Freezer Burn

FREEZER BURN

by Richard Smith

SMASHWORDS EDITION

IBSN 978-1-4523-7269-3

freezerburn.richardburgessmith.com

Copyright © 2009, 2010 Richard Smith - All rights reserved

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be re-sold or given away to other people. Please buy an additional copy for anyone with whom you’d like to share it. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

For Burge, without whom none of this could exist.

Table of Contents

Chapters 1-11

Chapters 12-22

Chapters 23-33

Chapters 34-44

Chapters 45-55

Chapters 56-66

Chapters 67-77

Chapters 78-88

1 - The Fridge

There are bodies in the woods. Trappers and loggers whose gas or luck have run out. Explorers and vacationers short on supplies or savvy. There are rum runners, drug runners and long distance runners, waylaid by misfortune or misdirection. They get there for many reasons. They stay there because it isn’t worth the trouble to drag them out.

There are other things too, if you know where to look. On sunny days, you can see Old Mr. Bancroft’s car, a Duesenberg, at the bottom of Round Lake, where Old Mrs. Bancroft had it dumped when she found out about Young Mrs. Bancroft two towns away. Crazy Frank’s bathtub is still there, out by Leaping Rock, where he ski-dooed it one winter to start his dream home, before another dream told him to move to the desert. There’s a steam engine too, right where the timber company left it, sitting on dirt after its tracks got reclaimed for steel. Ernest Whynot has seen all these things. He knows these woods as well as anyone. Growing up in and near them, hunting with his dad and his brother Floyd, he’s seen just about every part of it you could see. He’s seen a lot of things in the woods. But never a fridge.

At first it looks like a deer, the white through the trees flashing briefly like the rump of a White Tail. In one motion, Ernie drops to his knee and brings his .30-06 around. The gun had been his dad’s. A Mannlicher. A little big for deer but nicely balanced. Easy to shoot. You could hit a squirrel with if it you didn’t care what was left. Ernie’d gotten a moose once. One shot, which was some doing. Sighting down the barrel, he waits for the White to move. It never does. Hunters are patient; it’s part of the deal. Deer are not, and after two minutes, Ernie knows that whatever this is, it’s not a deer.

Deer! Wishful thinking. The woods have been empty for months. Maybe longer. There’s no deer, no bears, no beavers. Not even coyotes. The springs have dried up. All the game is up in Canada. Global warming, they say. Goddamn Canadians, Ernie thinks. In all his years as a hunting guide, Ernie has never seen it this bad. For folks whose livelihood depends on stitching together odd jobs, the loss of hunting income is devastating. Down at Just Deb’s, the talk is all about who is leaving next. The Niles family going to Rhode Island. Giles Clay off to New Jersey with a cousin. The Maucks putting their trailer back on wheels, heading south, somewhere. Albuquerque maybe.

Ernie stands back up and shoulders his rifle.

Floyd, who has been watching quietly a few trees away, so as not to disturb the game, comes up softly. Whatcha got?

Don’t know.

They move closer. For a moment, Ernie wonders if it’s Mildred Parsons, who’s taken to running around in the woods wearing brown. Mildred has Alzheimer’s and knows it. When she wanders into the woods she’s trying to get killed, hoping a hunter will mistake her for a deer and put her out of her misery. This fall, she’s already gone out three times, the last time, antlers glued to a bike helmet. Just her luck, no one’s out hunting.

This is not Mildred either. It’s an ice box. Sitting in the middle of a small clearing in the woods, miles from nowhere. There is nothing else around it, no foundation walls, or tracks in to suggest why or how it is here. Ernie and Floyd approach carefully as if the mirage of the fridge might vanish, and reveal itself to be a deer after all. It doesn’t. Up close it’s still a fridge, an old style, but in good shape.

Weird, says Ernie.

Yup.

Was out here last November. Don’t recall seein it. You’d think I would.

You’d think.

