The ice factory was located in Little Silver, one of the oldest and coarsest neighborhoods in the sprawling city of Jacksonville. Bold City Ice was the biggest player on the Little Silver tax roll, and sometimes Johnny wondered if he and Pauline were keeping afloat not just the factory but the whole community, such as it was: a tight basket weave of avenues crowded with historic but decaying houses that were nothing but termites holding hands, really. Back in the ‘90s there’d been talk of revitalization for Little Silver. New streets, for example, or at least repairs to the potholes in the old ones. More incentives for business owners to set up shop. Maybe replumb the drainage system so the residents didn’t have to wade through standing water and mosquito larvae every time it rained. But it hadn’t happened. The money went to other things: crape myrtle giveaways for the Riverside districts, a new library downtown, even a new jaguar exhibit at the zoo (Go Jags!). Money attracted money. And Little Silver continued to molder.
Johnny drove down King Street and had to negotiate a narrow passage between a rusted-out Impala and a slow-moving street sweeper before he could pull into the Bold City Ice lot. He parked and entered the admin wing. The factory lobby was quiet, and at first glance it appeared there was no one stationed at the reception desk, which wasn’t particularly unusual. They’d been having trouble keeping the position filled, and Johnny had almost grown used to the vacant chair and the irksome sight of the desk cluttered with the day’s rubber-banded packets of mail, stranded overnight packages, and the marooned calling cards of thwarted equipment reps who’d been hoping for a sales entrée and who had gotten, instead, a lobby barren as Gobi.
Then last spring they hired Rosa Kaplan, the eighteen-year-old daughter of Pauline’s assistant Claire, to man the reception desk. Rosa, sweet kid but a little dim, if anybody was being honest about it, had graduated from the arts high school last spring with an impressive sculptor’s hand but with a less-than-impressive GPA or attendant college outlook. Claire had been in a near-panic over what to do with the girl until Pauline stepped in and suggested that Rosa take on the receptionist’s role, at least for the summer, until the junior college started sessions. That it was now October and Rosa had yet to make any move toward higher education was not a topic that anyone had been motivated to broach. And really, Rosa was doing a suitable job in reception—not counting the time she wasted batting her eyes at the boys on the ice crew, and with one in particular: Owen Vickers, a feckless delivery driver and a garden-variety jackass, if you asked Johnny. Every time Johnny came through the lobby and found Vickers slouched over the reception desk, leering at Rosa, he wanted to puke. “You’re not busy enough?” he’d bark at Vickers. “You need more to do?” Rosa would bite her lip and Vickers would slink back off toward the loading bays.
But now the receptionist’s station was empty again. Johnny was about to proceed through the lobby to the factory floor when he heard a string of obscenities and approached reception to find Rosa—or Rosa’s blue-jeaned backside, rather—emerging from underneath the desk. She sat back on her heels and dangled a dusty wireless router in front of her.
“Damn router!” she said. “I hate this freaking thing!” Her face was red with exertion, and her hair was coated with dust. She’d been putting on weight since getting out of high school, and Johnny was a little sad to see that the first glimpses of harried womanhood had begun to stake a claim on a face he’d always thought of as nothing short of cherubic.
“Settle down there, kidda, you’ll hurt yourself,” Johnny said.
“I’m going to hurt this bleeping router, is what I’m going to do.” Rosa struggled to her feet and pitched the router onto the desk. “Or the people who made this router, that’s who. Who makes a router that won’t—that won’t even route?” She wiped the sweat from her brow and spit a strand of hair out of her mouth. “Do you know where Pauline is?” she said. “She needs to sign these I-9’s on the new hires.”
“Running. She’ll be in later. Here. I’ll sign the forms.”
Rosa shook her head. “They need Pauline’s signature.”
