Watermind (2 page)

“Ooh look.” She stooped to touch a water moccasin.

“Stop.” Max gripped her arm.

“Scared of a little snake? You taught me how to pick them up.”

“Not that one. Back away slow.”

She kicked the deadly snake with her boot, then danced off through the cattails, laughing. Max frowned and followed.

Humps of debris had washed in from the river, and CJ noticed a rusting white box wedged against a cypress stump. “God, it's an old Apple computer.” She kicked at the gutted computer and the stump, then fished in her pocket for her crumpled marijuana spliff. “We can sit here.”

Again, Max sighted the distant crew. She knew what he was going to say.

“Not far enough,
lamie.
They can see us.”

“You're paranoid. They don't care what we do.” She lit up and inhaled.

“I rather we smoke after the end of the day,” Max said for the second time that morning.

When she lifted her goggles to wipe sweat, he saw the damp rings denting her milky cheeks, and he bit his lip. She looked so fragile. Her eyes mingled all the colors a pair of eyes could be—gray green blue brown black. And like her, they changed with the passing clouds.

CJ stubbed out the spliff. She felt grumpy and restless—premenstrual. This time of month made her want to kick her own shadow. “Your music is good. You should do something with it.”

Max lowered his head. “Sa just a home recording. For studio time, we need the
largan
—money.” He knew she had no experience with music, but the kindness in her voice warmed him. For Max, CJ's presence in this
puant
swamp was like a snowdrop in spring—something that couldn't last. They'd met on this job two months ago. They'd been lovers for six weeks.

As he crashed a path for her through soggy, chest-high brambles, she asked about his lyrics, his melody, his syncopated beat. The girl had a gift for questions. He tried to speak well and to make himself clear, but the day was hot, and her attention wandered. She fanned her face with her gloves. “I hate this suit.”

Max shook his head. “Ceegie, it's the rule. We gotta wear 'em.”

“Mm.” CJ enjoyed the way he pronounced her initials to rhyme with squeegee, but she detested his reverence for rules. She stuffed her gloves and goggles in her pocket, and unzipped her coverall to the waist.

Max worried his lips between his teeth. “Child, you gonna get splash in the eye. Get eye cancer.”

“Don't call me a child.” She was twenty-two, and Max was only three years older. She wriggled out of the upper half of her coverall and knotted the sleeves to keep them from dangling. Damp patches dotted the front of her thin cotton undershirt, and she saw him watching her nipples harden. Through his goggles, his light brown eyes looked golden.

They slogged on through quivery black mire. Knife-sharp palmettos sawed at their coveralls, and soon, dense thickets walled them in. The last thing Max wanted was to get lost in two hundred acres of toxic quicksand. He checked his Ranger Joe wrist compass. The needle jittered wildly from East to North. He'd never seen it do that before.

“What's wrong?” The marijuana made CJ giggly. She grabbed his wrist to see the compass needle dance. “Must be magnetic interference. Power lines or something.”

When they reached a grove of tupelo gum, Max listened for the sound of the river to get his bearings. Then he hacked at a mesh of catbriar with his shovel. He was
thrashing so powerfully at the thorny vines that when he broke through, he almost bolted out the other side.

“Ho!” He staggered to a halt and gawked at what lay ahead.

CJ came up beside him and dropped her bucket. “What
is
that?”

They stood close together on a muddy slope, staring down at a long comma-shaped pond that was fringed with rancid grasses and covered in a sheet of—
ice
. They glanced at each other, then faced the frozen pond. White, pearly, gleaming like sequins, the ice cooled the surrounding air. A skim of meltwater coated its surface, and a fine layer of mist shimmered just above.

CJ knelt and touched the ice with her fingertip. “How could ice form in this weather?”

“Put your gloves on,
lamie.
” Max pried up a large stone with his shovel and heaved it onto the frozen pond. When it skidded several yards, he listened to the echoes. “It don' sound like ice.”

Before he could stop her, CJ crawled onto the pond.

“Come back, girl.” Max reached for her hand and missed. He swore under his breath, while she giggled and kept crawling.

“See. It holds my weight. I bet this pond is frozen solid.”