Once, Ernie found a set of golf clubs in the woods, leaning against a tree like the player had just stepped away for a moment. They were magnesium headed, top of the line, Ernie’s size exactly. Now they’re in his front hall, where people can see them and be surprised: a hunting guide who plays golf? He likes the idea of having unsuspected talents. Ernie doesn’t actually golf, but he could. He could take it up. You never know.

Floyd touches the fridge metal. Pretty good shape, he says.

Not carryin it home, if that’s what you’re thinkin.

Floyd snorts and sits down, leaning back against the fridge, opening his pack for the lunch inside. Floyd’s a man with a good vocabulary. He just chooses not to use it. No point, in his mind. Some things is just obvious. Don’t need saying. Besides Ernie does enough talking for the both of them. Ernie rarely meets a thought not worth expressing. Right now, he is thinking about Canadians, which he does a lot.

Goddamn Canadians, he says. Get all the breaks. Good healthcare. Lots of water. And now this.

The fridge?

Global warming. Gonna make Canada the next Riviera. How many miles of coastline they got? A lot. A lot a lot. Look at an atlas, you’ll see what I’m talking about. All coastline. Islands and coast. Somebody is going to go in, buy up those deeds. Things warm up, you’re looking at the next Cancun. Do it on Indian land, could be the next Atlantic City. Just takes someone with vision. Put a financing package together, sell some shares, we’re talking big time.

This is where Ernie usually loses Floyd. Floyd’s happy to think about beaches and girls in bikinis but doesn’t share Ernie’s enthusiasm for financial schemes. He changes the subject: Talk to MJ?

If there’s one thing that shuts Ernie up, it is Mary Jo Kowalski. Talking about her, talking to her. Just seeing her. It’s all the same. MJ makes Ernie tongue tied. Ernie, pretending not to hear, digs his lunch out. Kielbasa and figs.

Said you would.

Ernie munches the kielbasa.

How you gonna go out with her, you don’t ask?

Timing didn’t seem right.

Never does. Not gonna be there forever, you know. Girls like that… don’t stay single.

You don’t have to keep telling me. I know.

Ernie’s heard it all before, which doesn’t make it any easier. He is trapped by his own inertia, a man of ideas, and little action. He tries to rationalize it: things happen because they’re meant to happen. Practically speaking, this means things never happen. Not for Ernie, not to him. He groans just thinking about it. He had hoped coming into the woods would make things better. Now it’s clear nothing short of a miracle could turn this day around. Which is pretty much what happens.

It starts with a sound, a low hum. Years in the woods have trained them to pick up even the slightest sounds. Ernie knows what this sound is. He just can’t believe it. It’s mechanical, soft and steady, with a low pitch not unlike a motorboat on a distant lake or a truck on a faraway road, but he knows that’s not what this is. The sound is closer than that. A lot closer.

Ernie looks at Floyd, who’s heard it too. It takes them a while to understand where it’s coming from, and then a little longer to realize how strange that is. Ernie is the first to move, getting up and putting his hand on the fridge. Beneath the cool metal he can just feel it. A vibration. Like the fridge is running. He looks at Floyd, curious, alarmed. Floyd reaches out, cautious. Touches the fridge. Feels it, too. They stare at each other, trying to comprehend, but it makes no sense. The fridge is on. Two hours from the nearest trailhead, seventy-five miles from the nearest electricity, its plug clearly lying on the ground, the fridge, somehow, is on.

(Back to Table of Contents)

2 - Ernie and Floyd

Before Ernie finds the fridge, the day has all the makings of a real stinker. He wakes up at five because Bernice is rummaging through the garbage cans outside the house again. At three hundred pounds, Bernice is surprisingly graceful and quiet if she wants to be. When she is sneaking through back yards, for instance, or tiptoeing into someone’s kitchen. But like most bears, she can’t pass a metal garbage can without banging it. Any metal, actually. Metal gates, mailboxes, chains if she can find them. Trash cans and lids are her favorite. Most folks in town have long since gone to plastic. But Ernie and Floyd still have galvanized and this morning are paying for it.

Go on! Bernice. Go on!

Bernice just stares at Ernie, brown eyes unblinking.

