Absolute Zero

by Chuck Logan

  A surge of waves pounded the two men out of sight, and when they appeared again the canoe was tipped, draining. Milt staggered, fell, stood up, and Broker realized he had wrenched the canoe on its side and shook it out through sheer force. Broker scrambled to them and saw three paddles stacked safely ashore against a pack. Good.

  “Sommer?” Allen gasped, dragging another pack.

  “Bad shape. Don’t know. He’s up the beach, a kind of cave. Need a fire,” Broker yelled.

  “Fuck!” Allen scowled. “My medical kit with some decent pain killers. Lost it on the way in.”

  “Your canoe?” Milt grimaced to Broker. His right arm hung at an odd angle.

  “Swamped. At the other end of the lake by now. What’s wrong with your arm?” Broker asked, getting them moving.

  “Can’t move it,” Milt said, wincing.

  Allen started to check the arm.

  “Not now.” Shivering uncontrollably, out of fire, Broker was naked before the maw of shock. He felt over the packs. They had lost the tents, one of the food packs, and some personal stuff, but they had the sleeping bags and half the food. They’d be all right if they could warm up.

  “Get out of the wind. Move.” Shouldering the food pack, giving Allen the sleeping bags, he herded them over the slick rocks. In minutes they were in the dry granite pocket, a magical zone of calm compared to full exposure.

  Allen bent and stripped off Sommer’s parka, yanked up his shirt, and pulled down his trousers. He kneaded the bulge in Sommer’s groin.

  Sommer screamed.

  Broker looked away, spooked. Milt moved close beside him.

  “You all right?” Milt asked.

  “My arms seized up out there; he busted his gut on account . . .”

  Milt cut him off. “You swam him in. Let it go.”

  Broker nodded, pawed through his survival pack, cast aside a folding saw, grabbed a small axe, and found what he wanted: the fifteen-minute red highway flare that would save their lives.

  Broker and Milt tore into the tangle of driftwood rammed into a rock fissure ten feet away and dragged out pieces. Really shaking now, Broker kicked off branches, grabbed his hatchet, hacked slivers, coring down to dry wood, and tossed it into a small pile. Then he peeled back the flare’s cover, ripped off the friction cap, and struck it along the tip of the fuse like a match. A spout of incandescent flame erupted in a sulphurous cloud. The wood crackled.

  “Aw right,” Milt coughed and cheered, seeing the instant blaze. Ignoring his injured arm, he dragged branches, propped them against the rocks, and stomped them into smaller kindling.

  The fire was irresistible and Allen joined them. He had the first-aid kit from Broker’s bag in one shaking hand, a plastic vial in the other. “This is all we have. Fucking Tylenol,” he muttered. He pulled himself away, returned to Sommer, and carefully finished removing his wet clothing.

  Sommer was snake-bellied, with zero body fat. The baseball-sized bulge in the left side of his groin was unmistakable.

  “What is it?” Broker called out.

  “Not good,” Allen said as he coaxed Tylenol down Sommer’s throat. “He wouldn’t listen. Won the lottery and just had to go hunting with a hernia.”

  Sommer’s grimace was bathed in firelight. “How bad?”

  Allen composed himself. “You ruptured yourself, Hank. My index of suspicion is a strangulated intestine.”

  Sommer sought out Broker’s eyes with a perverse, painful grimace. “Sit tight,” Broker blurted, “I’m going to get you out of here.”

  “Not going anywhere,” Sommer said weakly as his head dropped back down. The three shivering men locked eyes and moved closer to the fire.

  “The cell phone,” Allen said in a dull voice.

  “Don’t go there,” Milt said.

  Broker looked from Milt to Allen. They had gotten their wish. They were on their own.

  Chapter Five

  Numb, Milt gawked into the storm. Allen stared at his trembling, useless surgeon’s hands. Broker kept seeing Sommer paddling. . . .

  Lassitude, the second fuzzy layer of shock, was setting in, so Broker roused and pounded their shoulders—Milt’s good one.

  “Okay. C’mon. Keep it simple.” First they had to get dried off. Gently they dressed Sommer in fresh clothing, easing him into a sleeping bag and moving him close to the fire. Allen made an ice pack from a T-shirt and some shore ice and placed it on Sommer’s stomach. Then they built the fire waist-high, stripped, wrung out their clothes, rigged a clothes line, and set out their wet boots.

