The Ice at the Bottom of the World (5 page)

About midway through the morning after their chores about a half a dozen of Vic’s kids came spilling barefoot out of Vic’s ackerine blue house to ride the ackerine bicycles and tricycles and to play on the good-deal ackerine swing set and jungle gym. The older Vic’s kids got to play fishing boat and battleship down on the canal dock as long as one of them stayed lookout to keep a count of heads and to watch for snakes.

From over my shoulder I was watching what Buster was up to. He stood looking up at me in the middle of the midday morning hot yard not seeking shade like even a common ass would but just standing in the yard near where the incline made of good-deal railway ties came out of the canal and led on up to the boat shed. Buster stood not even slapping his tail at the blackflies that were starting to work on Steve Willis and I up on the roof ripping shingles, but standing so still as if knowing not to attract one bit of attention to himself on his way to he and I knew where. I would rip a row of shingles and then look over my shoulder and Buster would be standing perfectly still not even slapping his tail at the blackflies or even showing signs of breath in and out of his big almost-to-the-ground-slouching belly. Just standing as if he was a big kid’s toy some big kid was moving around in the yard when I wasn’t looking, all the time moving closer by two or three feet at a time to the garden.

So I would rip a row and look, rip a row and look, never seeing him move even by an inch, and I saw Steve Willis was not even bothered by looking to keep an eye on Buster out of the garden even though Vic had told us both to do it, and the reason was a simple one for Steve Willis not to care, and boiled down, this is it: the evening Vic went over to make the good deal off the old people who had Buster for so long he rode Buster home and when he showed up at the gate needing one
of us, me or Steve Willis to come down off the porch of our shanty to open the gate, it was me who came down to let Vic and Buster in the yard. That is the reason for Steve Willis not caring about Buster, not one thing more. Steve Willis stayed on the porch with his feet up on the railing watching Vic ride Buster by and me close the gate, and ever since, anything Vic tells us to do or about or with Buster, it is me who does it or me who listens even though Vic is telling us both, it is me and not Steve Willis, all from me getting down to open the gate that one time. That is why today Steve Willis was just ripping rows and not looking at Buster sneak, and I tell you, this forward thinking in Steve Willis when we make our new-moon runs, I like it then, but around the chores in Vic’s back acres it can become tiresome and make you job-shy yourself.

Just about lunch time, just about the time for the little Vic’s children to come into their house to get cold pieces of fried fish and Kool-Aid for lunch, the big Vic’s children down by the dock all shouted Snake! and ran about fetching nets, poles, and paddles. This was a good time for Steve Willis and I to break so Steve Willis and I broke for a cigarette to watch what would all Vic’s kids be telling around the table that night all supper long. Vic’s big kids ran up and back the dock trying to catch the snake with their poles and paddles, and the poor snake swam from side to side in the boat slip with his escape cut off by one of Vic’s big kids poling around in
a washtub trailing a minnow seine. One of Vic’s big girl kids caught the tired-out snake on the surface and dipped him out with a canoe paddle and one of Vic’s big boys grabbed it up and snapped it like a bullwhip, popping its neck so it went limp. Vic’s dogs that Buster hadn’t yet kicked into the canal barked and jumped up on the boys playing keep-away with the snake until the boys took it up to the outside sink where we clean fish to skin it out and dry what the dogs didn’t eat in the sun.

As they all paraded up to the house I came to notice the yard seemed even emptier than it should have been with Vic’s kids and dogs all gone up to the big house, then I realized what piece was missing when between the wooden staked-out rows of peabeans I saw a patch of sparrow-shot ragged horsehair and a big horse behind showing out by the tomatoes. I shouted a couple of times and spun a shingle towards where Buster was at work munching cabbage and cucumbers but the shingle just skipped off his big horse behind and splashed into the canal.

By the time I got down from the roof leaving Steve Willis up there ripping shingles, Steve Willis not being the one to open the gate that first time Buster came to Vic’s acres, Buster had eaten half the young cabbage heads we had. I knew better than to come up from behind a horse who can kick a full-grown collie thirty yards so I picked up the canoe paddle the big Vic’s girl had
used to fling up the snake on the dock with and went through the corn to cut Buster off at the cabbage.

