Ice Storm

by Cadle, Lou

  If he opened his bedroom curtains, soon he’d be able to see enough to read. But that’d lose him some heat out the windows, right? It’d be better if he kept it a cave. But then he’d be crazy bored. No gaming, no computer, no internet, no movies, no music, no nothing. He could listen to music on his phone, but without a way to recharge it, should he?

  No. He shouldn’t use his phone to entertain himself. That felt like an adult decision, and he was pleased that he’d made it.

  But he was pissed off at himself too, for being so grown-up and reasonable. Damn, but he was bored. Okay, no phone for games or music. But he had to be able to at least read. So he’d lose a degree or two from opening one curtain. He checked the weather again to see which way the wind was coming from. He had a window each on two different walls, so he wouldn’t open the drapes to the one where wind might blow past any cracks. He also looked more carefully at the forecasted temperatures. It would top out at 32 degrees in four hours, and then the temps would fall and the snow would come. By tomorrow morning, it would be 23 degrees. With a tap, he switched to Celsius. Zero C now, -5C tomorrow morning. That made it feel worse, illogically.

  Sitting up in bed, it was really warm where the covers were on him but his nose and cheeks and knuckles were cold. He grabbed the throw and put it around his neck and shoulders like a really heavy scarf. That felt better already. It also, he realized, smelled faintly of his mother, of her soap, and that familiar smell soothed him.

  There wasn’t enough light to read yet, so he kept the drapes both closed and tried to think of some way to entertain himself. He tried to have a sex fantasy about the girl, Julia, but it didn’t work. He had to know her a little better to put her into action in his mind. Did she joke around a lot? Did she smile or look serious? Would she want to be on top or bottom? Not that he’d complain either way, and both would be a new experience for him, but it seemed weird to make her do whatever he wanted in his imagination if it wasn’t how she’d really be. It was one thing to do that with an actress in your head, who you’d never see in school the next day, and a different thing to do that with a real girl you’d met and would see. If he continued down this road, he’d never be able to meet her eyes again.

  Speaking of actresses… he let his mind drift to a recurring fantasy he had about India Eisley. I Am the Night was dead boring, but he’d watched it all because she was so hot in it. Vulnerable but tough. He let his mind drift over images of her, and just about when things were getting interesting, his phone buzzed.

  His mom. Had to be. She had impeccable timing about this. He looked at the screen. It was her. India faded from his mind.

  “Hi, Mom. Are you still at work?”

  “I am. Did you sleep okay, honey?”

  “Perfectly. The power is out here.”

  “I figured. I saw an outage map, and it’s almost everywhere. They’ll get it fixed and soon, I hope. I’m glad I have my job and not theirs. I’m inside, and they have to work out in this awful weather.”

  “When will you be home?” He didn’t mean for it to sound so little-kid and whiny. “I’m bored out of my mind.”

  “So even conversation with me would be better?” She laughed, letting him know she was just teasing. “It’s only for a day. Do some homework.”

  “I will. There’s nothing else to do but that and read.”

  “Don’t go out.”

  “I won’t go out much.”

  “Raysan,” she said in that mom voice.

  “I promised to help the neighbor. Eve? You know the old lady with the strange clothes and the jungle front yard?”

  “Oh yes. What are you helping her with?”

  “She has a fireplace and I helped her get wood inside this morning. I’ll do that again at suppertime, when there’s still light.”

  “You aren’t using an ax or a chainsaw, I hope.”

  “No. Just carrying logs for her.”

  “Okay, I guess that’s fine. It’s very nice of you, and I’m proud of you for helping. But I also want you to stay warm and safe.”

  “Is it warm where you are?”

  “We don’t have power, but the building is huge. It’ll hold heat longer than the house will. I hope I’ll be home before nightfall. Are you eating okay?”

