Ice  by Keith Norbury                                                                                

---

        
           It was hot and it was cold in the Dawson Industries ice plant. Tony Miles sweated and shivered. With one hand on the ice tongs, as it pinched a 400-pound block, he leaned his wiry frame against space, dragging the load from the tank room to day storage. He steamed beneath his coveralls. Every fifteen or twenty minutes, he set down his tongs and removed a glove and glided his fingers along a frozen block and then across his forehead. He spent entire shifts in the freezers, tucking the blocks into tight rows, end-to-end, side-by-side. His cap often brushed the ceiling, dusting frost into his collar where it melted and trickled down his back. He endured a perpetual cough and runny nose, symptoms he attributed to his failures to quit smoking.

        
            After work, Tony drove his 1965 Mustang hardtop to the Carter Insurance Company to pick up his girlfriend Sheila. She had been Carter's secretary for as long as Tony had pulled ice. Two or three times a week, she talked him into taking her out for dinner. Once or twice a month, when she didn't think to do that, they stopped at the Messenger Hotel for beers. Sheila would cross her legs and tug her skirt over her knees and complain to Tony about the frayed carpets, blood-colored curtains, and the flatulent men with rosacea who invariably occupied the next table.

        
            "You never take me anywhere," she said, sipping Tuborg from a glass as Tony drank draught.

        
            He worked alone at the ice plant. It hadn't always been that way. Long after the Frigidaire vanquished the ice-box, ice remained a crucial commodity for food processing, and packing produce, meat, and fish. As recently as the previous decade, the Dawson ice plant regularly kept three shifts of four men working overtime.

        
            Gradually, in the way a glacier shrinks, the firm's customers discovered they could increase their profits by investing in their own ice-making equipment. These contemptuous machines spat flakes of ice, eliminating the need for back-breaking labor. The Dawson ice plant now served a solitary client, Paradise Enterprises, a derelict fish processor also on the verge of collapse.

        
            Dawson had other concerns – a meat-packing plant, public cold storage, and a dry warehouse – to keep its proprietors rich. The company accountant advised against sinking any more capital into the ice plant. Equipment formerly straight and shiny as naval brass now crumbled from neglect and cancerous rust.

        
            The once level pavement of the loading dock resembled a tank trail as skid row crept toward the back door. The former lunchroom, where the crews used to gather for cribbage and coffee, became the refuge of nocturnal winos. Tony never saw them, only their empty bottles and paper bags. He cleaned up their litter and never reported his suspicions to his supervisor.

        
            Tony told Sheila, though.

        
            "That's disgusting," she said. "How could anyone live like that? The city should do something."

        
            "They're not doing any harm – except to themselves, I guess," Tony said.

        
            "You feel sorry for them."

        
            "Of course not. But they are people."

        
            "I suppose the same can be said for welfare leeches and junkies and rapists and murderers."

        
            "For Christ's sake, they're just a couple of winos."

        
            "They're disgusting. You should be disgusted. They're practically in your space."

        
            During salmon season, the men from Paradise Enterprises hauled three or four trucks of ice a day. Now in winter, they might only come by once a week. Tony took these rare opportunities to inform his visitors of his car troubles. The Mustang simply wouldn't accelerate smoothly since that time it had slipped out of gear on a boat ramp. On a brighter note, his twin brother, the minor league hockey player, looked poised to make the big time, maybe for the playoffs.

        
            The fish crew listened dutifully. Sometimes they would bring him magazines or a stolen salmon. The last of the several times he'd been on worker's compensation, they all chipped in for a set of chrome-alloy wrenches, which they presented to him while he was still in the hospital.

        
            In his coveralls and golf shoes, Tony weighed less than 135 pounds. He had never played golf in his life, but he wore the shoes to give him traction on the ice. It amazed the fish men, some double his size, how Tony handled the blocks. While they slipped and stumbled as they fumbled with their tongs, Tony leaned into his work with the agility of a draught horse. The fish crew often dropped their tongs and watched like passersby entranced by a street magician, as Tony loaded their trucks by himself. He didn't mind. It was the easiest part of his job.

        
            Raising the ice-filled cans from the brine tank required a delicate touch and brute strength. An electric hoist lifted the can, but to move the supporting structure Tony relied on his own muscle.

