The Ice at the Bottom of the World Read online

  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 leg
s, 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.

  We still had plenty of canal to cover before we broke out into open ocean. The dogs raced along beside us on the bank of the canal as far as they could but it was a game to them now, their wolf-like leaps mellowed out into tongue-flapping lopes. A couple of neighbors on down the canal came out to watch and the wake and spray from Buster cutting along ass backwards threw water into their yards. One of Vic’s cousins, Malcolm, was working in a boat and seeing us coming he held up a pair of waterskis pointing to Buster laughing as we passed, but I could see open ocean so I throttled down and leaned hard forward to balance against the rising bow. I was glad I had enough forward thinking of my own to pull Steve Willis into the boat starting us over about Buster because I could look at him in the stern watching the big horse carcass we had in tow by a stiffed up leg, and looking at Steve Willis I could see it was sinking in on him that when Vic came home from Norfolk and threw me out of the back acres by the canal it would be Steve Willis himself being thrown out too.

  I burned up about three hours of fuel looking for the right place to cut Buster loose. One problem we had was one time we stopped to idle the engine and pull up a floorboard so I could check the oil and while we set to drifting Steve Willis noticed that Buster floated. You could tell how the body was like a barrel just below the surface that it was the air or the gas or whatever was in Buster’s big belly keeping him afloat. When I got up from checking the oil I threw to where Steve Willis was standing in the stern a marlin spike and he looked down at the spike and then he looked up to me like he was saying Oh no I won’t punch a hole, and I looked back at him wiping the oil off my hands, looking back like Oh yes you will punch a hole, and when it came time for me to cut Buster loose out near the number-nine sea buoy and it came time for Steve Willis to punch a hole, I did and he did and it was done.

  So here we are really feeling bad about what we finally ended up doing to Vic’s horse Buster, us drinking about it in the First Flight Lounge after we called Vic’s wife at home and she said Un huh and Nunt uh to the sideways questions we asked her about Vic being home yet, trying to feel out how bad was the tragedy, and her hanging up not saying goodbye, and us wondering did she always do that and then us realizing we’d never talked to her on the telephone before.

  After we tied up Vic’s rig in the ditch behind the First Flight Lounge we started to wonder if shouldn’t we have let Vic had his say about what to do with his finally dead horse, so therein started us having the lack of forward thinking and of Big Thinking, and instead we were left to second guessing and after we had left the rig with its better-feeling hum and came in to drink, with the drink buzzes coming on ourselves, we started to feel naked in our thinking, especially when a neighbor of Vic’s came in and shook his head when he saw us and then walked back out.

  So what Steve Willis and I have done is to get down off the wall the tide chart and figure out where the most likely place for Buster to wash in is. We’ll head out over there when the tide turns and wait for Buster to come in on the surf and then drag him up to take him home in a truck we’ll somehow Big Think our way to fetch by morning. The tide tonight turns at about two thirty, just about when the lounge closes, too, so that is when we think we will make our move to the beach in front of the Holiday Inn, which is where we expect Buster back.

  So Steve Willis and I sit in the First Flight Lounge not having the energy to begin to think about where we are to live after having to get ready to be kicked out of Vic’s acres, much less having the energy to Big Think about pulling a sea-bloated horse out of the surf at two thirty in the morning. Here we are sitting not having the energy to Big Think about all of this when Vic walks in barefooted and says Gintermen, gintermen, another one of the ways he says things because he can’t read nor write and doesn’t know how things are spelled to speak them correct.

  There is a nervous way people who don’t drink, say, preachers, act in bars but that is not Vic. Vic sits at our table open-armed and stares at all the faces in the place, square in the eye, including our own we turn down. He sits at the table that is for drinking like it could be a table for anything else. Vic says he saw his rig tied up in the ditch behind the lounge on his way home from Norfolk, would we want a ride home and come get it in the morning.

