The Cage (20 page)

Jean-Claude started out. He examined the ice, stepped slowly, smoothly onto it. Butler watched him carefully, then followed. The ice stretched out blue, gray and even yellow in places. Where the wind had pushed it together it heaved upward into walls, ramps, tabletops, small castles with spires and broken doors. The ruins of some ancient town, sparkling along the edges. Snow danced about in the wind. Butler's snowshoes skittered across the ice. He had to lean into the edges for traction. The blanket bumped along after him.

David said, “There's never a cab around when you need one.” He looked slowly across the broken moon surface. “Hey, Beryl?”

She turned to him.

“Good luck, eh.”

She tried to smile. She wasn't sure if her lips moved at all.

He stepped out, tracked himself carefully after Butler. When he reached the end of the leash on his blanket sled, he pulled forward into it to get the blanket sliding. She watched him, waiting, then walked after him. She couldn't tell when she'd left land and began walking on ice. The sled moved
easily behind her. Its runners scratched like knives. She kept turning to look at the sled, tried to keep it on the flatter surfaces. She didn't want it spilling over on the uneven plates. Looking ahead, she could no longer see Jean-Claude. He was somewhere behind the walls of ice.

After she walked a hundred yards out, she felt the ice begin to give a little beneath her. At first it felt like she was stepping on a thick rug, then maybe Styrofoam, something stirring beneath her feet each time she shifted her weight. The feeling gradually changed to that of walking along a thick plastic plank, the material stretching out beneath her, swaying downward. She heard the cracking and popping of the crystals inside, saw a slight indent appear around her snowshoe with each step. She slid her feet forward smoothly, half-skating, her shoulders swinging with the motion. Breathing loudly with her effort, she alternately watched David's progress ahead of her and then the ice beneath her feet. She searched for the lighter streaks of ice, the gray of stone. The ice felt firmer there. Sometimes it felt completely solid. The next step could sway beneath her again. She wondered what she would do if she saw a bear out here. The bears lived on the ice most of the year. She couldn't imagine sleeping anywhere on this treacherous creaking surface.

Her sides began to itch. She rubbed her arms against her ribs. Gradually she realized she was sweating, breathing harder than she should have to for this effort. She tried to slow her breath down, to think of other things. Pushing back the hood of her parka, she could feel the wind in her sweaty
hair, could see so much more clearly all around her. She felt the sweat freezing against her scalp.

She tried to get perspective on how far they were walking. A mile and a half would be the distance from her house across the river into Boston. She pretended she was stepping from her house: that ice wall was the neighbor's house, the one with the magnolia tree. That mesa top was the drugstore on the corner. She crossed the street, saw the Indian restaurant, the supermarket, the park. After a time she approached the bridge into the city. She saw the water passing below the bridge, warm and soft, the brown-blue of a temperate world. Sailboats, people tanning on the decks, their bared flesh and easy smiles. A woman in a rowboat held a beer to her cheek, the glass sweating, the liquid sloshing about inside.

Beryl imagined that by now she would have reached the other side of the river, would have reached Boston. She still couldn't see any land ahead of her. She couldn't tell if she was judging distance correctly, if she was scrolling the scenery by at the right speed. What if they were walking straight out to sea? She shuffled her feet along, scanning the ice around her.

The smoother curve of land appeared ahead. At the same instant she noticed the open break in the ice off to her left, a long gash running parallel to their path. The water steamed up into the air. They would walk within forty feet of it. The ice beneath her feet shifted colors to dark gray and then to almost black. She could see the waves shiver the ice up and down near the open water.

As she concentrated on skating in David's footsteps, something
brown and heavy flitted by just beneath her feet, under the ice. She almost stumbled. The next form blinked its brown eyes as it passed beneath, its round cat face looking up at her. It flew by beneath the surface, as fast through the water as though in air, as though beneath the ice stretched a whole new world where heavy creatures could fly on their outstretched stubby hands.

“Hey,” yelled David, “seals!” He stood still for a single moment, pointing down. “Check it out.”

Beryl watched as the ice began to rip beneath him.

