Absolute Zero

by Chuck Logan

  What’s Broker doing back here? This could be a case where Earl was right.

  “At any rate, we’ll know who rings the bell.” Earl walked over to the bedroom doorway and Hank could barely see him fumble around at shoulder level on a bookshelf next to the doorjam. He moved some books aside and pointed. “State-of-the-art miniaturization, batteries, and transmitter. This baby is what the CIA uses. I cut a little hole in the wall and trained this camera on her bed. The camera transmits to long-playing tapes on a VCR in the basement. Forget voyeur TV; this is the real thing. I was thinking lighting would be a problem if it happens at night. But you know what? Jolene always sleeps with a night-light. So I upped the wattage in the night-light bulb. When she does the dirty, we’ll have broadcast-quality audio and pretty good video. Unless, of course, she does it in the cot at the end of the bed. I didn’t think of that.”

  Earl scratched his head briefly, then grinned, proud of himself as he tented the books back over the concealed camera. “You know what would have been good? I should have got your buddy Stovall on tape. He was a riot, a regular worm. Except he loved the hook.

  “It was his fault, you know. I gave him every out. All he had to do was come up with some bread to pay the hospital bills. You know what he said? He said, not as long as I was hanging around. Can you believe that shit? I rented that hospital bed you’re laying on. Me.”

  Earl pointed an accusing finger. “I mean, she didn’t have shit. She couldn’t pay the fucking mortgage, man. Jolene told me about his hangups so I left his dumb ass pinned to a tree so he could think about it. I figured if he did it, he could undo it and Jolene could get access.”

  Earl paused. “It was kind of a mellow day when I lured him out there. You know the place. Where you cut wood. In fact I used a trunk from a tree you cut down. And I left him with the hammer and two quarts of Johnny Walker Red.”

  Earl grinned. “I thought that was a nice touch.” He shrugged. “Any rate, I never figured it’d snow and get below freezing. I thought of going back out there but I didn’t have the right shoes, and I figured the van would get stuck. Besides, snow is good. It covers evidence. They already closed the investigation. They aren’t even calling it suicide, man. He just fell in over his head getting his weird kicks. You sure know some real degenerates.”

  Suddenly Earl frowned and stared at Hank and Hank realized that he’d stopped roaming his eyes and was glaring at Earl. He let his eyes droop and roll. Then, like a tiny yellow cloud, the smell of urine seeped up from his diapered crotch. Just a few drops.

  “Lookit you, you pig; you’re pissing yourself, aren’t you,” Earl accused, wrinkling his nose. “This is where I draw the line, like I told Jolene, I’ll turn your ass, feed you, and wipe your drool, but I definitely don’t do diapers.”

  What a horrible experience it was to watch an idea slowly form on Garf’s face.

  “On the other hand, maybe I do,” said Earl as he crossed to the windows and looked off to the left. Reassured, he came back to the bed and pulled Hank’s gown aside and opened the Velcro stays on his diaper.

  “That was hardly a sprinkle, so tell you what I’m going to do.” Earl swung his eyes in a mischievous look over his shoulder and unzipped his fly. “This is for the time you fucked with me, Lebowski.”

  Hank watched Earl take his Average White Boy dick out of his pants and aim a stream of pee onto Hank’s crotch.

  I can feel that, fucker.

  The urine splashed hot-chrome yellow and smelled like greasy rotten eggs. It pooled briefly between Hank’s thighs and then soaked into the thick, absorbent material. Earl went up on tiptoes and stretched forward to shake off the last few drops. Then he put himself away and refastened Hank’s diaper and straightened the gown. Very satisfied with himself, Earl picked up the TV clicker off the cabinet, zapped on the TV, and thumbed up the volume. Carefully, he inserted the remote under the clay fingers of Hank’s right hand.

  Another of his little mockeries.

  Then Earl left the room.

  Fucker pissed on me.

  Helplessly soaking in Earl’s urine, Hank tried to remember in detail the night more than a year ago when this cyber punk had walked into his house for the first time. Like some pimp, he’d ordered Jolene out into his car. Called her bitch, cunt, whore.

  Called Hank geezer.

