The Ice House

by Laura Lee Smith

  On the video, the animal expert guy dragged a huge albino alligator onto the stage and Jimmy Fallon feigned terror and the whole thing was quite entertaining. An albino alligator! Jimmy said. That’s crazy! Roy had seen that very same albino alligator at the park many times, he was sure of it. The sign near the enclosure said that if you gazed into the eyes of an albino alligator, you’d experience great good fortune. Once when she was around twelve, he and Ally had stood there for the longest time, hands clasped, gazing at the gator’s milky pink eyes. Roy wished he could do it again now. I don’t need great good fortune, he’d say to the alligator. Just a little good fortune. Just enough to send Ally to Italy. Come on, pal, whaddya say?

  Roy jumped when the video was interrupted by the buzzing of an incoming text. It was Ally. A selfie she’d taken at the Halloween pizza party. She was holding a slice of pizza up to her face and grinning. Mamma mia, delizioso, the text read. And then one more: Ti amo papà! Roy stared at the ceiling for the longest time, listening to the silence. Then he got up and sat down at his computer to start composing an email.

  Dear Nathan, it began. Guess what? Party’s over, dude. Times are tough, as they say. I’m sorry you’re paralyzed. But I’m even sorrier that I’ve spent so much money on you. I got better things to spend money on, Nathan, like my daughter. He stopped for a second and grinned. Claire would love this, he thought. Oh, Claire would just love it.

  Twenty-Two

  Pauline didn’t want to be home. She’d left the factory earlier and driven all the way out to Watchers Island, where she entered the kitchen to the sound of the ringing phone and found out from Rosa that Johnny was delayed in Charlotte. She checked the house phone’s voicemail and found Johnny himself leaving the same message. His voice sounded okay, but she sensed something underneath his words. She couldn’t put her finger on what it was. He said he was calling from the hotel phone and that he’d lost his cell phone the day before. Lost his phone? Well, that was irresponsible. Then she remembered that she herself had earlier thrown a tantrum and smashed a $600 iPhone against the kitchen wall, breaking a backsplash tile in the process. Yep.

  She fed and walked the General. Lord, this dog was slower than molasses. “Pee,” she said to him, grumpily. “Will you freaking pee?” They finally got the business completed. She moved through the house restlessly for a little while, tidying up. Then she sat down on the sofa with a glass of wine and the iPad and a thought to play Scrabble with Corran, but when she pulled up the game she saw they were still stalled on the last word she’d played: WONDER, which hadn’t really meant anything at all. She didn’t know how he’d interpret that one. Although come to think of it, the word was rather fitting. As in “I wonder what went on over there with you and your father, Corran? I wonder if you two made peace?” She thought about simply calling Corran to find out. She still had a house phone, after all. Johnny might be unreachable, but Corran wasn’t. But then she decided against it. She’d given her word to her husband. Maybe she should just finish painting the bathroom.

  Pauline felt like the walls were closing in on her. She dumped the wine down the sink and got back into the Prius to take a ride along the ocean road. She drove across the Intracoastal and watched an osprey circle for prey, then dive. For a few moments, her mind felt blessedly vacant, but as she followed the receding sun westward, the light turning soft and pink, the nagging mantra returned: We can’t beat OSHA. The factory is going to close. How would she and Johnny make a living? she wondered. In time, of course, Packy Knight would die, and he would leave a substantial nest egg to her and Caroline. But the nest egg was certainly not what it used to be, she’d wager, given the years of private home health care and the hefty tax bill on the big house on the river. It would maybe be enough for her and Johnny to get out from under part of the weight of the refinance on the Watchers Island house. Maybe. But then what? They had to work, didn’t they? They were too young to retire. And what, exactly, was she suited to do, after running her own ice factory for all these years: coming and going as she pleased, counting on the staff to fill in the gaps left when she herself was out running, or getting her hair done, or farting around Publix looking for wine gums in the middle of the day? Maybe she could get a job at Salon Belleza answering the phones. Or maybe she could be a Starbucks barista. The baristas always looked relatively content.

