The Ice Queen (16 page)

It took quite a while to walk down the road a piece. “Down the road a piece” was far, the way things always were in Florida. Ned was tired and the Dragon was slow, especially in the soppy saw grass.

“We’re going to wind up getting ticks,” I said. “Fleas. Poison something. Oak or ivy.”

“Do you smell it?” My brother had stopped and took a deep breath. “This is where the salt water meets up with the stream and mixes.”

It was salty and fetid both. Underneath it all was a sweetness. Here we were, older than our mother had been, wandering through the muck on a day when it was over a hundred degrees, following two old men through the swamp.

“I just want you to know: if I see an alligator, I’m turning around.”

Ned laughed. “But snakes don’t count, right?” My brother nodded, and when I saw a slithery thing in the grass, I grabbed his arm. “Harmless,” he said. “Milk snake.”

I realized then that my brother seemed happy. The place where his watch had been shone, white skin, naked, new. His khaki pants were streaked with mud and saw grass.

“Okay, here we are,” the Dragon said. “I can spit fire, you know that, right?”

Well, I’d seen Lazarus set fire to paper, burn me with a kiss — I thought I was ready. But the Dragon actually spit, and where it landed flames rose out of the saw grass. Joe ran over and stomped them out.

“Well, that’s physiologically impossible,” my brother said. All the same, he sounded excited. He looked wide-awake.

“So I’ve been told,” the Dragon said. “And I figured out how you can stop it.” The Dragon reached into his pocket and brought out something that looked like a tulip bulb. “Straight garlic. Takes the fire right out of a person. But I don’t want to do that now, ’cause I’m going to show you something worth seeing. You didn’t come all this way for me. Now promise you’ll keep this to yourselves.”

My brother crossed his heart. My eyes were burning. I thought of him in New Jersey, watching the bats in the sky. I thought about the colony of ants he’d had to leave behind when we moved in with our grandmother. I didn’t care about the things I couldn’t take with me, but my brother was different; after my grandmother put her foot down, Ned went out behind her house and set the ants free. I watched from the bedroom window. I never mentioned it, but I’d seen that he was crying.

“Cross your heart,” my brother told me.

I did so. I didn’t wish for anything, want anything, say anything. I was in present time, standing in the muck, my shoes ruined, my skin itchy.

There was a log, no, a tree, the one hit by the same lightning that had struck the Dragon the second time around. An old moss-draped oak, dead now and pale, pale gray. Ice-colored in all this green, this muck, these leaves, this water, this heat. The Dragon walked toward it. He was knee-high in the water. He took off his undershirt and I saw the tree patterns the lightning had left on his arms and his torso. Like Lazarus. I felt a twinge of something sad. As if everything that was happening now had already happened, only to someone else.

The Dragon turned around and nodded. “Watch this.”

He spit at the old log and there was a spark of fire. The Dragon waved his shirt around and smothered the flame, but the smoke had done what he’d expected. Dozens of bats rose from the log. They seemed pure black at first, but in the sunlight they shone, a glinty blue, then purple. It was like seeing the face of the world, like seeing every possibility there had ever been. Out of smoke, out of fire, out of wood, out of ice, they arose in a cloud.

Ned blinked. “Well, what do you know,” he said.

“They’re around all day long, only we never see them. You walk along and you think you’re alone. But they’re here,” the Dragon said. “Along with all the other things we don’t see.”

The bats disappeared into the sky; from underneath they were gray-brown, like leaves falling upward, like time reversed.

My shoulders were sunburned, I could barely breathe in the heat, there was a tick walking along my shin, but it was worth it. If I hadn’t learned my lesson, I would have wished we could stay there forever. But I knew better now. We’d seen what we’d come to see. The way to trick death. Breathe in. Breathe out. Watch as it all rises upward, black and blue into the even bluer sky.