Max stood on the bank, wishing she would come back and knowing she wouldn't. He couldn't put into words what he sensed about her, that she had a raging wind trapped in her chest.

He poked the ice with his shovel, and it rang like a steel drum. F sharp, he noted. When he struck it again, the shovel sank three inches down and stuck fast. “Huh,” he said.

The shovel wouldn't come out. He planted his feet, took the handle in both hands and heaved backward, then slipped on the muddy bank and fell.

CJ burst out laughing. “Good work, King Arthur.”

Max's face darkened, and she realized he might not get the sword-in-the-stone reference. He hadn't finished high
school. It was one of the many little divisions between them. She hid her smile and crawled closer.

The shovel stood like a flagpole in the ice, and her touch set it swaying back and forth. When it slipped sideways and fell with a clatter, she jumped.

“Mauvais,”
Max whispered.

CJ touched the smooth ice. “It didn't leave a mark. The ice just sealed over.”

She stood up and curled a strand of auburn hair around her finger. Harry would know what this is, she thought, yanking her hair till it hurt. Harry, her father. Celebrated winner of the Cope Award in chemistry. When he died a year ago, she quit MIT without finishing her doctorate.

Still, as she walked to the center of the pond, she remembered reading how ice could form at room temperature. “Some catalytic reaction must be absorbing heat,” she said.

“Come back,
lam.
” Max paced the bank, trampling weeds.

“Could the toluene spill be reacting with other pollutants?” She stomped the ice to check its tensile strength and nearly lost her footing. “Wow, it's slick.”

Then Max saw her nose wrinkle, and he knew she was plotting monkeyshines.

“Hey Max, we can skate.”

“Naw, girl.”

She put on her headset, got a running start and slid across the pond in her rubber boots. Shadows moved across the surface, altering its texture from glass to white sand. Her marijuana buzz made everything radiant. She zigged and zagged, dancing to Max's zydeco. “This is fantastic,” she said, gliding farther and farther away.

But when she noticed Max's hangdog look, she returned to the bank, hiding her disappointment. The first time Max took her dancing in West Baton Rouge, she loved the way his body moved, wild and free, shining wet in the dripping heat of the dance floor. But lately, he'd gone tame.

No, that wasn't fair. He had money problems—she didn't know the details, but she knew he couldn't afford to lose his job. As for her, she'd taken this gig on a whim, like all her choices lately.

She removed her headset and sat cross-legged on the ice, facing him. Waves of cold penetrated through the seat of her coverall. “Your music's really good,” she said again, smoothing and straightening her spliff. “Got a light?”

“Hoo, check it. My compass playin' 4/4 time.” He held out his wrist to show her. The compass needle swung much stronger than before, back and forth in a steady rhythm. “Accent on the third beat. Same as my zydeco tune.”

“Max,” she whispered, “I think the magnetic interference is coming from this pond.”

“You spookin' me, girl. Magnetic?”

He tried to pull her off the ice, but she laughed and scooted away. “Lots of things produce magnetic fields. Even our blood is magnetic. It's no big deal.” She dug her lighter from her thigh pocket and relit her marijuana joint.

“Ceegie, don't. This petrified octane might catch fire.” Max listened for cracks.

CJ took a drag, then offered the joint to Max, but he waved it away. While he glanced nervously from his compass to the pond, she tried again to decide if he was handsome. The goggles covered his best feature, his honey-brown eyes.

She had often speculated about his race. Except for his light eyes, he looked Native American. He had the straight nose and high cheekbones of the Seminole people. But he was very swarthy. At different times, his skin reflected tones of olive, ebony, and loam. Surely some of his fore-bears had crossed the ocean in chains.

“Who you mad at?” he said abruptly. “You mad at the whole world?”

“Who says I'm mad at anyone?” She inhaled deeply from her spliff.

“This pond might blow up, kill us both. You don' mind. They fire us for smoking weed. You don' mind.” Max sucked his teeth.

“I do mind. I do.”

When she gave him the spliff, he held it between his fingers, watching it burn. The paper made a soft crinkling noise. “Your
popa
's spirit need to travel over,
lam.
You got to let him go.”

CJ swiveled away, and a brief ache clapped through her temple. “I was drunk when I told you about him. Forget it.”

