The Glacier (5 page)

ROBERT

That doesn't sound like a novelty item.

SAMSON

No. It's very special.

Robert considers this, briefly.

ROBERT

I'll take it.

SAMSON

I'm sorry?

ROBERT

You've sold me.

SAMSON

Oh, I apologize, but there's been a misunderstanding. The Quicksilver is not for sale.

ROBERT

But this is exactly what I'm looking for.

SAMSON

Yes, of course it is. It's what we're all looking for.

ROBERT

Then name your price.

SAMSON

Listen, I think this conversation is quite premature. Now why don't we take our time and think this over—

ROBERT

I don't have any more time. Look at me. I want the full deal while I still have a chance.

SAMSON

I am sorry.

ROBERT

But why?! I don't have anything to lose!

SAMSON

Because you don't deserve it! If you don't have anything to lose, then you don't deserve it. Now I recommend that you go back inside your house and think about what you really want for the remainder of your short time here on earth before you mess around with irreversible consequences. Perhaps you may find that you do indeed have something to lose.

Robert is speechless. Defeated.

Sam places a hand on his shoulder.

SAMSON

Listen. Let's start out with something reasonable. On the house.

He offers Robert a nice fat joint.

SAMSON

Warm comfortable clothes. Nice hot cup of ginger-lemon tea. Relaxing music. Some yard work. And a long walk around the block. You'll feel like a new man. Won't even recognize yourself.

Robert takes the joint, cautiously.

SAMSON

And call this number. It may benefit you. Just make a reservation.

Sam hands Robert a black business card embossed with silver letters. It reads:
Event Horizon
.

Robert hesitates a moment longer.

ROBERT

(sheepishly)

How do you know?

SAMSON

How do I know what?

ROBERT

If it kills you, then how do you know what it does? Before that, I mean.

Samson grins.

SAMSON

Now that would be something of a conundrum, wouldn't it?

***

The surveyor's Chevy Suburban travels down a cold country road on its way to the next job site.

Gunner drives. Sue rides shotgun and fusses with the radio, searching for a station. Jonah sits in the backseat, looking out the window at the passing countryside and making notes in his notebook.

Gunner adjusts his rearview mirror.

GUNNER

You sure don't say much, do you?

SUE

What?

GUNNER

Not you, Nancy. It's no wonder you don't have a girlfriend.

From the backseat, Jonah sees Gunner looking at him in the rearview mirror.

JONAH

What?

GUNNER

Are you guys deaf?

SUE

Leave him alone, Gunner.

GUNNER

I've noticed that you're always writing stuff down.

JONAH

Oh? Yeah, here and there. Just making some notes…

GUNNER

That's what I just said.

Gunner watches him in the mirror.

GUNNER

What are you writing?

JONAH

Aw, I don't know. Just thoughts, observations. Poems. They're kind of difficult to explain.

GUNNER

That doesn't sound so difficult. Give it a shot. We like poems, don't we, Sue? We're not completely stupid.

SUE

Yeah, sure. I mean, no.

JONAH

No, I didn't mean it like that. I'm just not sure how to explain them.

GUNNER

Well why don't you read something for us?

SUE

Oh, Gunner, would you leave him alone.

GUNNER

I'm just making conversation.

SUE

Well, quit being an asshole.

GUNNER

I'm not being an asshole. He said he writes things down. I'm just curious what he writes down.

SUE

Did you ever think that maybe it's none of your business?

GUNNER

If it were my business then I wouldn't have to ask about it.

SUE

Well maybe if you weren't such an asshole to begin with—

Gunner slams on the brakes. Sue slams into the dash, spilling coffee all over the windshield as Jonah slams into the back of Sue's seat. The truck screeches to a halt in the middle of the road.

GUNNER

There. Now I'm being an asshole. I wanna hear what he has to say. It's not gonna kill us, is it? Now read.

JONAH

But it's just, uh…

Jonah reluctantly flips through a few pages.

Gunner turns around in his seat.

