Children of the New World: Stories (21 page)

“Yes, Mr. Paulson,” Jorge says. He’s a shorter man with dark Mayan features and a fuzzy patch of white hair.

“But I’ll tell you what made me think of you. There’s a garage full of tools down there. Saws, sanders, the whole lot. They’re yours if you want them. Come back tomorrow and I’ll have Jorge bring them up for you.”

“No kidding,” I say. “Shame I can’t run them.”

“Hey, we’ve got a generator full of gas. Next generator we find has your name on it.”

“Wow,” I say. Not that there’s really anything I could do with the tools. Cut ice into shapes, but still. “That’s really kind of you.”

“Of course, no problem. How about one moose for it?”

“Huh?”

“I’ll give you the tools,” Phil says, still smiling, “you give me a moose.” His grin is forced now, and I realize his teeth aren’t in as good shape as I first thought. His gum line has receded from malnutrition and his cheeks are sunken. It occurs to me that his wife may not have been thin for fashion’s sake.

“Phil,” I say, “we’ve got to talk.”

“If a whole moose is too much, I’ll take parts over time. Think about it. We’re talking electricity.”

“Gas runs out, Phil.”

“There’s more gas down there. Plenty of frozen cars. Jorge siphons them out.”

“Phil, it’s just not how things work around here anymore. You want moose, you have to hunt. Or take part somehow. Your wife, send her down to patch up clothing with the women, or skin badgers.”

Phil looks at me in a sorry sort of way. “Gordy,” he says, “you don’t get to where I’ve gotten by doing things the way everybody else does them. I’m a thinker, not a hunter. Ideas are what put me ahead.”

“Yeah, well, ideas don’t put you ahead anymore.”

“Sure, they do. You’re just not looking far enough ahead. We can have everything we lost. Maybe not lawns, not yet, but electricity, television, propane; one day I’ll open a heated swimming pool, just you wait and see.”

“Phil, you’re not going to open anything if you don’t put that fire out. Tom’s insane. He’ll be up here tonight if you don’t stop the burning.”

“Tom?” Phil says, and smiles. “Tom’s middle management. The kind of guy you can buy off with a couple bottles of cheap scotch. Trust me, I’m not worried about Tom. I’m talking about you, Gordy. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders; you want to move up in the world, you’d do good to start thinking for yourself. You get me a moose and I’ll get you the first generator I find. It’ll put you ahead of everyone. You put in a couple hours hauling up here and I’ll let your kids have the first pick of toys in the next house we melt our way into.”

I admit it’s tempting, the thought of a space heater, a radio, even just a board game to play with my kids at night.

“Look,” I say. “This fire can’t keep going, you’re burning up all the wood.”

“Not anymore. Ninety percent of our fuel is coming from the house itself—tables, floorboards, doors—we haven’t cut new wood in months.”

At first I think he’s lying, but I have to admit I can’t recall seeing any of the Mexicans out there in the forest since a year ago. Really it’s only been rumors of moonlit thefts that have made me think the Paulsons were to blame.

“Put the fire out, at least for a while,” I say.

Phil places his hands in his pockets. “No can do. Everything will ice up; it’ll take weeks to get back to where we were.” His other worker is climbing back up with a wheelbarrow full of stuff: tennis shoes, flowerpots, two vacuum cleaners, a chrome electric mixer.

“Don’t you get it? They’re threatening to come up here to do something really bad. Trust me on this. Just stop the fires for tonight, at least; let Tom see the smoke stop.”

Phil laughs. “Tom’s sent us plenty of threats before; I’m not worried about him. Listen, you think about what I said. You’re a smart man and you seem motivated. That’s why I’m offering you an edge. I have to get back to the kids now, but here, take something for the road. Show it to the people down there, let them know what I’ve got. I’m willing to trade,” he says and hands me the KitchenAid mixer. “Jorge, will you show Gordy out?”

“Yes, Mr. Paulson.”

“Phil, listen to me. Tom’s going to kill you.”

“Okay!” Phil says, waving. “Remember, half a moose and I can get you a jigsaw.”

Then Jorge’s guiding me back around the house and toward the gate. The snow is coming down hard, already covering the stones of the walkway. I brace the KitchenAid against my hip as we walk, wondering what I’m going to do with the thing. Jorge’s pace is slower than mine, pinched with the onset of arthritis.

“Were you with the Paulsons during the storms?” I ask Jorge.

