Big Mike

No matter how hard I try to make do with the changes, the past is always ringing in my ears. I'm thinking back to our days in Los Angeles and my ex's words about the frozen Michigan-here and-now are like so much yadda-yadda-yadda, like endless static. I hit on the details and wait for her to take a breath.

I'm underdressed and under prepared for a drive to the mall, I tell Tammy, and yet she expects me to haul little Mike up to a lodge in the middle of Buttfuck, Michigan for a weekend? What happened to hockey games, I ask her, and backyard sledding? How much of that lost father-son time are we going to make up if I'm listening to my frozen balls clank together, I ask, and wondering how blue little Mike's lips have to get before I can bring him home to thaw out? "Don't be such a pussy," she says, "you've got to do more than just show up." And I think this is what I get for being the nice guy. Frozen fucking stiff.

"Why don't you take him, then?" I ask.

"Indian Guides are for fathers and sons," she says, like its a rule anybody knows: stop on red, go on green. "I can't do everything for him," she says. She knows she's wrong on that one.

"Do I have to remind you," I say, "about the kind of pay cut I had to take just to move back to this iceberg and do I have to mention blah-diddy-blah?" I had it going on in L.A., but I'm a nice guy, and nice guys are ankle-grabbers.

I remember the first time I got up on the pole out there, in a new subdivision over the valley. I could smell ocean. I could see for fifty miles, easy, because it was a green-light day, low smog, most everybody at work -- including the Mexicans raising the timber all around me. I could hear the mumble and echo of their conversations off the very walls they were putting up. Esse, Hombre, Pendejo. I saw four of the men standing in the dirt and pebbles where a front yard would be in another month. They're talking smack about me and Jeff because, somehow, they knew we didn't speak a drop, and it felt like I was in a foreign country, but it felt right. Felt right for me, anyway.

Jeff told me to lose the ring while we're on the job -- gloves or not. "It's no OSHA bullshit," he said. He said he knew some poor schmuck who was up the pole one day near La Brea, gloves on, grounded to the pole, and not even touching anything when the hot white decided it wanted a piece of his gold and reached out and fused that raw gold to his metacarpal. I knew Tammy would feed me my balls, but I slipped the ring into my pants pocket and spent the rest of my time worrying about it.

"Do I have to remind you," Tammy says, "what a lousy fucking drunk you were? And need I mention the drive I made all the fucking way back here with little Mike just so I can fucking this and you can fucking that?" Bitch swears like a sailor when she's hot about something. I let her blow off some steam, but secretly I'm up on that pole, stringing line as far west as I'll ever be, as far west as anyone has ever strung line, and her words come at me like so much Spanish on a perfect day.

So that's how it's gonna be. I've got little Mike for the weekend and we're driving up north on a perfectly freezing Friday night with a bus-load of seven-year-olds and guys I don't even know. "I'll call you when one of us drops dead from exposure," I say on my way out. She hates that about me; the last word is always mine.

Not only do I hear it from Tammy about this trip but they're really funny about me taking time off this soon at my job. I have very little clue about fallen lines in an ice-storm and that seems to make me the most serviceable on-call for the weekend. Trial by ice, I guess. Seems everyone is out to do me in. Let the east side of Kalamazoo get an ear-full of static, too, until I get back, I think.

Little Mike is bundled up like a Pillsbury dough-boy and I think I sure wish I had somebody bundling me up like that. I'm barely making it in the hallway of Tammy's apartment and I do a little dance to keep warm. She, of course, takes this the wrong way and says "Just a minute. We've got to say good-bye first." I stand still and she invites me in. "He's very excited about this, you know." I look down at little Mike and I can't tell if he's very anything. Tammy's perfume comes at me through the cold. It's different now. She's changed it; a spicy smell I decide I like even better. "You two are going to have fun. You've never done anything like this before." I think to myself there's a good reason for that but I nod. She's trying, I can tell, so I'm trying too.

