Absolute Zero (2 page)

Broker was used to
sleeping alone because his wife was in the army and, except for her pregnancy and a short maternity leave, she had been absent on deployments to Bosnia during most of their marriage. And he was used to waking up in a freezing sleeping bag because he’d grown up in Northern Minnesota. What he was having trouble adjusting to was waking up alone in the cold bag and seeing the pale stripe on the third finger of his left hand where his wedding band had been.

So he coughed and rubbed his eyes, and the absent ring cued up the agnostic rosary in the back of his mind:
You just never know . . . never know . . . never know . . .
and it was,
yeah, yeah,
and he was talking to himself and his lips moved to dismiss the thought, but he had to appreciate the irony.
Mister Serious Student of the Unexpected.

Didn’t see it coming, did you, dummy?

She’d left two weeks ago and took their three-year-old daughter, Kit, off to army day care somewhere in Europe.

She said he could come along and take care of Kit. He said she could quit the army and stay home. So it stuck there between them. Their daughter watched nervously as Mom and Dad agreed to take an informal time-out, removing their rings and storing them in the top drawer of the bedroom dresser.

His reaction to the standoff was to exile himself from people he knew and retreat into the North woods. He’d purge himself with fresh air and hard work. Specifically, Broker volunteered to close down his uncle Billie’s outfitting lodge at the end of the canoeing season.

And now, as he greeted the ice-water dawn, the subject was still fragile as glass. Carefully, he held it by the stem and tucked it away.

So.

Uncle Billie and his golf clubs had hopped a Northwest Airlines flight to Broker’s parents’ condo in Arizona. Broker had hung a closed sign across the driveway of the small resort he owned in Devil’s Rock, north of Grand Marais, on the Lake Superior shore. Then he’d driven down Highway 61 to Illgen City, turned on Highway 1 northwest to Ely, in the Minnesota Iron Range. Arriving at Billie’s Lodge, he found a list of instructions next to the telephone. The canoe trip was at the top.

Broker had looked over the permits and perused the clients’ backgrounds. He’d be playing wilderness guide to Milton Dane, a lawyer; Allen Falken, a surgeon; and Hank Sommer, who called himself a writer. All three were from the Twin Cities area.

Broker told himself guiding was no big thing, that he’d done it lots of times.

But that was more than twenty years ago.

In the intervening time the canoes had been upgraded from aluminum to lighter Kevlar and fiberglass. The freeze-dried food and camping gear were much improved. But otherwise, the drill was the same. He studied the itinerary, selected the proper maps, and packed for a party of four, going in by canoe to shoot a moose among the lakes of the Boundary Water’s Canoe Area, BWCA for short.

And now it was the third morning of the trip.

Broker blew on his chilled hands and rubbed them together. He’d gone to bed breathing in damp lake water, lichen, and pine needles moldering on granite bedrock. A mild rain had tapped on the tent walls and eased him off to sleep. Now a loud winter silence replaced the patter of raindrops and his breath clouded in the chill air.

Hank Sommer bumped him as he rolled over in the narrow tent and snored. He lay on his back, half out of his sleeping bag, with his mouth open. He had buckteeth and a receding chin disguised under a short, unruly beard. When Broker reached over and jabbed him in the ribs, Sommer rearranged himself and stopped snoring. His cell phone, which had caused so much debate on the trip, was nestled next to his cheek.

It became clear from the start that Broker had been hired to carry the load for Sommer and to paddle his canoe. “Sorry, I’ve got this little medical condition,” Sommer had admitted at the start.

“What medical condition?” Broker had asked directly, since it could affect their travel.

“This, ah, little hernia thing,” Sommer had said, patting his side. So every portage on the way in, Broker had humped the boat and went back twice to haul all the packs while Sommer eased along with just his rifle case and a small shoulder bag.

Allen Falken, the doctor, appeared none too pleased that Sommer had put off elective surgery to go on this trip. But, Allen conceded, it was a routine inguinal hernia, a painless minor bulge. For half the century, men just wore trusses. It should be all right as long as Sommer took it easy.