  She crossed the river into downtown Jacksonville. She’d been driving a long time. She pulled over at EverBank Field, the Jacksonville Jaguars’ home stadium. It was fully dark now. Across the parking lot, a group of boys were doing something under a cluster of streetlamps. What was that called? Parquet? Parkour? Parkour. That was it. Jumping. Flying. Falling. They were practicing moves against the oversized jaguar statue near the front entrance of the stadium.

  She remembered that sculpture; it was quite an imposing replica. When the designers commissioned it from a local marble artist, they were careless with the measurements of the big cat’s gaping mouth. It was just big enough for someone to get into trouble, and someone did. A nine-year-old boy, horsing around, put his head into the jaguar’s jaws and got stuck. Then came the police. Then the fire department. Then the evening news. The kid ended up fine, but by the time the whole kerfuffle was resolved, the statue was down a marble tooth. When they fixed the sculpture, they rigged it with wires behind the teeth to prevent others from putting their heads into the jaguar’s mouth. Human beings, Pauline thought. We’re our own worst enemies. Always needing to be protected from ourselves.

  Well, she was this close to the factory, it occurred to her. Here it was Halloween, the last day of the month, and she hadn’t finished processing overtime payroll. She might as well stop in and pick up time sheets so she could finish the work at home. It wasn’t like she was going to be sleeping much tonight, anyway. She watched the parkour boys for another minute. They were beautiful. They could run straight toward a wall, sneaker their way up the concrete, and then flip over backward. Amazing!

  She reached the factory and parked. She entered through the back door, disabled the alarm, and made her way through the admin wing, past workstations and equipment blinking blue on desks. Funny, she’d been coming to this factory since she was a little girl, but she could hardly remember a time when she had been here in the dark of night, alone. She went straight to her office and found that someone had left a hand truck just outside her door. Why did they do things like this? Too lazy to wheel it back out to the loading area where it belonged. She rolled the hand truck back toward the factory to put it away.

  Before she entered the ops floor, she picked up Johnny’s parka from the peg beside the door and slipped it on. The faint scent of his sweat muddled her, and she stood still in the hallway, trying to steady herself. Then she opened the door to the factory floor and steeled herself against the cold rush. The icemakers hummed. They were on auto-ops for the night, maintaining temperatures but pausing production until the first morning crew came in tomorrow. She put the hand truck back where it belonged, then went over to Dumbo and found that the old ice machine was still. She kicked it. Nothing. She didn’t know how to kick it like Johnny did.

  Something scuttled under a catch bin, and a twinge of fear pinched at her spine. She pulled Johnny’s parka tighter and turned to head back toward the admin wing. A movement appeared at the corner of her eye. She looked toward the storage room and stopped in terror. The silhouette of a man was bobbing toward her in the dark. She screamed.

  “Pauline!” the man said. “It’s me!”

  Roy! Pauline felt her knees literally weaken. He stepped forward and peered at her.

  “Oh, Lord have mercy, Roy. You scared the living daylights out of me,” she said.

  “What are you doing here?” he said.

  “Picking up payroll,” she said. She looked at him closely. “But what are you doing here?” she said. “I didn’t see your car.”

  “Pulled it into the loading yard. I’m having my house tented. I needed a place to sleep. Gonna crash on my
little sofa there,” he said, gesturing toward his office.

  “You could have come to our house, Roy.”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t want to bother anyone. Isn’t Johnny coming home tonight?”

  “He got bumped in Charlotte. Home tomorrow. I’m not sure what time. He lost his phone. And I broke my phone. It’s ridiculous.” She was annoyed with herself to find her eyes filling with tears.

  “Aw, Pauline,” Roy said. “It’s just a phone.” He looked alarmed. He patted her shoulder awkwardly.

  “It’s not the phone, Roy,” she said. She sniffled. “It’s everything. I’m so worried about Johnny.”

  “I know, I know,” he said. “But Pauline, now come on. That man is tougher than cowhide. He could probably drill his own head open and be back up and running within a day.”

  “And then the hearing, Roy,” she said. “We don’t have a case.”

  Roy didn’t answer right away. He nodded and gazed off, a little vacantly, it seemed to Pauline, toward the old icemakers.