II

I called Frances York to apologize for never showing up for work. In my past life, before moving to Florida, I was the dependable one, the great co-worker, the planner of parties. As it was, I hadn’t been to the library in a week. Hadn’t called in once.

“Well, don’t come in now,” Frances told me. “Come to my house at six-thirty. Thirteen Palmetto Street. The house with the big yard.”

“Look, if you want to fire me, I understand. You can do it over the phone. It’s fine. I deserve it.”

“I have never fired anyone in my life, and I am not about to start now. You’re coming for dinner.”

I didn’t quite believe her. I dressed for the occasion of my firing. Somber. My hair combed back, a red headband that I’d picked up at the drugstore, and then, last-minute bribery, a plant from the florist. A Venus flytrap. Useful in Florida. Practical. The old me. The dependable girl. Maybe Frances would see she needed me, although the truth of it was, there was barely work enough for one of us at the library.

I’d never been to Frances’s house; it was on the older side of town, where the yards were bigger and the feel was more rural, less suburban. Her house was old Florida, tin roof, shutters, cabbage palms. I parked and got out, carrying the potted plant, wearing good black shoes that were uncomfortable. I stopped on the path. There was something that looked like a bear on the front porch. It was growing dark and my vision wasn’t great. I had a moment of panic. Then I realized it was the pup in her desk photos grown to a monstrous size. A Newfoundland. Not a breed that would do well in Florida, and as it was, I could hear the creature panting. When the creature woofed, Frances came out of the house. She was wearing blue jeans, an old shirt, a scarf around her head. She didn’t resemble her library self.

“Quiet, Harry,” she said to her dog. “Poor thing, some students got him, then realized they couldn’t take care of him and left him behind when they went home for the summer. Happens every year. Abandonment.”

“Good it wasn’t a pony,” I said.

When I approached, Harry sniffed me politely. He was slobbery, but gentlemanly. Not the pet I’d expected Frances to have.

“I thought you’d have a cat,” I said. “The stereotype.”

“Do you?”

“It’s not officially mine. It belonged to a co-worker. It thinks it’s mine when dinnertime comes around. And I had a mole. Adopted as well. I just released it into the wild. The hedge in front of my house, actually. I thought I’d better set it free before I killed it. I have terrible luck with living creatures.”

“They came looking for Seth Jones,” Frances said.

“What?” I couldn’t have heard quite right. We were talking about pets, weren’t we?

“Let’s go in,” Frances suggested.

I followed her, and the dog followed me. Had she said something about Seth Jones?

We sat down in the kitchen. Frances had made lemonade. Poured cherry juice into the pitcher, a faint blush, a sour pink. I could see it even though it was so pale. This was going to be worse than being fired. She wanted to talk about Lazarus, the man I never spoke about, the man I knew I would lose. Just not now. Not yet.

“The Orlon sheriff ’s office got a call from some character at a feedstore. That’s how the whole thing started, and now they’re convinced some crime has been committed. No-body’s seen this fellow Jones, not since he was struck by lightning, and now a deliveryman from the feedstore swears he recognized a man in Jones’s house who wasn’t Jones. It was someone who worked at the feedstore a while back. So now they’re digging around.” Frances let that all sink in, then she asked, “I suppose you want to know how I know all this.”

“Yes, how?” I suppose I looked stunned. I certainly felt it.

“They came for his library information. His card.”

Frances poured me a glass of lemonade.

“It was missing from the catalog, but I found it on your desk.”

She knew a lot. More than I would have expected. She’d been seeing through me all along.

The dog was sitting beside me, hoping there’d be cookies to go with the lemonade, I suppose, breathing on my leg.

I thought about which sort of lie would fit best.

“Don’t bother,” Frances said before I could even begin. “I don’t care how you’re involved. We’re going to burn the card, and just so they don’t think we did so intentionally, we’re going to burn all the others as well.”

We went over to the pantry. The boxes of catalog cards had been stacked inside, including the ones from the basement. There was the musty, sad odor of paper. Frances had spent all week carrying boxes of cards home.