  He told her of his plan to stay in one room all day, and reassured her that he had enough food for the day with him. “I’ll eat supper after I help Eve with the wood.” Though he would have to eat cold food. Not the freezer meals. What would cold chicken noodle soup taste like? Probably awful. He hoped the power would come on before he had to resort to cold soup.

  “Watch for falling trees,” his mom said, interrupting his thoughts of food.

  “I know. I can hear limbs breaking and falling all the time.”

  “Not here. Too much concrete, no big trees. But I’ve seen the news photos.”

  “It sounds like there’s a war going on. The snaps of limbs could be gunshots. If it happens nearby, it’s loud.”

  “I’m sorry if you’re scared. I’ll be there soon.”

  “Don’t drive if it’s dangerous. I’m fine. I’m bored. Not scared at all. You get used to the noise.” Though you really didn’t with the close ones. It was too irregular, and you couldn’t predict when a limb nearby might fall with a loud snap.

  “Call me if you have any problems. Don’t burn any candles. Oh, right, and the flashlight is in the garage.” She described where it was. “Extra batteries are in my office, sitting in the charger. If they’re right side up, they are charged. If they are upside-down, they need a charge.”

  “Thanks. That’ll help a lot. With a flashlight, I’ll be able to read even after the sun goes down. And find my way to the bathroom at night.”

  “I’ll be home before night if I possibly can. Okay. I should save my phone battery, and so should you.”

  “I know.” But he didn’t want to hang up. He missed her. And he was feeling lonely a lot these days, with Omar not speaking to him. The weather and no school and being stuck inside made the world seem lonelier still. But he said none of that. He only said, “I’m doing fine, Mom.” He didn’t want her worrying about him and trying to drive home when she shouldn’t.

  “I love you, sweetie. Gotta go.”

  “Love you too.”

  “I know. I’m so proud that you’re the kind of kid that I can leave alone there for a day or two and know you won’t get into trouble. See you soon. Bye.”

  He clicked off, wondering what kind of trouble a person could get into stuck in place alone in an ice storm. He supposed in houses with liquor, a person could get drunk until the booze ran out, but his mom only had an occasional drink when she went out. He’d never seen her come home drunk. So there was no booze here to sneak, no drugs to sneak, and, without electricity, no music or television to play too loudly. He might make trouble just for the entertainment value if he could figure out what sort of trouble to make, but again, his imagination failed him.

  An hour later, it was bright enough to see to read. He read for a while, did homework for a while, and read for a while more. He napped, and would have stayed asleep but for a loud and close crack of a tree limb falling. He texted his mom. He texted Brew. He wished he’d gotten Julia’s number so he could text her. Though he’d only texted, No electric. I’m BORED, to his mom and Brew. He wrote a short email to his father about the ice storm and sent it.

  Finally, two hours after lunch, his boredom drove him outside.

  It was a disaster zone out there.

  Chapter 7

  He supposed it technically was a disaster, the ice storm. But, staring out over the view, he could see that it was. He hadn’t been out in the daylight in twenty-four hours, and in that short time, the ice had done an awful lot of damage.

  Snow had been coming down for an hour or two, from the looks of it. And it was definitely colder and windier. He thought longingly of the warm cocoon of his bed with its stack of blankets, but he remembered how the boredom had gotten so bad it m
ade him want to crawl out of his own skin, so he stayed outside to explore the strange landscape his street had become.

  He wasn’t going to be walking far, though. There not only were branches down everywhere, but whole trees. The street was blocked in both directions by downed trees. The little tree in their front yard was bent nearly parallel to the ground. The tip was actually frozen to the ground, trapped there by ice. He walked to it, grabbed the slender trunk, and shook it. Ice cracked off and fell. It was soon free of its trap, but it was still bent way over. At least the top wasn’t touching the ground anymore. It was about eight inches above that. If it kept growing like that, sideways, it’d look pretty weird, but he wasn’t sure what to do for it beyond clearing it of ice. He hoped it would straighten up when it understood where the sun was. There was a word for that he’d learned in bio and gotten right on the test, but now he couldn’t think of it at all. Plants want to grow up toward the sun, so it might be okay.