But head to head, me shouting and making up and down wild slicing actions with the canoe paddle, Buster had no focus on me. Instead he was stopped in midchew. Then the sides of his almost-to-the-ground-slouched belly heaved out, then in, and then more out, moving so much more out that patches of horsehair popped and dropped off and I took a half step backward fearing for an explosion. I called for Steve Willis to come down, to hurry up, but all Steve Willis said was what did I want, and I said I think Buster is sick from whatever Vic had sprayed on the cabbage, probably not getting anybody to read the label of what it was to begin with, and then Buster side-stepped like he was drunk through two rows of stake-strung peabeans, and then he pitched forward to where I was backing up holding the canoe paddle, of little good, I was thinking, against an exploding horse, and then Buster, I swear before God, Buster erupt-belched and blew out broken wind loudly at the other end at the exact same time as his knees shook out from under him and he went down among the tallest tomatoes in Vic’s garden wiping out the uneaten cabbage and some cucumber pickles too.

By this time Steve Willis had come down off the roof to look at the tragedy we were having in Vic’s garden. It was hard to count the amount of summer suppers Buster had ruint and smushed. Steve Willis called
Buster a son of a bitch for wiping out the tomatoes, Steve Willis’ favorite sandwich being tomato with heavy pepper and extra mayonnaise.

Steve Willis asked me did I hit Buster in the head or what with the canoe paddle but I promised I hadn’t given him a lick at all with it, though we were both looking at how hard I was holding on to the handle. Steve Willis pushed in on Buster’s big blowing-up belly with his toe and air started to hiss out of Buster’s mouth like a nail-stuck tire, and the fear of explosion having not completely passed, we both stepped back. You could tell the little hiss was coming out near where Buster’s big black and pink tongue stuck pretty far out of his mouth laying in the dirt between where the tomatoes were smushed and the cabbage used to be.

Steve Willis said This is not good.

Usually when Steve Willis and I have a problem in our on-the-side new-moon business, we say we have to do some Big Thinking, and we are always seeming to be doing Big Thinking in all our business, but since this was a Buster problem and since Steve Willis didn’t come down off the porch that first time to open the gate, it was coming clear to me I would have to be the Big Thinker on this one. I stepped away to think really big about the tragedy, figuring from where the garden is situated around the boat shed by our shanty on the canal you can’t see it from the big house. I figured I had a fair while to figure where to go with Buster after I got
him out of the garden, hoping to find a hole enough nearby for such a big animal and do it all while Vic’s little children slept out of the afternoon sun and while Vic’s big children went to afternoon Bible study.

In the first part of thinking big I went up to the garage to get the good-deal riding lawn mower to yank Buster out until I remembered it had a broken clutch, and when I came back Steve Willis was holding back a laugh to himself, and I will say about Steve Willis, he is not one to laugh right in your face. He was holding back a laugh, holding the rope I’d given him to put around Buster to yank him out. Steve Willis asked me what kind of knot would I suggest he tie a dead horse to a broken riding lawn mower with.

I could see how far I could get Steve Willis to help with the Buster tragedy so I took the line out of his hand and put a timber hitch around one of Buster’s hind legs saying out loud A timber hitch seems to work pretty well thanks a whole hell of a lot. I paid the line out from the garden and started to get that sinking feeling of a jam panic, a jam closing in needing Very Big Thinking, with not the July hot sun in the yard baking waves of heat making me feel any better at all. You get that sinking jam panic feeling, and I got it so bad that while I was paying out the line across the yard, and even though I knew I could not ever possibly do it, I stopped and held hard to the line and gave it a good solid pull the hardest I could to yank Buster out, straining, pulling,
even when I saw when it was hopeless, and even with the jam panic worse, I had to let go of the line, and all the difference I had made was that now there was air hissing out from where blackflies were moving around and settling back beneath Buster’s big stringy tail.

