The Ice at the Bottom of the World (10 page)

What I want to know, said Doc, settling himself into Bill Doodlum’s La-Z-Boy recliner and coaxing out the television remote from a stack of
Reader’s Digests
, is why you, Louise, gave our Sweet William the whole load of the pistol. Christ, Louise, he said, any one would have done it.

Louise seemed to push and roll beneath the blankets as if she felt she was some heavy object floating slightly submerged in a just-disturbed tub of water. Well, she said faintly, the first one was for love. Then, as if she was reciting the first ingredient in a recipe for something sweet to eat, she said again, The first one was for love, and the other eight were for something Bill said to me over dinner in front of company in nineteen sixty-six. Louise Doodlum’s laugh was a slowly pumping hiss of air, finally inaudible beneath the blanket she pulled over her head.

Good night, Louise, said Doc, turning up the volume on the television with the remote.

Merry Christmas to you all, said Perry Como.

I feel so wonderfully wicked, said the blanket on the couch, its form gently heaving.

What Powell would stand wanting with Lisa Lee later
at the left-open broken place for the laying in of Bill Doodlum, was for her to slip the pistol beneath the starched, cedar-smelling folds of clothes in her chest of hopes, but Lisa Lee held her fingers to his lips for a silence, as if waiting for some sonic explosion of something that had just passed without sound overhead, Lisa Lee seeming to know that words are just sounds and that the sounds of love always follow where love has been.

GENIUS
 

G
ENIUS THINKS HIS BIG BELLY
fits Carol’s lumbar the way the Gulf Stream runs hot and close up the back spinal curve of the Carolina coast. Genius thinks Carol is the hot semitropics and he is the jislike filament of sun-broiled current running snug inshore. Genius pretends the air in his lungs is the southeast trades that blow the Gulf Stream in to the beach, turning water toeclear neck-deep. Genius likes to dog-paddle past the clear-breaking waves to where the bottlenose dolphins play. Fish-drunk and curious, the dolphins slap happy against Genius’ big belly before arcing out to sea in the Stream.

Genius is waking fat and happy until he kicks off the
top sheet and sees it’s not Carol the semitropics. Instead of Carol the semitropics he has Barbara the frontdesk clerk. Genius can’t think beyond mud flats at low tide when he looks at Barbara from the front desk. Genius goes out on the balcony of his room in the motel where Barbara works and hands his big belly up on the balcony railing. The real Gulf Stream looks like cut gray ribbon out past the breakers and Genius is downspirited. I have deceived myself again in my sleep, says Genius to himself. It downspirits me to think I am not the Gulf Stream. Genius holds his big belly in both hands and squeezes it like he wants to shoot something out of his belly button. A big belly takes energy away from even being flotsam today, he thinks. Genius goes back into his motel room to consider mud flats at low tide.

   The last time Genius saw any part of Carol was when her fist came rushing up to his right eye and didn’t stop and came right on coming. Genius saw part of her pretty pastel Easter skirt as he flipped over the railing on his way to the sidewalk, but Genius doesn’t think that counts. It was Easter and they had been to the Easter parade. Carol had on her new pretty pastel skirt and the round straw Easter bonnet Genius had driven all the way to Williamsburg to get. The round straw Easter hat had a blue silk sash that matched Carol’s eyes. After
Carol had punched Genius out and he sat leaning against the gutter curb feeling skin puff out from his cheek, Genius saw the round straw Easter hat with the sash that matched Carol’s eyes sail over his head like a Frisbee. It sailed over his head and out into the street where it got run over flat by a car full of people who had come to see the Easter parade and were now going home.

   The lifeguard on the beach is waving a red flag that matches his red lifeguard swim trunks. He is waving the flag and blowing a whistle for Genius to come in from so far out. Genius is floating on his back out past the breakers, out even farther than the good swimmers go. Genius floats and watches the lifeguard wave the red flag from his lifeguard stand. Sometimes Genius has to wait until the gentle swells turn him just right so he can see the lifeguard because sometimes Genius’ big belly gets in the way. If Genius works his hands like flippers back and forth it looks like the lifeguard is moving back and forth behind a big hairy hill. If Genius relaxes his head deeper into the water the sun blinds his eyes and the water fills his ears so he can’t see the lifeguard waving the red flag that matches his trunks or hear the whistle the lifeguard is blowing. He won’t come out after me, thinks Genius. I have lived on the beach a very long time.

   
Here is a list of things Carol has thrown at Genius: a sneaker with a toe full of sand in it, a coffee cup with a crescent of coffee in it, a raisin box with a half a box of raisins in it, and a picture of Genius holding a young girl under red and green plastic lanterns strung beside a pool. All of the things Carol has thrown at Genius have hit him in the face. The picture of Genius holding the young girl beside the pool Carol had to throw at Genius’ face over and over because Genius was asleep. While Genius was asleep was always when Carol looked through his stuff and read his mail. When she found the picture of Genius holding the young girl she had to throw it as hard as she could on Genius’ face over and over again until Genius finally woke up.

   The southeast trades are blowing the Gulf Stream in and Genius has a bat kite hung up in the high-voltage wires by the motel. Genius is jerking on the bat kite string walking up close then backing back away. Barbara from the front desk has said to let her buy him a drink and forget the kite. Some surf nazis have skateboarded up and are making loud zap and sizzle sounds with their teeth and tongues. A police cruiser slows by, sees it’s just Genius, and then speeds up to run over a cat. Genius pulls on the string to the bat kite hung up in the high-voltage wires until the string breaks and white-ribbons itself over a row of tourist cars parked in
the motel parking lot. Genius winds in the string over the cars that the surf nazis check for dashboard change. From the bar in the motel Genius drinks a drink and watches the Gulf Stream blow in on the southeast trades.