GUNNER

I said read, goddammit. Read!

Jonah quickly chooses a passage and in his smooth Midwestern drawl, reads.

JONAH

—from a singularity on that line dividing silence from complexity. It came like a great tide, sweeping them away. A continual, invisible explosion of white heat particles twinkling and glittering in the ether between entropy and determination. Suspended and informed somehow, and brutally awake. A throbbing nerve node. Arced-mass breathing in the curvature of space as if released from its cage of flesh and skull in one precise flash. Titanium veins pounding with incandescent armies of nano-teleology. Bursting vessels of—

SUE

(cutting in, quickly)

Well I'd say that is a little different. No offense. Gunner, would you mind if we kept moving here?

GUNNER

Read some more.

Sue huffs and rolls his eyes. Jonah glances nervously between the two men and then continues.

JONAH

In the zone of twilight between the deep past and the deep future, we are living our deaths and dreaming our lives. Across the ecstatic memory of the present how could it be otherwise? Hunt like a swallow in the last cavity of evening light because dusk is forgiveness and the fire in the tree is burning down heaven.

The men are quiet. The radio snows a soft flurry of static. Jonah shifts uncomfortably. Gunner gently switches off the radio.

He clears his throat.

GUNNER

Say that last part again.

JONAH

Um… the fire in the tree is burning down heaven. Beauty and cruelty are so close together that they can't see each other. For this we should be grateful that they are so close together. Death is laughing.

The truck is quiet.

Jonah reconsiders the last line—

JONAH

(to himself)

Hmm.

—and makes a note in his book.

GUNNER

Get out of the truck.

SUE

What?

GUNNER

You heard me. Both of you get out of the truck. Now.

SUE

What the hell for?!

GUNNER

(fiercely)

Get out of the goddamn truck!

SUE

All right, all right! Criminy!

At a loss, Sue climbs out of the truck in a passive aggressive fit. Jonah follows.

SUE

Good lord, Gunner, what has got into you?

GUNNER

Move away. Over there.

SUE

Hell…

They move away from the vehicle and stand in the gravel on the side of the road, kicking at the cold stones. The truck idles.

Gunner sits in the driver's seat, staring down at some buried consideration. He looks up and through the windshield.

The road stretches out before him in a long line that eventually disappears into the trees. Just up the road a deer-crossing sign shifts slightly in the light breeze. A murder of crows shouts out across the winter field.

Gunner looks out the driver-side window, across the road, across the winter cornfield, and way out in the middle of the field, he sees himself, as a mud man, standing naked and covered in pale mud paint, staring back at himself.

GUNNER

All right, let's go.

Jonah and Sue hesitate, not so sure.

GUNNER

Well, come on.

They climb back into the truck and Gunner pulls away.

The fields beyond the road are empty, quiet, and still.

***

A small storage room is filled with droning fluorescent lights. Thousands of salt and pepper shakers are lined up on metal shelves from floor to ceiling.

Simone stands at her cart, filling salt shakers with salt. The room is deathly quiet, so quiet that the sound of pouring salt is quite loud.

A flickering fluorescent light interrupts her and she stops to watch it. Then she returns to work. Salt pouring like sand through an hourglass.

***

A country road runs through a stretch of trees.

The Chevy Suburban pulls over and parks on the side of the road. Jonah, Gunner, and Sue hop out and unload some gear from the back of the truck. The winter woods are naked and still. The men are pensive and quiet before the landscape.

Sue scopes out the area and then speaks.

SUE

All right, we're gonna run a line through these woods and out the other side. Gunner, we got an existing elevation somewhere so let's find that and set up here. Visibility shouldn't be too bad with the leaves down so you just head straight out in there about a ways and then give us a call.

JONAH

How far?

SUE

(irritably)

I said about a ways. Couple hundred yards.

Jonah heads off into the woods with his surveyor's rod.

The trees are bare of leaves but the forest is thick with brown winter brambles and vines.