        
            A stout rope dangled in a 50-foot loop. The loop turned a pulley. The pulley drove an axle connecting two enormous wheels. The wheels rolled across rails spanning the walls on opposite sides of the room. Along this axle, perpendicular to the rails, the hoist slid back and forth on the rusting track.

        
            By tugging the rope or nudging the hoist, Tony could position the latter anywhere on the grid. Gently though. A sudden movement and a wheel might slice through the track (in patches, rust flakes the size of playing cards peeled off) and drop the whole works onto the rotted planks covering the brine tank.

        
            "Sometimes it scares the crap out me," he confided to Sheila.

        
            "Quit then," she said. "Just quit."

        
            Tony dogged on, masking his fears. For diversion, he held contests with himself to see how much ice he could haul in a single day. His record of 25 tons – 150 blocks – exceeded the plant's maximum daily ice-making capacity. The record-breaking days were over. The equipment could no longer operate for an eight-hour stretch without breaking down.

        
            Power failures often rendered the electric hoist brakeless. An unrestrained can once broke his foot in three places. The warped planks covering the brine tank fit loosely and inflicted many minor injuries. Tony often stumbled over them and rammed slivers under his fingernails. No matter how adept he became at hitting the bull's-eye in the target he had drawn on the door to day storage, he still managed to stab himself almost daily with an ice pick. He endured scrapes with tongs, sprained thumbs and bruised toes when lopsided ice-blocks toppled. His chronic stoop aggravated a perennial backache.

        
            "This place is cursed," he muttered at a sliver in his thumb.

        
            Aside from the health hazards, the decaying equipment posed other perils. Whenever it degenerated to the point where the plant had to shut down, Tony was laid off without pay until the company got around to making repairs. So he kept things in shape as best he could – with a hammer or a rope splicer.

        
            Another nuisance was the salinity level in the brine tank. Rust penetrated so deeply into the seams of the cans that fresh water from the leaking tans diluted the brine. If Tony didn't add salt regularly, the tank would freeze solid, requiring several days of defrosting, days without pay.

        
            Sheila rarely visited the ice plant. Shortly after she and Tony first met, she had dropped by, curious where the object of her enchantment spent his days. Tony gave her the grand tour. She wore high heels and slipped just inside the tank-room door, straining her ankle.

        
            "I didn't know such a place existed," she said. "It's like a creepy museum."

        
            She winced at the smell of mildew and the sight of bracken water, her eyes teary from ammonia.

        
            Tony showed her the little room the winos visited and she winced again and plugged her nose at the smell of piss.

        
            At Christmas he left a plum pudding for them. He didn't tell Sheila about the gift. Nor did he tell her he'd found a carton of cigarettes, his brand, in the same corner on the morning of New Year's Eve.

*****

        
            Tony inhabited a narrow trailer in an RV park just outside of the city. It had everything he needed – a color TV he seldom watched and a stereo he rarely played. Whenever she was in the mood, he stayed the night with Sheila in her narrow bed in her tiny apartment. She never went to his place.

        
            They spent most evenings away from either suite. Sheila despised cooking. Tony didn't know a ladle from a salad tong. After dining, they usually went to the movies, which Tony loved. Sheila also loved the movies, but lately she loved dancing more.

        
            "That was the worst time I've ever had," she said as they left the theatre one recent evening.

        
            "The only film you ever liked was Saturday Night Fever," Tony said.

        
            "Then why don't you ever take me dancing?"

        
            "We go dancing all the time."

        
            "I bet if you took lessons you could be like John Travolta."

        
            Tony refused to speak further on the subject. He had no confidence on the dance floor. More than once at the disco, he sat alone at their table, clinking ice cubes, as Sheila and a local Travolta experimented with the latest steps that he couldn't name.

        
            The Dawson freezers as his backdrop, Tony slid the blocks over and around one another with the agility of Nijinsky, his only audience his own shadows. Stooped over, he whirled lightly across the frigid expanse, tapping applause with his golf shoes, echoing off the frosty walls. When the show concluded, the winos came and sat in the darkness next door, oblivious to the spectacle they had missed.

        
            "Compressor broke down today," Tony told Sheila as he collapsed into her armchair. She was already sprawled on the sofa.

        
            "You should find a better job," she said. "A career. You're nearly 30. You have to think about your future."

        
            "Nothing's wrong with my job. I'm good at it. Make decent money. Got ten grand in the bank."

