The Ice House

by Laura Lee Smith

  “Dude, to you, maybe,” Chemal said. “But maybe it’s working just fine for them. Who are we to judge? This dude on the show is assuming that the technology is taking something away from them. He doesn’t see it’s adding new layers. It’s, like, hyper-experiential. Those two still have the opportunity to get busy in person anytime they want. But they know they have more options, so they experiment. A new reality. It’s very creative. It’s, like, pioneering.”

  “Chemal,” Johnny said. “Why aren’t you in school?”

  “School sucks.” Chemal knocked back the rest of his Coke. “You ready to go?”

  “I think you should be in school,” Johnny said. “You should be thinking about college.”

  “Dude, you’re, like, lecturing me.”

  “Well, I think you need to hear it.”

  “I want this, I can go hang out with Jerry.”

  “I have a question for you, Chemal.”

  “Go.”

  “And I happen to have a son, so I think I can speak with some authority here.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Have you considered the fact that Jerry might be thinking of your best interests?”

  “Absolutely not,” Chemal said. “The only thing Jerry is thinking of is my mother’s ass.” It was hard to know exactly what to say to that. “And now, I have a question for you, Chilly Willy,” Chemal continued.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s important.”

  “Then ask it.”

  Chemal leaned forward and peered earnestly into Johnny’s face. “Friend,” he said. “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and savior?” Johnny looked down and massaged his temples. Then he sat back in his chair and stared at Chemal, who was waiting, face expectant, eyes wide. Great. A proselytizing KISS Army field marshal.

  “Listen,” Johnny began, “I don’t—”

  Chemal slapped the table, exploded into laughter. “I’m kidding, Iceman!!” He leaned back and rocked his chair up onto two legs, gleeful. “Bam!! Nailed your ass, dude!”

  Johnny stared at him, then picked the car keys up off the table and tossed them at him. They hit Chemal in the belly and tumbled into his lap. Johnny left a twenty on the table and they walked out of Shakey’s Fish Camp into the blinding sun.

  “Do me a favor,” Johnny said. “Don’t tell my wife what I told you.”

  “She doesn’t know?”

  “No.”

  “That you have cancer, or that you have a kid?”

  Jesus. “She knows about the kid. And he’s not a kid. He’s an adult. About the cancer. It’s not even cancer. Maybe precancer, or something. I don’t know. Just don’t say anything to anybody.”

  “Ice,” Chemal said. “You have my word. And anyway.” He jerked his head to the side to clear the bangs from his forehead. “I don’t really hang out with your wife. I mean, no offense—she’s a pretty lady. All the running.” Chemal looked away then, embarrassed, it seemed, to be talking about Pauline. To be talking about lying to Pauline.

  Johnny nodded. “Yes, she is,” he said. “A pretty lady.” Not the kind of lady to lie to.

  They drove west, then south along the river, across Julington Creek and down State Road 13 through Fruit Cove and Switzerland. The road was lined with loblolly pines burned brown from the late autumn sun, and as they drove, the houses and businesses along the roadway began to drop away until they were deep into a deserted quiet stretch, nothing to see but blacktop, trees, the canvas of blue sky above.

  “Where is this place?” Chemal said.

  “We’re almost there.”

  Johnny rolled his window down and listened to the tires skimming over the road. At an isolated four-way stop, they idled for a moment.

  “Listen,” Johnny said. “Quiet.”

  Chemal opened his window.

  “You hear it?” Johnny said.

  “Hear what?”

  Johnny often thought that if he was abducted by aliens, transported through space, then blindfolded and dropped back to Earth in either his native Scotland or his adopted Florida, he would be able to discern his location based solely on the quality of the silences. He compared the silences often—both from memory and from the many trips he’d taken back to Glasgow. The city was always noisy, sure—loud with cars, people, the jarring business of living. But you could go out a bit into the Scottish countryside to find the heavy silences.

  In Florida, silence was a porous thing, damp and fragile, never quite solidified. Always there was sound, somewhere. Cicadas whirring, rustle of palmettos, rumble of afternoon thunderheads. Pecans dropping through the canopy. Mosquitoes buzzing at earlobes. In Scotland, out in the country, the silence was dry, hardened, complete. It was a silence so absolute it was almost deafening, softened only now and again by a cold wind cutting through wide yellow fields of oilseed rape. Johnny always felt that the silence in Scotland was older, perhaps wiser. Florida quiet was restless, wild, as unrestrained and lightsome as a bobcat cub.