We're to meet the group of fathers and their kids in the school parking lot. It's a dismal sight, little Mike's school, in the late February falling slush. A school, at that, with phone lines crossing power lines coming into two separate junctures at opposite ends of the campus. I can only imagine that the sprawling red-brick building was added on to at some point or that two separate buildings were joined together and that that's the reason for the additional juncture. Sloppy work: somebody's getting bilked. I bring us to a stop at the end of a short row of cars, domestics mostly, unlike Cali, and the bunch of them in great shape. I imagine these Indian Guide dads are the kind to wash their cars in the dead of winter and lay down the extra five c's for the protective under-coating.

Little Mike's barely said word-one since we left Tammy's place and he's a damned sight short of excited by my estimation so I venture something before we get out of the car: "Hey-there bud." He's leaned against the passenger door, the seat-belt bowed around his padded body. He's looking through a spot in the window. He's wiped free a splotch of his hot breath, which has managed to escape his wrappings and fog it up nice and thick. "You know all these kids?"

"Most," he says without tearing his eyes away from the little wet spot on the window. Two of the bigger kids near the yellow bus are throwing snow-balls at each other through the exhaust. A group of about twenty dads are smiling and talking, pretending not to stare at our car when SPLAT, one of the dads get nailed in the back of the head, knocking his gold-rimmed glasses off. The glasses bounce off his mittens and for a second he looks like he's not sure if he should wipe the back of his neck, yell at the kids, or pick up his specks. "That's what you get for wearing mittens," I say. "Well, stay away from those kids throwing snowballs," I say. "If I get tagged there's gonna be a lot of red snow up at the Hokey-Pokey Camp site."

When we unload a couple of dads come over and say their hellos and welcomes. From the looks of things I'm the only dad without a moustache. "You must be big Mike," the mitten-man tells me.

"Well, I sure as hell ain't little Mike," I say. He takes a step back and I think I've hurt his feelings. "Big Mike," I say and I reach out to let him grab my hand in a fuzzy mitten.

"I'm Art," he says and like I figured he points out one of the snowballers as his own. "We're glad you could make it. I think the Indian Guides is a zippy-dippy thingy and blah blah opportunity and ho hum bonding experience."

"That's really terrifuck," I say.

"You're from California Tammy said." The mitten-man's read my file.

"Los Angeles. And I'm not the awful bastard she makes me out to be."

He doesn't have anything to say to that and we stare at the bus. Little Mike has stowed his gear inside and is chumming it up with a pale little under-stuffed kid and a fat kid. "I'd like you to meet Ronald," Art says finally, trying to unload me onto a tall, barrel-chested guy with a raven-black mustache. He's got a chin like a prize-fighter but not much of a grip on him and I think he probably hasn't done an honest day's work in his life. Some are just made big.

Ronald says, "Do I call you big Mike or is just Mike okay?" This is as exciting as its going to get, I can tell.

"Mike. Call him little Mike if you get confused."

"Tammy tells me you working for Ameritech."

Jesus, I think, does Tammy know the whole assembly of dads? Not that it would surprise me. She's started dating lately. "How do you know Tammy?"

"She's my wife's friend," he says, but he says it like he knows what I meant by the question. There's some communication with this guy, I think, and I cut him some slack.

"I had a great job out in L.A., but I came back to be around little Mike." Not the whole truth, but we're not into whole truths yet.

"Great," he says, "Great." And Art says the same thing and the three of us stare at the bus. Ronald and I are wishing Art would get lost, but before he does Commander dad, a nerdy, square headed dad with another moustache and glasses that could burn ants to death on a fair summer's day, pipes into a blow-horn: "Load 'em up Guides!" He pulls a yellow band out of his pocket and pulls off his knit cap in the freezing cold to put his band on. The other dads do the same thing. I see Ronald's band is covered in Indian-looking designs. The same hokey stuff you see all over southern Cali. Grinnin' Ben, a real-life Indian I worked with in L.A. pointed them out to me one day while we were getting ready to repair a juncture in Palos Verdes that had been knocked to the ground in a car wreck. The house in front of the wreck had these symbols in-laid in tile on the stucco wall around their house. It was a hot fucking day that day. "See those," Grinnin' Ben said to me. Grinnin' Ben seldom said much to anybody, but he was a big sonuvabitch so you expected that from him. "Them's fakes."