Now this was irritating. Years ago, when he and Pauline first bought the ice plant from her father, they’d drawn up an elaborately detailed business plan which included an organizational chart that presumably gave each of them equal leadership. It wasn’t as if Johnny—a self-taught journeyman with a high school degree—had been to business school. How did he know what all the terminology meant? But there it was in the business plan: At Bold City Ice, Pauline was CEO, and Johnny was COO. His understanding, at the time, was that the “C”-level titles implied parallel authority. Not that it really mattered, of course. It was just that over the years it became apparent to Johnny that some of the administrative staff seemed to assume that Pauline was the actual boss of the ice venture, while he was more like the lead roustabout in a stationary circus.
Once, out of curiosity, Johnny googled the titles and was surprised to discover that a chief executive officer was widely considered to have greater authority than a chief operating officer. Well, bollocks. He wondered if Pauline knew that when they wrote the business plan. Ah, not that it made a real difference. To his own operations staff, to the workers making the ice, there was no issue. Out on the factory floor, he was the boss. He was “Ice,” as the crew called him. But these folks inside. Now they were another story.
“I’ll sign Pauline’s name, then,” he said to Rosa, reaching for the forms.
“Forge them? That’s dishonest.”
“It’s fine. I’m half-owner of the company. Hasn’t Pauline ever signed something for me?”
“No. She always wants things done right.”
“And I don’t?”
“Well, you’re suggesting we forge government documents. That’s dishonest.”
“Honesty is overrated, Rosa,” Johnny said, just as Roy Grassi, the factory’s lead operations engineer, banged into the lobby, shouldering a ladder. “And if anybody ever asks you where you heard that,” Johnny continued, “you lie and tell them it was Roy Grassi.”
“Roy Grassi told her what?” Roy said.
“Told her she’s under the mistaken impression that my wife is the boss of me,” Johnny said. “Now give me those papers,” he said to Rosa.
Rosa rolled her eyes. “Oh, fine,” she said. She handed him the forms. “I’ll just tell Mrs. MacKinnon you pressured me to commit a felony.”
“Now it’s ‘Mrs. MacKinnon’?”
Rosa sighed. “My mother tells me I have to behave more professionally.”
Johnny signed the forms and handed them back to Rosa, who accepted them grudgingly.
“Pffft,” she said. “Anyway, you had two calls. One from Southeastern Distribution. And one from a lady named Sharon. She sounded Scottish.” Rosa exaggerated an accent on the word “Scottish,” dropping the t’s in the middle so it came out “Scawish.” She handed Johnny two slips of paper with phone numbers written on them. “Like, maybe a relative?” He looked at the numbers, which were fuzzy and out of focus. He rubbed his eyes.
“My ex-wife,” he said.
But Rosa had lost interest in Johnny. She picked up the router and called across the lobby to where Roy was now struggling out the front door with the ladder. “Roy,” she said. “This router’s broke.”
“Take it up with your mom, Rosa,” Roy said. “I’m busy.” He paused and looked back at Johnny. “I know why Southeastern’s calling, by the way,” he said. “They got a bug up their backside about pallet heights. Ed’s gonna come pester you about it.”
“Brilliant,” Johnny said. “Looking forward to it.”
“Oh, and Pauline texted me. She told me to remind you that the OSHA lawyers want to come this week about working on the appeal.”
“I know,” Johnny said. “Och, I know.”
Roy grunted and bumbled out the door.
“What did she want, Rosa?” Johnny said.
“Who?”
“Sharon.”
“Oh,” Rosa said, squ
inting at him while she tried to retrieve it from her memory. “She didn’t say. Just that you should call her back. Oh, and the Southeastern guy? Rude.”
Johnny made his way to his office. He dialed the number at Southeastern Distribution but got voicemail. He left a message. Then he dialed Sharon’s number but reached voicemail there, too. Didn’t anyone answer phones anymore? He listened to the familiar cadence of Sharon’s voice on the recording. “I’m not here right now,” she said. “But leave me a message. I’ll ring you back.”
“Returning your call,” he said simply. “Hope all’s well.” Don’t overthink, he told himself. If it had been an emergency, she would have called your cell.
