The Ice House

by Laura Lee Smith

  “You don’t understand this pain, Sharon,” he’d said, turning to limp into the other room.

  Oh, Toole, she’d wanted to say. I understand pain. But then she felt a little guilty for her outburst, so she followed him to the living room and got him settled in the recliner. She brought him a beer and a pair of cold packs to place under his knees. She made a tikka masala and brought it to him on a tray. She even got down to business with him later in bed, gingerly climbing astride his hips while giving his tender knees a wide berth, hoping the sexual release might distract his body’s pain receptors and get his mind off the cursed medications. She did everything she could do for Toole. For God’s sake. She did everything she could do for everybody, she thought, remembering her beleaguered son in the bedroom. And Lucy. Sweet dolly Lucy.

  Here was what they needed to do, Sharon thought, she and Johnny. They needed to have a serious, sit-down meeting with Corran and insist that he plot out a real plan for how he was going to raise his child. This business of working for low wages on the Drumscaddle ferry and counting on Sharon to haul her ass up to Port Readie every single weekend for babysitting and housekeeping was not going to work. She’d been doing it for weeks now; she didn’t plan on doing it for much longer.

  She’d spent almost her entire life caring for other people—feeding them, cleaning them, entertaining them, supporting them, comforting them. Johnny. Corran. Toole. A boatload of patients, too many to ever count. And now Lucy. Beginning of the road for that one; think of all that was still to come: teething, walking, talking, toilet training, ear infections, croup, tantrums, allergies, nightmares, laundry, school lunches, homework, contact lenses, science projects, acne, boyfriends, driving! Did Corran think that Sharon was supposed to just stand by to be the point person for all of that, too?

  A living assistant. That’s what she was. Helping everyone around her with the basic fuckin’ business of living. She’d had enough! Couldn’t any of them just do it themselves?

  Johnny shifted again on the bed behind her. She thought about letting him know she was awake, perhaps leaning over and giving the old boy a pat on the arm, a little squeeze of the hand. He’s worried, after all, she thought. About his brain thingy, and his factory, and Corran. About all of it. It even crossed her mind, albeit briefly, to give him a real distraction, to climb aboard like she did with Toole and give him something wonderfully basic and corporeal and true to think about, if only for a little while. After all, Chemal was in a dead sleep on the floor and was sure to stay that way until morning. The door to Corran’s room was closed tight. What could it hurt? Who would ever know?

  Ah, Sharon, she told herself, you’ve gone ‘round the bend, you slutty old thing! She smiled. It was enough to know that she could do it. If she wanted to. Which she didn’t. She pulled the thin blanket up around her shoulder and kept her back to Johnny. Let him wrestle his own damn worries. She had plenty.

  Fourteen

  Corran had a recurring dream, and it came to him again that night. It went like this: He was standing atop a teetering stepladder in Margaret’s kitchen. The stepladder was making him uneasy, and the attic access through which he was about to stick his head and shoulders was yawning blackly, and why he’d agreed to any of this he had no idea. Margaret had called him to come over. The idea was to have Corran investigate a scrabbling noise that had been coming from the crawl space the last several nights. Rats, Margaret had said. I cannae abide rats. Have a look for me, will you, lad?

  The stepladder wobbled. Margaret was standing in the kitchen, Lucy on her hip. From the attic above came a whiff of mildew, and then something else, acrid and rank. From the back of the house, toward the lounge, came television sounds—staccato bursts of music, laughter, a dissociated shriek. Corran looked down at his feet, shifted them slightly to center them on the stepladder’s black rubber surface, then looked back up toward the hole above his head. A quick spring would do it. Catch his weight on the perimeter of the access hole and buck up his forearms to make the ascension. Easy. He knew his own weight—spryness came easily. And then what?

  What d’ye see, then? Aught? Margaret said.

  Nae up there yet, am I?

  But do ye?

  He had a toothache, too, which certainly wasn’t helping matters. Not terribly surprising, because he’d developed a habit lately of sucking on fruit pastilles, one after another, until the candies became little embryos of sugar on his tongue. It was like he was addicted to the damn things. And so now he probably had a cavity. Brilliant.