  “La Florida,” Johnny said. “I’ll never get over it.”

  Chemal looked at him, skeptically at first, but then he closed his eyes, listened, and nodded.

  “Dude,” he said. “You speak the truth.”

  After a few more miles, Johnny directed Chemal to pull down a long driveway toward a large property shielded from the road by a row of live oaks. Behind the trees, Chemal let out a low whistle. Before them lay five acres of junk: oxidized appliances, mildewed lumber, a small massif of carburetors, engines, alternators, flywheels, and manifolds. The debris was arranged in an intricate labyrinth, with worn footpaths meandering in and among the piles as if this were a botanic garden. In the near-distance was a series of formations of stacked cars, like Stonehenge. In the middle of it all was a low cinder-block house. It looked like a bunker. A hand-painted sign was nailed to a television antenna: “Pellum’s ‘You Pull ‘Em’ Salvage.”

  “Cool,” Chemal breathed.

  “You like?”

  “I like.”

  A gigantic black dog came racing around the side of the building, baying like Cerberus.

  “Damn, Ice, check this dog,” Chemal said.

  “He’s fine,” Johnny said. “That’s Cujo.”

  The dog circled the Suburban, barking and growling. He jumped up on the driver’s-side door and bared his teeth at Chemal through the window.

  “He ain’t joking, Ice.”

  “He’s fine. Just don’t let him smell fear,” Johnny said. “Come on.”

  He reached into the backseat for a canvas tote bag of tools, then he opened the door and climbed out, noting with some relief that Cujo seemed to recognize him; the dog gave him a cursory sniff and barreled back around the Suburban to wait for Chemal, who still sat in the driver’s seat.

  “Let’s go!” Johnny said.

  Inside the truck, Chemal shook his head.

  Johnny sighed and walked around to Chemal’s door. Chemal rolled the window down. Cujo growled.

  “He’s gonna bite my nuts off, Ice.”

  “He won’t. He’ll see you’re with me. He knows me.”

  Cujo barked. A line of saliva worked its way loose from the dog’s lower lip and dangled under his chin. Chemal shook his head again.

  “Oh, come on, lad.” Johnny opened the door. Cujo pushed his way in front of Johnny and sniffed at Chemal’s legs, growling and making oafish grunting sounds.

  “Holy shit,” Chemal said.

  Johnny pushed Cujo away with his knee. Chemal grabbed Johnny’s arm and slowly climbed down from the driver’s seat. Cujo growled again. Chemal pushed himself up against Johnny like they were dancing.

  “Oh, geez, Ice,” he said. “He hates me.”

  “Get off me, ya poof,” Johnny said. He pushed Chemal away and tried to walk toward the house. Chemal edged his way around behind Johnny but still held on to his arm. “Come on. Now quit,” Johnny said. “If he thinks you’re scared he’ll react to that.”

  “I am scared.”<
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  “Cujo!” Johnny said. “Git now!”

  Cujo stopped barking. He gave Johnny an injured look, then fell back to a slow walk behind them.

  “God,” Chemal said. He let go of Johnny’s arm but still walked uncomfortably close to him all the way up to the house. Johnny knocked. After a moment, the door was yanked open and a short, heavy man with curly gray hair appeared. He wore a blue T-shirt, voluminous blue jeans, and enormous glasses with lenses the size of drink coasters. He was beaming.

  “Hiya, James,” Johnny said.

  “Johnny!” he yelled. “Where you been, son?” He turned around and yelled into the house. “Fayette! It’s Johnny!” He turned back to Johnny and clapped him on the shoulder, and then he was joined by a woman who looked almost exactly like him: same curly gray hair, same ballooning jeans, same oversized glasses.

  “Johnny!” she said. “Where you been hiding? You don’t never come see us no more.”