"What do you mean, fakes?" I said.

"That's a bunch of bullshit. For all you know it says kill whitey." Grinnin' Ben said.

"You know what it means?" I said.

"It means some dumb fucking white family lives there," Grinnin' Ben says and he was probably right. We raised the pole and while I was patching the juncture I saw those dumb whiteys had a pool in their back yard. Most houses in that neighborhood had pools in their back yards. After we finished the juncture and called it in we walked right through dumb whitey's gate and jumped into that pool, clothes and all.

We propped ourselves up on the side of the pool and laughed like it was the funniest thing in the whole world. But things weren't so funny back home, a home not one-fifth as nice as whitey's place. Tammy was getting ready to pack it back to Michigan with little Mike and I knew there was no more getting her to stay. I'd probably lost her weeks before and to get her back I'd have to leave the clear skies, the warm air, the clean pools. I don't know what Grinnin' Ben had to laugh about.

When I got out of the pool Grinnin' Ben whipped it out and whizzed into the pool. He had a real little dick for being such a big guy.

"What's with the head bands?" I ask Ronald.

"I'll bet Marty has one for you," Ronald says and he flags down Marty who's orchestrating the loading of the bus. I can't tell if Ronald thinks I really want a head-band or if he's flipping me shit, but I give him the benefit of the doubt.

I have to exchange a couple of hi-ya's with Marty, the big chief, who has the worst coffee breath in the world and he fishes a yellow headband out of his dirty, red back-pack. The headband is bright yellow except for the blue and red embroidered symbols. He has one for little Mike too, like mine, only small, and I wonder where in the hell little Mike has gotten to. Marty tells me we've got to sit father and son when we get on board.

I climb onto the bus and scan the green vinyl seats and see little Mike near the back across from the pale kid. They're talking about something as I approach and their voices get lower and lower until they fade.

"Colder than a witch's tit, huh boys?" They laugh at this. The back of the bus smells like diesel and the windows are fogged over. The pale kid has written Indian symbols in the fog on his glass. "Here you go," I say and toss little Mike his headband. He peels back the layers Tammy no doubt spent hours piling on and pulls the band over his head. His hair is staticky. "You look like an Indian Chia pet," I say. He doesn't understand and I find myself playing Tammy, stuffing a glove into my pocket so I can lick my hand and slick his hair down under the headband. "You don't want to be Chief Big-Hair, do you?"

"Aren't you going to wear yours?" the pale kid chimes in. He has a voice like Minnie Mouse.

I see the other dads climbing on board and they're all wearing the headbands and I can feel little Mike's little eyes on me. My hair is standing up like little Mike's but a gallon of spit wouldn't keep it down. The headband slips down over my eyes until I wear it over my ears.

Minnie Mouse's dad turns out to be Ronald who plops down next to his kid and says a quick how-do-you-do to little Mike. The kid is so small and pale I think Ronald's wife must be a real milque toast. As soon as we get rolling, without a word from Marty by the way, I offer Ronald a nip of some smooth. It's a pint bottle I keep tucked in the breast pocket of my coat. Ronald shoots a quick look toward the front of the bus and I think, "So this is how it's gonna be." But he takes a quick slug; says its warming. I put the bottle away and look over at little Mike. He's drawing a stick figure man running in place. Then he breaths over it and draws it again a little different. The world's slowest cartoon.

Its not too long before we're on the highway and I can see the shadows of phone lines through the foggy glass. I can't see the lines but I know they haven't changed since the fibre-optic additions. In L.A. I was putting up new lines, new wire and housing, the latest technology, plugging into homes full of new families who would anxiously copy and recopy the new numbers I gave them. As soon as I would leave they'd call back across the country, or more often, across the ocean, distributing the new numbers, giving out a homing signal. One of the first things you find out about L.A., especially in the suburbs, is that no one is from L.A. Most aren't even from Cali. The job left me feeling like I was establishing some link, forging new lines. Michigan is all about maintenance and repair. New numbers for old houses.

