Chuck Logan - Absolute Zero

Broker walked forward, grabbed a handful of tarp, yanked, and then groaned. The windows on both doors were gone, nothing but pulverized shatter-glass hanging in the corners. The door panels were caved in and so were the fenders and wheel wells. The sides of the truck bed were cratered. The tailgate was dimpled.

His truck looked like a Roman legion had hauled it in a field and used it for catapult practice.

“I can explain,” J.T. said as Broker began to space out his cussing.

“Goddamn mother fucker. . I let you use this to bring in hay ?”

“Well, it involved hay-straw actually. See, I was taking bedding straw into the paddock where I used to keep Popeye and. .”

“Son of a bitch, shit!”

“. . and the sucker decided to take on the truck. Amazing he could kick that high.”

“Kick?” Broker voice was strangled. “A bird did this?”

“If it helps any, I damn near didn’t get out of that pen intact,” J.T. offered. “It’s not like you paid full boat for the thing. I remember how you had the fix in at the police auction. You had your eye on that truck since the time you confiscated it on that meth bust up in Pine County.”

Broker growled and stomped out of the Quonset and paced back and forth. He noticed Denise and Shamika standing on the porch. After making fleeting eye contact they both diplomatically scooted to Denise’s Accord and drove away.

Hearing J.T.’s boots crunch up on the cold trap-rock behind him, Broker walked to where J.T.’s glossy Chevy Silverado was parked next to the house. “Well,” Broker announced, “I’m going to need to drive something.”

“Uh, wait. No way, man. You can’t use the Chevy. I sort of promised that to Amy to go shopping. But, ah, you can use the Cherokee.”

“The Cherokee?” Broker swung his gaze to the ten-year-old boxy red Jeep that sat next to the Chevy. It looked like an experiment to determine how much rust could be balanced on top of two axles.

“The Leper Colony?” Broker protested.

“Not much to look at, I agree; but everything under the hood is rebuilt, got new rubber, heater’s good. Oil changed every three thousand miles,” J.T. added.

Amy smiled and patted the fender of the Silverado. “So which of you guys is making breakfast?”

After breakfast Amy took off on her shopping errand and Broker had some time to kill before his coffee date with Sommer’s ex-wife. So he helped J.T. rearrange bales in his hayloft for a few hours. Then he washed up, changed his shirt, started up the old Jeep, and headed for St. Paul.

Broker picked up Interstate 94 coming in over the St. Croix River from Wisconsin just west of the Hudson Bridge. Then he drove twenty miles to where the city of St. Paul was rising from the hundred-year blahs. The talk was all about the Minnesota Wild’s new hockey arena that would dominate the redeveloped riverfront. St. Paul was swinging her tail after decades of being eclipsed in the shadow of Minneapolis.

Broker was aware of this primarily because he had trouble finding a place to park. On his third try, he squeezed into a ramp and then walked to the newspaper building on Cedar Ave.

Dorothy Gayler was tall and lanky in a long dark coat, with shiny black hair cut in a precise page boy that brought to mind Prince Valiant from the Sunday comics. The hard October light emphasized the faint lines that branched off her eyes and down her cheeks. She made no effort to disguise any of it with makeup.

She picked him out easily from the busy early afternoon street crowd. He did not have a cell phone jammed to his ear. He wore jeans and the blaze-orange fleece jacket.

“Mr. Broker,” she said, extending a lean, knuckle-prominent hand. They shook. “There’s a coffee shop in the skyway, shall we?” He nodded and she led the way. They went in the newspaper lobby, mounted a stairway, and entered the skyway, which was a covered, elevated walkway system that connected all the downtown buildings and allowed St. Paul residents to travel between buildings out of the winter weather.

“Are you located in Ely?” she asked.

“No, my uncle has an outfitters there. I was just helping him out.”

“And what is it you do when you’re not guiding canoe trips?”

“I have a small resort on Lake Superior, north of Grand Marais.”

“So you don’t get down to our city much, do you?” she asked.

Broker smiled at her cordial, city-mouse condescension and followed her through the busy skyway past banks and boutiques and into a coffee shop decorated with just do it Nike posters and swooshes and lots of chrome.

Several highly caffeinated young people jerked their eyes up from their laptop computers, perused Broker’s rustic attire, then returned to their screens.

Dorothy ordered coffee, insisted on paying, and they found a table. After she sat down, she shook off her coat and scarf. The muscles of her neck and throat were firm and clean. He caught a whiff of chlorine. A swimmer, he thought.

She came directly to the point. “You said on the phone you wanted to know more about Hank, because he saved your life.”

“Yes.”

“Well, if he did save your life then you have the essence of who he was; you see, he was all about taking care of people. Oh, he tried to be a reporter for a while but it wasn’t his nature.”

“Oh, really?” Broker, who rated reporters about equal with hyenas, was curious.

“Hank always said a newspaper is a place where reporters wait for something bad to happen to someone else, for someone to tattle on someone. Then they swoop in and do a trim job on reality to fit their byline and a deadline.”

Broker’s expression showed amused surprise.

“Oh,” Dorothy waved his reaction away, “I’m no cherry. Twenty-six years in the trenches. I admit, when I was starting out I thought I would have a career . But, as Hank never tired of pointing out, here I am, chained to the copy desk in a word factory, stamping word widgets toward a pension like all the rest of the hamsters.” She smiled. “That’s what he called people trapped inside corporations.”

“Running in those wheely things,” Broker offered.

“They’re called exercisers,” Dorothy rectified, then continued. “That’s why he got involved with the Newspaper Guild and became the business agent. Reporters amused him, calling themselves professionals,” she allowed herself a small smile. “The National Labor Relations Board classifies them as skilled tradesmen.” Dorothy tossed a profligate hand. “So he was our junkyard dog who protected us from management.” She fixed Broker with a stare. “But it wasn’t enough.”

“You mean the money?” Broker asked.

Dorothy’s eyes evaluated him. “Were you in the war, Mr. Broker?”

“I was a little old for the Gulf.”

“That was not a war, that was a TV show. The last real war.”

“I see. Yes. I was.”

Dorothy sipped her coffee and pursed her full lips. “Hank used to say there are two kinds of soldiers: the kind who fight and the other kind.”

“Keep going, I’m with you so far,” Broker said.

“Have you heard of a place called the Ashau Valley?”

“Yes, I have.” He recalled the Annamite Mountains which bordered Laos emerging out of morning mist.

“There was a hill in the Ashau that was briefly infamous in 1969,” Dorothy said.

“Hamburger Hill.”

“Yes. Hank was a buck sergeant in the 101st. He took his squad of twelve men up that hill. When they all became casualties he was issued ten replacements. Nine of them became casualties. That’s a casualty rate of 190 percent. He went up the hill five times.”

Broker nodded. “The red teardrops tattooed on his forearm.”