  “Might be the end of the road, is what you’re saying, I’m guessing,” he finally said.

  “Might be.”

  Roy leaned in to give her an awkward hug, his hand patting her back like he was burping a baby. “Come on now, Pauline,” he said. “We can’t give up yet. We gotta keep trying. We still got two weeks, right?”

  She pulled back and wiped her eyes with the hem of her shirt. “Yes, we’ve got two weeks,” she said. “And my husband is about to undergo brain surgery. Something tells me I’m not going to be particularly focused on a fucking OSHA appeal.”

  Roy’s eyes grew wide. He gave a low whistle.

  “What?” she said.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you drop an F-bomb, Pauline,” Roy said. “That was most impressive.”

  “Desperate times, Roy,” she said. She found a tissue in her pocket and blew her nose. “Desperate measures.”

  The back door banged. Somebody was entering the factory.

  “Did you leave the door open?” Roy said.

  “Oh, my God,” she said. “I must have.”

  “Stay here,” he said. He moved toward the door to the admin wing. She ignored his command and followed. When they got to the door, Roy jerked it open quickly and called into the darkness. “Who’s there?” he said. “Somebody there?”

  “Happy Halloween,” came a deep voice. Pauline’s heart stopped. Who was that? She couldn’t see anyone. She squinted. A dark figure loomed in the hallway. Two smaller figures bobbed behind it.

  “Who is it?” Roy said again. “We can’t see you.” Pauline could hear the beginnings of panic in his voice.

  “It’s Ford,” the voice said. Ford! Pauline started to breathe again. She felt Roy relax next to her. Sure enough, now old Ford stepped forward into the light. He was wearing a Lone Ranger mask and carrying a bright plastic pumpkin filled with candy. Two little girls trailed behind him: One was outfitted in a blue princess gown and an elaborate blond wig, and the other was wearing some sort of faux-leather dress and was carrying a fake microphone. “These my grandbabies,” Ford said. “We trick-or-treating.” The little girls gazed up at Pauline with wide eyes. The one in the princess dress had two fingers in her mouth. “But I come to tell you that you left your car window open,” Ford said, looking at Pauline. “You better shut it—you won’t have no radio left, you don’t.”

  Outside, Little Silver was coming alive with trick-or-treaters. Pauline was surprised. Even in the few minutes since she’d arrived at the factory, activity had increased significantly. As a rule, she and Johnny stayed home on Watchers Island to hand out candy on Halloween nights. She’d never observed the holiday in this neighborhood before. It was like something out of a movie. She looked up and down the street. With the exception of Leonard’s house across the way, which was thankfully dark and quiet, the porches as far as Pauline could see were filled with people. Some had strung orange lights along decaying railings and banisters. Some had hung tissue-paper ghosts in trees. One ambitious crew halfway down the block had rigged a smoke machine and a Halloween sound track, and the result was a raucous haunted house—spooky enough to entice the older kids. But the sounds of laughter and the sweet calls of older women on the porch—”Come on up here, baby, come get you a candy, it’s all right, honey”—were keeping the younger kids approaching the house as well, even the tiny ones, fat toddlers dressed as pumpkins, wobbling up the battered sidewalk to dip their sticky hands into a huge bowl overflowing with packets of candy.

  Up and down King Street, a parade of costumed children undulated through the dusk. The evening had grown blessedly cooler, and though it was still warm enough to raise an immediate dampness under the back of Pauline’s T-shirt when she stepped out of the factory, there was also an insistent breeze to keep the trees stirring and the mosquitoes at bay. From the top of a live oak, a barred owl chanted, his dirge interrupted periodically by a pair of cranky mockingbirds. It was a beautiful night in poor old Little Silver, Pauline thought. Beautiful.

  She closed the windows in the Prius but then pulled the car to the front edge of the parking lot and opened the hatch. She and Roy and Ford sat in the Prius’s cargo area like it was a park bench. The bags of candy she bought earlier at CVS were still in the car. She opened them up and dumped one whole bag of Milky Way packets into Ford’s granddaughters’ plastic pumpkin. The candies looked a little melted, but Pauline didn’t think the girls would care. Then Roy went back into the factory and emerged with two more bags of candy.