  James and Fayette stepped out into the sunshine, and Johnny was struck by their appearance. Did these two ever age? They had to be nearing eighty, both of them, but they looked exactly as they did when he met them thirty years ago. Back then, Johnny had just signed on as a loader at the factory, James was the drying room foreman, and Fayette worked at a travel agency on the Southside. By the time Travelocity and Priceline pushed her out of a job, James was sniffing around retirement anyway, so they bought the salvage yard. James got to fiddle around to his heart’s content with cars. Fayette got to bake, read, and visit with her grandbabies. They were all set, they told Johnny. Just all set.

  “Doing all right, son?” James asked.

  “All right. Pretty all right,” Johnny said. James nodded.

  “This is Chemal,” Johnny said.

  Fayette immediately hugged Chemal, who looked around awkwardly in her grasp. She let him go and he stood there, blinking. “You in luck, young’un,” she said. “I just made me a Tootsie Pie.”

  “What in the world is that?” Johnny said.

  “You never had that?” she said. “That’s ‘cause you’re from that overseas there. Tootsie Pie—it’s got the butter and the Tootsie Rolls in it and so forth? Oh, you’ll see.”

  James was looking over Chemal—not unkindly, Johnny thought, just curiously. He watched James take in the baggy shorts, the chains, the military jacket. Good grief.

  “You work at the factory, son?” James said.

  “He’s my neighbor,” Johnny said quickly. “He’s helping me with some driving. I’ve got a little medical thing going on. Not supposed to drive.”

  “What do you mean, a little medical thing?” Fayette demanded.

  “I don’t want to get into it,” Johnny said. “It’s fine. Not a big deal. I’m just not supposed to drive for a bit.”

  James and Fayette both stared at him. Hard.

  “Please,” Johnny said. “I just came by to say hi. And to see if you have some parts I need.”

  “All right, Johnny,” James said quietly. He and Fayette exchanged a look but didn’t say anything else.

  “I need a steering wheel,” Johnny said.

  “For the Chevelle?”

  “No. For a Beetle.”

  James raised his eyebrows. “A Beetle?”

  “Yes. I know,” Johnny said, holding up his hands. “It’s not mine. It’s Corran’s.”

  James shook his head.

  “I was gonna say,” he said.

  “I know, James. I know.”

  “All right. Let’s head out there, then. You know I don’t like them German cars. But I sure enough got me one Beetle out there. Way out the back. It’s got a steering wheel. And if you can pull it you can have the damn thing.”

  “Now listen,” Fayette said. “You come back when you’re done, hear? My Tootsie Pie’s cooling.”

  “Wait here,” James said. “I’ll get our ride.”

  He disappeared around the back of the house and reappeared a moment later in a stripped-out Dodge minivan that looked more like a large piece of shrapnel than a vehicle. It had once been white, Johnny reckoned. Or silver? Hard to tell. The windshield was held together with electrician’s tape, with only a small window of visibility in front of the driver’s seat. All the doors were missing, as was all the seating. James was driving while perched on an overturned five-gallon bucket.

  “Awesome,” Chemal breathed.

  “This here is my yard transport,” James said. “All aboard.” Johnny and Chemal climbed in and knelt down awkwardly on the metal flooring. Chemal looked around the gaping, empty interior for something to hang on to, but not seeing anything, he leaned forward and put his palms flat on the floorboard for balance. Johnny was straddling an eight-inch rust hole between his knees. James took off like a rocket and Johnny watched the ground rushing by underneath the van. They careened down the center aisle of the salvage yard, past a half dozen thirty-foot metal mountains, each one a study in automotive archaeology. Toward the bottom of each mountain Johnny could make out the gutted carcasses of cars from the eighties, the seventies, maybe even a few older than that. As the scrap heaps rose higher, the cars got newer. And every time Johnny came out to this old yard, there was something novel—some new treasure or find that James had happened upon. Johnny and Chemal bumped uncomfortably in the back of the van and Johnny tried to listen to James, who was talking about some of his latest discoveries.

  “Look at that,” James was saying. “Cadillac XLR roadster. Body shot but engine good. And look at that one.” He pointed at a late model car, shiny and spiffy, under a metal carport toward the edge of the property. “Brand-new Kia Sedona.”

  “That’s a horrid thing,” Johnny said.

