The Ice at the Bottom of the World Read online

  My uncle said all that night he drove his boat over the boiling waters wondering why the men in the green uniforms had put him so far out into the Gulf, until in the shine of his flashlight he saw an island of sparkling diamonds. When my uncle drove his boat over to the island he saw it was the crown of a tree boiling in the currents of the floodwaters and the diamonds were the eyes of all the snakes spun up through the branches. My uncle said the snakes dropped into the water so they could swim into his boat, but instead they were swept away into the darkness by the waters. He said after that he was careful of the islands and was not fooled again by their diamond-shining lights.

  My uncle said that when the sun was supposed to come up it didn’t come up at all, but just it started to rain harder. The rain got into my uncle’s breath when he drove his boat. He had to hold his hand over his mouth like he was going to call a duck, but he was breathing in through the tube his fingers made instead of blowing out with his tongue. That was when the Brahma bull went by backwards. The way it went past, with just its head out of the water holding up its long, flat horns, my uncle said it looked like a big brown bird made of solid wood, gliding over the boiling waters for its breakfast. My uncle drove his boat alongside the Brahma bull and he looped some ski rope around the long, flat horns, but he said it did not work too well trying to pull the animal back to the barge because sometimes the ski rope pulled down on the Brahma bull’s head so that its long, thin horns dipped into the water, and sometimes the Brahma bull’s nose blew out water instead of breath, and by the time my uncle got over to where the barge seemed to be moving toward him, the ski rope was going straight down into the water by my uncle’s boat like it held an anchor my uncle could not pull up. When the men in the green uniforms asked my uncle what it was, he said it was nothing, and he cut the ski rope loose from his boat and set out over the boiling waters again.

  When it was supposed to be noon my uncle said he found the baby on the rope. He said it looked like somebody had tied a strong rope around the baby’s waist and was still holding on, because the other end seemed deep down in the water. The baby was cutting through the current with its arms and head thrown back like it had just broken up to the surface to take a long deep breath that it was still taking. My uncle said when he pulled the rope from where it went deep into the water, it did not feel like it gave as much as it felt like it was being let go of. When my uncle got back to the barge with the baby on the rope, the men in the green uniforms gave him some coffee and a doughnut and a spam sandwich. He said the doughnut dissolved and the sandwich washed away and the coffee tasted like rain.

  My uncle said the girl swimming on the barbed-wire fence had skin that did not come off in his hands like the skin on some of the others did. He said when he first saw her, her right arm was crooked over her head and her left arm was following, with her head turned like she was a swimmer in the boiling waters, making it look like she was stroking away from where everything was being boiled off the face of the earth. He said he was shouting at her, Swim, come on and swim! as he drove his boat over to her. He said even as he unstuck her from the barbed-wire fence he talked to her and looked away from her modesty, because her clothes had been boiled away, so he just focused on a little mark on her cheek like a snakebite the barbed wire had made that did not bleed because all her blood had boiled away, too. He made over her, protecting her modesty until they got back to the barge and the men in the green uniforms helped him hand her up from his boat so they could lay her on top of the other boiled-over people they had stacked at one end of the barge like corded wood.

  My uncle said that after three days, when the only sun was just the amber light, the barge was full. The men in the green uniforms headed it back up the bayou, and even though sometimes they would see things hung up in the trees and caught along the fences they would not stop. The men in the green uniforms spread white powder out of green barrels on the people stacked under big green tarps. Men’s boats like my uncle’s were laid helter-skelter on the barge, all banged up like a lot of toys some bullies had come along and played too rough with. All the men like my uncle who had the boats stood around the edges of the barge away from the big green tarps, away from their boats they could not look at, and as far away from each other as they could without falling over into the boiling water. They stood watching for faces of boiled-over people to come up to just below the surface like they sometimes did, like they just wanted to sneak a peek before slipping back under. Then the men stood looking away to the trees and to the fences along the bayou that caught the boiled-over people. They stood looking, giving good hard long looks, because they knew, like my uncle knew, that once they were back up the bayou home they would never be able to watch a stew pot boil, or look at something caught on barbed wire ever the same again, even with someone like me coming in to show it is nothing but a piece of nothing thrown up on the fence by the wind.

  HAPPINESS OF THE GARDEN VARIETY

  I FELT REALLY BAD about what we ended up having to do to Vic’s horse Buster today, not that, looking back, all this could have been helped, all this starting when Steve Willis and I were ripping the old roof off of where we live in the shanty by the canal on Vic’s acres. Vic was up to Norfolk again, checking on a washing machine for his many-childed wife, Steve Willis and I left to rip off the roof and hammer in the new shingles. We were doing this in change for rent. Every month we do something in change for rent from Vic. Last month previous we strung three miles of pound net with bottom weights and cork toppers. What we change for rent usually comes to a lot more than what I’m sure the rent is for our four-room front porch shanty on the canal out back of Vic’s, but Steve Willis and I like Vic and Vic lets us use his boat and truck for side business we do on new-moon nights.

  Let me tell you something about what makes what we ended up doing to Vic’s horse Buster all the worse. This is not to say about Vic less than Buster; me, I personally, and I know Steve Willis did too, hated Buster, Steve Willis having had to watch from far away Buster kill two of Vic’s dogs. There’d be a stomp and a kick of dust and then a splash in the canal where it’s a crab feast on old Tramp or Big Spot. Then there was Buster’s biting and kicking of us humans, Buster having bit me on my shoulder once coming up from behind while I was scraping barnacles from one of Vic’s skiffs in change for rent and then he didn’t even move when I came at him with a sharp-sided hoe. Steve Willis had Buster kick in the driver side of his car door after Buster had been into some weeds Vic had sprayed with the wrong powder. Buster kicked in the door so hard Steve Willis still has to crawl in from the other way. It was this eating that finally got Buster in the end, though not being able to read the right powder label is something about Vic which made him have us around.