“How easy?”

“He shouldn’t lift over forty pounds.”

“So if you get a moose, Sommer will take the picture and I’ll carry the meat.”

“Something like that,” Allen had said.

It meant that Sommer was the weak link, so Broker wanted him in his canoe in case anything went wrong. Besides, he was curious. Sommer was a Minnesota fiction writer and Broker—strictly a non-fiction guy—had the feeling he should have heard of him. But he hadn’t. He figured Sommer wanted to shoot a moose so he could write about it.

Broker was doing some hunting himself, but not for a trophy moose. Running from his marriage, he spent the days scouting the treelines and lakes half hoping to catch a younger, more resilient reflection of himself.

And he wasn’t alone. By day three it was clear that marital discord paddled with them as Sommer conducted a nasty long-distance feud with his wife on his cell phone.

As they canoed deeper into lake country, Broker overheard enough of the terse conversations to gather that Sommer and his wife were fighting over money.

Onward.

Right now Broker needed a fire and a pot of coffee, so he shivered into trousers, a fleece sweater, and a pair of old tennis shoes. Carrying his stiff boots, he unzipped the tent and hunkered outside.

Well, he’d wanted the rain to stop.

And nothing stops water like ice.

The campsite, and probably all 140,000 square miles of the BWCA, wore bridal white. Brocade, lace, floss, and fluff—the tents, the gear, the hulls of the two canoes, every pine needle, clump of moss, and boulder were gilded with frost.

He watched his breath condense, then tatter off gently in the still air; he estimated the temperature at 34 degrees. He was not distracted by the beautiful fantasy spun in the trees. They were still twenty miles from Ely traveling on water cold enough to kill them.

But Broker had to grin. Even with hypothermia as a risk, Sommer’s cell phone became an issue with his buddies because it violated the first rule of the wilderness, which was: You are on your own. Allen and Milt wanted a clean break with the hyperconnected world they’d left behind. Sommer wasn’t impressed by such purist conceits. Older, crusty, he’d pointed out that he’d once spent a year sleeping on the ground, and he’d muttered a few profane references to the 101
^st
Airborne and 1969 and a place Allen and Milt had never heard of called the Ashau Valley, and he
would
bring his goddamn cell phone, thank you very much.

So.

Broker toed a hoary clump of grass. Maybe the sun would come out and melt this fairyland. And maybe it wouldn’t. If this cold snap continued they’d have to be careful.

He stirred the banked coals in the fire pit, added tinder, and built up the fire. Then he placed his boots near the flame to thaw. He walked a hundred yards into the brush to where he’d hoisted the food packs on the branch of a tall spruce beyond the reach of prowling black bears. He carried the packs back to the campfire and set out utensils and ingredients for breakfast.

You could still drink from the lakes along the Canadian border, so he took the coffeepot to the shore, poked through a wafer of shore ice, and filled it. Then he scooped up a handful and brushed his teeth. A few minutes later he had a blue flame hissing on the small Coleman camp stove.

He stretched, rotated his neck, and gauged the stiffness in his back and shoulders from two days of paddling and portaging. Starting to show streaks of gray in his forty-seventh autumn, Broker still looked like he could knock a man down or pick a man up, and like he wouldn’t talk about it either way. His dark, bushy eyebrows met over the bridge of his nose, his eyes were quiet gray-green, and he wore his thick, dark hair trimmed just over his ears. At six feet tall and 190, he was ten pounds over his best weight. A few more days on the trail would pound down the kinks and trim off the flab. But he had to admit, as he scanned the white solitude, that he was starting to feel his age. For the last two years his chief workout had been chasing his daughter around.

He stooped, attended to the fire, and when the coffeepot perked he withdrew a cigar the size of a fat fountain pen from a Ziploc bag and carefully nibbled the plug. When the coffee smelled done, he turned off the camp stove, poured a tin cupful, and wedged the pot in the coals. Then he went down to the shore and found a seat on a granite ledge. There would be no sunrise today to go with his morning coffee. Not even a shiny spot in the overcast.