It’s five in the goddamn morning!

Hung over from too many Black Russians at Just Debs, the yelling makes his head throb and Ernie leans his forehead against the cool porch rail. Bernice seems empathetic. She has a way of staring at people that makes them think she is listening. A lot of folks have gotten used to talking to her the way they might to a barber or postman. Bernice hears a lot of secrets in town. She knows a lot about the personal habits of most of its people. She knows, for instance, that Floyd likes bacon, and there is often grease-soaked paper towels from the microwave. It’s what she’s munching on now.

Don’t make me shoot ya. Not that Ernie would. Bernice is the last big animal around, and the town has informally adopted her, hoping her presence might bring other game back. Bernice, please!

Bernice looks at Ernie, leaning against the rail. Perhaps she pities him, because she finishes the greasy paper towel, and ambles off. For a brief moment, Ernie feels the flush of victory. But on his way back into the house, he steps in a pile of her shit. From there, things just get worse.

Ernie tries to go back to sleep, but the couch isn’t working for him anymore. And he can’t go to his bed because Floyd’s still in there with the girls. Ernie and Floyd still live in the house they grew up in, and still share their childhood bedroom. There is another bedroom, but it had been their parents’ and that’s just too weird. So they share the bedroom, except when Floyd has a date. Like now. Floyd has a thing about him, a 70’s Burt Reynolds sex appeal that still works like magic around here. If there’s a girl to be found, Floyd finds her. Ernie’s tried to learn from Floyd, but the same lines coming out of him always fall flat. The same mullet looks stupid. The same handlebar mustache misplaced. He’s Beau to Floyd’s Jeff Bridges. They see Floyd, and that’s that, looking and moving right past Ernie as if he doesn’t exist. So last night when Ernie came home with a hangover, Floyd came home with two French Canadian girls.

Ernie lies on the couch trying to go back to sleep, but after the encounter with Bernice, and washing his feet, he can’t, and starts drinking coffee around six. By eight thirty, when Shear Delights opens up, Ernie has had, by his count, nine cups. And now, is standing outside the beauty shop door, shaking, waiting. Even without the coffee, he would have been nervous, but now he’s downright jumpy. Not the way to impress a girl.

MJ sees Ernie as she drives up. She’s running late, but makes no hurry to let him in, instead, driving around to the back, and parking by the Toilet Paper Museum. Officially, it’s the Bancroft Museum of Specialty Papers, but nobody calls it that. She lets herself in the back and takes her time opening the store. Ernie is not going anywhere. She knows he’s got a crush on her. Everybody knows. She wonders if this will be the day he finally asks her out.

Ernie was one of MJ’s first clients, the first man for sure. Most of the men in town thought unisex was a lesbian thing, but when Ernie saw MJ walking down street in yoga pants, he was willing to risk it. Once Ernie goes, the other men in town see it’s safe, and pretty soon they’re all in there.

MJ boldly transforms Ernie’s mullet into a Troy Bolton mop top. Ernie hasn’t seen High School Musical, and isn’t so sure about his new hairdo. But he knows how he feels about MJ. It keeps him awake at night. Unfortunately, he can’t quite bring himself to say it. He keeps coming back to the shop, ready to ask her out, and time after time, chickens out. What are you doing tonight becomes: Um, I was thinking… a little trim? and Would you like to get coffee sometime? becomes If you’re not doing busy, maybe… a little off the sides?

After a couple weeks, his hair gets trimmed so many times, she’s just clipping air. She can’t even pretend any longer. She tries to spur him into action. Was there something else maybe? she asks.

A door opens. A chance. He can see it clearly. Everything slows down. He can see the smile on her face. Can smell her crazy Fracas perfume. Can picture himself kissing her, holding her. It gives him strength. He can do this.

I was wondering…

Yes?

I was wondering about… This is it. He’s gonna do it. Then: I was wondering about tinting…

Tinting? Ernie doesn’t even know what that is.