  Yeah, well—a few minutes later Earl wound up on his ass in the driveway with a bloody nose—Hank’s attention suddenly wrenched away from the pleasant thought of thumping on Garf. Christ, his hand was on fire.

  This stinging in his right hand. Jesus, his right index finger, like something hot was under the skin squirming to get out.

  Hank tried to turn his eyes into a magnifying glass and his mind into the sun. He tried to concentrate his thoughts into a beam of flame on the finger. If. If . . . he could move his finger an inch he could . . . hit the red button on the top of the remote—the one with the two letters: TV—and turn the sucker off. The red button was right between his first and second fingers. If he could do that, he could message. He could communicate. Maybe find a way to fight back.

  Then he shut his eyes and drove his thoughts into his dead flesh. He visualized wrecking crews beating through debris, pushing against collapsed tunnels and fried nerves, searching for something that could hook up.

  Just give me one thing. One thing.

  Nothing.

  Just Earl’s taunts and his wet piss.

  And the cryptic snatches of Jolene’s and Earl’s conversations that confirmed Cliff was dead. Lost in the woods in his special pain, with the cold shadows lengthening, the snow creeping over his shoes, and the booze for comfort.

  Allen, Garf. They were coming in with cold, blunt noses, sniffing like jackals, tearing off hunks of him, thinking he was a corpse.

  The question mark was Jolene; would she land heads or tails? She’d shown signs of empathy since his accident in the way she attended to him, talked to him, played music for him, left the TV on. She kept looking into his eyes and believed that he was looking back.

  Could he trust her?

  Or Broker?

  Okay. Okay. Get squared away. Nothing good is going to happen. It’s a question of how much bad you have to eat before it ends. Those are your options.

  If he didn’t dangle just so on his single thread of sanity it got like Auschwitz in his head. C’mon, Hank, don’t overwrite, he chided himself.

  Cliff was dead but he’d done his job. But Jolene wasn’t strong enough to stand up to Garf. He’d take everything if it wasn’t locked away. Milt would score his legal settlement. Allen had seen to that.

  Then Ambush the cat appeared in midleap, lightly dropped on the bed at his side, sniffed the wet diaper, and moved a distance. Then she curled up at his hip and purred like a big, warm fur cricket.

  Hey, kitty. At least we’re still pals.

  Ambush stretched against him and nuzzled the hand that covered the remote. Then she concentrated on the first two fingers, licking them methodically with her tongue.

  Needles.

  Jesus. I felt that. More than before. An excruciating but wonderful thawing sensation in his index finger brought on by the pink sandpaper of Ambush’s tongue.

  C’mon.

  Hank sent all his thoughts back into the dead spaces of his right arm and commanded them to fight their way down through the wrist and the palm to link up with the painful tingle in the finger.

  Right now it all seemed to depend on a cat’s tongue. Keep it up, Ambush. Good kitty. And then he was gone—deep inside again, with random movies flickering in his head.

  After the hill.

  Her name was Mai, a slender former medical student at the University of Hue, who spoke French and English and left it all behind to get rich running the laundry concession at Camp Eagle. Mai, who sometimes threw a fuck his way. She didn’t really need the carton of cigarettes he brought for her.

  But it wasn’t going to happen, maybe never again. The hill had definitely busted his dic
k string, so she lounged back and smoked a Salem while he tried to explain that Americans were going to the moon.

  “Bullshit, Hank.”

  “No, I swear, in July they’re going to the moon.”

  “How can you go to the moon? You can’t even go to the Ashau Valley? You can’t even get a hard-on.”

  And then in July he came out alive and was back in Michigan, in a darkened motel room, not sure who the naked woman asleep next to him was, not remembering her long white body or her long brown hair. The TV was on just like it was the day he left to go to the war thirteen months before. Back during that time he’d come to and squinted through the dirty windows of another hangover, and they kept showing the pictures over and over and the volume was off and it took him forever to get up and focus, and then he realized he was looking at the churning footage of Bobby Kennedy lying in a pool of blood in the kitchen of a Los Angeles hotel and that was the going-away party.