Houses were going up so fast in L.A. it wasn't unusual for them to be finished before we could run a line into the house. When that happened I had to spend more time around the families, drilling holes in their new walls, the paint still sticky and plastic. Most of the houses in L.A. were poorly insulated, even in the best neighborhoods they cut corners, so running a line behind their walls was no trouble at all. They always thought it was my expertise that got those lines in so easily. A hero several times a day.

Little Mike finishes his line drawings and I reach across him to wipe a spot in the window to look out. We're alone on the road now, and before too long the phone lines disappear and we're on a slippery one-lane heading into some serious woods. The back end fish-tails every other mile and the little Indians let out a whoop like they're on a carnival ride.

Near the end of the line I look over at Ronald's little Indian who has turned from pale to key-lime green. The kid's holding his cheeks out like a chipmunk with a mouth full of seeds. "He doesn't look so hot," I tell Ronald.

"He barfed."

Jesus. "He's holding it in his mouth?"

"Let's keep it down, Mike. He doesn't want to get embarrassed." Ronald softly puts his hand around pale-boy's shoulder and whispers to him, "We're almost there. You gonna make it, sport?" The kid nods slowly and rolls his eyes. I've got new-found respect for the little dork.

I give little Mike a shot in the ribs. He's leaning across me to see his little friend. "Now that's one tough little sonuvabitch," I tell little Mike. "That's a helluva kid." Little Mike turns away like he might get sick too, only I'm pretty sure he wouldn't hold it in his mouth. I think of offering Ronald another nip, but I think the smell of the smooth might be the last straw for his poor guy.

When we pull into the camp the kid pushes his way to the front. The other kids have to be warned they're gonna be wearing his puke if they don't let him through and he only makes it few feet from the bus before he tosses. Little Mike has cleared a patch of window and we can see the steam coming out of the snow even though Ronald is hiding the kid behind his big body now. I decide its as good of time as any to take another nip or two and little Mike waits like a good boy until I'm done before he pushes past to check on his friend who's sitting in the snow.

The bus' engine clatters to a stop and I know I'm in it now. I take another nip and wait until the bus empties out. Another nip. The back of the bus is as quiet and remote as riding a pole in the mojave. And like riding a pole, I've a got a good view. Little Mike and Ronald are helping the kid into the lodge. Out the opposite side there's a frozen-over lake and the kids and dads spread out in front of it, playing. Even the mitten-man picks up a snowball and I'm thinking payback, but he lobs it like a grenade, afraid of culpability or maybe putting an eye out. I know no body better be thinking of hitting me, lobbed or not.

Little Mike doesn't come out of the lodge and I've got to tote his bags in. As soon as I've got my hands full my headband drapes itself over my eyes. A few good shakes of my head and its around my neck. The soft velvet fuzz tickles my throat.

The lodge's huge, but I swear its five degrees colder than the outside. Two big, big rooms and the toilets. One of the rooms has a kitchen against a windowless wall, long folding tables and chairs under inches of dust and spider-webs and bird shit, and a fireplace the size of my car. The other room is full of bunk beds and I stow our things farthest from the toilets. I know a little.

Little Mike and Ronald are standing in front of the toilets talking to some of the other kids and dads. "How's the kid?" I ask Ronald.

"He'll be all right," Ronald tells me. "He gets car sick."

"What do we do now?" I ask. I offer Ronald another nip and he takes it. He's not nervous about nipping now. His kid is puking for chrissakes, what are they gonna do?

"Well. We've gotta get this place cleaned up. There's dinner and stories tonight and then tomorrow we've got crafts."

I don't say a word.

"And ice-skating," Ronald adds in his best Minnie Mouse voice -- I can see where his kid gets it from.

"Oh."

Ronald rubs at his hairy chin until it gets his brain going. "There's the polar bear club, in the morning, if you're up for it."

"What is that?"

"Its for real men," Ronald says.

"Yeah? What happens in the polar bear club?"