  This is what I mean, this about Vic and about what we did to his horse to make things all the worse: Vic could not read nor write, and this about Vic affected the way we all were with him. What I mean all, means Vic’s wife and his children and Buster and his dogs and all the acres we all lived on down by the canal, and everything on all the acres, and everything on all those acres painted aquamarine blue, because one thing about Vic, and I say this to show how Steve Willis and I made this all the worse, was that Vic not reading or writing seemed to make him not to think about things like they had names that he had to remember by way of thinking that needed spelling, but instead Vic seemed to think about things in groups, like here is a group of things that are my humans, here is a group of things that are my animals, here is a group of things I got for free, here is a group of things I got off good dealmaking, and here is a group of things I should keep a long time because I got them from some people who had kept them a long time, and maybe because of a couple of these reasons put together, Vic had another group of things painted aquamarine blue because he had gotten a good deal on two fifty-five-gallon barrels of aquamarine paint, and everything—even Vic’s humans and animals who could not help but rub against or sit in somewhere because it was everywhere wet—everything w
as touched the color of aquamarine, though all of us calling it ackerine, because even spelling it out and sounding it out to Vic it still came out of his mouth that way, ackerine, keeping in mind here is a man who can’t read nor write, and Steve Willis and I always saying it ackerine like Vic said it, for fun, because it also always seemed like somehow we were always holding a brush of it somewhere putting it on something in change for rent.

  So what made what we did to Buster worse were some ways in Vic’s thinking which were brought on by him not reading nor writing. Just because somebody had kept Buster a long time to Vic made it seem Buster was very valuable, and even though the horse did come with some history tied to it, the real reason the people had Buster for so long was because they were old and could not seem to kill the horse by just shooting it with bird shot over and over even though they tried again and again, them just making Buster meaner and easier for Vic to buy when the two old people saw him in church and asked did he want a good deal on a historical horse. The history Buster had was he was the last of the horses they used at Wicomico Light Station to run rescue boats into the surf. To Steve Willis and I when we heard it said So what? but to Vic this was some history he could understand and appreciate, being an old sailor himself and it being some facts that did not have to be gotten from a history book that he could not read from in the first place.

  What I came to find out later on was the heart tug Vic felt about this old horse that had to do with when Vic grew up, Vic’s father having boarded a team of surf horses in a part of the house Vic slept in when he was a boy because all the children from Vic’s parents spilled out of the two-room clapboard laid low in the dunes, not a far situation from Vic’s own children who as long as Steve Willis and I have lived here I don’t think I have seen all of yet because they keep spilling out of the house barefoot all year around and maybe it’s because there are so many of them that Vic can’t seem to remember all their names right rather than the fact he can’t place in his mind what they are called because Vic cannot read nor write.

  Anyway, the point I’m leading to about the heart tug is that where Vic spent his life as a child was sleeping with two other brothers in a hayloft over a team of old surf horses, and a hayloft mostly empty at that, not even because there was no hay to be had on an island of sand but because the team always grazed on the wild sea oats in the dunes, and this is what makes what we did the worse, this tug on Vic’s heart to his younger days that Buster had, me hearing Vic tell it all to Buster one day when Vic didn’t know I did, the feeling Vic remembered best of laying snug with his brothers, all of them laid all over each other to keep warm during the winter northeasters that shook the two-room clapboard and the tacked-on horse stalls where they slept, remembering them in the early mornings keeping warm wishing for breakfast while down below the horses would be stirring to go out, making droppings and the smell coming up to the warm, all-over-each-other brothers, the warm smell of wild sea oats passed through the two solid horses breathing sea fog breath.

  So that was the heart tug Buster had and I don’t mean to make Vic out strange owing to him liking the smell of an old horse passing gas, I think if you think about it there’s really nothing there that doesn’t fit with a man not thinking thoughts he has to read nor write, but fits well with a man who thinks of things as being good when they are human or animal especially if they came about by getting them free or from off a good deal.

  I guess that is the main reason about Vic besides using his boat and truck on new-moon nights that Steve Willis and I stuck around, us in a couple of groups in Vic’s mind mainly getting a good deal off of, us stringing nets, ripping roofs, and painting everything not breathing what we called ackerine, and that is also the main reason what we ended up doing ended up all the worse.

  So like I said, this all started when Steve Willis and I were ripping the old roof off our four-room front porch shanty by the canal in change for rent. Vic had gone to Norfolk because he had heard of a good deal some people from church told him about to do with washing machines, and Vic, having stood in water barefoot while plugging his old washer in and getting thrown against a wall by the shock, naturally to his mind thought it was broken and in need of replacing. Vic had left in the morning coming in to get Steve Willis and I up around dawn to finish the roof and said only one other simple thing, the real easy thing, to please keep Buster out of the garden no matter what we did. Then Vic was off through the gate in his good-deal truck he had painted ackerine blue one night after supper the week before.

  It was July hot, and before we started Steve Willis and I just walked around our shanty roof, just looking, because the island we live on is flat with just scrub pine and wandering dunes and from the single story up you can see Wicomico Light, the inlet bridge, and the big dunes where the ocean breaks beyond. It was a good morning knowing Vic’s wife would come soon out bringing us some sticks of fried fish wrapped in brown paper, her knowing for breakfast we usually had a cigarette and a Dr. Pepper. For a long time Steve Willis and I had not made any new-moon runs to Stumpy Point to make us watch the one lane down to Vic’s acres for cars we wouldn’t like the looks of and I could look at Steve Willis and Steve Willis could look at me and we could feel good to be one of Vic’s humans in a house on all of Vic’s acres.

  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.