Children of the New World: Stories (20 page)

If it weren’t for the ice age, Tom and I would never be friends—if that’s what you call two men squatting in the snow clutching bows in silence. Tom and I have fundamentally different souls. I was a cabinetmaker back in the old world. Used to hammer nails, listen to Grateful Dead on a paint-splattered boom box, smoke a joint after work with whichever guys were onsite, and talk about windsurfing as the sun went down. Tom ran an auto supply store where he’d managed to churn himself bitter amid the boxed-up engine parts and jugs of antifreeze. Occasionally, when we’re crouching in the ice like this for hours, he’ll stare out at the white snow and his face will go slack and he’ll say, “God, I could use some blow,” letting his memories hang in the frozen air.

Tom lost a lot. The ice storms froze his wife and two children below. Still, we all lost people. Fathers, mothers, friends, life partners. I had a sister out in Reno and a mom and stepdad down in Boca Raton. God only knows where they are now. Frozen far below. Even if they’re still alive, I’ll never see them again. Boca and Reno are a lot of frozen miles from wherever the hell in Michigan our igloos squat.

We sit and watch the terrain. Nothing moves. The wind whips through the boulders and the sun slides behind the clouds. Snow flurries start and stop, start and stop. Shadows begin to stretch from the rocks. Somewhere far above, a crow caws. And finally the dogs move. They lift their muzzles, huffing at the wind, their ears bristled into peaks.

Tom and I rise slowly. He motions for me to head right as he makes his way down the rock face to another opening. Sure enough, as I look through the gap, there are two moose: a mother and calf nibbling the bark off an exposed treetop. The calf’s on my side. I look back to Tom as we notch our arrows. Our eyes meet, we nod, and we fire simultaneously. The calf, hearing the bowstring, looks up and spots me. His legs bend to bolt, but the arrow sinks into him and loosens his body. He attempts to sprint away but his haunches are already weak and he hops clumsily over the rocks, his hoofs clopping against the topsides. The mother follows, and I hear another arrow from Tom’s side. The moose snorts, a deep sound of death, and then is gone after her child.

We find the calf far out on the tundra and the mother a bit farther on. The mother’s a good-size cow. We split open their bellies and slide the entrails out onto the snow. Tom separates the liver and kidneys, slices out the heart, and puts them in a sack. Then we truss up the cow and calf and load them onto the sled. We check the traps, both empty, before starting back toward home.

With two moose bagged, Tom gets in a talkative mood. “I’ll tell you something,” he says as we hike across the snow, “Paulson’s about to get what’s been coming to him.”

“Yeah?”

“Me and some other guys are heading up there tomorrow night to put out those fires.”

“Good luck. No way Phil’s going to let you through the gates.”

“He’s not letting us; we’re axing our way in. I’ll put an arrow through him and his wife if they try to stop us.”

“Tom, just relax.”

“Relax? Freezing’s what I’m doing. How about you? You ever spend the night thinking about all the wood the Paulsons have wasted? Your little girls shivering yet?”

“We can move, right? Relocate. Let them have what’s left of the woods.”

“And leave a perfectly good home to go find another one? That’s plain stupid.” Tom spits into the snow. “We’ve been miles out; there’s nothing but ice and rocks.”

“The wood will run out anyway.”

“Fuck that. Those trees would’ve lasted us another two years if the Paulsons had let off. Nah, we’re going up there and putting an end to this tomorrow night.” Tom lowers his head against the winds that howl between us.

“Who’s going?” I ask.

“Why? You want in?”

“No.”

“Then it’s none of your business.”

“Don’t do it, Tom. They’re survivors, like us.”

“They’re not like us. They don’t give a damn about anyone but themselves. Look, you want to extend the olive branch, you go ahead. You’re good at talking to people. You go up there and talk to Phil. You get him to put out that fire peacefully, and I’m happy to spend tomorrow night home. But if that fire’s burning after sundown, we’re going.”

We don’t speak another word for the rest of the way home. The sun falls low, sending a pink stain across the clouds, and the dogs huff white clouds into the air ahead of us. The other families are happy for our arrival. It’s been a good day. A cord of wood has been cut, three trout and a river otter caught, add in our two moose and we’ve got a feast. The women take the meat into the igloos to prepare it, and we gather together to eat. It’s a beautiful night: the smell of singed meat in the air, the children happy as they eat, the snow drifting lightly around us. The scene puts everyone in a festive spirit—enough so that Jerry says he’s opening the Disco later that evening and we all should come over.