  “That’s a lot of candy!” the girl in the leather dress exclaimed, delighted. “Milky Way!” shouted the princess.

  “Come tell me what you are for Halloween,” Pauline said to them. The girls stood before her, very serious. “I’m Beyoncé,” said the leather-clad girl. She pointed to her sister. “And this is Elsa.”

  The girl in the blue princess dress smiled. “From Frozen,” she clarified. “You know Frozen?”

  “I’ve heard of it,” Pauline said. “But I haven’t seen it.”

  “You should see it,” the blue princess said. “You would love it.” Beyoncé nodded. “It’s not, like, my style,” she said. “But it’s a good movie.”

  “How old are you?” Pauline said.

  “I’m four,” Elsa said. “And she’s five.” She looked at her sister proudly.

  Beyoncé rolled her eyes. “I’m six,” she said. “She forgets.”

  “Why don’t you give out the rest of this candy?” Pauline said. She opened the two remaining bags and handed them to Beyoncé and Elsa, who left their pumpkin with Ford and darted to the edge of the parking lot to greet an approaching group of costumed kids.

  “Trick or treat!” the kids were bellowing. Three young mothers were trailing behind the kids. They smiled tiredly and waved at Pauline. Pauline waved back. You don’t know what you have there, she wanted to say to them. Or maybe you do.

  Roy and Ford were talking about Leonard’s house. “You ever see anything go down there?” Roy was saying. “Drugwise?”

  “Hell, yes,” Ford said. “Day after day. Ever since Leonard moved in.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like selling,” Ford said. “Clear as day. Other day car pulls up, guy runs up to porch. Hands Leonard a wad of cash, leaves with a baggie. They don’t give a shit.”

  “We sure wish they’d get busted,” Roy said. “It would strengthen the OSHA appeal we’re dealing with.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Ford said. “I done heard about that.”

  Pauline looked at Ford. “Maybe you could help us,” she said. “Maybe you could testify that you’ve seen stuff, too. That way we’d have a neutral witness. All the accusations wouldn’t be coming straight from the ice plant.” Her mind started to race. Or better yet, she thought, Ford’s testimony could help bolster probable cause for a search warrant on Leonard’s house. Couldn’t it? This could be important. This could help! She looked at Ford hopefully.

  Ford shook his head. �
��I like it here aboveground, baby. You know, you talk too much about someone like Leonard, you get your head blown off. You know that?”

  “What if we kept it confidential? Would you be willing to sign a statement about this?”

  Ford snorted and gave her a hard look. “I don’t think I owe the ice plant too many favors, baby,” he said. He took a piece of chocolate out of the Halloween pumpkin and unwrapped it slowly. He was quiet for so long that Pauline wasn’t sure if he was going to continue.

  “You Packy Knight’s girl, aren’t you?” he said finally. She hesitated, then nodded. Girl? It had been a long time since anybody called her a girl. She appreciated it, though her gratitude was counterweighted by the dawning knowledge that Ford knew full well who she was, and he most likely always had. It’s not something you can hide, Pauline, she chided herself. You’re Packy Knight’s daughter. You’re the Ice Princess. Congratulations. I should be wearing a Frozen costume myself.

  “Did you know I used to work over here?” Ford gestured across the parking lot to the factory. “Years ago. Even before Packy Knight bought the place. I was a loader. And then I was a bagger. I was learning all about ice, you know what I’m saying? I could have been a foreman eventually. But I got hurt. So I couldn’t do that work no more. I been on and off disability my whole life. Odd jobs. Parking cars at EverBank. That’s it. That’s the only kind of work I’ve been able to do. You know why? You know how I got hurt?”

  Roy and Pauline were silent. Ford popped the chocolate into his mouth and leaned back. He pulled up his right pants leg to reveal a sickeningly atrophied shin. “That’s me and Packy Knight, right there,” he said, pointing to his leg. “Me and Packy Knight’s ax handle. Shattered my tibia, nerves never healed right. So there I am. Ford the Cripple. Ford No Work. Ford the Drunk.” He looked at Pauline for such a long time that she fought the urge to actually squirm. “Why should I help you?” he said.