the entire world must have felt the heat. Johnny and his mother watched until the rocket was a distant spark. Then they turned to Charlie, who was gone.
Johnny’s adolescent mind had created an unbreakable link between his father’s spirit and the wandering of the Voyager 1 probe. When it stopped to observe Jupiter, Johnny felt Charlie was there. When it stopped to collect radiation from Saturn, Charlie was there. And now Voyager 1 had crossed over, had left the solar system for the uncharted mysteries of the interstellar medium beyond. It was the farthest human-made object from Earth, far beyond the reach of our understanding, past the safety and comfort of our known stars. In another decade, the instruments would fail, in another two decades the probe would run out of power. Charlie died at thirty-five years old. He’d barely gotten started
. But when Voyager crossed over it was like Charlie died all over again. And now he would float in the Milky Way, untended, forever.
Johnny closed the sunroof. He took out his phone and squinted at the keypad. God, the numbers were so hard to see. Pauline’s iPhone was broken—he remembered that, somehow. What was their home phone number? He thumbed at the contacts.
“Are you calling Mrs. MacKinnon?” Chemal said.
“I was thinking about it,” Johnny said.
“I may make a suggestion here,” Chemal said.
“Go, kidda.”
“This may not be your finest hour, Iceman.”
Johnny looked at him for a long moment. Then he nodded. “You’re a mate, Chemal,” he said. “A real mate.”
Chemal grinned. Johnny put the phone into his pocket.
When they got back to the bike shop in Fort William, Johnny bought a new bicycle—just a basic model, nothing crazy—and a fine new baby seat for Lucy. On a whim, he threw in a pretty little baby’s helmet decorated with jumping pink frogs. And a reflective safety plate for the back fender. And a cargo basket. There. Problem solved.
They were too late for the last ferry. They had to drive the north route along the loch, which seemed to take forever. Johnny dozed a bit, and Chemal drove quietly. When they finally got back to the cottage Johnny left the bicycle parked directly outside the front door, where Corran couldn’t possibly miss it in the morning. He put the bike accessories in the toolshed. They crept back into the warmth of the cottage. Chemal dropped down onto his makeshift bed. Johnny went into the bathroom and peed on a sugar strip. He swallowed four ibuprofen tablets. The hangover was going to be a crippler. He crept back to the living room and crawled into bed next to Sharon, who was still as stone, though he had a feeling she wasn’t sleeping.
“Dude.
“Dude.
“Dude.”
Johnny opened his eyes. Chemal was standing over him.
“It’s, like, almost nine o’clock, dude. You gonna get up?” The last Johnny looked at his watch it had been three-thirty a.m., and he’d been in such despair over being unable to fall asleep that he had been considering taking the Polo for a drive along the loch. He talked himself out of it on the grounds that he was, one, still drunk; and two, still a seizure risk. Well, at least he had some sense. And then evidently he’d fallen asleep, because here it was mid-morning, with a dull misty light pushing into the cottage’s front window and the faint smell of toast in the air. He sat up. The headache hit him like a brick, and he groaned.
“Shouldn’ta drank so much,” Chemal said. He was shaking his head. “I mean, seriously.”
“Where is everyone?” Johnny said.
“Miss Sharon took Lucy for a walk. Corran went to work.”
Johnny dragged himself out of the sofa-bed and stumbled to the bathroom. More ibuprofen. Fistfuls of tap water. Deep breath. He looked at himself in the mirror. Get some tea in you. You’ll make it. He plunged himself into an icy cold shower and waited for the water to warm just a little, then he dressed and returned to the living room. He walked to the cottage’s front window and peered out to the walkway.
The bicycle was sitting just where he’d left it last night.
Nicely done, Corran, Johnny thought. Game, set, match. Johnny sat down at the table. He managed some tea and toast and sat still until he started to feel slightly more human.
“We ought to go back to Dunedin today,” he said to Chemal.
Chemal shook his head. He had a mouthful of toast. “We can’t. Miss Sharon told Corran to cancel his babysitter today. We’re watching Lucy. Since we were all gonna be here anyway. You missed the whole conversation this morning.”
Johnny looked over at the rumpled sofa-bed and imagined himself lying there in a dead sleep while Sharon and Corran held a powwow over schedules and child care. He could only imagine what else they might have had to say this morning. About him, for example. He took another sip of tea. Well, it didn’t matter. Yes, he was hungover, and yes, he was more than a little rueful about the bullishness of his behavior last night. But did it set the scales back to even? Not by a long shot. And if he’d had any doubt, the sight of the bicycle on the walkway this morning eliminated it. The battle wasn’t resolved. But it was over. Johnny was done.
“Then tomorrow,” he said to Chemal. “First thing. We’ll go back to Sharon’s, aye? Flight home on Thursday.”
“Hey, Iceman,” Chemal said. “You know we’re flying home on Halloween? That’s not a bad omen or anything, is it?”