“Because what someone reads in a library is nobody else’s business,” Frances said.

We waited for the sun to go down. Then we dragged the boxes into the backyard, dumped some cards into the barbecue, then poured on some fire starter. It was pitch-black now, a hazy night. I had my backpack; I unzipped it and took out Seth Jones’s cards. The ones I’d swiped.

“I appreciate your helping me,” I said. “And just so you know, there hasn’t been any criminal activity. Nothing like that.”

“Don’t tell me anything. I’m not helping you. It’s something I believe in. Let them find their man some other way.”

It took nearly three hours to burn all the cards. We drank all the lemonade, then switched to whiskey.

“The sheriff will be back tomorrow. I insisted I needed time to look up the gentleman in question’s card. I’ll let him know that over the years records have been lost.”

I worried for Frances, putting herself on the line this way.

“Oh, I know our funds will be cut. If they close the library, people in town will have to go to the Hancock Public Library, or maybe the university will let them use their facility. Maybe I’ll go to Paris. If I do, you can take care of Harry.”

I laughed.

“I’m serious.”

She just might be. We both had soot on our faces, under our nails, along with paper cuts from ripping up the catalog cards.

“He likes you,” Frances said.

The dog was at my feet, a mountain of fur.

“I’m totally unlikable,” I insisted.

The Newfie sighed and Frances and I both laughed.

We finished the whiskey, then had coffee to sober up. Now that we were done with the burning, we wet the ashes and scraped them into garbage bags, which I took with me when I left. No evidence. Harry followed me to my car and watched as I drove away. Nice dog, but I already had a pet.

I drove until I felt I’d found a safe place; I tossed the bag of ashes in the bin behind the diner. Then I headed out of town fast. I hadn’t thought to phone Lazarus; I’d thought we had time. Now I wished I’d called him from Frances’s house. I simply hadn’t expected the authorities to move so quickly. When I got there I knew something was wrong before I turned into the driveway. I pulled over onto the shoulder of the road. From here I could see there were no longer any red oranges. Everything had turned black. Oranges were dropping from the trees, like stones. Through the trees, I saw the whirl of blue light.

There was a sheriff ’s car at the rise of the drive, so I kept going; I doubled around and drove back to the Interstate. By then, I was shaking. I wasn’t sure if I’d done the right thing. Should I have driven right in and demanded to know what the hell was going on? Maybe I’d panicked. Or maybe I was smart. Either way, I was now on my way home. I stopped at the gas station in Lockhold and considered going back for Lazarus. I sat in my car for almost an hour, debating, and then I headed to Orlon.

I would hire a lawyer — that’s what I’d do. I would stand beside him even if they thought he’d murdered Seth Jones. Perhaps I would be an accessory to murder in their eyes. Perhaps Lazarus wouldn’t even be charged with anything. I stopped at another gas station. I didn’t know if I should go backward or forward, so I just went nowhere. This time I got out and called the police station in Red Bank, New Jersey. It was a crazy thing to do and I wasn’t sure why I did it. Some decisions you make and some seem to be made for you. I suppose I called the person I trusted most. The one whose opinion mattered. I stood near the restrooms in the dark, pushing quarters into the pay phone. Trucks rumbled by on the Interstate. When I got Jack Lyons on the phone he was quiet at first. He didn’t seem to believe it was me.

“Of course it’s me,” I said. “The parking lot. You and me.”

“Okay,” he said. “You and me.”

“I need to ask you some reference questions.”

In our small town Jack had been in charge of death of all sorts: homicide, suicide, double homicide, death by misadventure and by accidents, death by natural causes. When folks saw him walk into the old-age home, the residents crossed themselves, turned to look in the other direction, knew one of them was gone for sure. When he went to talk to the elementary-school kids about safety — no sticking fingers into electrical outlets, no grabbing pots off the stove — some of the children got hysterical and had to be taken to the nurse’s office. All that time Jack had been calling me with reference questions, he could have looked up the answers himself. I’d come to understand that. He knew it all already, so maybe he simply liked my pronunciation of
asphyxiation, nightshade, West Nile virus.