"Real men," Ronald says again and I think his chin could use some more action.

Right then Marty busts into the room, covered in snow. His face is bright red and he's got snot-cicles hanging in his moustache. "We've got to get this place cleaned up for dinner, guides. It'll be dark soon." He stares at us. "DAAAAAAAARK!" He makes Dracula fingers at some of the kids but nobody budges.

I lend a hand with the cleaning crew to get my blood going. Its not Better Homes and Gardens when we're done, but the bird shit and dust's gone. The other half start dinner and set the tables with plastic. When dinner comes it's pitch black outside. The only real light in the lodge comes from a bonfire Marty lit in the fireplace, tossing in old crates and a few acres from the forest he brought along. Little Mike talks quietly to his friend and tells me a couple of things about his school. His art teacher likes him. His math teacher doesn't. "That's no way to make your way in the world," I tell him. "Get that turned around when you get back, will ya?" I tell him math teachers like kids who pretend to like math. "And tell that teacher you think he's the smartest guy you've ever met."

"It's a she. It's Ms Parks," he says, drawing out the zuh sound in Ms like a rattlesnake's warning.

"One of those, huh? Well. Tell her she's smart anyway. Can't hurt." I hadn't really planned on sharing so much of my smooth with anyone, and Ronald really puts it away with each slug. I'm into my second fifth already and I know at this rate I'll never make it to Sunday. I lean onto the table to look past little Mike and his buddy at Ronald, who's talking to a dad at the other end of the table. "So what's the story with this polar bear club?"

Ronald turns to say something to me, but pukey's pulling at his sleeve. "He's got his elbows on the table," pukey says.

I look down at my elbows. So fucking what?

Right then Ronald turns fuckhead on me and stands up and announces that I've got my elbows on the table. So much for running out of smooth. The kids and the dads start into a sing songy chant: Elbows, elbows, off the table, this is not a horse's stable, this is a first class dining table. And then it breaks into a full-fledged song: Round the table you must go, you must go, you must go.

"You've got to run around the table," little Mike tells me while the chorus continues, louder.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me." I shoot Ronald a look he won't forget.

I walk around the table and think of heading to the other room, but I know they won't shut up. "Be a sport," Ronald says.

"Be a man," I say and plop my ass down a good two and a half feet from the table. The song stops, but the laughing starts. Little Mike is leading the charge. "Ha ha ha," I say. "Ha. Ha. Ha."

After dinner we scoop everything left and drop it into plastic bags. The place is warmer now, Marty is going through the wood like a ruddy-faced termite; picking over each piece like he's constructing a fire instead of feeding it. Little Mike tells me he's excited about the stories and I look into his little brown eyes. Tammy's done a good job with him, I think. Not an extraordinary kid, but then who needs that? "You're too young to take a nip off this I'll bet," I say. He nods and I reach out to rub his head but I stop short. I catch the symbols on the headband in the flickering light.

Marty lets the fire die back a bit while the stories make themselves known. Some of the dads pull their kids onto their laps, to keep warm mostly. The boys, seems to me, are a little old to be sitting in laps. I don't like to think about it.

Ronald's trying to get back in my good graces. He passes me a cigar and then tells me I can't smoke it in the lodge. I go back to the bunks and break the seal on another bottle and when I make my way back the chairs I see little Mike's face. He's caught up in the old one-armed freak story. The mitten-man's got the conch and he's acting the story as much as telling it. And if I didn't know for sure the two teens find the bloody hook hanging on their car door I'd be interested too. The mitten-man's got his glasses off and I can see he's into it so much he's sweating from the heat of the fire. He takes off his coat, and then his shirt, and rubs himself all over his chest and neck when he gets to the part where the two teens are necking. The kids laugh at this and I use the distraction to pass Ronald the bottle.

"Creepy," I say to no one in particular.

"I know what you mean," Ronald says. He takes a big slug, and as he hands the bottle back the shadow of the mitten-man's hand pauses on Ronald's face and then closes into a fist.

"Don't disturb the spirits," mitten-man cautions.