Jonah tramps through the undergrowth, blending in with the wintry foliage in his brown construction coveralls. He counts out paces under his breath, slowly ducking and weaving through the brush, pushing branches aside, stepping over downed trunks, and crunching across a layer of frozen fallen leaves.

When he reaches his count, he stops and slowly waves the red and white striped prism rod back and forth above his head. He speaks into the walkie-talkie.

JONAH

You got me?

GUNNER

(on the radio)

Hang on. Yeah. Got you.

He drives his surveyor's rod into the ground.

GUNNER

(on the radio)

Shooting.

Jonah waits. The trees are quiet. He scans the forest. A woodpecker taps on a walnut tree.

He looks in another direction and is surprised to discover an animal very close to him, only a few yards away. A buck deer is lying quietly on the ground. Strangely, the buck is just watching him, either unafraid, or unable to move.

Jonah slowly walks away from the surveyor's rod stuck in the ground and approaches the deer. It struggles to its feet, wounded. A bullet wound leaks blood from its side.

Jonah carefully creeps toward the deer. He reaches out a hand. Closer…

And then his radio erupts with a burst of static—

GUNNER

(on the radio)

All right, got the shot! Hang tight.

Jonah quickly silences the radio but the buck takes off, disappearing into the forest.

***

Robert pours himself a hot cup of tea and sits down at the kitchen table. He wears his favorite jogging suit.

He examines the joint that Samson gave him. His cup of tea steaming quietly on the table. He lights the joint with a match, and inhales, and coughs horrendously.

Then he relaxes a little and smokes some more. He sits back in his chair, smoking. He rubs his face and loosens up his neck muscles. He takes a sip of tea. And he smiles a funny little smile.

He examines the black and silver business card which reads
Event Horizon
and a phone number. He goes to the phone and dials the number. It's a brooding 1970s push-button wall phone.

ROBERT

Hello? Yes. I would, uh, I'd like to make a reservation, please. Uh huh. Robert Adams. Yes. Adams. Okay. Uh huh. All right. I see. Okay. Thank you. Goodbye.

He hangs up the phone and stands there for a second, lost in the face panel of the old phone. He lifts the phone off the receiver just an inch or so, floating it, listening to the dial tone. Then he floats it next to his head, listening to the dial tone arcing invisibly between the handset and his ear.

He holds his other hand up before the keypad and positions his fingers to dial. He slowly probes in the air with his fingers, searching like a spider for a number to dial.

But there is no one to call. He hangs up the phone and sits back down next to the kitchen table. He stares at the floor, at an odd angle, nursing a little paranoia, and settles back into the horrifyingly infinite quiet of the kitchen.

He remembers his tea and takes a sip, but he inadvertently snickers and almost forces tea out his nose. He snickers again, struggling not to spit out his tea when— CHIRBONK.

Robert hears a sudden sound at the window. He swallows his tea and listens attentively.

THUNK. FFFFLLLLLLLKUNK.

He goes to the kitchen window to have a look. BONK! Startled, he recoils as something hits the window. He looks again, cautiously. WHAM. Something is flying into the window

He goes to another window. SLAM. THUNK.

Red birds are flying into his windows.

Robert crosses into the other room. He opens the curtains at the large window. Nothing. Then—

THUNK UNK UNK UNK UNK UNK UNK UNK…

The house is under assault. A storm of kamikaze cardinals. Hundreds of red birds hurl themselves into the windows.

Robert stumbles backward, falls over the couch and hides behind it, covering his head and ears.

THUNK UNK UNK UNK UNK UNK UNK UNK UNK UNK UNK UNK.

Then, like a bag of microwave popcorn…

THUNK.
THUNK UNK.
THUNK.

The storm stops.

Robert opens the front door and cautiously peeks outside. The coast seems to be clear. A dead cardinal is lying on the front steps. Then he sees the rest of them.

Looking down from above, the house is surrounded by a moat of red. Red birds are piled like roses, circling the house. The house sits inside a ring of red, a square inside a circle.