A match flared and migrant smoke from Spanish Honduras mingled with the steaming Colombian bean. Cigars were a weaning vice—all tease and foreplay—no inhaling. They got him off the cigarettes and now he worried that the thing that would get him off the cigars would be Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.

“Good morning, I think,” announced a voice that ended in a cough. Turning, Broker saw Milton Dane’s short salt-and-pepper hair poke through his tent flap. Milt was nursing a cold, which did nothing to diminish his childish delight as he looked at the forest made over into frosted parsley.

Milt at forty-five stood six foot one in pile underwear and felt boot-liners. Broad shouldered, deep-chested, and deliberate in movement; he collected a cup of coffee and joined Broker on the sloping rock beach. He drew his knuckles across the stubble on his square chin and shivered. “Jesus, it’s
cold
.”

“Yeah, and I got a feeling we’re going to see some big, cold snowflakes,” Broker said.

“Still beats the office.” Milt toasted Broker with his coffee cup.

“Agreed. But maybe we should stay put till this front works on through,” Broker said.

“No pain, no gain,” Milt said with a grin.

“Right. And pneumonia is God’s way of telling you to get out of the rain,” Broker said.

Milt was unmoved. Being a serious white-water kayaker, he refused to be impressed with the concerns of flat-water paddlers. He pointed to Broker’s tent and said, “Heads up.”

Across camp, Sommer emerged from Broker’s tent robed in his sleeping bag.

“Check it out, we woke up on a wedding cake,” Sommer said, blinking at the hushed foliage.

Then he stooped, knelt, felt around for a flat place on the ground, found one, laid out the bag, sat down on it, and folded his legs in a casual lotus position. With the rest of the bag drawn around his shoulders he sat upright and draped his hands on his knees. Just like yesterday.

Broker studied the lanky writer sitting Buddha-fashion against a background of snowy spruce. Sommer had this tattoo on his left wrist, like a colorful bracelet, until you got a good look at it, and then you realized that the color scheme and sequence were the exact reds, greens, and grays of the lethal coral snake.

While Sommer did his morning meditation, Broker and Milt talked weather and drank their coffee. Then Sommer unfolded from his sitting position, bent forward, placed his forearms on the ground, clasped his hands, tucked in his shaggy head, and slowly hoisted himself up perfectly vertical into a headstand.

“Does that every morning, too?” Broker asked.

“Yeah, he’s trying to stay mellow.” Milt paused and rolled his eyes. “Until Jolene rings him up again.”

“We should be out of cell-phone range soon,” Broker said.

“Knock on wood,” Milt said.

“So, what do you
think?” Broker jerked a thumb at the low clouds.

“I think you’re right, it’s going to snow,” Milt said.

“I heard that,” Sommer called out, as he lowered his feet to the ground, sat up, and looked around. “How soon?”

“Can’t tell. There’s coffee by the fire,” Broker said.

Sommer poured a cup, squinted his hazel eyes, ran a hand through his thick blond hair, and lit a Camel straight. Barefoot, wearing just a T-shirt and Jockey shorts with the cell phone tucked into the waistband, he appeared immune to the cold. His size 13 feet ended in long toes and were attached to heavily muscled, slightly varicose legs. His chest seemed narrow because his sinewy arms were so long, and his neck was embedded in wedges of more wrinkled muscle that sloped up from his shoulders. In addition to the poison bracelet on his left wrist, he had five red teardrops tattooed on his right forearm. The tattoos had a crude jailhouse texture and Broker, who had some experience in evaluating jailhouse art, reflected that the raunchy designs might harmonize just fine with a woman named Jolene.

When Sommer took his coffee back into the tent to get dressed, Broker wondered aloud: “Where’s a writer get arms like that?”

Milt raised an eyebrow. “Oh, he’ll get around to telling you about how he grew up in the factories of Detroit.”