So Ernie is tinted. He is moussed. He is re-styled. From there, it’s a short step to a manicure, then a mani-pedi. In a few months, he works his way inexorably down her menu of services. For MJ it’s like having a life-size Ken doll to play with. For Ernie, it swings between momentary pleasure and soul scouring humiliation. He actually likes the facial. But the perm! It causes him endless grief in town. A popular greeting: Hey Orphan Ernie! The bright side, he’s at the end of the list, and his bank account. The madness will stop, and then he’ll ask. Standing in bear shit earlier that morning Ernie promised himself, today will be the day. Now outside Shear Delights as MJ finally opens the front door, he’s reminding himself of his resolve.

Morning Ernie. You’re here early.

Is it early? I thought, I mean. It’s… when do you open? I could come back. He’s already flustered. Seven seconds and his mojo is gone.

MJ smiles. This is going to be fun. She’s got a mischievous streak. She got kicked out of high school for covering the principal’s front steps with manure. In his lecture to her afterwards, he promised that one day when she’s older and more mature, she’d understand why that wasn’t funny. That day never came. She still thinks it’s funny. She got kicked out of college for velcroing the Dean to his carpet. That’s still funny too. She lost her job in New York when she painted smiley faces on a gross of superballs and dropped them from the roof of the building.

Come on in, she says.

Ernie steps into the Salon. For all the time he’s spent there, he ought to be more comfortable, but he stands near the door, not taking his coat off, not sitting down, not sure.

What’ll it be today?

Today? Ernie can feel himself waver. The preparation, the internal pep talk, the visualization, crumbling. I, uh… Come on! he says to himself. Come on! I uh…

Trim? she offers.

He doesn’t fall for it. He doesn’t need a trim. He doesn’t need a mani-pedi, a re-style or even a shave. He needs to ask her out.

Something else?

I don’t know. Done just about everything, he says. Except waxing! Ernie laughs, there’s no way he’s going for that.

Ten minutes later, Ernie finds himself sprawled in the back room, clamping down on a bite block, and paying for his sins as the hair on his back and chest is ripped off. It would almost be tolerable if it were MJ’s hands troweling on the wax, MJ’s voice saying bite down, MJ’s footsteps softly padding round him, but instead it’s Inga. All six two of her, with her unbleached mustache, Popeye arms, and scent of ham. Inga rips the hair off his back. Off his chest. Eventually Ernie passes out from the pain or the indignity, it’s hard to tell. When she’s done with his back, she tries to wake him, but can’t. That’s when the real fun begins.

As an added service, at no extra cost, she offers the full Hollywood treatment. Sack Back and Crack. Out cold, Ernie fails to say no. So by 11, when he limps out of Shear Delights, he is having a truly wretched day. Classically all time, wretched. Still hungover. Shit encrusted. Humiliated at every turn. And now painfully hairless. Ernie needs to shake things loose. There’s only one thing he can think of. He bursts into Floyd’s room.

Let’s go hunting.

On the face of it, a dumb idea. There’s nothing to hunt. But hunting is part of who they are, and to his credit, Floyd is always there for Ernie. He gives the girls each a kiss, and a few minutes later, he and Ernie are in the Ford, heading out logging road R4W6. Which is how, around lunch, they find themselves deep in the Paper Company woods, hunting for game that isn’t there, leaning against a fridge that shouldn’t be either.

(Back to Table of Contents)

3 - In the Fridge

What’s in a fridge can say a lot about someone’s income and values. If you have the interest, or a bad sense of smell, it can be a window into their un-retouched selves, who they wish they were, and who they really are, mapped out side by side. In Ernie and Floyd’s fridge at home: leftover soup which they’ve had for dinner two nights in a row; milk, going sour because getting new is Floyd’s turn and he’s lazy; some Camembert cheese which Ernie got because he thought it sounded fancy; and several six packs of Mickey’s Widemouths. One of the things they always agree on, stocking up on beer. Way the back is a Tupperware with something in it. Neither is willing to find out.