It wasn’t just the headache. He was feeling decidedly punk, he realized. He left his office and stopped in the men’s room, where he chugged a few gritty nips of Pepto and swallowed three more ibuprofen tablets. Then he donned a parka and headed for the ice floor, the music of Sharon’s voice still ringing in his ears.
Johnny’s first wife was a survivor. That’s what Sharon called herself, and it was true. She had survived a number of seemingly insurmountable obstacles in her lifetime: abuse, poverty, breast cancer, and even—as she often reminded him—marriage to Johnny. But it was funny how things worked out. He and Sharon had loved each other, but they had been terrible together. Far too young, for one thing. Hopelessly poor, constantly overwhelmed, scrapping like cats at every turn. They’d been living in a moldy flat in the housing schemes of Easterhouse, just outside Glasgow, when Sharon discovered she was pregnant. Easterhouse was a place filled with fear and despair, governed by a ring of territorial gangs: the Drummies and Barlanarks, the Monks and the Provies, all of whom had been hacking each other with machetes and Buckfast bottles for close to a century and who showed little sign of slowing down anytime soon. When the baby was born, they called him Corran and gave him the middle name of Boniface, a name Johnny had heard once in a movie and never forgotten. “Good fate,” it meant. They laid their hands on the baby’s downy head and wished it so.
Johnny and Sharon stayed together for a few years after that, which seemed a miracle now, looking back. There had been no doubt in either one’s mind that they should split. The only real surprise was how much more they liked each other after they separated. After a few rueful, stiff meetings with legal aid about custody arrangements, they realized with great relief that they could chuck the lawyers, get the divorce, and still be friends. They even still lived together for a spell. “Just my ex-husband,” Sharon would say to the new boyfriends who came calling, pointing to where Johnny sat in the lounge watching telly or in the kitchen making Marmite toast for Corran. “Pay no mind.” Sometimes Johnny would fetch them a beer, have a chat about the Rangers while Sharon finished getting ready.
The only problem was money. It was moderately miraculous that they both had jobs: Johnny as a packer in a frozen food warehouse and Sharon as a night-shift orderly in an elder care hospital so she could be home days with Corran. They worked as hard as they could. Out of Easterhouse, they said. We’re getting Corran out of Easterhouse. They swore on it. They drank on it. Sharon wept over it and Johnny made grim-faced promises in the night, hands clenched, watching Corran’s thin chest rise and fall as he slept in the little cot in the lounge. They cut back on cigarettes and quit going to the pub. They put the extra pound notes in a biscuit tin and hid it in the oven.
But then the warehouse cut the hours on Johnny’s shift nearly in half, and the Drummies busted into the flat and stole the stash, and the tenuously balanced scale of solvency they’d worked so hard to stabilize went plummeting toward paucity again. Sharon took on extra hours. Johnny spent every afternoon and evening with Corran and even looked after a little girl from the other end of the housing schemes to try to pull in a little extra cash. It wasn’t enough. Out of Easterhouse, they whispered, voices growing fainter and more hopeless. The flat was cold, and icy water dripped from a spongy area in the bedroom ceiling. One day three-year-old Corran stumbled and cut his hand on a broken Buckfast bottle tossed just outside their back door. Another day he stood transfixed at the front window, watching two teenage girls beat each other senseless while a gang of young men urged them on. Sharon pulled him away from the window, gave him a zwieback.
Then she met Toole, a physical therapist at the hospital where she worked. “This is the one,” she told Johnny. “You might be looking for another roommate.” She was right. Toole was a good man. And he wanted to marry Sharon, wanted her and Corran to move with him down to Dunedin. Out of the schemes. “He said he’d pay for nursing school,” Sharon told Johnny. Toole was on the front steps, goofing with little Corran.
Johnny looked around at the horrid little flat and then back at Sharon again.
“He’ll be good to ye?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then.” He walked over and kissed the top of her head. And then he told her about the lead he’d gotten from a mate on a job in America. An ice factory in Florida. A real salary. Promotions, even. He could send money home. They could save for Corran’s education.
“But won’t ye miss us?” Sharon said. Toole walked in holding Corran upside down by his ankles. Corran was screaming with laughter, his fat soft belly rolling out of his shirt.