  Milt’s biceps was already swollen purple, hot to the touch, so Allen wrapped it in ice and tied a sling from a sweatshirt.

  “Fucking rotator cuff, again,” Milt hissed.

  “Take some Tylenol,” Allen said.

  Milt waved him off. “Save it for Sommer.”

  Broker took inventory. They’d lost the coffeepot and the propane stove and fuel, but he found a coffee can full of tea bags and instant coffee. He filled the can with water, then put it over the fire and doled out hefty candy bars.

  They’d overbuilt the fire and now they began to stumble in the drowsy warmth. To keep them alert, Broker brewed strong, hot tea which they drank from canteen cups as they gobbled chocolate bars. Allen gingerly spooned tea to Sommer.

  “Well, how bad is he?” Milt asked.

  Allen calculated. “He has to get to an operating room in twenty-four hours.”

  Their eyes locked in a fast, triage glance.

  “And I can’t operate in the woods with a hunting knife and aspirin,” Allen said.

  “And I can’t paddle with this arm,” Milt said.

  “And I can’t do it alone,” Broker said, careful to control his voice. On a hard paddle out, he’d much prefer Milt.

  “So that’s it,” Milt said. “I stay with Hank, you two paddle for help.”

  Broker started making his preparations.

  “What are our chances?” Allen asked.

  Broker glanced over at Sommer in the sleeping bag. “I won’t bullshit you. Getting out’s the easy part. It’s getting back in that’s hairy.” He yanked his thumb at the storm. “The wind’s out of the northwest. That’s classic Alberta Clipper. If something really big’s coming down from Canada, we’ll hit it going out. The Forest Service has a seaplane base in Ely, and the state patrol has a helicopter. That’s his only chance.”

  Their eyes met. Allen said, “But bad weather could keep them from flying.”

  “There it is,” Broker said.

  “I don’t have to tell you how serious this is,” Allen said. “His bowel has popped through a tear in his stomach wall, the muscles have constricted, and I can’t reduce it—push it back in. His intestine is incarcerated, it’s not getting blood, the tissue is dying. If it perforates, depending on the size of the tear, his stomach cavity could literally flood with his own shit.”

  “Peritonitis,” Broker said.

  “Not the way I’d choose for him to die,” Allen said tartly, staring out into the whirling snow.

  Sommer curled in the sleeping bag with his knees drawn up in a fetal knot of pain. “Jo-lene,” he moaned, going in and out of consciousness.

  “Is that?” Broker asked.

  Milt nodded his head, raised an eyebrow, and drew out the syllables as an afterthought: “Joe-leene.”

  Sommer repeated his wife’s name like a painful metronome, marking time, and it was all about time now. Two hours had passed since they’d fumbled ashore. Hypothermia was behind them, they had retrieved the canoe from the point, but Broker wanted to make sure that he and Allen were thawed and in dry gear before they faced the weather again.

  They hunkered over a topographical map on which their itinerary had been traced in yellow Magic Marker. Allen reached over abruptly, turned Broker’s wrist, and plucked the cheap canvas strap on his watch. Broker started to react, then saw that the doctor didn’t mean to be rude—he was just curious and his curiosity didn’t respect normal boundarie
s.

  “Still running. Twelve bucks, United Store,” Broker said evenly.

  Allen, wearing a Rolex Explorer II, nodded and continued to lace on his boots. Broker cinched up the survival bag. They had food, flashlights, sleeping bags, a change of dry clothes, a sound eighteen-foot canoe, and three paddles. For ballast, Broker wrapped some dry kindling in a poncho liner.

  Allen gave his last instructions to Milt about applying ice packs to reduce the swelling. Broker knelt and put his hand on Sommer’s shoulder. “Hey.”

  “Hiya, homeboy,” Sommer said through clenched teeth. Briefly their eyes conjured with credentials, then Sommer quipped, “You still here? Go out there and find me a skyhook.”

  Allen said, “No food and no water after midnight. This time tomorrow he’s going to be on an operating table.”

  “Allen, we’ve gotta roll,” Broker said, getting to his feet.