“Whoops,” he said and slogged forward, but the rip followed him, rolling forward beneath his feet. She saw his motions go silky smooth, serious, as he realized the danger. The ice dipped beneath him, his snowshoes scraped for purchase. The ice tore, noisy as soggy fabric. His feet slid backward leisurely. His hands clawed out for balance.

“Butler!” screamed Beryl. “Jean-Claude, help!” She slipped out of the straps of her sled, jogged forward. With each slap of her snowshoes the surface rolled beneath her. She wasn't quite sure how she would stop when she reached him. She had no traction.

“Lie down!” Beryl yelled. “Lie across the ice.”

He started to ease down, but his feet slipped. With a scratch of nylon he slid into the hole. Gone. The water glugged up against the lip.

She threw herself down, sliding across the ice toward the rip as if into home plate. She held one arm out for the far side.

The freezing water hit her flesh like a knife. Her heart
shocked still. Her arm slapped onto the other side of the ice, swung her back, the material rolling with her weight. Her head, chest and right arm lay in the water, her back and legs on the surface above. Hanging. Completely dark all around her. Her body was quiet. Death, she thought; this is what death is like.

David sank slowly just in front of her, pulled down by his billowing clothes, a fading dream. Beryl couldn't see the bottom, only blackness everywhere. A pebble clicked somewhere below her. His face gleamed very white in the gloom as he looked up at her. He blinked like a seal.

She rolled her hand through the water, grabbed the edge of his hood, surprised that her fingers could still close, could hold on. He bobbed in her grasp, reached up and took hold of her arm. He gripped hard. The ice she lay on ripped a little. The first half of her belly slid into the water. She felt the weight of her wet parka pulling her down, the weight of David. She kicked her legs out, trying to get any purchase with the edges of her snowshoes. Trying to kick the edges down into the ice, to pull up. She couldn't back out.

She and David hung together in the water looking at each other. The ice creaked again, rotten and soft in her ear.

He smiled sad and wide, let go of her slowly, shook his head. His hair rolled soft against his face. She looked at her hand wrapped hard around his hood. Her lungs began to swell against her ribs. Even if she let go, she didn't know how she would back out of the water.

The first yank on her feet shocked her so much she almost
lost her grip on his parka. Then she clenched as tight as she could and David grabbed hold of her again. He was dragged after her through the water and up, his jacket rolling around him heavy as a wet towel.

They came out gradually, pulled up onto the ice, which bent and groaned with their weight. As her head broke the water she sucked air in again and again, cranked her head around to see. Butler lay with his face buried in her ankles, his arms locked around her knees. He crawled backward, digging in with his elbows and toes. Fifteen feet beyond that Jean-Claude gripped the lashes of Butler's sled. He walked backward, straining into the weight. When they had moved twenty feet from the rip they all let go of each other, spreading out across the ice, slithering away from the danger area on their stomachs like seals, like animals groveling. After forty feet they crawled. After a hundred feet they stood up on the flat white plain of land.

David's face was a pale blue, ice gleaming on his cheeks. His eyes blinked behind his clear mask. Beryl turned and vomited meat and dark water onto the snow by her feet. The liquid burned hot on her lips.

“Strip,” Jean-Claude said to David. “Fast, everything. Butler, give him every sweater you have.” Jean-Claude sat down on the snow, started to take off his outside pants. He looked at Beryl. “I told you not to be a hero. You almost killed us all. Get your jackets off. I'll give you one of mine.” His face was stiff with fury.

She tried to work her arms up to pull off her jacket but couldn't seem to move her hands precisely enough to find her shoulders. David's hands slapped around loosely near his parka's zipper, making a light knocking sound against his shining chest. Butler stepped in and unzipped David's parka,
stripped it off and then removed his boots. He helped David off with all his clothing, as with a baby.

Butler said, “Shit, I mean I thought the ice would be thick enough.”

Jean-Claude roughly jerked both parkas over Beryl's head. She looked down at her bare breasts and stomach in the cold. Her nipples gleamed hard as plastic, ice shimmered in her belly button. Butler looked away from David's body, yanking the pants down over his heels, spilling water sluggish across the snow. David sat nude on the drift, his stomach sucked in, the hair on his head and between his legs shiny with crystals, his genitals shriveled and purple. His eyes were half-closed. His head listed. Jean-Claude took off both jackets, pulled his inner one down over Beryl's shoulders. He stood there wearing just a pair of pants. This was the first time she'd seen his chest in the daylight. He had an outie belly button. Distantly, she looked at them, all this pink tender skin against the snow. She wanted to laugh but it seemed too big an effort.