  I smell it, Margaret said. Oh, my.

  Margaret fluttered her free hand now and then toward the stepladder as if to steady it, but she never actually touched it. Lucy was staring at Corran, and at the gaping hole in the ceiling above his head. She pointed at it.

  Pah, she said.

  Watch your daddy, Lucy, Margaret said. Corran made the spring. There he goes!

  Corran fell into a sit at the edge of the hole, legs dangling into the kitchen. The crawl space extended the length of the house, and beyond the scant perimeter of the kitchen access, it clenched into impenetrable darkness. He squinted, willing his eyes to adjust.

  What do ye see, then?

  Too dark.

  Here’s the light.

  A flashlight flew up into the access. Corran caught it but then dropped it, watched as it clattered past his reach and nearly beyond his sight into the graduated darkness of the crawl space. He cursed. He shimmied into a crouch and moved forward toward it.

  Be careful, Corran.

  Margaret’s voice, a bit muffled now from down in the kitchen below, had a tone of mild reproach, as if Corran were acting the irresponsible fool up here, skylarking about in an attic of his own accord. If she’d really wanted him to be careful, she would have called a proper pest control agency and left Corran well out of it. He crawled farther into darkness. He had a great affection in his heart for Margaret in nearly all things and ways, but this little adventure might have been asking just a bit too much. Never mind.

  He retrieved the flashlight and flicked it on at exactly the same time something at the far end of the crawl space exploded. He shone a beam of light toward the commotion. A weasel-like animal was scrambling about the floorboards, looking for escape. It backed into a corner, stood up on its rear legs, and looked at Corran with hatred.

  Oh, now.

  What d’ye see?

  Pine marten.

  Give over.

  Sure enough.

  Rare creatures. Corran had seen a pine marten only a few times in his life. But now here was one, not ten feet away. It was unmistakable: the sleek dark fur, yellow markings around the neck. It looked like it was wearing an ascot. Foxy thing, quite cute, but for the bared teeth. The attic smelled like piss. And now there was a rasping. Corran could actually hear it breathing. He glanced around the attic for a breach, spotted none. The pine marten hissed.

  We’ll need a trap.

  It’s always something, isn’t it, Corran?

  The attic space felt pressurized. Outside, a wind began to buffet the house. The pine marten was staring at Corran. Abruptly, the bared teeth seemed to resolve into a more human expression, something like a salacious grin. Now the animal was watching him intently, smiling wickedly, and Corran found he could not look away. The pine marten got up; it paced in a tight circle three times, then stretched itself supine, its back legs extending straight out toward Corran. Again it looked at him intently. Again he could not look away.

  Corran? Come down now. We’ll get a trap.

  Pah.

  The pine marten opened its back legs. It flicked its tongue at Corran and watched him with hooded eyes. The scene was humanly lewd. Corran was aware of the open attic access, now a good six feet behind him. He wanted to inch backward toward the opening. Instead he watched the pine marten. The animal reached its black hands down between its legs and spread apart thick gray fur. It gave a throaty laugh. A woman’s voice.

  Corran felt a rush of bile ascen
d in his throat. He tried to shuffle backward but reacted too quickly and hit his head on a beam. He dropped reflexively to his stomach and tried to snake backward toward the opening. The pine marten laughed again. The attic filled with a rush of musky heat. Corran gagged. Margaret’s and Lucy’s voices had become muffled. He could not make out what Margaret was saying.

  Fish mine slipper snow, it sounded like. Boy drank book feet.

  Pah.

  The pine marten was still grinning, but it had begun to grunt and buck. A slick darkness was emerging from its slender loins. The darkness took on mass, then shook itself free and writhed wetly on the attic floor. Corran looked behind him. The attic access was gone. There was no egress to the kitchen below.

  The dark mass was unfolding itself. It shook like a dog and stood up, and Corran saw that it was a dog—an enormous mastiff with a thick mane of matted green hair. It was growing, growing, growing. Its back pressed against the ceiling of the attic; it threw up its head and the beams above it cracked. Then Corran knew what it was: the Cù-Sìth, a green dog big as a bull, known to hunt the Highlands, looking for those who are close to death. The dog swayed from side to side, straining against the walls of the attic. A corner joint gave way. A rush of snow and wind blew into the attic.