As Sommer disappeared into one tent, Dr. Allen Falken emerged from the other. He stretched and stood for a minute, methodically kneading moisturizing cream into his hands, taking extra care with each finger. When he finished, he inspected the overcast sky.

“Well, super,” said Allen. A general surgeon, and the youngest at forty, he was racquetball-smooth and wrinkle free. Broker cooked plain trail-fare and Allen proved to be a picky eater. And he fussed with his appearance; fresh from his sleeping bag, every strand of his thick sandy hair was in place like a styled wire hedge. He had wide blue eyes under a broad forehead, wide cheeks, a long narrow nose and tapering chin, strong hands and supple, well-tended fingers.

“I doubt it’s going to rain again,” Allen said, eyeing the misty sky and forest.

“Probably it’ll snow,” Broker said.

“Good, easier to see the moose against a white background. What’s for breakfast?” Allen asked as he rubbed his hands together to warm them. Three precise rubs, no wasted motion. Broker was forming the impression that Allen never stopped following instructions.

“Oatmeal, Tang, toast and jam,” Broker said, getting up and returning to the campfire. He threw his cigar stub into the coals and, as he prepared the porridge, speculated that they wouldn’t be out here unless it was a once-in-a-lifetime hunting trip. They had won a state lottery that allowed them to take a moose in the Boundary Waters in the “greatest wilderness, big-game hunt east of the Mississippi.”

From their banter Broker had learned that they had climbed Mount Rainier, mountain-biked through Moab, and rafted white-water rapids in Chile. Now they intended to paddle twenty-five miles into rough country and tote out a bull moose to add to their trophy repertoire.

Their destination was a burned-over area on Lake Fraser, a two-hour paddle to the north, where tender green shoots had thrived in the ash and were prime moose-browse. So far, they’d been out for two days in the rain with no sign of anything bigger than a fox.

When they’d eaten and were finishing their coffee, Broker went on record with the prudent option: “I think we should hunker down in camp until this weather blows over.”

“Quit, huh?” Sommer snorted.

“Get dry,” Broker said. “We’re wet and chilled. Milt’s getting sick. We should fort up with a good fire.”

Sommer scrunched his mobile face in a Gallic shrug, “C’est la fuckin’ vie. It’s not like we’re in Nepal. We’re just a few miles from Ely.”

Milt seconded Sommer with a curt nod. Allen scoffed, “Ditto. It’s Indian summer, right?”

Broker laughed and tossed the dregs of his coffee on the fire. “Okay, sure; let’s hit it,” he said and thought how Northern Minnesota killed a few zealots like these guys every season. But then, that was part of the lure of this trip. They wanted to push the edge a little.

Dzzztttttttting.

The electric whine from Sommer’s cell phone ended the discussion. Broker, Allen, and Milt grimaced with a there-goes-the-neighborhood expression.

“Goddamn shit,” Sommer said.

Dzzztttttttting.

“Motherfucker.” Sommer furrowed his scruffy brow and flipped open the phone. “What?”

A tiny, forceful female voice delivered a speech inside the slender plastic phone. Sommer stepped on her remarks in a dogged voice: “This is not the time to discuss the subject of trust.” Pause. “Oh, for sure. We tried that and the first thing you did was drain the account.” Pause. “Okay, your half of the account.” Pause. “It’s how you did it. Giving money to Earl behind my back.”

In a spontaneous display of consensus body language, Broker, Allen, and Milt rose, tiptoed away, and formed an awkward huddle a discreet distance from Hank.

“Earl is the old boyfriend,” Allen explained.

“She wrote him a big check, so Hank cut her off, closed the joint checking account,” Milt said.

“Put all his money in a trust she can’t touch, to teach her a lesson,” Allen said.

“Don’t call me again when I’m hunting,” Sommer growled. He grimaced and held the phone away from his ear, up toward the overcast sky. “I don’t need this shit,” he hissed. Then, in a sudden fit he threw the phone like a shortstop firing to first base, and the black plastic rectangle skittered off a spruce branch, bounced, then rolled over next to Broker’s boot.