  “Better get ahold of Jo,” Sommer said.

  “First thing,” Allen said.

  “Tell her I ain’t dead yet,” Sommer said, managing the barest grin. He raised one hand weakly in farewell and dropped it.

  Broker and Allen left shelter and went to the canoe that Broker had readied on the cobble beach. The storm winds had spiraled away, leaving the fickle lake relatively calm. They shook Milt’s left hand and, with snowflakes pelting their faces, they launched into the restless swells.

  Chapter Six

  The storm left behind gloomy flurries that stuck to their faces, melting and trickling down their cheeks. The breaking waves were gone, now sluggish swells slapped the bow of the canoe.

  “If only she wouldn’t have called this morning.” Allen paddled furiously and stared ahead at the misty spruce crowns. “Can you believe it. He threw the cell phone away.”

  “Nothing like a domestic dispute.” The remark rolled easy and world-weary from Broker’s tongue; a cliché from his background in law enforcement.

  Allen paused to rest on his paddle and shake his head. “Typical. He does things on impulse, then he regrets it later. That’s been the story of his life since he met her.” Allen looked up and shook his head. “And how he met her, Jesus.”

  “In an AA group, right?” Broker said, to keep the conversation going.

  “Right, but the reason they met personally was, she walks in to this group of guys in this church basement—folding chairs, cinder blocks, no windows, the air full of cigarette smoke . . .”

  Allen said “cigarette smoke” like he’d just raised Satan.

  “. . . and she’s wearing this sweater and she has these perfect tits. So Hank and this other guy start to wager, like, are they for real or are they implants? So Hank is on the case. He takes her out for coffee—at this motel and gets her in bed and, he swears, no scars, they are real.” Allen continued to shake his head. “I was married. You know where I met my wife? In Sunday school.”

  “So Sommer married a sweater girl,” Broker mused.

  “Milt thinks she’s practically a gun moll. But he’s reacting more to her old boyfriend, that Earl character. He’s definitely a criminal element.”

  Broker suppressed a grin at Allen’s language. He was getting an impression of Allen as a missionary-position Minnesota Normal.

  “I guess some women find that attractive,” Allen said. “And Hank has a little bit of that in his past, too. You know, rough stuff.”

  Broker cleared his throat and looked to his paddle. Getting into the locker-room swing of the conversation, he’d been on the verge of asking Allen to describe more of her.

  They were silent for a while, just paddles shoving water.

  Allen turned out to be surprisingly strong and steady on the paddle, which led Broker to revise his earlier judgment. The doctor, he decided, was used to digital results and was holding nothing but an analog wooden paddle in his hands, so he was more frustrated than fussy. And, far from being annoyed at Allen’s carping, Broker welcomed it because it filled the dreary monotony of sky and water.

  Talk was good, because they had a lot of time to fill. Broker figured fourteen to sixteen hours of nonstop paddle and portage to the lodge. And they’d have to camp when it got dark. So add six more hours. If Sommer had twenty-four hours, they’d be cutting it close. And they still had to rely on a plane or helicopter to get him out.

  The time stretched out in front of them. Old-fashioned, unplugged, slow Real Time with no crowds, no traffic, sirens, TV, telephones, email, or Internet. Just the creak of the canoe, the hiss and slap of the bow cutting the chop, and the dip of the paddles.

  “How long have you guys known each other?” Broker asked.

  “I met Hank through Milt. I met Milt at a seminar. He was the keynote speaker on malpractice. Milt invited me to a poker game where I met Hank. That was just after he got the movie deal for his book.”

  “I don’t read much . . .” Broker was about to say “fiction.”

  “But you’ve been around,” Allen said quickly.

  “How’s that?”

  “Back by the fire, when we were stripping out of the wet stuff. Your shoulder, your back, and your right leg. I spent a month in Bosnia in ’94. Doctors without Borders. I’ve seen shrapnel wounds before.”

  Broker let the statement hang unanswered. Three years retired from police work, he still retained the dissembling persona of ten years working deep undercover for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Before that he’d been a St. Paul cop. Before that, he’d caught some Communist metal during the last two years of that war people didn’t like to talk about and couldn’t forget.