"Don't take off any more clothes," I say back. This gets a laugh, even from mitten-man.

"What's the deal with the polar bear club?" I ask Ronald.

"Be ready to go at sun-up, if you're man enough."

"For what?"

Ronald laughs and reaches for the bottle again. Little Mike turns and shushes us. Just like Tammy would if she were here. She should be here, I think, for lots of reasons.

The next morning I'm buried in my sleeping bag, chattering in my sleep when Ronald pokes me. His moustache is full of ice. "Let's go polar bear."

"Fuck you, polar bear," I say. "It's freezing."

"Last chance," Ronald says, and I let the cold in.

I grab my coat and follow him out to the lake. Most of the dads are there, huddled around a hole in the ice not too far out. When we get there some of the dads are still chipping away at the hole, expanding it, making it bigger. The white ice is a good foot and a half thick. The water underneath is green. I see that the sun has just cleared the hill on the other side of the lake. There's not a single line around the entire lake I realize; no way of calling out.

"I'm next," Marty says from right next to me and he takes his coat off. But he doesn't stop there. He takes off his shirt, and his undershirt, and his boots and socks and his pants and his underwear. His headband is the last to go and he lays this down on his pants next to his bare feet. His dick looks like a circus peanut in the cold and I can't believe he's not embarrassed by it.

"What the fuck is going on?" I say, but no one listens. I can't believe this idiot is going to jump into the water and I know if he does I'm not getting pneumonia pulling him back out. They start chanting Marty, Marty, Marty.

He's chanting to himself, Yes, Yes, Yes and I swear the whole time his pecker is getting smaller. It looks like a little boy's.

And he jumps in.

"JESUS!" I say. Marty is splashing around for a minute or so and then crawls out of the water. His hair freezes, as soon as he gets out, into all sorts of crazy shapes. His skin is tight, bluish and covered in goosebumps. One of the dads hands him a towel and he dries off and gets dressed.

"Anyone else this morning?" Ronald asks. He's looking at me.

"Not a fucking chance," I say and turn to walk back. "Wake me when you've all come to your senses."

When I get back to the cabin most of the kids are getting up. Not a one of them is complaining about the cold. They seem as revved up and frisky as frosty old Marty. "I guess none of you is hung over." Little Mike is crawling out of his bag, his hair's gone greasy and flat, I can just barely see his eyes below the headband. "Pull that up, will you?"

"It's crafts day," he says ominously.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"We're supposed to make things. Snowshoes, wampum bags, walking sticks," he says and I can tell he's already pulled himself together, not two seconds out of the sack. He slides off the bunk and then grabs my hand. His little fingers feel icy and I pull back.

"I'm gonna have to get a little hair of the dog before I do anything."

"Did you see the polar bears?" he says.

"Yeah. I saw the polar bears."

"Did you?" He says.

"No."

"I didn't think you would," he says. He looks me over with that same suspicious look of Tammy's. I know he's going to tell her I drank the whole trip when he gets back. He follows Ronald's kid out into the other room to get some breakfast and I crack open a newbie for a nip. It chases away the headache.

Little Mike comes to get me when they finish with breakfast but I tell him I'm still not warmed up enough to make wampum boots or whatever the hell it is they're making out there. He doesn't protest and I know that means he's written me off. He won't ask again today.

I can see from where I sit that Marty has unloaded several boxes on a table in the next room. My clothes reek of the fire last night. I need a bath. Or another nip.

They finish their crafts and I'm already feeling sleepy. Little Mike brings me a wampum bag he's sewn. It smells of leather and its soft and warm in my hand like a baby animal. "What's it for?" I say.

"For wampum," he says. Something behind his eyes, an impatience with me, tells me he's feeling obligated to show me this. He's holding back for when Tammy gets a crack at cooing over it.

"Here," I say and I bust out a pocket-full of cold change and dump it into the bag. "Now you've got wampum." He warms a little and jingles the bag. The coins clink together, muffled by the thick skin of the bag. "Nothin' sadder than an empty bag."

