Chuck Logan - Absolute Zero

. .

No color. Everything grainy, gray on gray-ashes after fire. The air itself is a mist of blowing soot. Hell again, a dream without sound. At the bottom of the dream two bare feet stick out from a sheet. They sprawl on the edge of a mattress covered with a crinkly cover. The kind of rubbery thing that goes on a baby bed to protect it from getting wet. The feet aren’t attached. They are just more shadow furniture, like the couch.

Feet. Not feet.

Here. Not here.

The situation calls for discipline. A point of origin.

Ego. I.

Me.

Hank.

. .

From the angle of his vision he cannot find the rest of himself .

He tries real hard. He can feel his chest rise and fall as his lungs fill and empty, and he can hear the drumbeat of his heart. He can see arms, inert; just lying there. He sees the coral snake tattoo on his wrist from that night in Columbus, Georgia, after he got his jump wings.

So. You are stuck.

Just asleep. Just asleep. Stay calm.

Wake up. Wake Up. WAKE UP!

. .

The bubbles lied. No up, no light. Still stuck in between. Not awake, not asleep. Just entombed here inside this living suit of a body.

And he senses a wry flutter behind his eyes. A. .

Smile. Because isn’t everyone trapped inside themselves?

Okay, be serious.

Stuff is connecting up. His mind scurries for a fix. You cannot move today. One day at a time.

But his imagination and intelligence are running more in step now-more like him-and they are running scared because they’ve already made the leap. What has no body and can see? Five-letter word starts with G.

No longer merely a camera/recorder, the voice inside is his voice now and can still laugh at a joke.

Hey man, it’s like you’re dead.

And then. What if you are dead?

How would you know? You’ve never been dead before.

C’mon cut the Buddhist shit, this is serious.

What’s that? Tunnels of sound. Drains unclogging. Whoosh.

“Jesus.”

Jesus . Someone said “Jesus.” An echo like. .

Wait a minute here.

Oh, shit, oh, shit, what if Aunt Louise is right and Jesus is waiting at the end of the long, dark tunnel to pull me over and stick the God flashlight in my face and check the expiration on my spiritual ID-not the historical Jesus who was some right-on, squat, big-nosed, splay-toed, swarthy rabbi who was bucking the system. No, it’s the Anglo-Saxon, blue-eyed Baptist Methodist Catholic Lutheran Episcopalian Presbyterian Jesus, the only man in ’50’s America allowed to have long hair, and Eisenhower is God and heaven is really a white-church picnic in Mississippi.

“So when they nailed Jesus to the cross. .”

Oh, shit, oh, God. Somebody was talking out there, not in here. No bullshit. Shadows talking out in shadow land. Two shadows talking close.

“No. No. Take my word, it just wouldn’t work that way.”

“But that’s how they show it in this painting. And this book costs. . look at this, a hundred and forty-five bucks.”

“That painting’s from some religious Flemish fanatic’s imagination three hundred years ago. Absolutely incorrect. It would never happen. Spikes through the palm would not support the weight of the human body. They’d tear right out.”

“Hmmmmm,” shadow number two said. “You’re saying they just made it up.”

“I don’t know about that. Crucifixion was practiced by the Romans as a form of state execution. And the Romans were, above all else, engineers. They were always very practical in their planning.”

“So how would they have nailed him up, you know, live?”

“Live?”

“Like, in real life.”

Real life. Real life. Bodies that move. Hey. I’m here. I’m-listening .

“Probably they just used rope and strung them up. It would have been more efficient and cheaper. What killed them was exposure, starvation, and the hanging, the cramping of the shoulder and chest muscles disabled the lungs until the condemned person slowly asphyxiates.”

“Like they couldn’t breathe anymore.”

I can breathe. I can breathe.

“That’s right.”

“But if they did nail them up what would be the ideal way to do it? Give me your best-case scenario.”

“There’s an anatomy book on the reference shelf over there. Go get it.”

Get it, get it. I’m here. Can’t really see them yet. Like behind Venetian blinds. Come out, come out.

“Okay, here are the bones of the forearm and hand. The logical place to pin the arm is through a foramen.”

“Forearm, right.”

“For-a-men.”

“Say what?”

“A natural opening in the body. And on Hank, that would be here, see?”

Oh, God. Touching. Touching me.

“At the terminus of the radius and ulna bones. Above the wrist. See this opening in the tendon? Called the interossesous membrane.”

“You mean, ah, here?”

I can feel that! I can feel that. They’re touching my left wrist. Poking it. I can feel it and I can breathe and I can hear.

“Right here, there’s a natural opening between the bones.”

“Just give it the old kabosh right there and nobody’s going anywhere, right?”

“Not unless they tear through a lot of nerves and soft tissue, and especially not if the nail has a head on it.”

. .

Gone. They’re gone. Come back.

I’m here.

Me, Hank.

Come back.

“I don’t suppose anybody brought in the other canoe, did they? I’d hate for it to sit out there all winter. Freeze-up will probably stove it in.” Uncle Billie was calling long distance from Arizona golf heaven and when Broker didn’t respond, Billie continued on, “Well, I guess not. Don’t worry about it. I’ll write it off. And the tents. And all the gear. .”

Several seconds ticked by during which Broker did not volunteer to go back into the canoe area and round up Billie’s lost items. Billie cleared his throat and resumed talking. “Just goes to show you. Hell, kiddo, we all figured it’d do you good to get out in the woods. Get some fresh air, work out your heebie-jeebies.”

“Yeah, yeah, go cut a rug,” Broker shot back in Billie’s Kilroy lingo. “Let me talk to Mom.”

Irene Broker came on the line. “How are you doing with all this?”

“I got a cold,” he said, avoiding the question.

“Heat up some cider, lemon, and vinegar.”

“I know, I know; listen, Mom-have you, ah, heard anything? I know she’s got the number out there.”

“No calls.” He waited while his mother searched for the right words. “Maybe she’s waiting for you to call her. You have numbers for her over there.”

“Right. How’s Dad?”

“He’s taking a nap, should I get him up?”

“No, just say hello; look, someone’s here, I gotta go.”

“Take care.”

He placed the phone back in its cradle. No one was here at the moment, but Amy was on her way, bringing supplies to the shut-in. He just didn’t want to talk. Being sick mocked and trivialized him, and his darkest thoughts all ended in a comic sneeze.

He stared up at the stuffed moose head over Uncle Billie’s fireplace. Damn thing was too big for the main room and it swooped out with horns like the wingspread of a Stone Age bat. The glass eyes followed him.

And he kept seeing Jolene Sommer being led off by Allen Falken and that Earl character. He wondered how she was doing with all this.

It was four days later. The weather had turned dismal and Broker’s cold exaggerated all his doubts. Between Kleenexes, he scourged himself with shoulds: Should have been more responsible on the trip. Never should have been caught in open water by the weather like that.