  The eaves of every house that he could see from his front yard had icicles hanging down eight or more inches. He turned around to look at his own house—yes, it too had plenty of them. One neighbor across the street and three doors down was out with a broom, knocking his off. Was there a reason to do that? They were pretty. People put up fake ones at Christmas, so why knock them down now, when they were real?

  People confused him. But only that one guy was doing it, so he didn’t worry that he should too.

  He picked his way along the sidewalk, which had a bit more traction now that there was a light dusting of snow. But under the snow, he could feel the slick coating of ice. Safer to walk over the grass still. The pain of falling didn’t worry him, just the humiliation factor. Not that anyone was out here looking at him. And nobody from school lived on his block that he knew of. So he wasn’t sure why he was worried about embarrassing himself. But he was.

  He picked his way along slowly, climbing over downed branches, making his way along. Limbs were down everywhere. He walked almost half a block. In just that short distance, he saw six cars that had been crushed or buried by falling trees and branches. The street beyond where he stood was entirely blocked by a big tree. Electric lines were tangled in it and a power pole was canted like the leaning tower of Pisa. The wood at the break in the big tree was white, the break jagged, and there was a high lump of ground in the yard, as if the roots had been partly pulled up as it fell. But the roots had been strong enough so that the trunk gave first. Or the ground was too frozen to give up the roots.

  Whatever had caused it to break that way, it was a big mess, and the power company and owners of the tree would have days of clean-up ahead of them. Everyone would. He wondered how much officials would do—the city or the power department—and how much would be left to the people in the houses. He’d never really thought about that before. You had to mow your own lawn, and he did that sometimes, or his mom did, but not everyone had the tools to fix a whole tree being down, like chainsaws or whatever. He and his mom didn’t have that stuff.

  And even if they did, he wouldn’t have the first idea how to use a chainsaw. He was pretty sure watching old horror movies wasn’t good enough training. An ax he might be able to manage… if it wasn’t too heavy. Would it be? He had no idea. He’d never picked one up except in a video game.

  Except for the one guy with a broom and hatred of icicles, no one was out here cleaning up fallen limbs. It was cold, and the wind made it colder still. That was probably why.

  By the time he made it to his own house again, he was freezing. Eve’s house had a faint stream of smoke flowing from the chimney. He’d seen one other smoking chimney on his short walk. He’d heard the roar of two generators. So of—what, eighteen houses he’d seen?—only four families had any heat. It wasn’t only him who was cold.

  He unlocked the front door and went back in. The house was colder than it had been a day ago, it still felt way warmer than outside. He stripped off shoes, socks, and jacket again, and went to check the thermostat. It was down to 47 degrees inside.

  Toast. Man, that sounded good. But he couldn’t even make a lousy piece of toast. Not without power. Cavemen might have made it fine, or at least made it for long enough to have kids who had kids who led eventually to his parents and then to him, but Ray wasn’t a caveman. He was a modern person missing all the conveniences of civilization.

  He returned to his room, which might be marginally warmer than the rest of the house. He sat on the chair, reading his English book until he was too cold to think. Then he climbed back in bed, sitting up, the plush throw around his neck and the blankets piled on him. He ate an apple, thinking what he might have for supper and breakfast. His mom’s salad? A cold can of soup? He could pile all the peanut butter on one slice of bread, but he didn’t think that’d be enough to satisfy him.

  He would have traded his gaming console for a couple of steaming large pizzas.

  To distract himself from such thoughts, he read his history assignment for next week, answered the homework questions, and read ahead another two chapters beyond that. He discovered that reading history was good for stopping your self-pity. No matter what was going on with the weather in Virginia, and no matter how cold the house grew, it wasn’t like freezing your ass off in Russia during the Napoleonic Wars while having a festering musket ball wound and no antibiotics.