“Ah, no,” Johnny said. “I’ll make so much money I’ll never think of ye again.” He looked out the window, at the cold dirty streets of the schemes, and he cleared his throat. Then cleared it again.
“Ye cold basturt,” she said, sniffing.
Johnny pulled three Tennent’s from the icebox and passed them around. He gave Corran a cup of chocolate milk. They went out to the front steps and stood freezing in the gray haze. “Fuck you, Easterhouse,” he said. He raised his beer.
“Fuck you,” Sharon said. “Pack a’ numpties.”
“Fuck you,” Toole said.
“Fuck you,” Corran said, banging his cup against the rusted metal porch rail.
“Your mouth!” Sharon said. They laughed and went in, then spent the night drinking and talking of schools, airplanes, and America. And about the sweet salvation of money.
The next morning, they were hungover. Sharon left Toole snoring in the bedroom and came out to drink tea with Johnny. “Florida. It’s what you want?” she said.
“It’s good money,” he said. “It’s money I’ll never make here. It’s for Corran, aye?”
“Well, then.”
“I’ll come visit,” he said. “And Corran can come see me.”
She nodded.
“We’re getting him out of Easterhouse, Sharon,” he said.
And they did.
The frigid operations wing of the old ice factory was a cavernous rectangle, somber as a basilica, three stories high with column-like fenestration that lent the place the look of an art deco Parthenon. The manufacturing gallery was surrounded by its supporting departments: water purifying, drying, storage, shipping. In the center, six twenty-foot-tall cylindrical ice machines stood in formation, and when the light was right, the effect of the looming silhouette of the barrels against the tall windows was like a Gotham City skyline, Johnny often thought. The ice machines were ancient, stubborn as pachyderms, a sextet of cantankerous old beasts that Johnny had been nursing, cursing, and cajoling for nearly three decades.
They had long ago outlived their manufacturer, and Johnny had found it so difficult to find replacement parts when he needed them that he had begun machining them himself in his garage at home: a containment valve, a mounting bracket, a conveyor screw. The old tube machines could lose parts like rotted teeth, and sometimes Johnny felt like an antediluvian dentist, trying to fashion custom teeth for a passel of cranky old hippos that were only going to turn around and bite him once he got the choppers fitted.
Ah, but he loved the old brutes. Who was he kidding? He regarded them. The most problematic of the six was Dumbo, a wholly erratic lunk of a machine that had been rebuilt so many times Johnny was surprised every day to come in and find the old
hog still wheezing and clanking away. Then there were the others, which over the years the crew had christened according to reliability, productivity, and personality: Tut, Popeye, GoGo, Samson, and Proud Mary. He wondered how much longer he could conceivably keep this old fleet of rust buckets going. But he’d work them until they were dead. What else could you do?
As if on cue, Dumbo started acting up, clattering like a washing machine with an off-kilter bushing. Damn it. Johnny knew what was happening. Lately there’d been a pesky tendency for short-outs on Dumbo’s electronic expansion valve, a newfangled add-on that had been installed on all the old icemakers a few years ago. Before some of these newer technologies had been integrated into operations, a step that Johnny grudgingly accepted as a conduit to more efficient production, the icemakers had been completely mechanical. But increasingly, the old machines were being retrofitted with electronic and even computerized parts, which might have meant gains in efficiency but also meant losses in bloody fixability. Johnny could fix a mechanical part. He could even retool one, if necessary. But these computerized valves? They were like highly complex parasites on a bunch of simple old dinosaurs. The only thing he really wanted to do with them was pull them off. He shut Dumbo down and waited for her to stop thrashing. Then he shimmied under the base of the icemaker. If he could reach up and jiggle one of the hoses to the expansion valve, it might help trip the connection back to life.
He’d been at it for only a couple of minutes when a pair of leather loafers appeared next to Dumbo, pivoted once, then stopped. Johnny wondered if it was possible to crawl all the way under the machine to avoid detection, but it was too late.
The Ice House Page 2
