he had too much imagination for police work. Peel back the bark, she’d said, and he was layered and impressionable. Like a ball of wax , Sommer said, things stick .
And the things that stuck were memories from more than twenty years of cleaning up after human beings at their worst. And suddenly he swerved again, but this time it was in his head, and he was back in the middle of the argument with his wife.
And she’d said, Oh, I see, so it’s all right for you to do it but not for me, is that it?
The memory invoked all the hoarded resentments; she still thought she was indestructible at thirty-three. She took too many chances out there and left him home to rehearse attending her funeral with their daughter Kit . . .
Right now Kit’s absence ached in his arms and he could smell her milky sweet-sour breath and her copper curls and see her chubby face that was part Rubens and part Winston Churchill, and he could hear her pure laugh that was so uncomplicated by fear. He experienced a piercing memory of her a month ago as she struggled with the physical limitations of her limited grasp and discovered that she couldn’t carry all her stuffed animals at once.
She was going on three and by the time she was four she’d experience the death of something—a cat or a dog or a hamster. She’d find and poke her first roadkill. Fearless, like her mother, she’d probably lift the maggots on a stick.
She was almost ready for The Lion King , which he’d screened. She’d see Mufasa trampled to death by stampeding wildebeests and watch little Simba vainly attempt to rouse his father from a permanent sleep.
Eventually, she would pose the question: Daddy, will you die? Will Mommy die?
Will I die?
Broker parked Iker’s truck in a snowdrift in front of The Saloon on a desolate street in Ely and was in a fine mood when he pushed his way through the door, stamped off snow, and took over a table in the corner. The place was dim as a cave and sparsely populated by a few hardy snowmobilers and a storm-weary bartender and waitress.
Broker was no drinker. For a thirst-quencher he preferred lemonade on a hot day, and his only use for bar culture had been as a fertile recruiting ground for bottom-feeding snitches. He always made a point to leave drinking scenes before the lip sync went haywire and people’s expressions became dissociated from their words.
Uncharacteristically, he ordered a double Jack Daniel’s and drank half of it. He gagged, flushed with sweat, and drank the rest, then sat back and waited for the numbness.
He kept getting stuck on the inverted sequence of Sommer’s mind being suffocated inside his living body, and the image obligated him to reflect on his own fast parade of sudden death.
“Traffic,” Broker mumbled to his whiskey glass.
August. Last year, on a sticky, humming, deep-green afternoon he and his father were out for a walk by the state capitol in St. Paul. They’d paused on a freeway overpass with the domes of the capitol and the St. Paul Cathedral bracketing them north and south, and rush hour on Interstate 94 clamoring below their feet. Mike Broker at seventy-nine took long mental vacations and tripped down rabbit holes of nostalgia because in the rabbit holes he was young and doing things that mattered. That hot August afternoon, Dad had looked down at the racing cars and said, “This is what it sounds like when a lot of young people die fast and unhappy in a tight spot. Hundreds of lives go screaming by each minute.”
Dad was talking about the first hour on Omaha Beach.
The rush was not that loud in Broker’s memory but it was audible enough to prompt ordering another double. After it arrived and he drank it, his thinking wobbled: Okay. The body dies first. Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and Christians could all agree on that much. The problem was—the major religions were designed for a medical reality that didn’t anticipate CPR, ventilators, and dialysis.
“Hey,” Broker
And the things that stuck were memories from more than twenty years of cleaning up after human beings at their worst. And suddenly he swerved again, but this time it was in his head, and he was back in the middle of the argument with his wife.
And she’d said, Oh, I see, so it’s all right for you to do it but not for me, is that it?
The memory invoked all the hoarded resentments; she still thought she was indestructible at thirty-three. She took too many chances out there and left him home to rehearse attending her funeral with their daughter Kit . . .
Right now Kit’s absence ached in his arms and he could smell her milky sweet-sour breath and her copper curls and see her chubby face that was part Rubens and part Winston Churchill, and he could hear her pure laugh that was so uncomplicated by fear. He experienced a piercing memory of her a month ago as she struggled with the physical limitations of her limited grasp and discovered that she couldn’t carry all her stuffed animals at once.
She was going on three and by the time she was four she’d experience the death of something—a cat or a dog or a hamster. She’d find and poke her first roadkill. Fearless, like her mother, she’d probably lift the maggots on a stick.
She was almost ready for The Lion King , which he’d screened. She’d see Mufasa trampled to death by stampeding wildebeests and watch little Simba vainly attempt to rouse his father from a permanent sleep.
Eventually, she would pose the question: Daddy, will you die? Will Mommy die?
Will I die?
Broker parked Iker’s truck in a snowdrift in front of The Saloon on a desolate street in Ely and was in a fine mood when he pushed his way through the door, stamped off snow, and took over a table in the corner. The place was dim as a cave and sparsely populated by a few hardy snowmobilers and a storm-weary bartender and waitress.
Broker was no drinker. For a thirst-quencher he preferred lemonade on a hot day, and his only use for bar culture had been as a fertile recruiting ground for bottom-feeding snitches. He always made a point to leave drinking scenes before the lip sync went haywire and people’s expressions became dissociated from their words.
Uncharacteristically, he ordered a double Jack Daniel’s and drank half of it. He gagged, flushed with sweat, and drank the rest, then sat back and waited for the numbness.
He kept getting stuck on the inverted sequence of Sommer’s mind being suffocated inside his living body, and the image obligated him to reflect on his own fast parade of sudden death.
“Traffic,” Broker mumbled to his whiskey glass.
August. Last year, on a sticky, humming, deep-green afternoon he and his father were out for a walk by the state capitol in St. Paul. They’d paused on a freeway overpass with the domes of the capitol and the St. Paul Cathedral bracketing them north and south, and rush hour on Interstate 94 clamoring below their feet. Mike Broker at seventy-nine took long mental vacations and tripped down rabbit holes of nostalgia because in the rabbit holes he was young and doing things that mattered. That hot August afternoon, Dad had looked down at the racing cars and said, “This is what it sounds like when a lot of young people die fast and unhappy in a tight spot. Hundreds of lives go screaming by each minute.”
Dad was talking about the first hour on Omaha Beach.
The rush was not that loud in Broker’s memory but it was audible enough to prompt ordering another double. After it arrived and he drank it, his thinking wobbled: Okay. The body dies first. Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and Christians could all agree on that much. The problem was—the major religions were designed for a medical reality that didn’t anticipate CPR, ventilators, and dialysis.
“Hey,” Broker
Similar Books