A youthful voice rattled distinctly from the phone, “I’m just trying to be responsible, goddammit; and responsible people
pay their debts
.”

Broker picked up the phone and held it at arm’s length.

The voice continued. “You have all these bills piled up on your desk going back two months. The power company called. They’re going to turn off the lights. Hank? Hank?”

Gingerly, Broker handed it back to Sommer who was now furious and clearly not tracking her conversation. “Not with my money. Not to that pimp!” he shouted into the phone.

“Earl was never a pimp,” the voice said. “And it’s
our
money because we’re married.”

Milt shook his head. “I told him he should have made her sign a pre-nup.”

Allen worried his lower lip between his teeth and tried to explain, “This is one beautiful woman on the outside but as to the inside Milt and I disagree.”

“Bonnie fucking Parker is what I think,” Milt said.

“And I think she cleans up well, like Eliza Doolittle, a lotus growing in a field of shit and Hank had the good sense to pluck her,” Allen said thoughtfully.

“We’ll see who plucks who.” Milt glanced at Broker and shrugged. “Allen and I have this bet going. It’s a classic nature-nurture debate; she was a stripper and a drunk who hung out with some rough people. Hank met her in an AA group in a church basement. I don’t think she can change, Allen thinks she can. Obviously so does Hank.”

“Fuck this,” Hank exploded. He wound up and threw the phone again, except this time he lobbed it over their heads in a long arc that ended in a splash twenty yards out in the lake.

“And that settles that,” Milt said.

Broker watched the circular ripples radiate out from the spot where the phone disappeared. He cleared his throat. “Sure can get quiet up here,” he said, deadpan.

After that, they set off in separate directions to practice male solidarity through denial, and to break camp. While Broker did the dishes, Milt and Allen efficiently collapsed the tents, stowed them, and organized the cumbersome Duluth packs next to the canoes. Sommer hung back and brooded with a cup of coffee and a cigarette.

After he finished the dishes Broker packed them and scanned the low clouds as he laced up his boots. Snow didn’t bother him. But he felt a draft comb through the pine needles, like someone had eased open the door of a walk-in meat freezer. And in the chill he sensed the charged air marshaling and packing tighter.

They stamped out the campfire and stowed the last of their gear. Sommer clambered gingerly over the mound of packs and took his seat in the bow of Broker’s canoe. Milt naturally took the stern position in the other boat. A little after 8:00
A.M.
, they pushed off from the campsite and entered a maze of narrow channels that threaded toward Lake Fraser.

Paddling side by side, Broker and Milt kibitzed about canoes. Milt had wanted one of the fast, lighter Kevlar models that were currently popular. Broker preferred the old-fashioned aluminum Grummans. The popular Wenonahs, he argued, were great for racing in a straight line on flat water, but he distrusted the square cut of the bow and worried it would dig into a breaking wave, not ride up it.

They’d compromised on fiberglass Bells—a broader craft with more lift in the line of the bow and more stability for heavy loads and bad weather.

Then Milt and Allen pulled ahead and when they were out of easy earshot, Sommer turned in the bow seat and shook his head. He seemed to have been holding his breath since the phone incident. Now he exhaled and grumbled. “Sometimes I feel like a cliché, marrying a younger woman. Thinking I could help her change.”

Broker studied the older man for two long paddle strokes. As the cold water swished and the canoe rocked he watched Sommer’s expression slip. Suddenly he saw into the dilemma of a physically rugged man who was grappling with aging and was losing the strength he’d always taken for granted.

Broker spoke in a low, soft voice no one on the trip had yet heard: “I married a younger woman and I thought she’d change after she had a baby but she didn’t.”

And that pretty much dried up the conversation for a while.

Up ahead Milt and Allen put down their paddles, unzipped their gun cases, and loaded their rifles, which they then carefully positioned against the thwarts. Then they picked up their paddles and pulled farther ahead.