“Yes,” Jorge says proudly. “Fifteen years I work for Mr. Paulson. You know he saved me before his neighbor. For me he’s like family.”

“What about your other family? Your real family. Where were …
are
they?”

“Chile,” he says. “But who knows.”

We’re at the gate.

“Jorge, what would you do if Mr. and Mrs. Paulson died?”

“That’s a sad question, Mr. Gordy. These people, they’re like my family now. I guess I’d go try to find my brother.”

“Your brother?”

“Yeah, he lives in Iowa.”

I don’t have the heart to tell him how flat Iowa is, a barren stretch of cornfields with no trees that would have made it above the frost line. There are places where his brother might have had a fighting chance. California, with its great redwoods, the Colorado Rockies, even New York or Chicago, with their monumental skyscrapers, where I imagine survivors camped on the upper floors, scavenging supplies on frigid stairwells. But Iowa? There’s no way anyone’s still alive out there.

“Iowa’s a long way from here,” I tell him.

“I know. But still, that’s where I’d go. You be careful out there, okay?” he says, and opens the gate for me. “You bring us back some moose, I get you something better than that.” He points at my mixer, whose cord is dragging in the snow. Then he closes the stone gate behind me.

The blizzards have started up again, clouds thick and heavy, the sun blotted out. The snow is falling steadily, whiting out the landscape so I can hardly see a couple feet in front of me. I heft the KitchenAid under my arm, and lumber through the snow crookedly, trudging across the drifts. It’s slow going with the wind and snow, the sun so far gone, it could just as well be evening, and I’m chilled by the time I see the dim outlines of our igloos.

Tom’s been watching for me. When I arrive he makes his way through the storm.

“Hey,” I say.

Tom doesn’t say anything, just looks at the KitchenAid and shakes his head. He turns and walks back toward his igloo.

“Tom, wait!”

He pauses. “What?” he says, his back still to me.

There’s not enough ice in my heart to do what I should. Not say a word of what Phil proposed, just head back to the quiet of my igloo and keep the kids inside as the men pass through the storm to the Paulsons. If I do that, Tom is liable to kill the Paulsons and loot their home, and by tonight it’ll be open season on those houses below. But in that scenario, the Paulsons will be dead, their two daughters orphaned, Jorge abandoned to certain death, and my children get a father who’s an accomplice to murder. So, what do I do? I tell Tom about the houses and all the loot inside. I show him the Kitchen Aid and explain Phil’s trade offer, hoping negotiation will quell his bloodthirst. And what more do I do? I call up the old monkey still clinging to his back. “I bet you there’s some good painkillers in those houses,” I say. I see a momentary flicker, can almost hear the devil on his shoulder whispering beneath the whipping snow; then the light goes out of his eyes.

“Let him talk for himself,” he says and spits.

Sure enough, later that night the men organize around Tom’s igloo. Am I stopping them? No. But out here you have to choose your battles. If I stand up for the Paulsons, I might as well go build an igloo outside their gate. Still, I can’t help but feel horrible as the men crunch by our igloo, dogs barking with the excitement of the hunt, pulling a sled of axes, arrows, and other tools for breaking and bludgeoning.

Lisa and I tuck the kids into bed. I sit and sing our kids to sleep and then Lisa and I huddle together, listening to the snow, both of us complicit in what’s going on up there. Even the kids knew. Our eldest had asked me, “What’s happening tonight?” “Nothing,” I’d lied, smoothing down her hair.

Lisa goes to sleep, but I can’t. I sit whittling small figures out of wood for the kids. What I tell myself is, you can only do so much. I did the best I could. I made the hike out there, I told Paulson what was coming, I laid all the facts on the table. It’s not my fault what’s happening tonight; Paulson made his own decision. You can only do so much, I say out loud. But the words are too quiet, they get absorbed by the snow of our igloo, revealing their emptiness. “Damn it,” I say aloud. The last thing I want to see tonight is dead bodies. All the same, I put the little stub of wood down, fold my blade and tuck it away, and put on my jacket.

The sled tracks are easy to follow. I hike through the snow, wondering just what exactly I’m planning to do. Give a speech that warms everyone’s hearts? Step in front of the Paulsons with my whittling knife? Still, I continue on, following the deep trench of the sleds through the night, heading toward the dark igloo on the horizon.