  The pine marten was dead.

  Corran writhed wildly toward where the attic access once was. He ran his hands along the floorboards, looking for a void, but found none. The Cù-Sìth was thrashing like a bull in a chute. In one mighty lunge, it extended itself upward and smashed a gaping hole through the roof, and the wind took over from there, sharking its way across the boards on the roof and whipping them off in quick succession. Corran had the impression of watching a great zipper being opened, then the floor gave way beneath him and Margaret’s house crumbled into a pile of kindling, and the kindling became needles, and the needles were carried away on the wind, and then Corran and the Cù-Sìth were alone in the midst of a vast cold moor. The animal looked at him. It appeared to be waiting.

  Lucy! Corran tried to scream, but no words came out. Margaret!

  Lucy!

  Lucy!

  It was Johnny who finally jostled Corran awake. He’d entered Corran’s bedroom and was now standing over the bed, peering down at his son. He shook Corran’s shoulder and let his hand stay there.

  “You’re dreaming, Corran,” he said. “The bairn’s right there.”

  Corran sat up straight and looked over at Lucy in her crib. She was sleeping soundly. He found he was panting. He looked at Johnny blankly for a moment, and then gathered himself. He lay down again and turned his back to his father.

  “I’m sorry I woke you,” he said.

  “You all right, Corran?”

  “I’m fine.”

  Johnny walked softly out of the room. Corran listened while the springs on the pullout sofa creaked as Johnny lowered himself back into it next to Sharon. After a long time, Corran slept.

  Fifteen

  When she found herself in the ridiculous position of trying to run with Sam Tulley across the sidewalkless Hart Bridge, a hundred feet above the St. Johns River in the dark and fog of a late October morning, Pauline had the realization that the terror was actually improving her pace. Maybe it was an evolutionary thing, a holdover from the days when humans served a more elemental role in the basic predator-prey food chain. Or maybe it was simply that the stricture of her heart was revving up blood flow and thus improving muscle contraction. Whatever it was, the fear was feeding her running ability as nothing else ever had. In fact, it was the only thing that could possibly explain how she was keeping up.

  Sam Tulley had been talking since they met near the stadium to do a half-mile warm-up loop on flat ground before ascending the ramp to the bridge. He talked through the first quarter-mile and past the point Pauline had come to think of as “the wall”—that two- or three-minute period when every fiber of her being was screaming for her to stop. She had never figured out how to avoid the wall, but she’d figured out how to push through it.

  Granted, they hadn’t even gotten near the sharpest part of the incline yet, but she was amazed to find that she was keeping pace with Sam Tulley pretty well. It was quite possible that this was not because she was going faster but because he was going slower, a thought which she found both mildly infuriating and strangely gratifying. On the one hand, she hated to be patronized. But on the other hand, there was no way she was going to keep pace—uphill!—with a man nearly two decades her junior and a good six inches taller. Which could mean only one thing. Sam Tulley was trying to make her feel good. How interesting.

  She tried to adjust her breathing to her pace. Step-step-step-step-step-breathe. Step-step-step-step-step-breathe. If she could keep this five-step rhythm going for the first half of the incline, she reasoned, then she could accommodate the inevitable quickening of her breathing once they began to ascend the steepest part of the climb, which, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how she chose to look at it, was barely visible up ahead through the fog. They were running against traffic. This was a strategic maneuver designed to give them more warning when a car was coming over the bridge. So far only one car had approached, and Sam had held his hands up high overhead as he ran, shining small flashlights to attract the driver’s attention.

  Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy. This was nuts. When she had ACL surgery a few years ago, they’d replaced her torn anterior cruciate ligament with a segment of ligament from a “donor.” When the doctor told her he’d be using donor tissue, Pauline hadn’t understood at first. Who would donate a ligament? It wasn’t like blood, after all, that would replenish itself. Then it dawned on her that the donor was dead. “It’s called an allograft,” the orthopedist said. “It’s from a cadaver harvest.”