Six weeks was the longest she'd stayed with one guy in months. Maybe this was the day to end it. She batted a swarm of gnats.

“Let the dead bury their dead,” he quoted from the Book of Matthew, though he knew she had no faith in spirits. He gazed at the delicate nape of her neck, sunburned satin pink. He tried to imagine something to say that would hold her. But there was nothing. She couldn't be held.

“My God. Look at this.” She stared into the glassy depths of the pond. Max craned from the bank. Ten inches down, her iPod lay embedded in the ice. She'd forgotten setting it down on the pond. She lay flat on the ice and listened. “Your music's still playing.”

“Get off that ice now,” Max said.

From the corner of her eye, CJ saw a blue-green light shimmering in the ice like a liquid crystal display viewed on edge. “Biz
arre,
” she said, drawing out the last syllable.

She was going to say more, but the next instant, the ice opened and swallowed her. Faster than the possibility of thought, the pond sealed over. Cold waves needled through her chest. She couldn't move or breathe. Two feet under, she lay curled on her side like a frozen fetus. Her wide-open eyes stared up through clear solid layers at Max, who gawked down at her. Inches above her head, his
muddy soles made skid marks as he knelt and clawed at the ice.

Zydeco rumbled in loud maddening waves, and her lungs burned with a useless muscular effort to suck breath. She saw Max lift his shovel and stab at the surface, and the ringing blows hurt her head. Then something frigid and waxy pushed into her mouth.

She tried to scream, but she couldn't. The pliable ice slid down her throat and gagged her. Freezing wet jelly fingers probed her ears, her nostrils. The ice oozed through her thin shirt and slid under her clothes. She felt it penetrating her esophagus, her vagina, her urethra, and rectum. Her heart walloped. Ice slivered under her fingernails and pressed her corneas. Everything squeezed.

Then, as fast as it had trapped her, the ice liquefied and buoyed her up. She thrashed, and Max caught her wrist. “Ceegie!” He hauled her out and pulled her to the bank, where she lay dripping and gasping in his arms. Water leaked from her eyes and nose, from every orifice. She couldn't tell if she was crying and pissing herself—or if the very saliva in her mouth was that . . . that freakish ice.

With a violent shudder, she turned and stared at the pond. Coughing spasms raked her lungs. Again and again, she hawked and spat phlegm. What lethal chemicals had she swallowed? Her mind floundered. Even now, deadly toxins might be sluicing through her arteries, corroding her brain, annihilating her cells. Could this be the final judgment on her life?

But there was no mark on the pond. The ice had solidified again. It looked exactly as they had found it, blank, frosty white, immaculate.

 

Wednesday, March 9

12:20
PM

 

CJ Reilly had always known there was something wrong with her, something insidious and concealed, not noticed by strangers. She kept a catalog of her faults—impatience, lying, egotism, disrespect, snap decisions, reckless driving—yet she could never find the one word that defined her wrongness. If only she could blame it on a chemical imbalance, treatable with meds. But no, she wasn't like her father. Her personal evil loomed under the surface, churning her shallows and troubling her depths.

Her father Harry shot himself in March, a year ago, when the winds blew sleet that nicked her face like shattered window glass. Boston floated in a sea of icy brown slush, and her MIT friends were too slammed with lab work to notice her withdrawal. After the funeral, she bought a four-wheel-drive Range Rover and fled South, moving every couple of months and taking random jobs. She covered a hotel night desk in Atlantic City, analyzed cat stool for a veterinarian in Norfolk, taught aerobics in Myrtle Beach.

Myrtle Beach was the best. She lived in a shoreline motel, and every day she walked the wet sand. The ocean's immense blue swell saturated her dreams. Skipping along its foamy fringe was the only time she forgot to think about Harry. When rain kept her from the shore, she grew despondent and wanted to chuck it all. Face the final judgment. Take her punishment. Pay her debt. Then oblivion. Just knowing that course existed gave her a prop to lean on. Plenty of other people had done it before. She wouldn't be the first.

She kept moving. Money was not an issue—her father left her a trust (locked up in a bank that doled out interest. Even dead, Harry contrived to regulate her life.)