Chuck Logan - Absolute Zero

He glanced up at winter clouds in October and very much wanted this detour in his life to be over. He ducked into the first paddock and was soon busy, elbowing his way through clumsy hens who crowded around him as he dumped five-gallon plastic buckets of feed into bins. The bigger males hung back while their harems fed. If one put in an appearance, mindful of J.T.’s warnings, Broker exited the pens and just heaved the feed sidelong at the bins over the gates. In each paddock he checked to make sure the water reservoirs were full.

Half an hour later he came back up the gravel path toward the barn. A grind of downshifting gears drew his eyes toward the road and he saw a flash of an auto chassis streak over a dip and disappear behind a tree line. Then a gust of wind stood him up and he looked at the sky which was darkened to the point where he wanted to check out the weather channel. He’d lost track of the speeding car. Probably the wind.

His last chore was to feed Popeye in the barn.

“How you doing today, you and hit-and-run punk,” Broker said, as he carried a last bucket of feed toward the pen and saw Popeye’s big stupid eyes bob more than nine feet in the air at the end of his skinny neck.

The wind groaned through the barn’s wooden walls and somewhere hanging farm equipment clanged like Gothic wind chimes, and at first Broker didn’t hear it. Then he did-the sound of something hard pounding the fender of the tractor parked behind him. A mean cadence, off the rhythm of the wind.

He turned. The source of the noise was a shiny new baseball bat in Earl Garf’s hand.

Another guy stood behind Earl, a big guy who also wielded a bat. Broker looked past Earl, at the big guy who was wearing a baggy leather bomber jacket, extra large to allow room for his massive arms. There was a fake bomber-group insignia on the left breast of the coat. A diving vulture. Broker had seen the jacket before.

Rodney had been wearing it more three years ago when Broker busted him for selling machine guns.

“Hiya, shithead,” Earl sang out. “I believe you have something that belongs to me.” Earl had dressed for the occasion in black leather-a long belted trench coat. As Broker’s gaze shifted from Rodney to Earl and back again, Earl loosened the belt on the coat and flexed his shoulders.

“Binds the arms,” he said. Then he raised his bat like a hitter warming up and took an experimental swing at the air. His tongue played along his lower lip in anticipation. Earl didn’t see Rodney, behind him, getting a good look at Broker and crinkling his wide forehead in surprise.

“Eyebrows?” Rodney said. “Oh, fuck me.”

Eyebrows.

Broker’s nickname in the world of snitches, gun dealers, and dope entrepreneurs, where his last official act had been to arrest Rodney. And he now recalled Rodney’s parting words, screamed as they stuffed him into a cruiser-“I’ll kill you, motherfucker, if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

Now here was Rodney shifting a bat in his ham-sized hands. Teamed up with Earl. Getting his wish.

Not good.

But then-Rodney developed instant eloquent possibilities as a mime; recognizing Broker, he shook his head, pleaded with his eyes, and took a step back all in the same second:

You don’t know me, I don’t know you; this is a mistake; I’m outa here .

Broker nodded ever so slightly and Rodney started backing away, flipping a very abbreviated wave good-bye, close to his hip and behind Earl’s back.

“What’d you bring him for, Earl-to block the sun?” Broker asked, encouraged by the changing odds. His eyes took in everything in the barn garage in half a second and came up with a plan. He had one chance not to wind up in an emergency ward, or worse. Even with Rodney opting out, barehanded, even in his prime, he couldn’t go up against a bat wielded by a street monster like Earl and hope to come out unscathed.

“I don’t like it,” Rodney yelled, backing away. “I highly suggest we get the fuck outa here.”

“No way; it’s gonna cost him at least a knee.” Earl stepped forward in a modified batter’s stance, gauging his target.

Broker was not about to show Earl anything like fear. He was pissed about his spat with Amy. And he could still smell burnt chili. So he stuck out his chin and taunted, “Earl, be a good little computer nerd and take his advice, because this is just the wrong time to mess with me.”

The facts of his situation were far less nonchalant. So, as he moved back to keep the same amount of distance between himself and Earl, he raised the bucket of feed to port arms, to protect himself. He was exactly where he wanted to be-within an easy reach of the dead bolt that fastened the gate to Popeye’s pen.

J.T., buddy; I hope you weren’t putting me on .

Earl stepped forward, menacing. The bat gleamed in the overhead sodium vapor light. Brand-new, not a scratch on the scripted logo or the clean-grained ash. Earl heaved his shoulders, feinting a swing. Broker moved as Earl moved, tossing the feed bucket at Earl’s face.

Whack! Earl swung. Feed pellets exploded from the shattered plastic container.

“Yeah,” Earl giggled, an hysterical wheezing giggle on the far edge of control. He had feed pellets in his hair, he had a pale, berserker light in his eyes. Broker instinctively realized why Earl had brought Rodney as extra muscle.

It wasn’t to help work Broker over.

It was to pull him off when he lost control and was beating Broker to death.

But Rodney had disappeared out the door into the gray afternoon and Earl, sans backup, had cocked the bat again. Trembling with pleasure and rage, he took another step forward.

Okay. Life had become very simple. If he tried to close the distance and grapple, Broker would for sure take at least one blow going in. So that was out. He needed to get something between his skull and that bat. Broker’s hand reached back, seized the bolt, yanked it, and pulled the thick, chest-high gate open.

Earl let go a blinding overhand swing and Broker went to his knees, ducking as the bat smashed down, denting the framing on the top of the gate just above and behind Broker’s head. As Earl recovered, Broker scooted around to the other side of the gate and pulled it full-arc on its hinges, so he was squeezed behind it, tight against the plywood outer wall of the pen.

“What a chickenshit,” Earl sneered, trying another overhand swing that harmlessly glanced off the gate and thumped the wall. Broker was contorted sideways, one shoulder back, flattened against the wall; his other arm folded against his chest, his hand gripping the simple handle under the bolt, holding the door against him.

Earl could prod into the limited space with the bat, but he could no longer swing. So he tried to pummel Broker, but Broker grabbed at the end and tried to twist it away. With difficulty, Earl yanked it back out of the cranny.

“Give it up, Earl!” Broker yelled. “Walk away now and you won’t get hurt.”

“Can you believe this guy, Rodney. .” And then, “Rodney?”

And then.

The high hissing sound Earl and Broker heard was all the more unnerving because its source was not mechanical but animal, because it issued from the quilled throat of an infuriated four-hundred-pound male ostrich. Popeye’s massive thigh muscles trembled, tensing, at about the same level as Earl’s shoulders. The bird’s wings flung up, rampant, and the stiff plumes lashed the doorway of the open stall.

“Now what the fuck is this?” Earl muttered as he looked up into Popeye’s bloodshot eyes. Fearlessly ignorant of his situation, he taunted Broker, “Won’t work, hiding behind Big Bird. Uh-uh.”

Broker came up to look over the gate as Earl shifted his feet to take a swing at the hissing bird. He let go an indolent one-handed swat aimed at Popeye’s head.