  A cadaver harvest! That one had stayed with Pauline for some time, and after the surgery she often thought about the cadaver from which her new ACL had been harvested. She was running around with a piece of tissue in her knee from a person whom she had never met and would never know a thing about. Sometimes she made up a persona and gave it a backstory, little Walter Mittyish fantasies about the person who might have previously had ownership of the ligament—usually a woman, it was hard to imagine having a man’s ligament in her knee, but who knew; maybe it was a small man. This morning, it was not too hard to imagine the ligament’s original owner as a tough, foulmouthed battle-ax type, maybe somebody like Claire, who would likely be happy to give Pauline what for when she realized that they were headed for a suicide mission over a wicked-high suspension bridge in the dark. “The fuck you doing?” the ligament was shrieking. “You want to get me killed again? I been down this road, sweetheart. It don’t end well.”

  “You ever listen to ‘Get Runspired’?” Tulley was saying. Pauline had to recalibrate her breathing before she could answer him. Step-step-step-step-breathe. Down to four-step breathing. Hold steady, girl. Three-step breathing was borderline. Two-step was critical, a slow jog at best. One-step meant a dead walk, and that wasn’t going to happen. She didn’t care what kind of pace she kept, but she was going to keep running over this bridge if it killed her. Failure was not an option.

  “Rohan Bergonia? All the time,” she said. Talking was difficult. Messed up the four-step. Keep the chatter minimal, Pauline. Save your air.

  “He had this thing once where he narrated the story of Pheidippides? Did you hear that one?” Tulley said.

  “No.”

  “It was so good. I mean, so inspiring. I listened to the whole thing. It was like thirty minutes, in the middle of the rest of the podcast. You know Pheidippides, right?”

  Pauline shook her head. Step-step-step-step-breathe.

  “Well, he was this runner in ancient Greece. He ran from Athens to Sparta to warn people about the invading Persians. A long-distance dude. Today he’d be an ultramarathoner. And Ironman and shit. He just kept going, that guy. Then, right after he ran another stretch from Marathon to Athens to announce Gree
k victory, he dropped dead on the spot.”

  “I don’t think I can talk about it.”

  “Yeah, it was kind of sad. But it might not even be true. A lot of historians say the death part was a myth.”

  “I mean,” she managed. “I don’t think. I can talk. At all.”

  She was trying not to gasp. Her calves burned, and the plantar fasciitis she thought she’d gotten over last summer seemed to be making an encore. She had no idea how she was continuing to move.

  “Okay,” Tulley said. “So we’ll focus. You got this, Pauline. You can do it. I believe in you.”

  Oh, God. Was that some bullshit solicitousness? Or honest encouragement? She didn’t know which would be worse. She sneaked a glance to her right to see Tulley running up the slope, his stride solid, seemingly untouched by this wicked gradient that was starting to feel nearly vertical. If he was patronizing her with that last remark, she’d like to kick him off the side of this damn bridge, watch him get sucked into the river’s current and swept out to sea. Take that, you law school prick! But if he was actually offering her a sincere piece of encouragement, then that implied a dangerous level of camaraderie and concern that—Oh, stop it, Pauline. Just stop it.

  Don’t stop. If she stopped now, even for just the shortest bit of walking, she’d never be able to restart her legs at running pace to get up over the top of the span.

  She ran and ran and ran.

  To the west, the black Goliath of Jacksonville’s Bank of America building commanded the skyline. It made Pauline think about the World Trade Center attack. She’d been attending a business breakfast in a restaurant on the top floor of the Bank of America building at the time of the catastrophe, and as the morning’s boggle of realities came crashing down on the rest of America, as it began to slowly dawn on the most powerful nation in the world that it was under attack, Pauline panicked. Someone pulled a TV into the restaurant and they all crowded around it, watching. People started talking, theorizing. Here they were at the top of the Bank of America Tower—a perfect symbol of American wealth and excess. And in Jacksonville! A perfect target—large enough city to make a horrific impact, small enough city to ensure minimalist security measures. Who would attack Jacksonville? Any smart terrorist, someone said. Think of our Navy bases! Think of our shipping! Think of our vulnerability!