        
            Tony bolted from the armchair and dropped to his knees in front of her. From his shirt pocket, he withdrew a tiny felt-covered box. He opened it to reveal a gold ring flaunting a solitary diamond as big as a peppercorn. For a minute, he just let Sheila stare at it. They swallowed in unison, but Sheila broke the silence.

        
            "You can be a corny, romantic son-of-a-bitch when you want to be," she said, pausing to swallow again. "But let's be realistic. Sure, you've got some savings. But are you planning to work in that run-down ice hole for the rest of your life."

        
            "I love you," Tony said.

        
            "And I love you. Love isn't the issue. I have dreams. You don't seem to have any."

        
            "I have dreams. I dream of you."

        
            "You just don't get it," Sheila said.

        
            The air turned as sharp and dry as the breeze the steel fans slap through the ice plant. Sheila turned on her stomach and cried into a cushion.

        
            "Are you going to be all right?" he asked. "Please, please, please tell me what's the matter."

        
            "I'm OK," she said. "I just need to be alone right now."

        
            "Have I done something wrong?" Tony said. "I don't want to hurt you. I apologize if I've hurt you."

        
            "I just need some time to myself," she said as she stood up, her eyes toward the ceiling.

        
            Tony offered her his arms. He almost cornered her into a hug when she slapped his cheek.

        
            He answered with a blown kiss as he stepped back through the doorway.

        
            That night, Tony went to bed early and dreamed of hauling ice. It was so hot that the blocks melted away before he could pull them into place. The harder he worked, the faster they melted. The faster they melted, the harder he worked. He awoke coated in sweat as thick as honey.

        
            On Fridays the fish-plant crew, if they needed ice at all, came for a single load in the morning. The rest of the Dawson staff – those working in the packing plants and public cold storage – also took the afternoon off. Not Tony.

        
            Every can in the brine tank needed refilling. He had to check the brine salinity and inspect the compressor for ammonia leaks. Accomplishing these miracles within eight hours required working faster than icicles melting in the sun.

        
            Exasperated by the previous night's ordeal, he couldn't stop thinking about Sheila. At lunch break, he called her at work, but another woman answered the phone. She said Sheila had called in sick. Tony tried Sheila at home, but the line was busy. He called back every ten minutes for two hours. Busy. He resolved to drop by her apartment after work and straighten things out.

        
            It was five o'clock, and he still had a dozen cans to go. Anxious to finish, he pulled the rope a little harder than usual. The wheel sliced through the track, collapsing the structure, closing him at the waist onto the splintered planks. A ragged edged of the hoist cut off his leg, severing an artery. Across from where he was pinned, stood two blocks of perfectly formed ice.

        
            One reflected his face as it might look as an old man; in the other was Sheila in old age. As his image grew older, Sheila's wrinkles faded, until his flesh shriveled to a dark gray and hers had regained its youthful elasticity. Smiling, her apparition blew him a kiss and faded away.

        
            "Sheila!" he screamed, but the ice-congested freezers absorbed his cries. Outside, rush-hour horns sounded and brakes squealed. His blood trickled across the broken planks and dribbled into an ice can, streaking crimson streamers in the freezing water.

****

        
            At seven o'clock, the winos arrived at the lunchroom to find the tank-room door open. Cautiously, they peeked inside.

        
            "Is he dead?" gasped one through swollen gums.

        
            "Better see," said the other. He waddled over to the frozen figure and put his hand on his chest. "He's frozen."

        
            "Should call the police," the first one said, shivering.

        
            "Won't do him any good. Or you and me. He's not going anywhere. They'll find him soon enough."

        
            "You always know best," the first said as they went to the lunchroom. "Sad. Been better off it he hadn't worked so hard."

        
            The second put a bottle to his lips, a trickle of red leaking onto his chin. "You know, I once worked here," he said.

        
            "Don't say."

        
            "Worst job I ever had. Amazes me how he stuck it for as long as he did. He deserves a toast."

        
            "Certainly."

        
            "To . . . what's his name?"

        
            "No idea."

        
            "To the Iceman, for service beyond the call of duty," the first said, raising his bottle and bashing it against his colleague's. They squinted at each other and then around the room, light from the street seeping through scratches in the blackened windows. For the rest of the night, they said nothing as they drank themselves to dreamless sleep.