Ronald and little Ronald walk up behind little Mike. Little Ronald's got some color to him and I see his wampum bag isn't half the bag little Mike's is. I'm proud that little Mike has learned to do for himself and I feel vindicated when I see the piss-poor job big and little Ronald did on their bag. I offer Ronald a nip of the smooth and his eyes pop out of his head, like I offered to take care of little Ronald for him. They turn and walk back out and I take a nip and watch as little Mike tags along behind them. He's shaking his bag.

The place has gone cold and almost everyone is outside skating or picking through the skrig around the lodge except for a dad I haven't met and a little kid crying about some nonsense in the dining room. "There, there," the dad says over and over until I'm about to go out of my head. "There, there."

When I stand up and look out the window I see little Mike skating with little Ronald. The polar bears are keeping themselves between the hole in the ice and the skaters. Probably a good idea. What was it little Mike said? "I didn't think you would." I see Marty standing in front of the hole and I can tell he's talking about his morning dip by his body language. He's wide, wide awake and the other dads are watching him like they've never seen anything so interesting.

I think of Tammy. I think of Tammy in lots of ways. With one of these dads, back in the sack in her apartment, and I can see that easier than I can see us in the same clutch. I know little Mike can for sure see that easier and I feel like I'm losing her even more.

It's cold in L.A. in the winter, but it's a helluva lot warmer than where I'm at right now. L.A. has forgotten me, I think, Jeff and Grinnin' Ben and the others are probably letting me fade from their stories right now. I try to think of something they'd talk about, some story about me, some stunt, but nothing comes. Could be the smooth. But I think I'm fading out all over the place. The past is ringing in my ears, but I'm not ringing back; I'm not resonating. I'm fading. I'm tired, I'm freezing my ass off, and I'm fading.

I look down at little Mike, cutting back and forth across the ice, tagging some of the other kids. He skates like a little pro. I used to skate like that when I was his age, but then my ass got too far away from the ground. Little Mike tries a jump and spin and makes it. Marty and the other dads clap for him. They cheer him on. I think of what Tammy said before we left: "You've got to do more than just show up if you want to be a real man."

Cali was nearly full when I left. Repair work mostly. I knock back the rest of the bottle and for a few, painful seconds I'm as warm as a Mojave booster box. I toss the bottle back on the bed and drop my coat on the floor. The cold over-takes the acid-burn of the smooth, but its an inviting, invigorating cold, urging me on like a cheerleader. If Tammy could see me do this one thing. If the guys back in L.A. could see this one thing. It'll have to do that little Mike's out there. When my bare feet touch the floor I know its gonna be a rough flight. My pecker raises up like a little kid's, only hairier. I hop around a little but its time to go. Just me and the headband.

Once I'm out the door I feel my bare feet sticking to the snow less and less with each step. Everybody stops what they're up to and stares at me, follows me with their eyes. I want to yell something, "Polar Bear," but my chest is tight and heaving. I catch little Mike's eye. He's stopped skating, but he's still gliding forward, moving like a soft voice through a wire; gliding; staring. The dads move back as I approach. "Yadda, yadda, yadda," they're all saying something to me. "Stop" or "Go" or something unimportant. I nearly slip when my feet hit the ice. I can't feel them anymore. Two more steps. Time to back off, but I know it's now or never.

I launch. My take-off is good and I can feel the cold air between my legs. But it's nothing like the water. The thin crust of ice cuts my skin as I burst through. My nuts fly into my throat and my chest crashes in on itself. Its an intense burn. Only my eyes feel the cold. At first I'm not sure if they're open or closed, but then I see things; bits of blue and green and brown and I feel myself going down. I'm slipping down and down and down. I can hear the cracking of the ice, and I imagine the cracks shooting out like impulses through the phone lines. Or maybe its my head that's cracking and I'm still going down. The headband slides loose from my head and I can make out its yellow ring rising above me, floating over my head. There are muffled footsteps all around me and the voices. Voices trying to cut through the water and it sounds like being up on the pole, plugged into a hundred thousand conversations at one time. And they're all talking about me.