The Disco was Jerry’s baby. He built the igloo and put in a bar with the few bottles of liquor we had among us. Every now and then he’ll get some moose tallow candles burning, water down the bottles, and invite us to come dance. Back in the day he had an iPod with a solar charger and he’d play some tunes at the highest volume that little thing could manage. Then the frost bit into Jerry’s iPod and shattered the screen. After that it was just the watered-down drinks—so watered down that all you’d really be drinking was colorful melted snow—and the moose candles. You go, drink a couple drinks, and without fail, someone makes a dumbass of themselves by imagining they’re drunk.

Still, it was at Jerry’s Disco that Lisa and I became a couple. Lisa was one of two remaining single women in the community, the only other one being Martha, a sixty-seven-year-old battle-axe whom we affectionately call Grandma. Lisa’s good-looking: large-framed with strong arms capable of skinning moose and hauling ice, tall with big, round mountain-climbing legs and a laugh that rolls from her like thunder. One night I asked Lisa to dance, and it’s been her and me ever since. So, I feel like I owe it to Jerry to go to his Disco nights when he throws them.

Lisa, the kids, and I stop in long enough to share a pale yellow cocktail and say goodnight. Then we crawl out and head through the dark cold, the sounds of the community party fading behind us. After the kids are tucked in and dreaming, I tell Lisa about Tom’s threat.

“Don’t worry, you’ll be able to talk to Phil,” Lisa says. “You’re a good talker.”

I don’t know why everyone tells me this. All I can remember saying to anyone in the last year is “delicious fish.”

So, I try to distract myself like I do when I have insomnia. I think about shopping. For a while, I used to think about food. American breakfasts were my thing: yellow scrambled eggs, thin strips of bacon, sizzling sausages, the mottled golden brown of French toast. But that kind of thinking makes a person wicked hungry, so I switched to shopping. I picture myself pushing a cart down the aisles past Kitchenware, full of waffle irons, pots and pans, spice holders, electric juicers; into Bed and Bath with its hand towels, bath mats, bamboo soap dishes, shower curtains, toothbrush holders; Household and its ironing boards, vacuum cleaners, starch bottles, laundry detergent, peaches, twilight, smoke, moose …

I wake to another cold dawn. The kids are outside rolling snowballs down the sloping sides of our igloos. Lisa and I try to give them half an hour of playtime every day so they can experience what childhood feels like. It hurts to think how little time our children get to be kids. Their day is filled with sawing wood, skinning moose, learning to hunt: the work of survival. Lisa gives me the pants she mended and they look good, two strips of badger fur running down the legs. Warm. I throw some thin strips of marten on the coals, let them sizzle till the gristle starts spitting, flip them over, and drop them into our bowls. We eat, listening to the sound of snowflakes falling outside.

“Okay, I’m going.”

“Good luck,” Lisa says, and we kiss, our noses brushing against each other’s.

Soon I’m out the door, alone, into the long expanse between our community and the Paulsons’. On the horizon their igloo rises, an enormous mound of white interrupting the flat landscape. The snow starts falling heavier, and I hike through the drifts until the ice wall of the Paulsons’ towers above me. Through the wall I see the dark shadow of one of the laborers dragging something. I walk around the side where a crude gate has been hewn from a slab of rock.

“¡Hola!”
I yell over the gate. The figure on the other side freezes.
“¡Amigo! ¡Hola!”
The man puts down what he’s carrying and approaches the fence.
“Soy Gordon,”
I yell, trying to recall the little Spanish I still remember.

“Yeah, I remember you,” the worker says.

“Oh … I’m here to see Phil.”

“Why?”

The line had come to me in the middle of the night, a memory from how we used to interact so long ago. “Wanted to invite him for cocktails.”

“Wait here,” the worker says. I watch him as he makes his way up the stone walkway and through the tall arched entrance of the igloo. He doesn’t even have to duck to enter. I wait, kicking the snow and smelling the smoke from the fire as it spools toward the clouds.

Phil emerges from the entrance and heads toward the gate. The chain is unlocked and the large stone slab is opened, and there Phil is, in his woolen vest and trousers, all smiles, his teeth miraculously white and still there.

“Gordon,” he says, extending his hand. “Good to see you again!”