Sommer chuckled. “Look at them go. They want to be first.”

“First, huh?”

“For the next big thing—which in this case is some poor, lily-pad-chewing moose.” Sommer chuckled, raised his voice, and hailed the other canoe. “Who gets the first shot? Who will be the Alpha Wolf and hang the antlers?”

“Pipe down,” Allen yelled back, “you’ll scare everything away.”

“Oh, that’s good,” Sommer exclaimed. “What do you think? Some moose is going to get wheeled down to the shore all prepped and anesthetized on a table for you to carve up?”

Milt and Allen pulled about fifty yards ahead and no one spoke. The white trees enforced quiet, like a hospital ward. There was only the splash of the paddles, puffs of their breath, the occasional knock of wood on the gunwales.

Then Sommer shrugged and wondered out loud, “What do moose do in this weather, anyway?”

Broker said, “Got me.”

“Hey, c’mon, you’re the guide,” Sommer said.

“I’m the cook, I set up camp. I’m not a hunting guide. It’s illegal to guide or assist in the state lottery hunt up here if you’ve already got a moose,” Broker said.

“That’s what I mean, you’ve shot a moose, right?” Sommer said.

“It was a long time ago,” Broker said.

“So how was it?” Sommer asked.

“Shooting a moose is like shooting a garage door.”

Sommer jerked around and laughed. “That’s good, I’m going to steal that.”

“So you steal stuff, huh?” Broker asked.

“You bet. All writers are thieves.”

“I always heard there are two kinds of thieves: the ones too lazy to work and the ones who think they’re too smart to get caught. Which kind are you?”

Sommer laughed. “The smart, lazy kind. Actually I’m more like a ball of wax; you know, everything sticks.”

“And that’s why you want to shoot a moose, to pick up some details?” Broker asked.

“Nah,” Sommer raised his paddle and pointed at the canoe up ahead. “I want to see
them
shoot a moose. Especially Allen.”

Broker fixed on the blue back of Allen’s parka and asked, “How’s that?”

“I admit I wouldn’t mind seeing a surgeon field-dress a moose,” Sommer said.

“I hear you,” Broker said, suppressing a smile. Then they stopped talking and looked to the paddles, their arms rising and falling in a crisp morning cadence, working out the kinks, easing into the day. Despite the overcast sky they were happy to be free of the rain and they warmed with the work.

“So what is it you write about, anyway?” Broker asked.

“The Four Great American W’s: Women, Whiskey, Work, and War. And of course, sex and death.”

Broker was smiling now. He asked, “How’s your side feeling?”

“I’m good,” Sommer said, appearing to be more relaxed. Unlike Milt and Allen who looked around frequently to find the source of an invisible irritation, Sommer was momentarily at ease with the silence of the north.

“So how old are you, anyway?” Broker asked.

“I was born a week after the Battle of Midway.”

Broker rested his paddle. “June, 1942.”
He’s fifty-seven, ten years older than me
. Looking closer, Broker noticed the faint webbing at his throat and in his cheeks. He saw the dapple of dark pigment on his bare wrist between the cuff of his parka and his glove.
Ten years
, he thought.

“Not bad,” Sommer said.

“I read military history to go to sleep, like some people read mysteries,” Broker said. He shook his head. “Up until now the only writers I’ve met were newspaper reporters. They don’t sound much like you.”

Sommer acted indignant. “Hey, I’m a thief, not a fucking vampire.”

Broker grinned at the remark and a few minutes later the frosted woods opened and they squirted from the last tight passage into a long, open stretch of lake.

“Life vest,” Broker reminded Sommer who had neglected to put his on. Sommer pulled on the vest and snapped it tight. Their paddles dipped and swished in and out of the glassy, motionless water and, except for the chill air, the distant treelines could have been a blur of steam. They were well into the open water when a feather of breeze drifted down. Long, dark ripples began to gouge Lake Fraser as if an invisible giant was dragging his feet.