  When the light began to fade, he made his sandwiches, a peanut butter and a cheese sandwich, wrapping up one for breakfast and putting the other on a plate. He ate the last orange while standing in the kitchen, tossing the peels into the trashcan. He also ate his mom’s work salad, which tasted more bitter than the salads she served at suppers. He managed to eat it all anyway, standing at the sink. The floor was cold, and he stood on one foot as he chewed, and then when it started to ache from the cold, the other foot. He should wear his old sneakers around the house if the floor was going to be this cold. The wind outside was picking up, rattling the windows, and there were more shushing cascades of ice off trees nearby, audible even indoors. Or maybe the furnace had put out noise he never noticed and had disguised the outdoor noises before. He looked out the back window, and the two trees still stood tall out there.

  Back in his room, the light had grown too dim to read text. He glanced at a graphic novel he’d already read before until he couldn’t make out the pictures at all, and then went to the bathroom. When he returned, he closed the drapes and lay in bed, wanting to turn on the flashlight to see his book, or the phone to play a game, but knowing he shouldn’t do either. He should conserve the power in both phone and flashlight.

  It was hard to resist turning them on—damned hard. He wasn’t tired yet. He didn’t want to sleep. He checked the time on his phone and made sure his mom hadn’t texted again. She had answered his last text late this morning, saying she might be stuck there another night and she was sorry. If she came home, at least that’d be something to do, talking with her. Or they could light candles and play Monopoly or Gin Rummy. Something other than just sitting here and thinking.

  He crawled out of the warm bed and went to his computer—there was over an hour of charge left on its battery after he’d written up his history homework on it—and opened his journal. He wrote about his day. He hadn’t told a lie that he could remember. He hadn’t had any screw-ups because he had only talked with one person. And he had the good deed of—

  Shit!

  He’d forgotten to go over to Eve’s house to help with the wood this afternoon. Only one thing to do today, one promise made, and he’d forgotten to do it.

  Chapter 8

  He went to the bathroom and grabbed the damp socks off the shower rack—the drier of two pairs now hanging there—and switched his warm and dry socks for those. If he was going to get a pair wet, might as well be the ones that already were.

  He threw on his jacket and zipped it as he retraced his path to Eve’s house.

  He ran up the front steps, slipping and sliding, keeping himself from a fall only by clutching the ra
iling, and knocked on the front door. He stood, shivering, pulling on his gloves, thinking that wearing wet socks hadn’t been such a great idea. His feet were already freezing. He wondered what had happened to his scarf, and knocked again.

  The door eased open an inch. “I thought you’d forgotten,” Eve said.

  He nearly lied but stopped himself. “I did. I got involved with homework and stuff, and didn’t think about the time. I’m really sorry.”

  “Well, you’re here now, and that’s all that matters.”

  “I’ll go around back.”

  “I’ll meet you back there.”

  It wasn’t as dark outside as it had been inside, so they didn’t need a flashlight for him to see the woodpile. But the wind was strengthening, whipping around the fallen snow. When he had his second load in arm, she told him to hang onto them and come inside. She took two pieces from the first pile on the landing and led him through her kitchen and into the living room. In the living room, there was a fireplace and a woodstove wedged in its opening. On either side of it were a couple of split logs, the ones he’d carried for her this morning.

  “Wait a minute,” she said, as she dropped the pair of logs she’d been carrying with a clatter onto the hearth. She moved one old stack of two onto the other stack of two, and when she was done pointed to the single taller stack she constructed. “That’s the dry wood over there. Everything from outside can go on the other side of the stove to start drying.” She picked up the two new pieces she’d dropped earlier and started a new stack.

  Ray was about to drop his pile on top, but she stopped him. “Hang on. I’ll put them crossways, like this. That’ll allow air in between them and they should dry faster. Just drop them right there, next to the hearth, on the floor. I’ll move them from there.”