Johnny didn’t answer. He closed the sofa-bed and washed the breakfast dishes. Chemal bundled up and wandered off through the misty morning to explore the hills behind the house. Johnny thought about calling Pauline, but it was still too early in Florida. Pauline would be asleep. After a half hour, Sharon still hadn’t returned with the baby, and Johnny thought he might text her, but then he saw that she’d left her cell phone on the kitchen counter. He picked it up and looked at it. A text from Toole: I’m lost, it said. Johnny put the phone down. Did Toole mean figuratively? Or literally? It was a little disconcerting. But none of his business.
He put on his jacket and borrowed a pair of Corran’s gloves from a basket by the front door. He went outside and got on the new bicycle, then rode it down the hill, along the narrow winding road fronting Loch Linnhe. By the time he reached the village, his eyes were watering and his lungs aching from the cold. He felt like he was in the ice factory. At a curve in the road about a quarter-mile from the ferry ramp, he pulled the bicycle down to a rocky beach and stood looking across the loch. The ferry was headed for the opposite bank. Johnny squinted his eyes and watched the three yellow jackets of the ferry crew pacing around the deck. After a moment, he identified Corran. Last night’s fury stumbled a bit. His son looked so small. And so distant.
In a year’s time, Johnny wondered, where would they all be? If he was honest, he knew that statistics painted a fairly predictable picture: There was a good chance Corran would relapse into heroin use. He couldn’t keep up this bizarre hermitlike exile forever, not with a child to raise. At some point he’d end up back in the city, with ready access to all his old skag friends. And if Corran relapsed, there was a good chance that Sharon’s heart would finally break, and that she’d throw in the towel, and that little Lucy would go to foster care. And there was more: There was a good chance Toole would lose his mind. There was a good chance Pauline would be in the poorhouse. There was a good chance Johnny would be dead. You have the potential to have cancer. Don’t we all have that, Dr. Tosh? Yes. You just have more of it, friend.
The ferry horn sounded as it approached the opposite landing. Corran walked to the front of the ferry and stood with a rope. A song, unbidden, presented itself to Johnny.
Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling.
From glen to glen, and down the mountainside.
The summer’s gone, and all the roses falling.
It’s you, it’s you must go, and I must bide.
The boat’s bow bumped against a row of pilings. Corran lassoed a stanchion. He steadied himself on the ferry deck for the impact. Then he disappeared behind a lorry on the ferry deck, and Johnny looked down. The loch was a deep, deep black. Here at the edge, though, the water clarified and danced over fist-sized stones worn smooth and round. Johnny bent down. He took off the gloves and dipped his hands into the water, holding them there until his bones started to ache. He fingered a stone and imagined it had originated on the beach in Watchers Island, imagined that he himself had launched it eastward, years ago, for Corran to find. Could the boy not have just admitted to stealing the ring? It would have been a start, wouldn’t it? They could have begun to build something again. They could have been honest with each other. I’m sorry I took the ring, Corran could have said. I’m sorry I wasn’t a better da, Johnny could have said. I got you out of Easterhouse. But I could have done so much more. Well, we were almost there, Corran, he thought. But almost counts only in horseshoes
.
But when ye come, and all the flowers are dying,
If I am dead, as dead I well may be,
Ye’ll come and find the place where I am lying,
And kneel and say an Ave there for me.
All right now, enough of that! Get it together, Ice. He stood up and wiped his hands on his pants. He put the gloves back on. Nothing good at the end of that road. Maudlin old ditty, let it go. It was like he told the boys on the ice floor when they started kvetching about the work and the cold: Buck up, grow a pair, show some fortitude! And for God’s sake, he told himself now, change the channel. You can’t save him.
The floaters appeared out of nowhere, and for a split second Johnny worried that he was about to have another seizure, but when he recognized the feeling as his own long-familiar anger returning, he was both relieved and galvanized. He’d tried to fix all of this. And he’d failed. To hell with everything. He stood next to the new bicycle; he put one hand on the seat and the other between the handlebars. He picked up the bike and executed a half-turn to build up momentum, and then he pitched the bicycle through a long slow arc into the dark swirling waters of Loch Linnhe. In seconds, it was gone.
Time to go, pal. Time to go. Back to the cottage, and keep your head down, fella. Game over. Two more days. Call it a draw, and give Corran a wide berth, wide as you can in that saltbox cottage. That’s the way he wants it. You got this, Ice. You know what to do. Just wait it out until tomorrow, then load up the Polo and move ‘em out. Tomorrow they’d go back to Dunedin. Thursday, on to Jacksonville. He’d be home with Pauline in time to pass out Halloween candy to the trick-or-treaters on Watchers Island. No tricks, kids, please. No tricks. Next stop: craniotomy.
The heavy mist was turning to snow right before Johnny’s eyes. He watched the crystals settling on his jacket. Then he looked back at the ferry across the loch, and at the bright yellow spot that was Corran’s jacket. And here it was, he realized: water again. Corran was on one side, burning and distant and irritated. Johnny was on the other, damp and cold and lost. Which meant they were in exactly the same position they’d been in three days ago, two men standing on opposite shores, and neither one knowing how to swim.
The Ice House Page 29