Iceman

Buckhead Springs

The cumulative effect of the day was like a nice, refreshing double back-flip into the cesspool. A day of noxious smells and deleterious people and nastiness that left you washing your hands until you felt like Lady Macbeth. Schumway was one of those people who gave off a particularly strong aura of unpleasantness. And the whole day had been like that.

Eichord walked in the door and started catching flak from Donna about some bills, not like her at all, and he made some remark about when dinner was going to be ready and she told him off and he snarled, “I love this warm welcome tonight. I worked my butt off, and instead of my nice, sexy wife I come home to the Wicked Witch of Buckhead Springs. How's about giving me a break, eh?"

“Oh, excuse me, dear. I'm so very sorry. But would you believe the CHILD has run me ragged today, I've got to balance our checkbook AND pay all the bills or I'll catch hell about it. I have to clean the house, I'm beat, I'm tired, I don't feel good, I'm getting my period, I'm goddamned bitchy and don't have your dinner ready on time and just can't be real soft and cuddly and coltish for you tonight? Okay?"

“Fine.” He sat down with a sigh and opened his mail. There was this awful packet of material on a case study being done on some weirded-out, misogynic asshole and his nitwit girlfriend who had a record of priors for going into public places and slashing each other on the ankles with razor blades, giggling like fools, and the cops would come and there'd be these two nuts sitting in a restaurant over two pools of blood. That's what got them off. One day the guy got bored and reached out and cashed in her chips right there over the seafood platter. All of this was illustrated, yet. The perfect cap on the day.

He was getting up to flick on the news channel and there was a loud crash at the other end of the house and he was up and out of the chair and moving before he heard her scream behind him, “Jonathan!"

“Honey,” he said, and reached out to rescue the little boy, who was seated in a shower of sharp glass shards. Eichord stepped forward without caution, he just wanted to make sure Jonathan didn't cut himself, and as he moved, the child gritted his teeth and ripped the thing he was holding, plucked from the wreckage of the broken picture frame, tearing in half Jack Eichord's favorite photograph of his long-deceased mother.

“You mean shit,” he said, the little child glaring up at him defiantly with eyes as hard and cold as small black marbles, Eichord swooping him up out of the glass and paddling his butt as hard as he could, thinking to himself, I could kill you, wanting to hit the child so hard, leaving purple fingermarks on the kid's bottom even through the layers of diapers and clothing.

“Jack,” was all she said, one word and a look. But Donna and Jack were close. She said a bookful with that look of reproach.

Eichord said, “He's not hurt,” over the screams of their son, “he's crying from humiliation more than pain."

“Come on, Jonathan.” She carried the kid off while Eichord swept up glass and tried to calm himself down. He looked up at her in the doorway as he was finishing and said, “I don't have a negative, of course.” The kid had ripped her head right off. Broken the glass to get to it. That said everything right there. Jesus.

“I know, hon, but your anger, my God!"

“Excessive. I know. I—” He couldn't think of what to say and just shook his head. He could hear the boy crying at the top of his lungs down at the other end of their home. Jack thought to himself, He had wanted to kill the kid when he saw him ripping the old photograph in two. It wasn't just the meanness of the act or the fact the picture was damaged. He could probably tape that back together.

Eichord wondered what else had just been torn beyond repair. Christ in heaven, he'd seen a look in the kid's eyes he'd seen before. A look he seemed to reserve for Eichord. It was a look of the purest, coldest hatred, and the whole idea was so absurd and crazy that he rejected it immediately. Just the product of a genuinely awful day. Nothing more.

He went back in and took off his sock and picked a splinter of glass out of his right foot, got up, and turned the TV on. The idea of watching the news now was so thoroughly depressing he got the remote-control unit and sat there popping from one channel to another.

“—score four to two, Jim. And you know what that means for the—” He switched from the hockey game to PBS.

“—documentation of the Heracletian canonical labors. Studying the fascinating iconography in the—” Click.

“—would go into the office and take my clothes off. But he wouldn't ask me to take my clothes off because he's not that kind of doctor and I'm not that kind of a girl. He's a veterinarian—” He switched from the channel as a 1950s laugh track roared in response to the 1980s writing. Another sit-com from hell.

“—gold and zircon with the flaming mist center. The regular price is 199.95. But you won't believe our special, low, low sale price for our telephone shoppers. Only—” Click.

“They can't find enough World War Two tanks. Also, it may seem a bit odd to hear a World War Two American soldier with a thick German accent, but Arnold—” Click.

“—say to the Lord that you're willing to make a financial sacrifice—” Click.

Click. Click. Click. Clickclickclickclickclick.