  And this was his coming home. A discarded champagne bottle on the floor blew its cork and he came up all jangled and alert just in time to hear Neil Armstrong say that’s one step for mankind.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Most of the wood was split and stacked when Earl stepped onto the deck outside Hank’s room and waved at Jolene.

  “He smells like a Porta Potty at the state fair. I’ll feed him and wipe his nose but I’m not changing diapers, uh-uh,” Earl said.

  Jolene removed her gloves. “I’ll be back in a minute.” Broker nodded and resumed work. She followed Earl inside and the first thing she reacted to was the blaring volume on the television. Immediately she searched for the remote. “Very funny,” she said when she found it where Earl had comically inserted it in Hank’s limp hand. She picked it up, clicked off the set, and said, “You know how much he hates the Fox News Channel.” She eyeballed Earl to see which face she was dealing with.

  “C’mon, he isn’t there. Allen says if you keep up that kind of talk you’re going to have a problem with acceptance,” Earl said.

  Okay. It was his mean face. “I already have a problem with you,” Jolene said flatly.

  Earl moved on an oblique angle to her defiance and threw a menacing arm in the cat’s direction. “You should do something about that goddamn cat.” Ambush was now up, back arched at Earl’s loud voice. “If it was up to me, I’d nail that damn cat to a tree.”

  * * *

  The idea of Earl harming Ambush filled Hank with a normal anxiety that he found comforting compared to the bizarre terror he inhabited. Run, kitty, he thought. Get away from him.

  Which Ambush did. She jumped lightly to the floor and sped from the room.

  “I’d watch running my mouth about nailing things to trees,” Jolene said under her breath.

  “You know what they say?” Earl grinned. “To a man with a hammer everything looks like a nail.”

  “I’d watch my mouth if I were you,” Jolene repeated, louder.

  “Or what?”

  “You said you were going to talk to Stovall,” Jolene strained the words through set teeth.

  “I did talk to him. He wouldn’t talk back.”

  “So you got mad.”

  “Jolene, whatever I did I did for you. We’re in it together. You told me all about his cutting hangups because he talked about them in AA. How the cops had to come unnail him from the bathroom door in the basement. Same wrist. I used the scar for a guide.”

  “You didn’t have to waste the guy, goddammit.”

  “Me? He fucking froze to death. It wasn’t suppose to get that cold.”

  “It was dumb and wrong and unnecessary,” Jolene said. “Milt will be into the trust in a month . . .”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Earl countered. “Hank’s got an ex-wife in Michigan and one in St. Paul. They could tie it up.”

  “We’re just lucky no cops have been going around interviewing all Stovall’s clients,” Jolene said.

  “Hey”—Earl stabbed with his finger— “if I ever have to do any explaining, I’ll explain the part about you feeding me his cutting habits first. Maybe we don’t make it anymore, honey, but we’re still linked at the hips—just like NoDak.”

  North Dakota. As always, Jolene recoiled from the memory of the ice age cold and that cowboy clerk’s scuffed boot soles doing their backward flip. So she changed the subject. She took out a fresh diaper, a baby wipe, and talcum powder. She said, “How could you grow up and never change a diaper?”

  Earl made a face. “That isn’t a baby’s butt; that’s a rude old guy’s.”

  Efficiently, Jolene peeled away Hank’s gown, removed the diaper and, as she carried it to the diaper caddy, she wrinkled her nose. “Something’s different,” she said, weighing the sodden weight in her hand.

  “Yeah, him out there, he’s different,” Earl said, jerking a thumb toward the muffled sound of splitting oak.

  “He’s handy,” Jolene said. She dropped the diaper into the can and let the top fall. Then she swabbed Hank with a wipe and dusted him with talc. Then she scooted an arm under the small of his back and levered him up to slide the new diaper under him.

  “The Yellow Pages are full of guys who are handy,” Earl said.

  “I kind of like this one,” Jolene said, pulling Hank’s gown into place.

  Hank watched Jolene smile sweetly, undeterred by Earl’s glower. Something was going on. Maybe some of the things he’d been trying to teach her the last year had taken root.

