Chuck Logan - Absolute Zero

Probably it was just the residual morphine, punching up the edges and textures, that made Jolene look like a page out of the kind of glossy magazine that he never read. He’d heard about Madison Avenue sneaking tiny, subliminal death heads into images of invincible beauty. But he didn’t see any grinning skulls in her green eyes.

Milt must have brought some of her clothes because she wore perfect-fitting Levi’s, a white T-shirt, and a short leather jacket. Her face glowed, baptized in glacier water and born again clean. They stared at each other for a long time and his eyes were full of questions. Her eyes brimmed, but not with answers for him.

“So what do you think?” she said.

Broker thought about it. “I think you were more implicated in what happened than Amy or myself could testify to.” Her lawyer was present. Broker didn’t really expect a reply. So he summed it up. “I’ll never know if you did the right thing or just the smart thing.”

Jolene smiled, and all Broker learned from her smile was that she was deep enough for mystery. She patted his cheek. “Hank used to say, ‘I didn’t make the world.’ Well, I didn’t make the world, either, but I’m sure as hell going to live in it the best way I can from here on out.”

She bent forward and kissed his forehead. “Another thing, be patient. I think your wife’s going to call. A smart woman doesn’t leave a guy like you loose for long.”

Probably she was right. Then she turned, and it was clear from her expression that she was busy and had places to go. When she left the room, Milt came over to Broker’s bed and gently touched his undamaged shoulder.

“You’re not such a bad guy for an ambulance chaser,” Broker said, “but the next time you want to take a canoe trip, tell you what-don’t call me.”

Milt squeezed the shoulder. “Thanks,” he said. His eyes drifted to the doorway where Jolene had disappeared. “Without you, we would have lost her.”

Broker nodded and for a moment he absorbed the low-key, leaving-on-a-jet-plane vibrations Jolene and Milt put out. Then he asked, “Hank?”

Milt looked away, shook his head.

Broker nodded again. Then he inclined his head and his eyes toward the doorway. “Like I said, watch yourself when you get in among those rocks.”

The exhausting ordeal with the letters had ended. He’d done his best and then his mind had just turned to sand. Whatever happened now, it would happen without Allen and Earl. And without him.

Jolene had taken her first steps and would just have to take her chances. Just like he’d have to take his chances with whatever came next.

He had come full circle. Milt and Jolene tucked him in and hovered for a moment over his bed. Then, slowly, they backed away and turned out the lights.

So he waited in the dark. Beside a trail he knew it would come down.

At first it was just a color-yellow-and then, as it moved closer, it assumed the shape of a man. He understood this was merely manifestation; the way he chose to experience it.

So he made himself tidy inside and remembered the first time he’d seen it coming, calm, like this. All the other times it grazed him with a lurid action beat: shock, fear, pain, adrenaline hemorrhaging, and the brimstone reek of cordite.

It had been on a late morning when the air was the color of steaming tea. This yellow blur floating against the ferrous-red dirt and all the green God ever made. It was hot that day. The sky was the blue heart of a Bunsen burner. They were sweaty and dirty and dressed, as usual, to kill. They were sprawled along the path, taking a break next to baked, fallow fields that were cracked and choked with weeds.

And Hank and his squad were kin to the weeds: poisonous, itchy, and bristling with stickers. They had all gotten so dirty they would never be clean again. And then they saw the yellow come floating, a man in saffron robes and bare feet.

Gook in the open.

Reflex rifles came up, the solitary figure filled a few peep sights.

Hey, man, check this dude out, someone yelled, the way he walks.

It’s cool. Just one of those monks, walking.

The peeps moved off.

And he came on with his shaved head and his bare feet and his saffron robe swaying and his sturdy brown arms swinging. A man who moved like a clean, upright flame. His clear brown eyes focused right through and beyond them, like they were mud from somewhere else that had gotten out of control and had acquired guns and airline tickets to his country. And Hank had remembered absolutely recognizing how this guy knew exactly what he was doing. He was walking one hundred percent present in the moment and every one of them watching were wishing like hell they were someplace else.

Absolutely perfect goddamn walking.

Just look at the way he placed his foot in the dust, the way his heel came down and then his instep, and the ball and then the toes. This guy could teach the world to walk.

They’d watched him come on, one step at a time, and by the time he passed them they were all up on their mud feet.

Eyes right.

Hank was a grown man the day he learned to walk. And he never forgot the presence of that moment and how it had a one-pointed heft and carry to it; simple, like a country song about a hanging in the morning.

Tried to live his life that way.

Maybe he’d managed a few gestures that came close.

And now he just had to put one foot in front of the other.

So. .

When you walk, walk.

And when you fight, fight.

And when you live, live.

And when you die. .