The Ice at the Bottom of the World Read Online Free PDF Page B

they slept, remembering them in the early mornings keeping warm wishing for breakfast while down below the horses would be stirring to go out, making droppings and the smell coming up to the warm, all-over-each-other brothers,the warm smell of wild sea oats passed through the two solid horses breathing sea fog breath.
    So that was the heart tug Buster had and I don’t mean to make Vic out strange owing to him liking the smell of an old horse passing gas, I think if you think about it there’s really nothing there that doesn’t fit with a man not thinking thoughts he has to read nor write, but fits well with a man who thinks of things as being good when they are human or animal especially if they came about by getting them free or from off a good deal.
    I guess that is the main reason about Vic besides using his boat and truck on new-moon nights that Steve Willis and I stuck around, us in a couple of groups in Vic’s mind mainly getting a good deal off of, us stringing nets, ripping roofs, and painting everything not breathing what we called ackerine, and that is also the main reason what we ended up doing ended up all the worse.
    So like I said, this all started when Steve Willis and I were ripping the old roof off our four-room front porch shanty by the canal in change for rent. Vic had gone to Norfolk because he had heard of a good deal some people from church told him about to do with washing machines, and Vic, having stood in water barefoot while plugging his old washer in and getting thrown against a wall by the shock, naturally to his mind thought it was broken and in need of replacing. Vic had left in the morning coming in to get Steve Willis and I up around dawn to finish the roof and said only one other simplething, the real easy thing, to please keep Buster out of the garden no matter what we did. Then Vic was off through the gate in his good-deal truck he had painted ackerine blue one night after supper the week before.
    It was July hot, and before we started Steve Willis and I just walked around our shanty roof, just looking, because the island we live on is flat with just scrub pine and wandering dunes and from the single story up you can see Wicomico Light, the inlet bridge, and the big dunes where the ocean breaks beyond. It was a good morning knowing Vic’s wife would come soon out bringing us some sticks of fried fish wrapped in brown paper, her knowing for breakfast we usually had a cigarette and a Dr. Pepper. For a long time Steve Willis and I had not made any new-moon runs to Stumpy Point to make us watch the one lane down to Vic’s acres for cars we wouldn’t like the looks of and I could look at Steve Willis and Steve Willis could look at me and we could feel good to be one of Vic’s humans in a house on all of Vic’s acres.
    About midway through the morning after their chores about a half a dozen of Vic’s kids came spilling barefoot out of Vic’s ackerine blue house to ride the ackerine bicycles and tricycles and to play on the good-deal ackerine swing set and jungle gym. The older Vic’s kids got to play fishing boat and battleship down on the canal dock as long as one of them stayed lookout to keep a count of heads and to watch for snakes.
    From over my shoulder I was watching what Buster was up to. He stood looking up at me in the middle of the midday morning hot yard not seeking shade like even a common ass would but just standing in the yard near where the incline made of good-deal railway ties came out of the canal and led on up to the boat shed. Buster stood not even slapping his tail at the blackflies that were starting to work on Steve Willis and I up on the roof ripping shingles, but standing so still as if knowing not to attract one bit of attention to himself on his way to he and I knew where. I would rip a row of shingles and then look over my shoulder and Buster would be standing perfectly still not even slapping his tail at the blackflies or even showing signs of breath in and