This was even better than before to Steve Willis who stepped behind what tall tomatoes were left so he wouldn’t have to laugh at me to my face. I picked up a shingle I’d flung at Buster from the roof and spun it towards Steve Willis but it sliced to the right and shattered our side kitchen window and Steve Willis had to go behind the boat shed to laugh not in my face this time after you couldn’t hear glass falling in the shanty anymore.

I gathered up the line bunched at my feet and trailed it over to the boat shed down to the dock. Vic’s big Harker Island rig, our new-moon boat with the Chrysler inboard was gassed up with the key rusted in the ignition. I cleated the line that ran across the yard from Buster’s hind leg onto the stanchion on the stern and shouted over to Steve Willis in the garden to at least help me throw off the lines.

I felt for an instant better starting up the big deep-throated engine so that the floorboards buzzed my feet, feeling the feeling I get that starts to set in running the rig over to the hidden dock on the south bay shore on new-moon nights, the feeling of the chance of sudden money and the possibility of anything, even danger and
death, and feeling now in a July hot sun the feeling of Big Thinking a way out of a bad tragedy. With the engine running it was now possible in my mind that we wouldn’t lose our place of life in Vic’s acres over something like letting a big horse die.

I was feeling better as Steve Willis threw off the stern line and I choked the wraps on the stanchion leading to where I could just see two big-legged hooves hung up in the tomatoes where I could snatch Buster out and decide what to do then, but the sound of the big engine turning over brought out the dogs from underneath the big house, them being used to going out with Vic in the mornings to check five miles of pound net, and then some of the older kids not yet set off for Bible study started to spill out of the house to see what Steve Willis and I were up to this time with their daddy’s boat, and if I looked harder at the house, which I did, I could see the little Vic’s children in the windows with diapers and old Vic’s t-shirts on wanting to follow the big kids out, but not coming, them having to sleep in away from the July hot sun.

Vic’s dogs got down to us first, and even old Lizzie’s tan and gray snout, a snout she lets babies pull without snapping, and a snout which would, when you were bent over fooling with getting the lawn hose turned on, come up and give you a friendly goose in your rear end, even old Lizzie’s tan and gray snout snarled back to show ripping wolflike teeth when she saw that old bastard of
a horse Buster was down, and then she and all of Vic’s other dogs were on the carcass and there was no keeping them away.

Now I had the problem of everybody in Vic’s acres coming down to see what I had let happen to Buster, topped off by the dogs having their day going after Buster’s body biting his hind legs and ripping away at the ears and the privates. The sight of the dogs on Buster was no less than the sounds they made, blood wild, and here came the rest of the kids to see all this, this even being better than chasing the watersnake around and out of the canal for a supper-table story.

I had to Big Think quick so I pulled Steve Willis by his belt into the boat, us starting over at that point about me and him and anything to do with Buster, forgetting that first time him not getting down to open the gate. I pushed forward on the throttle but did it swinging the bow off where I knew the sand bar was, still being in the right mind to know not to double up a dead horse tragedy with bad boatsmanship. When I rounded the dock and the line leading to where the pack of wildacting animals were in the tomatoes with the horse carcass snugged tight, our bow rose and our stern squared, and I really gave the big old lovey Chrysler the gas and, looking over my shoulder, I saw Buster slide from the garden with still the dogs around, this time giving chase to the dragging legs, because in their simple minds they were probably thinking the only way to stop something
with legs is to bite its feet whether that something is standing on them or not.

I knew that I was not just pulling Buster out of the garden now but that we had him sort of in tow, so that as we turned onto the canal proper and Buster skidded across the bulkhead and onto the dock that I knew wouldn’t take his weight, I really had to pour the engine on, and I was right, Buster’s big body humped the bulkhead over and came down splintering the dock we had just been tied to, but for an instant even over the dogs barking and the children yelling and the deep-throated throttle of the engine giving me any of anything making me feel better about all of this, just for an instant I heard Buster’s hooves hit and clotter across the good-deal planking of the dock before bringing it down, and in that second of hearing horse’s hooves on plank I had to turn back quick and look, because it passed over me that maybe I would see Buster galloping behind us giving chase to me and Steve Willis out of Vic’s garden instead of us dragging his big dead body out to sea in tow.