  After a polite interval, Allen asked, “You’re from Ely?”

  “I’m not a local. I have a little resort over on Superior, north of Grand Marais. I’m just helping out my uncle on this trip.”

  “So your family’s in the resort business?”

  “You could say that.” It was an accurate if incomplete answer.

  “So how are we doing on time?” Allen asked.

  “We’re doing fine. If we can keep up this steady paddle till sundown.”

  “Then what?” Allen said.

  “We’ll have to stop. We can’t take a chance on getting turned around in the dark.”

  “Agreed,” Allen said.

  They paddled and portaged through the afternoon and, as the clouds sagged lower and the temperature dropped, the lakes sweated a fine late-afternoon mist.

  “It’s funny,” Allen said, talkative again, “Jolene married a guy who had some money and she thought she’d get to go shopping in Paris, maybe see Florence. But Hank bought a big old fixer-upper and their life turned into This Old House. Now he wants to fill it up with smelly cats and dogs. And maybe kids.”

  Allen turned. “I mean, you have to see this woman to believe her. A figure like hers. The thought of stretch marks drives her crazy.”

  “Sounds like one of those trophy wives,” Broker said. He imagined her blond, tanned, and spa-rat skinny in Spandex.

  “Absolutely. And like I said,” Allen lowered his paddle, turned, and cupped his hands generously to his chest. “You know, they stay aloft on their own.”

  Broker laughed. “You seem to know a lot about the aerodynamics of Mrs. Sommer’s knockers.”

  “I saw some topless pictures taken when she was an entertainer,” Allen said.

  “Hmmm.”

  “An exotic dancer,” Allen said. “Hank Sommer is not your normal writer and Jolene isn’t your normal writer’s wife.”

  “And not your normal type of friends, either, huh?” ventured Broker.

  “Touché. Very good. That’s Milt for you, he’s famous for collecting characters.”

  Allen wore no ring on his left hand. “What about you? You said you were married?” Broker asked.

  “Sore subject. I married my high school girlfriend. It didn’t survive my residency at Mayo. Now I can’t afford it,” quipped Allen. “Hell, I’m still paying off med school and the Crash of ’87. Certainly can’t afford it doing hernias and he
morrhoids for a freaking HMO.”

  Allen took his frustration out on the lake and they fell into a brooding physical rhythm. The paddles rose and fell, filling time. Broker figured it had to be worse for Allen. His friend was slowly dying in a makeshift winter camp while he moved under muscle power at the same pace as French and Ojibwa fur traders three hundred years ago.

  At dusk they came ashore and made camp, using the upturned canoe as a shelter. They brewed cocoa over a small fire, ate their energy bars, and, huddled back-to-back in their sleeping bags, fell into an exhausted sleep.

  “Jesus, what’s . . . ?” Allen jerked upright and banged his head on the canoe.

  “Wolves.” Broker, thrilling to the howls reverberating through the dark trees, pictured raw meat in the snow. He’d been awake for an hour, warming his hands over a low fire, listening; ten or twelve animals, more than a mile and a lake away.

  “They don’t attack people, right?” Allen asked.

  “Not here, not yet. In India they snatch infants and eat them. Population pressure probably.”

  “We don’t have a gun,” Allen said.

  Broker allowed a smile. It was the appropriate response. “C’mon. Let’s go,” he said.

  The wolves ended their serenade as the dark leaked away, and by the light of a fuzzy dawn Broker hoped he didn’t look as numb with cold as Allen.

  They ate a fast breakfast of instant coffee, chocolate, and Pemmican bars as their breath came in dense white jets. It was getting colder and they stamped their feet to get their circulation going. In the canoe, they fell into the same dogged rhythm, just their muscles yanking at the time and distance. Allen was not talkative today and put all his effort into the paddle.

  They lasted two hours and had to beach, take a pee, and stomp around to restore the circulation in their hands and feet. The temperature hovered at freezing, and frostbite whiskered the air. They climbed back in the boat.

  Lift, reach, dig, pull, recover.

  Broker was watching hypnotic whirlpools of dark water spin away from his paddle when the first snowflake wobbled down almost big as a quarter. Broker glanced up hopefully, grabbing at an old Indian saying: Little snow, big snow; big snow, little snow.