The fridge in the woods is different. To begin with it’s top of the line, or was, fifty years ago. It’s a Consolidated Electric Ice Master 700. It came in four colors: Classic White, Harvest Gold, Avocado and Sienna Brown. It was frost free, was one of the first fridges to come with a magnetic seal—required by the Refrigerator Safety Act—and could be ordered with an ice-maker, an industry first, and why the name. During its run, from 1958 to 1964, it was CE’s most popular model. 11, 288 came off the assembly line, and could be found everywhere, from crab shacks on the Delta to the White House kitchens. This one is a ’63, Classic White, and what’s inside makes no sense at all.

When Ernie opens the fridge, he doesn’t notice that the light goes on. He doesn’t notice that the fridge is spotless, or that it looks almost new. There’s no brown gunk in the cracks. No alluvial plain of meat juice encrusted to the pan. The aluminum parts still have a sheen. Ernie doesn’t notice because he’s distracted by the cave. The fridge has no back. Where the back should be, an opening, a cave, extending back twenty, thirty yards maybe, and then bending out of sight. Weird. Incongruous. Visually, it makes no sense. Ernie closes the fridge sharply.

Floyd’s view was blocked by the door. He questions Ernie with a look. Ernie doesn’t even know what to say. He points wildly at the door. It… I don’t… There’s…

Floyd yanks the door open, wondering if Ernie’s drunk. He sees the cave. Now he wonders if he’s drunk. He backs away from it, unnerved. The two stand there for a full minute, staring at the fridge waiting for something to happen. For an explanation. For it to disappear. For them to wake up. Something.

Nothing happens. Ernie looks around wondering if it’s some kind of joke being played on them, looking for the crowd of people hiding behind the trees, laughing at them. But there’s nothing. Just the wind in the dry leaves.

What is that?

Floyd shrugs. You found it.

As they stare at the fridge, they start to notice some details. It’s a deep, empty space, eerily lit. Softly glowing, like an ice cave. A lot like an ice cave. There’s ice on the ceiling, ice on the walls and ice on the floor. There’s light filtering down the cave as if there were some distant opening. Ernie leans to one side and looks behind the fridge. There’s nothing there, no evidence of a cave, just Maine woods. He looks back through the fridge, cave. Behind the fridge, woods. Through the fridge, cave. Behind the fridge, woods.

Still not sure what he’s seeing, he walks around behind the back of the fridge, but the exterior offers no clue. It’s solid, covered with coils, like it’s supposed to be. There’s no evidence of the opening. He shakes his head, uncomprehending.

The fuck is this?

Floyd doesn’t answer. Instead he checks his ammunition and prepares to go into the cave. That’s Floyd’s way. In general, he spends less time thinking and more time doing.

What are you doing?

Goin in. Like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Can’t do that.

Why not?

I don’t know. You might vaporize or something.

Floyd picks up a rock and tosses it into the fridge. It bounces along the icy floor a ways and slides to a stop. He gives Ernie an I-told–you-so look. Before Ernie can say or do anything else, Floyd steps through the fridge and into the ice cave. He slips a little, regains his footing, and walks to the rock, which he picks it up and holds out triumphantly.

Coming?

Goddamn it!

Ernie scrambles through after him. Floyd moves aside to let Ernie go first. It’s a habit. Even though Floyd is older by five years, it’s usually Ernie who leads. Floyd doesn’t mind. He’s easy going. First, second, doesn’t matter… as long as you get there. As they edge slowly down the cave. Ernie is reminded of a cartoon. Maybe Sesame Street, he’s not sure. Two characters: one is always first, first to get the cake, first to get the cookies, first for everything. Then one day First opens a box and a monster inside eats him. That day being Second pays off. Ernie is wondering if this isn’t that day. As he walks, Ernie can feel his knees actually shaking. Around the corner, the cave angles up slightly. Another turn. It gets brighter. Brighter. As they get closer to the mouth of the cave, they can hear wind on the other side. And then, they’re there.

