Winter of frozen dreams Read Online Free PDF Page A

lights. There was no Christmas tree, and the only presents on the kitchen table were those Jerry had brought from Madison. Ruth read a letter she had received from her son Bob.
    Jerry idolized his brother and never compared himself to Bob, for comparison was folly. Bob did what Jerry was incapable of doing. He'd been a member of River Valley High Schools only undefeated football team, a bulwark in a defense that had never been scored on. Jerry had been a second-string defensive back on a squad that matched River Valleys usual record for mediocrity. Bobs horizons extended far from home, while Jerry could get no farther from Spring Green than Madison. Bob boasted of his randy escapades, and Jerry had little to brag about. Barbara was the only woman he had kissed.
    Ruth read the missive, interjecting her own opinions and asides so freely that Jerry couldn't distinguish what Bob had actually written and what were his mothers digressions. Jerry faded in and out of listening. The hours became elastic, each one stretching, snapping, popping to the next. When Ruth retired for the night, it was early Christmas morning.
    Jerry remained at the wobbly kitchen table. He crossed his arms, which formed a cradle for his head. All the years he'd been away from home, and what had changed? Not the burlap curtains made out of old feed bags, not the brass teakettle on the old Amana stove, not his mothers tortuous talking, not the stump leg of the table, not the cobwebs in the corner near the stovepipe. What had changed was the year printed on the Agway Feeds calendar. Nothing else.

    Davies shut his eyes to seal out the past and the present, to welcome sleep. But what greeted him in the darkness was a sheet lifting off a body and genitals swollen the size and color of the number-seven ball on a pool table, but not nearly so perfectly round, rather chipped and veined, and then the enlarged and discolored penis . . .
    Daviess stomach surged like a spasm of white water. His lungs burned. Perspiration beaded on his forehead in large droplets, as if he were sweating translucent kernels of corn. The vision flashed again before his open eyes— the gray, the cold, the waxen skin discolored, disfigured, the pubic hair like a thousand frozen questions marks— and Davies sobbed. His trembling body rocked the kitchen table.
    His mother scrambled eggs for breakfast and peppered him with questions. Davies nibbled at the eggs and fasted from talk. The phone rang. Ruths daughter was calling from Indiana to wish her a merry Christmas, and while Ruth chatted long-distance, Jerry kissed his mother, told her he had to drive to Madison on an errand, and assured her he'd be home for dinner.
    — 8—
    By late afternoon on Christmas Day a search warrant was issued for apartment 306, 638 State Street. Unable to locate the landlord and obtain a key, a quartet of police officers removed the door from its hinges to gain entry.
    Inside, 306 was hot, muggy, and resembled a botanical garden. Spider plants were suspended from hooks in the ceiling, and their umbrella shoots bobbed in the air like green starbursts. Corn plants, ferns, a persimmon tree, and an azalea bush crowded the room. Philodendron and ivy spilled out of clay pots, sending leafy runners across the floor. Hibiscus flowered vermilion and scarlet. Under fluorescent tubes a miniature hothouse of exotic

    flora bloomed in badges of deep color. Because the thermostat registered seventy-nine degrees, the officers, in their police parkas, quickly began to perspire, and on a holiday, when an off-duty cop sweats, he often reeks of booze. One cop flopped on the sofa, dizzy from the severe temperature change and the days consumption of alcohol.
    Two glasses of eggnog had opened his day. The oatmeal his wife prepared for breakfast was washed down by a six-pack of Old Style. A second six got him through the construction of a bicycle he'd bought his daughter for Christmas. More eggnog for lunch. If it hadn't been so cold,