“Run.” Jean-Claude said to her. “Run around us, now. Don't stop for anything.”

The first few steps felt awkward, heavy. She looked down at her feet. Kicked them around in the snow to get them to behave. Her arms hung heavy as meat.

“Slap your arms. Flex your fingers. When your skin starts to hurt again wrap your hands in a blanket and keep running.” Jean-Claude pulled his outer parka on. “Put David in my outer pants. Wrap blankets around his feet. I'm getting
their sleds. We're going to need them.” He walked smooth and fast back onto the ice, careful. He slapped his hands against his sides. The wind rolled around him and the hair of his pants shivered.

Butler rubbed at David's feet, trying to get circulation back in them. The skin looked gray and plastic. David gazed at them with his head cocked to one side and his mouth half open.

“Hey,” Butler said to no one in particular, “I mean that ice should have been five feet thick by now. Don'tcha think? In this cold?” He fumbled awkwardly, pulling the pants on over David, looking away. When he had David clothed, he held him up and began to walk him around, then made him run. Without a parka, David wore several thickly knit Icelandic sweaters. Beryl thought it strange to see someone wearing a sweater out here, like it was just a fall day. Beryl could see the wind rippling the wool. The edges of David's ears were white.

When Jean-Claude came back, walking slowly across the ice, the two sleds dragging behind him, she could see the faces of three seals floating about in the open water. They watched Jean-Claude big-eyed and absorbed.

Jean-Claude picked up Beryl's Inuit parka. It had frozen with its arms held out in front, as though still reaching for David. He snapped the material twice hard against the ground. The ice tinkled off. He gave her the outside jacket, snapped clean the inside shirt to give to David to put over his sweaters.

He repacked the sled and they left with her and David
pulling it, running. Jean-Claude yelled behind them, “Faster, faster, bring your knees up.”

After a while Beryl didn't want to sleep anymore. She wanted to scream from the feeling returning to her fingers and arms. She ran half-sobbing until Jean-Claude said that was enough for her and Butler took her place.

As she stepped out of the traces, she glanced at David. He stood breathing heavy with his head down, lips loose, a line of drool frozen across his chin. He hadn't spoken since they'd pulled him out of the water. Butler picked up the traces, looking at him. When Butler started jogging forward, David stumbled. Butler held his arm out to keep him standing up, moving forward.

Butler talked to him, trying to sound tough and hard as a coach. “Come on David. Keep going, you wimp. You can do it. Faster, you lazy slob.” After running for a few minutes pulling the sled, he was gasping on his words.

Beryl could see he kept one hand under David's arm the whole time, keeping David moving, the sled bouncing along behind. He did not stop talking to David the whole afternoon. Once Beryl jogged in closer and she heard Butler say that David should just pretend this was all a game, imagination.

“Me and my brother,” Butler gasped, trotting forward, “used to play this game all the time, pretending we were other places, other people. That's what you should do now. Like you could believe you're really in Central Park right now, walking on a hot day, near Central Park West and Seventy-sixth, sweating. Imagine you're there and just pretending to be in a
cold place to forget the heat.” Butler jogged on, catching his breath, then added, “Yeah, that's right. Can't you just smell the summer in the park? What is that smell anyway? Horses' turds and the grass, sweat and beer, grilling hamburgers. Can't you just smell it?” Butler watched David's face.

David never looked up from his feet slogging forward. He leaned more and more of his weight on Butler.

Beryl gasped and half-jogged behind them, her head hanging.

Near the end of that first day she tried running ahead as fast as she could. The slow jogging hurt her. She wanted to get there, to get warm, to stop moving. But her feet had no feeling and she fell and had to get up again. She pushed herself up slowly, her legs clenched, her butt waving from side to side. Her hands rolled about slack. She had to watch them to check that they moved as she wished. After that she continued to jog on at a steady pace.