  Steve Willis and I settle up and stand to go out with Vic who says he’s excited about the good deal he’s come back with. Looking at Steve Willis I still see it’s to me to start telling Vic about us having to wait for his favorite animal in his animal group to wash up down the beach, all at our hands.

  Out in back of Vic’s truck Vic runs his hands over six coin washing machines, something he does to all his new good-deal things to make them really his own. Vic says he got them from a business that was closing down, won’t his wife be happy. Vic says our next change for rent will be to rewire the machines so they can run without putting in the quarters, what did we think. I start to tell Vic about Buster and the tragedy in the garden. I can’t see Vic in the dark when they turn off the front lights to the First Flight Lounge but I can hear him say Un huh, un huh as I talk.

  When I finish the part with Steve Willis and I waiting for the tide to turn Vic says Come on boys, we ought to get on home oughten we. All three of us sit up front of the truck riding across the causeway bridges home. All Vic says for a while is Well, my horse, my old horse, not finishing the rest, if there is anything to finish, and I get the feeling Vic is rearranging groups in his mind like his animal group things and his human group things and his good-deal-off-people things, and maybe making a new group of really awful people things with just me and Steve Willis in it.

  But then Vic starts talking about how in change for rent Steve Willis and I are also going to build a laundry platform with a cement foundation and a pine rafter shedding, and Vic starts to talk like, even after taking rearrangement of all his things in all his groups, everything still comes up okay. Vic says oughten we lay the foundation around near the downside of the shanty where Steve Willis and I live so the soap water can drain into the canal, and after we figure how to put the sidings and braces up, oughten we put a couple of coats of paint on it to keep the weather out, maybe in change for some rent, and what color would us boys say would look good, and Steve Willis and I both sit forward and yell Ackerine! at the same time, us all laughing, and me feeling, crossing the last causeway bridge home, I’m happy heading there as a human in Vic’s acres again.

  THIS IS US, EXCELLENT

  MY BROTHER GAINS HIS PORPOISE on my pony in our race along the alleys home. I handlebar-heave through some side-skidding garbage and hold him off at the turn. I back-jam my pedals for my famous gravel-scatter through our chain-link gate. I try to knee up fast to do my Duke McQuaid sidesaddle dismount but my toes catch on the crossbar and my brother slips in along my side. Either on TV it’s “Danger: Duke McQuaid” or “Ocean Secrets,” hundredth millionth. We elbow-to-rib wrestle up the back cement steps. I punch my brother in the boxwoods. I
am pulling in the door.

  I do the Duke McQuaid dive-from-the-back-of-the-buckboard through the den door down in front of the TV. The TV is already excellent, warmed up. My brother claws the wall coming in off the kitchen and surfs on the hall rug in on top of me. I’ll break his wrist in one snap for him to touch that dial. But what we’ve missed coming in the alley the back way is our dad’s car out front with our dad home, and with our dad home is our mom, backhanded backside down between the coffee table and the sofa for company we’d better keep our asses off of. What we’ve missed here is our dad helping our mom up for another blap across the mouth.

  This is excellent! I do the Duke McQuaid drag-away-your-wounded partner with my brother, then we spin out with toenail traction on Mom’s Shine-Rite floors down the hall to our room for shoes and shirts, leaving it all, leaving on the TV, it having sports on it on anyway. So much sports on makes it less the chance for our dad to have an interest in coming down the hall to beat our asses. It’s just our mom this time.

  This really is excellent. Now we get to go snag a ’za at Psycho Za, my brother and I getting to order the Manic Size Train Wreck ’za with double everything hot. We get two orders of Logjam Fries and two Gutbuster SuperSodas, no lids or sissy sticks, please!

  Our mom just has coffee to go with her Jesus homework. The lady next door brings the homework over to her in little books. For us she brings usually some green apples and some Christian outlines you can cut out of God and the Apostles. My brother and I stick the cut-outs in the spokes of our bikes with clothespins to rattle some clatter up and down our street until Mr. Murdock comes out and says, Stop it! He says, Here’s a quarter for you and here’s a dime for your brother, just, please, Stop it!