  “Hey, look,” Earl said, “you’re almost a rich widow. You have this big house and you’re surrounded by these guys who want to get into your pants. Allen for sure, maybe Milt, now this Broker guy . . .”

  “Yeah, so, tell me something I don’t already know,” Jolene said.

  “How about you need some protection. And guidance.”

  “Earl, what I’m trying to tell you is I don’t need your kind of protection.”

  “Hey, wait a minute here, you called me up. You were all freaked out till I showed up,” Earl protested.

  Jolene smoothed wrinkles out of Hank’s sheets. “True. I was. But now I’m better. And I don’t need your protection,” she repeated firmly. “That’s why I have a lawyer.”

  Her last remark clearly alarmed Earl. “Hey, Jolene, word of advice. You try going from Wal-Mart to Nordstrom too fast, you’re going to get the bends.”

  “Oh yeah? How’m I doing?” Jolene asked, sticking out her chin.

  Now Earl threw his change-up and became genial. “Jolene, honey,” he said, coming forward, arms wide as if to embrace her, “who’s always been there for you?”

  She moved in swiftly and poked a stiff finger into his sternum. “Right. And I appreciate it.” Another poke. “And I’ll make sure you’re taken care of,” she said.

  “Taken care of?” Earl slapped her hand away, his expression curdled. “That sounds on the minimal side.”

  “Not at all. I kept track and wrote it all down in a notebook, the amounts you spent putting me through treatment and what you gave me the last few weeks. We’ll come up with a figure we agree on. See?” And she let him have another sharp poke.

  “Ow.” The annoyance on Earl’s face quick-fused to anger. He reached out and grabbed her hand below the wrist before she could poke him again. His knuckles blanched white and purple as he powerfully wrenched her toward him.

  “You’re hurting me,” Jolene said between clenched teeth.

  They glared at each other, Jolene up on her tiptoes, yanking her hand to free her trapped wrist.

  Earl pointed out the window with his other hand, in the direction of the woodpile. “Cut the shit, Jolene. Now you get rid of him or I will. And if I do, it won’t be pretty.” He released her hand.

  Jolene stepped back and triumphantly massaged the bruising already evident on her wrist. “You know what? I think you better watch yourself around this guy.”

  An awkward amount of time passed. Too long for a simple bed check. Broker had finished the wood and now waited, sitting on the cho
pping block with the maul across his knees. When Jolene left she’d been breezy and confident. When she finally stepped back out onto the deck and approached him she had washed her face and put on lipstick. And her posture and gait were guarded. She held her right arm tucked close, protectively.

  “I think you better go,” she said. Her eyes did not quite rise to his. “It’s got a little tense around here.”

  “Uh-huh.” Broker got to his feet.

  “I don’t know exactly how to put this.” She glanced back at the house. “I’m afraid you could get hurt.”

  Broker ignored her last remark and tugged at the cuff of her right sleeve and saw the bracelet of blood bruising on her wrist.

  “That’s going to show,” he said.

  “I’ll wear long sleeves.”

  “I owe your husband a big favor, more than chopping wood can repay,” Broker said slowly.

  Jolene shook her head. “Earl’s my problem. And I have to learn how to handle him.”

  He could still walk away. But maybe this was his entry into the curious dynamics of this house. So he said it and went over the line. “How about I just teach him some manners.”

  After another of their loud silences, he reached in his pocket, pulled out his wallet, and removed a card on which was printed:

  Broker Fixes Things

  Carpentry, Electric, Plumbing

  Landscaping

  The card was history—an artifact of his undercover persona. He was following his reflexes but he was working in midair, without a badge, without authorization.

  But it felt good.

  He took a pen from his jacket pocket, crossed out the old Stillwater address, and wrote down J.T.’s phone number and handed her the card. “I’ll be at that number for the next two days. You think about it.”

  Jolene looked at the card, then at him. “You sure?”

  Broker nodded. “Like I say, you think it over. Now, I’m going to put this away and leave.” He hefted the splitting maul, which weighed twenty pounds of forged steel. He carried it into the house and searched for the basement stairwell and followed a rising column of loud music and a steam of sweat, dirty laundry, and a faint under-scent of cannabis down the stairs off the kitchen.