“Yeah,” I say, shaking his palm with my glove.

“How are the kids?”

“They’re fine,” I say, taken aback. “I’m surprised you remember them.”

“Are you kidding me? Who’s going to forget kids that good-looking! So, what brings you up here today?”

“I just wanted to know if you and your wife wanted to come over for drinks this afternoon and talk.”

“Well, that’s nice of you. Really, we appreciate it. But, to be a hundred-percent honest, Gordy, we don’t really like to go down there anymore; hasn’t been the warmest reception among the locals. But, hey, we’ve got plenty to drink here, why don’t you come in for a bit? What do you say?”

“Thanks, that sounds good.”

Phil steps aside to let me in, and his worker chains the gate behind us. As we walk up the flagstones, Phil’s igloo rises above us, thirty-feet high, storm windows set into the snow walls. Through one of the windows I see the Paulson daughters watching me. They raise their hands and wave.

“Sure is nice what you did here,” I say.

“Wait till you see the inside,” Phil says.

It’s true; the interior of the igloo is a work of beauty. Bricks of ice are stacked to form walls, which divide the lower level of the house into a main living room, a kitchen with an attached dining room, a den/office space, and a small bathroom equipped with an oak door for privacy. Along the walls are a series of windows, and around each window a ledge of ice protrudes to create a sill, on which rest framed photos of Phil and his wife playing at the beach. Ice has been intricately cut to form crown moldings and latticework baseboards, and the floor has been covered with white plush carpeting. There’s a meticulously chiseled ice staircase leading to the second floor, complete with an ice banister and carpeted steps. What’s most striking, however, is the furniture. The living room has a black leather couch and a glass coffee table, upon which the girls are playing with a complete Playmobil fire station: fire engines, the station house, a fire pole, even a little Dalmatian. My kids would kill for that.

“Barb!” Phil calls. “We have company.” Barbara appears from the kitchen, warm in mink fur and leggings. “This is our neighbor, Gordon,” Phil says.

It’s the first time I’ve met Phil’s wife. She’s pretty in an old-fashioned way: skinny with too-thin arms that look like they couldn’t shovel more than a couple yards of deep snow. Her eyes are black, and for a moment I think it’s from sleep until I remember what makeup looks like.

“How nice of you to stop by,” she says.

“What are you having?” Phil motions toward the bar. The bottles of the old world are lined up like bowling pins: the squat square flasks of bourbon, dark brown bottles of coffee liqueur, the frosted glass of a vodka bottle. I’m speechless, and it’s only when Phil asks again that I tell him bourbon. He fills a tumbler, dropping two ice cubes from a small box beneath the bar, and hands me the drink. I haven’t tasted the smoky sweetness of pure bourbon in years, and the flavor shocks my tongue, warming me immediately and answering the question of just how shitty Jerry’s Disco drinks truly are.

“How’d you get all this?” I ask.

“That’s a good question,” Phil says. “And don’t worry, I’ll let you in on the secret in a minute, but first sit, tell me how life’s going down there in town.”

So, we sit and talk the kind of talk I’m not used to. Old-world talk about sports and travel. I remember words I haven’t heard for ages: public schooling, frequent flyer miles, coq au vin. My blood’s so thin from a diet of moose and melted snow that the alcohol hits me hard and I’m dizzy with bourbon and gabbing about dovetailing benches over an empty tumbler when Phil interrupts me.

“Come with me,” he says, getting up. “I’ve got to show you something.”

I rise onto tingling legs, feeling a fuzzy kind of love, and follow him back outside and around the igloo to the fire. The cold winds and the smell of smoke sober me enough to remember why I’m here. I have a sudden image of Tom wielding an axe. I promise myself to broach the subject soon.

The hole is enormous, at least twenty feet in diameter and so deep, it’s near impossible to see the bottom. From down below, the smoke is steadily rising. There are steps leading down along the outer edge, each step carved out of the snow, a wheel well cut through their center. One of Phil’s workers arrives with a wheelbarrow and begins down the spiraling path that corkscrews along the perimeter of the hole.

“Wow,” I say. “What’s down there?”

“Houses. Only melted our way to one so far, but there are hundreds more. Full of everything you could want. Just last week we brought up a whole set of racquetball clubs. Jorge here says he thinks he can build a relatively decent racquetball court; isn’t that what you told me?”