Or maybe he just wanted to speak to me in my own language.

“Where are you?” Jack asked. “You disappeared. I wrote you a note, but you never wrote back.”

“I moved to Florida. Better weather.” What a joke. It was about a hundred and five degrees and so humid my usually straight-as-sticks hair had curled. The night smelled like poison.

“I know you moved. You think I didn’t take it upon myself to find out what had happened to you? I mean, where are you right now? I hear traffic.”

I thought about the way he used to look at me. He had wanted something from me and he never got it. I thought I’d been humiliating myself, but maybe I’d been doing the very same thing to him. “I’m sorry, Jack.”

“You’re sorry that you disappeared and never bothered to write? Or you’re sorry that you never gave a shit about me and how I felt?”

“I didn’t know what I wanted.”

“As opposed to now.”

I laughed. Maybe he did know me.

“So, what is it you want to talk about?” Jack went on. “Or let me guess. What did we always have in common? Oh, yeah. Death.”

He sounded different, or maybe I’d never listened to him before. Maybe those times in his car and in the parking lot weren’t exactly what I’d thought they were. Maybe he’d noticed the ice, the stones, the way I believed I deserved to be hurt.

“Are you making fun of me?” I wasn’t used to feeling this way when I talked to him. It had been a long time, after all.

“Hey, baby, I am Mr. Death. Ask me your questions.”

I’d called to ask him about Lazarus, about how I could help him if he was accused of murder. Should I help him flee, or tell him to stand up to everyone? But as it turned out, that’s not what I really wanted to know.

I hesitated. That wasn’t like me, I was overwhelmed with feeling.

“Go on. Shoot,” Jack said. “Make it a good one. Give me a what-if.”

So I did. I made it the only one.

“What if your brother is dying and you can’t stop it. What do you do?”

All I could hear were the trucks. The gears grinding. So many people going somewhere. I was standing in a gas station in the middle of the night in Florida. It was as though I’d never talked to anyone before. I could hear Jack breathing. I wanted to cry. I’d never even really given him a chance. Dealing with so much death had given him the ability to find logic in an irrational world.

“You help him find something that makes him feel that he still wants to be alive. Only thing to do.”

“Maybe you should have been the one at the reference desk.”

I could have been anywhere on earth. I was that lost.

“Not me,” Jack said. “It was always you.”

When I got home, I knew someone was there. Giselle was on the lawn and I had left her inside. There was a spare key under my mailbox. Not very hard to find; when I slid my hand under the metal, it was no longer there. I crouched down beside the cat and rubbed under her chin and left her out a while longer. She didn’t hate me as much, or maybe she’d grown used to me. Lazarus was asleep on the couch, one foot planted on the floor. He looked young, and tired, like a man who’d hitchhiked and walked all night. I locked all the doors, unplugged the phone. He had a duffel bag with him, which I took into the kitchen. You shouldn’t do these things, I know, but I did it anyway. I unzipped the bag, looked through it. I suppose I was just making sure he was who I thought he was. There were some clothes, a wallet with a few hundred in cash, a plane ticket to Italy, a passport with Seth Jones’s name and Lazarus’s photo; at the very bottom I found the wooden box filled with ashes.

I replaced everything and put on some coffee. I got a new bag of coffee beans from the freezer, and I noticed the electricity must have gone out sometime during the night. My house was a mess. I’d paid no attention to it; but then, I’d never felt as though it belonged to me. I’d never really lived here. The closest thing to something familiar, something that belonged to me, were the few pieces of Renny’s Doric temple still on the table. Giselle liked to play with the columns, batting them around until they fell on the floor.