  “I know it. But I got it for twelve grand, and only five hundred miles on it, can you believe that? Old guy bought it and then died. Wife unloaded it. Like new. Hasn’t even been farted in. I’m going to eBay the shit out of that thing. Make enough for me and Fayette to go up to Cherokee for a week, still have some left to take the grandbabies to Universal. You know they got that Blue Man Group down there? Those boys is something else, Johnny. No joke. And you too, son—Chamile, is it? It’s an all-ages show. Shit!” James braked, and Johnny and Chemal jolted forward. “Almost passed the gee-dee Beetle, I’m talking so much!”

  They had reached a pile of cars toward the rear of the yard. It was thirty-five feet high if it was a foot, Johnny figured. He counted six layers of cars working themselves up toward the top like a pyramid. At the top sat a rusted red Volkswagen Beetle.

  “There you go,” James said.

  “Up there?” Chemal said. “How is he going to get up there?”

  “He’s gonna climb,” James said. “It ain’t gonna come down to you, Johnny.”

  Johnny got out of the minivan. He knew the drill. He’d been out to the salvage yard enough times to know that it was a do-it-yourself endeavor: said so right on the sign out front. James would get you to the right car, or the right pile, as the case may be. After that, you were on your own. Johnny picked up his bag of tools and got out of the minivan.

  “Where’s Cujo?” Chemal said to James.

  “Aw, he stays up there at the house with Fayette,” James said. “Specially when she’s cooking.”

  Chemal got out of the minivan.

  “I’m going to help you, Iceman.”

  “Not necessary,” Johnny said.

  Chemal looked a little hurt, but the last thing Johnny needed was for this kid to get injured climbing up a heap of rusted cars in a junkyard. Not on my watch, Johnny thought. I’ve got enough to worry about. He hitched the bag of tools up on his shoulder and started to climb. If Pauline and Tosh saw this, they’d have a conniption. No exertion, they said. Take it easy, they said. And here he was climbing Mount Tetanus, toting a bag of tools, in a heat wave. Johnny said a little prayer to the meningioma gods. Deliver me from evil. Amen. He kept going. His foot slipped once on the flattened quarter-panel of a rusted Pontiac, but he regained his stance and kept going. The metal was hot
under his hands. He touched the broad surface of a black roof (what was that, an El Camino?) and it burned his fingers.

  By the time he reached the top of the car mountain he was wet with sweat and out of breath. He opened the door of the Beetle and started to climb inside, but his bag of tools caught on the chrome wing mirror. He wobbled frantically and grabbed at the door frame to steady himself, which he finally did, but not before dropping his tools. The bag cartwheeled twice, then burst open and sent the tools clattering to the ground. Johnny watched them fall. He sat back in the driver’s seat of the Volkswagen, breathing hard and noting with irony that the steering wheel was in perfect shape. Exactly what he needed. If only he had the tools to pull it.

  “Hang on, Mr. Freeze!” Chemal yelled from below. “I’ve got ‘em!”

  Johnny looked down. James was leaning against the Dodge, laughing. Chemal was gathering up the tools.

  “Don’t worry about it!” Johnny yelled. “I’ll come back down!”

  But Chemal was already scrambling up the side of the scrap heap like an orangutan, the tool tote slung over his shoulder. Well, all right, Johnny admitted to himself. So that was what a forty-year advantage could do for you. In less than a minute, Chemal was up the heap and crouched, balancing on the trunk of a Pontiac like a yoga instructor, at the Beetle’s door. He handed the bag of tools through the window.

  “Thanks, mate,” Johnny said. Chemal grinned.

  Johnny disassembled the horn and loosened the nut on the steering wheel. He pulled on the wheel but found it immovable, probably some corrosion on the shaft cementing the whole damn thing together. He pulled again, but the wheel wouldn’t budge. He took a hammer and beat against the back side of the steering wheel. No luck. He was sweating like a rhinoceros at this point, fat dollops of sweat slipping into his vision and running down his nose.

  “Let me try,” Chemal said.

  They executed an awkward position change across the front seat of the Beetle—Johnny shifting over to the passenger side and Chemal shimmying around the open door and into the driver’s seat, where he started to pull on the steering wheel.

  “It won’t move just with you pulling. I need to beat on it from the back side at the same time,” Johnny said. Chemal slid the seat as far back as it would go and then got up on his knees to get his weight behind the pull. Johnny crouched down to assume an angle that would allow him to hammer the back side of the steering wheel.