The stone door of the entrance is smashed. A quarter of the old slab still hangs from the wall of ice; the rest is scattered across the ground, shards trampled into the snow. There’s an eerie stillness to the scene. In the darkness, the unlit sockets of the windows, ominous against the white dome, transform the igloo into an enormous skull. I’m standing there, wondering what to do, when I see someone emerge from the hole. A beam of light cuts through the falling snow, playing over my face and blinding me, and for a second I can’t figure out what’s happening. It’s been so long since any of us had flashlights.

I raise my hand. “It’s me, Gordy.”

“Hey,” Jorge says.

I step through the snow, my boots squeaking against the ice. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Jorge says and shines his flashlight on the entrance. “But I’ll have to build another door.”

“Are the Paulsons okay?”

“It was bad for a while, but it’s safe now. Everyone’s asleep inside. Mr. Paulson’s down there.” Jorge turns and points his flashlight to the pit. “Come, I’ll take you.”

Jorge lights the way into the hole and we descend together in silence, circling around the smoke, which rises through the center like a chimney. I stay close to the wall, running my hand along the ice for guidance. Here and there, the cut edges of branches and the scorched wood of a telephone pole emerge from the snow, their feel comforting to the touch. The path flattens out at the bottom and enters a long tunnel of ice. Down here, the ground is brown with mud, speckled with rotten yellow tufts.

“Is that grass?” I ask.

Jorge trains his light on a patch of crabgrass. “Yes, Mr. Gordy. Look here.” He lifts the flashlight to the wall by my side. At first I can’t see anything, only the glow of his light against the blue ice. But then it all begins to come into focus: the dim outline of a tree frozen within the glacier, a hedge, a long stretch of concrete sidewalk, and the outlines of other houses, dark hulking giants frozen deep within the ice.

“I show you something else,” Jorge says. He steps forward a couple feet and disappears into the wall. I follow him down a hollowed-out pathway. We pass the frozen hedge and cross the sidewalk to the side of a parked car. The driver’s door is wide open and Jorge shines his light across the interior, illuminating the dashboard, the car stereo, and the sliced balloon of an airbag hanging limp over the steering wheel. The passenger door is also open, creating a kind of vehicular tunnel. It’s then that I see what Jorge is really trying to show me: the ice caves on the other side, large open caverns punctured by frozen stalagmites, mailboxes, and the vinyl siding of houses.

“Wow,” I say.

“Yes. Come, I’ll take you to the others now.”

I follow Jorge back to the main tunnel. Ahead of us, the mud turns to flagstones, welcoming us to the gaping door of a ranch house. A small pyre is burning beneath the windows on the left side of the house, melting the way toward a neighbor’s. There are voices now, their tone high-pitched but warm, and when we enter the foyer, I see the men from the village inside.

The living room is a memory from the past, long ago forgotten but instantly familiar. The bookcases along the wall, the framed artwork, the carpeting upon which a couch and chairs are arranged, the whole scene lit by candles and upended flashlights, as though set for an intimate dinner party. The dogs are lying on the floor, their muzzles against the carpeting, a couple stretched out on the couch. The men are milling about, stuffing black garbage bags with books and picture frames. They’ve dragged the sled inside and have stocked it with a floor lamp, a boom box, Christmas lights, and throw pillows. They look like manic shoppers, hoarding the spoils of the old world. Occupied with their pillaging, the men don’t notice me, but Paulson does.

“Gordon!” he says warmly. “Good to see you!” He’s sitting in a recliner by the fireplace. Tom’s beside him in his own recliner, holding a tumbler of liquor in his gloved hands.

Only now do the other men turn. Jerry sees me and waves, sloshing a dark bottle of Myers’s into the air. “Disco night!” he yells. The others wave to me before turning back to their work. From down the hallway, I hear the clink of plates in the kitchen.

“You weren’t lying,” Tom says. “They’ve got everything down here.” He raises his glass in salute to Paulson before downing it.

“Tom’s agreed to be my new distributor,” Phil says jovially.

“Go ahead,” Tom motions to the living room, “take whatever you want. Just make sure to clear it with me before it goes.” At this, Tom lifts a clipboard from the coffee table between the two of them.

I don’t say anything, just stand there, taking it all in: the smell of alcohol, the men emptying the shelves of knickknacks, the windows white with snow. It’s obvious what’s about to happen—so clear that, even before Phil offers me a drink, I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to ask Phil where the kids’ toys are, and when he tells me, I’m going to get to them before anyone else does. Then I’ll take a look at the saws and sanders in the garage. And there will be no blood tonight, no bodies, and no murder among us—just this sled full of pawned goods, and drunken men, spoiling what was once our community.