   Carol has said over the telephone there is no chance. Carol has said over the motel telephone there is no chance so much that the motel telephone bill is more than the motel room bill. Barbara at the front desk reads tourist people’s postcards that tourist people send and listens in to Carol saying there is no chance to Genius over and over again. Once when she was listening in she heard Genius say he was going to shoot himself, and then there was a loud bang just as some surf nazis came into the lobby to steal matches and put boogers in the breath mint plate. Barbara from the front desk took out the master key and flung open the door to Genius’ motel room. Genius was standing big-bellied naked by the telephone table, studying the heel of a shoe he was holding. The way he stood by the coiled-up cord, studying the heel, made Barbara from the front desk think at first the coiled cord was a snake Genius had just hammered with the shoe in the head and that maybe Genius was studying where he had gotten some snake head on the heel. When Barbara went back down to the front desk to listen in, Carol had already hung up and
the surf nazis had cleaned out the petty cash drawer and were gone and so was her purse. When the switchboard rang it was Genius who asked her to go to Ocean Eddie’s seafood buffet and she went.

   The girl Genius held under the green and red plastic lanterns is coming down to the beach. She says she has made the national swimming finals and she is coming down to practice and to see Genius. Genius thinks he is too fat for her now. His belly has swollen out drinking beer at the motel bar watching the Gulf Stream blow in and out on the southeast trades. Genius thinks when she sees him she will be disappointed. Genius thinks the lifeguard will get her if he is not careful. Genius is mad that she is coming down because she is too pretty for him and he is certain the lifeguard will get her. I’m coming down to the beach to practice and to see you because I like you says the girl Genius held under the green and red plastic lanterns. Genius is mad hanging up the telephone and Barbara the front desk clerk is unplugging her headset from listening in and she is mad too.

   Carol and the reason there is no chance come down to the beach. The reason there is no chance drives a heavy-duty pickup truck with extra suspension. The
doors on the heavy-duty pickup say Mr. Tire. In the back of the truck are brand new tires and retreads chained around canisters of compressed air. Carol and this reason there is no chance go out to Jungle Acres Putt-Putt and Genius hides behind the black plaster gorilla near the twelfth hole. Genius wants to page Mr. Tire over the intercom that is playing rock and roll. He wants to page Mr. Tire away from where Carol is bent over a short adult putter. If he can get Mr. Tire paged away he wants to break through the transplanted tropical reeds dying in the semitropics at Jungle Acres and say Mrs. Tire, I presume. Then Genius will fend off Mr. Tire with the short adult Jungle Acres putter. But Mr. Tire putts holes-in-one on the front nine and birdies the tenth so Genius gender checks the black plaster gorilla he’s hunkered by and decides to go home.

   The girl Genius held under the green and red plastic lanterns comes to the beach and shucks her clothes in Genius’ motel room. In her bag are eleven bathing suits. Genius watches her swim from the boardwalk. He can hardly keep up walking along the boardwalk with her swimming in the surf against the current. She breaks splits in the rip curls and shimmers through faces of breakers. The lifeguards wave red flags that match their swim trunks and blow their whistles but they see they could never catch her. Her feet are long because she
is tall and her long feet slap the water when she turns like the tail of a bottlenose dolphin. When she wades out and drips water over Genius’ big belly she is not even winded. I felt the water go clean and warm just past the breakers, she says. There were big shapes moving deep under me but I wasn’t afraid. The Gulf Stream, thinks Genius.

   By dawn Genius has crept out of his room, leaving the young girl sleeping. Barbara at the front desk is face down in a pizza take-out box. Out in the parking lot Genius watches the offshore winds push cloud cover up over Arctic Avenue and the bat kite spins and dives side to side in horrible motions from the high-voltage wire it’s tethered to. The bat kite’s wings are ragged and its skeleton is bent but its flight is furious in the gusts that are pushing everything out to sea. The lifeguard stands stand empty, facing the waves coming in on the tide that seem hesitant about their break and collapse onshore. Genius strips down to his big belly and wades in the cold surf, cold because the wind has pushed the top of the water out to sea and stirred the deep cold bathos out of its cold black to break the breakers instead. Genius wades in and flipper fins his hands and feet out past the breakers until he is blown along with the foam seaward and then arches his spine so his big belly bulges out of the water and a motel guest from
shore with binoculars would see what looked like a white-domed man-o-war way out or a child’s beach ball deflating and ocean going. Genius thinks it isn’t as pleasant as he thought but he knows how the Gulf Stream runs hot and clean just beyond the black swells he’s pushing through so he relaxes and arches his back with his eyes open watching the pushed-up cloud cover cover the bluing black in the west, where below the drop in the west the beaches, the boardwalk, and the motels that border the boardwalk are now not lost behind one or two swells but lost for good, even when the canyons rush the big-bellied flotsam up to the peaks and down the canyon walls somewhere beyond even what he can see as bigger than his big belly, the big black swells of it all.

FISHBOY
 

I
BEGAN AS A BOY
, as a human-being boy, a boy with a secret at sea and sentenced to cook in Big Miss Magine’s stone-scoured pot, my long fish body laid, tail flipping, into that solid stone pot, scales ripped and skin slipping from my meat tissue-threaded in the simmer, my body floating from my long, fish-bodied bones, my bones boiled through and through down to a hot bubbly sweet steaming broth, lisping whispers of steam twisting to the ceiling, curling in your curtains, speaking to you in your sleep.