(Back to Table of Contents)

4 - Ice Age

The cave is at the base of an enormous glacier that steps up behind them, a giant grey wall, looming a thousand feet above. Stretched out in front, a broad valley. On the far side, a large mountain stands proud above it all, blue and purple in the haze. It is a dramatic vista. Fantastic. Stunning in it’s own right, but all the more because of how they got there. Despite that, when Ernie and Floyd step out of the cave, they barely notice the view. They’re too busy gawking at the animal in front of it.

Forty yards away, grazing, is a big furry thing with a huge curved back and a long narrow head, pawing at the ground for something. It’s not like anything either of them has seen.

The hell is that?

Floyd shrugs.

It looks something like a badger, only a lot bigger. On all fours it’s the size and weight of a Hummer, the original, four-ton Schwarzenegger model. It has the flat grinding teeth of a plant eater, but formidable claws and a bad attitude when confronted. It looks up at them, flaring its nostrils, menacing.

Instinct takes over. Floyd drops to his knee, swings his rifle around and brings the animal into the sights. He compresses the trigger. BANG. The bullet hits the animal broadside. The animal looks up, irked, but unhurt. It stares at them, contemplating its options, condensed breath puffing out of its nostrils, then ambles off, looking for something more interesting, or edible.

You believe that? Hit it in the chest. Bounced off.

Bounced?

What it looked like.

They watch the animal disappear into the distance.

What was that? Ernie asks.

Floyd doesn’t respond, he’s looking at something else. He points, his finger shaking at something he can’t find a way to explain. Ernie’s gaze follows where Floyd is pointing. The shot may have had little effect on the animal, but the sound has sliced through the primeval air, disturbing it. All across the plain that stretches out for miles below, animals that had been still now stir. Thousands of animals moving, like the Serengeti. Only, these animals are prehistoric. A herd of Wooly mammoths pauses by the edge of a forest, flapping ears, trying to hear better. A group of humpless camels stands alert, heads-up at the river. A Sabertooth cat hunting the camels, stops to sniff the air. A herd of peccaries doesn’t wait to be told whether it’s safe. It hurries single file into the distance. A tapir pokes its head up from the ground, annoyed at the interruption. On a far hillside, a Dire wolf sits back and howls at the sound. Its pack, somewhere out of sight, howls back.

The two men are silent for a long time. They’re used to seeing wild game, but usually singles. A solitary moose. A lone bear. Occasionally they’ll see a mother and cub or four deer on a hillside. Nothing like this. Nothing ever like this.

You seeing this?

Seeing it, says Floyd, staring at the game. Like Africa or something.

Only with Sabertooths. Look at that. A goddamn Saberfuckingtooth cat. That’d look good on the wall.

Mammoth too, says Floyd, pointing.

Ernie follows, scanning with his scope across a herd of American camels before landing on a Columbian mammoth, a big bull, shaking his ears, then trumpeting. Ernie brings the bull’s forehead right into the crosshairs. Fires. Hits the mammoth square in the head. On other animals, a kill shot. The mammoth? Grunts a little, then returns to what it was doing, unaffected. Ernie shoots again. This time it doesn’t even grunt.

Believe that? Two in the head. Didn’t even notice.

Ernie looks at his gun. Then back at the mammoth. Maybe it’s too far away to shoot with a bullet, but not a camera. He fishes in his pocket and pulls out his cell phone, places the lens against the scope and snaps a shot. He looks at the screen. Not bad, he thinks. He shows it to Floyd with a smile.

I don’t know what was in those Black Russians, but this is one crazy good dream.

Don’t think it’s a dream, says Floyd, unzipping his fly and peeing on a rock.

Could be.

Nah, says Floyd. Pee in your dreams, you wet the bed, wake up. Floyd finishes peeing and zips up. See? Not waking up.

Yeah, but if this is my dream, what you do doesn’t matter, says Ernie, pleased with his logic.

Floyd shrugs, and picks up his rifle, sighting at various animals. That’s one difference between them. Floyd accepts things at face value. Ernie over-thinks, second guesses. Nothing’s ever simple. He leans back against a rock and closes his eyes thinking that if he can some how act like he’s asleep, the dream will pass and he’ll wake up. It doesn’t really make sense, and it doesn’t