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He insists over her doubts that it will be a fine spring weekend, the first truly fine one after the long, rough winter. But by the time they reach the cabin it is snowing hard. The snow has begun as sharp, fine crystals, turned into styrofoam-like pellets, and ended up as steady, heavy flakes.
“The multiple kinds of snow,” he says, “that the Eskimos each have a different name for. That’s an interesting study, linguistics. I should go back to school and become a linguist.”
She says nothing.
The cabin is stripped bare. Everything gone except the andirons in the fireplace. The andirons, and on the hearth the want ads and Trends section from last November’s newspaper.
“Well, at least they left us the paper and those things,” he says. “What do you call them?”
“Andirons,” she says.
“And-irons. I guess they were too heavy to bother with.”
They dig in the snow for deadfall, but the snow is already deep and the deadfall is hard to find. He breaks easy-to-reach dead branches off trees for kindling.
“Here,” she says, kneeling at the hearth. “Give me the paper. Let me do it.”
He gives her the want ads first. “Never did me much 400d,” he says. “You get there and they’ve already had 300 applicants for the one position.”
She tears the sheets into strips and crumples the strips into little balls which she places strategically under the kindling.
Now he is reading the Trends section. “’Why Things Are.’ You ever read that column?”
“Nope.”
“The first question here goes, ‘Why is urine yellow?’ Good question. Let’s see, it talks about bilirubin, ‘a yellow pigment found in bile and urine...’ Hey, I knew little Billy Rubin in third grade! A jaundiced, pissed-off little kid...”
He looks up at her to see if she is smiling, but she’s blowing on the paper to keep it going.
“Give me some more,” she says, reaching her hand back.
“Okay,” he says. “Here goes ‘Why Things Are.’”
She tears the paper, crumples it, blows. He says:
“Actually, I’ve got something better than that.”
She turns. “What.”
“For emergencies,” he says. He digs in his pack. He produces a large, flat bottle of slivovitz. A third of it’s gone already. “Isn’t this an emergency? Flambe them logs.”
She turns back to the fire and blows. He takes a drink. The fire catches.
“It’s the andirons,” he says. “Brings the oxygen up underneath. Oxygen’s a poison in high concentrations, and an explosive too. But it’s also necessary for life. How does that grab you?”
He takes another long pull and begins to sing:
Love is like oxygen
You get too much, you get too high
Not enough and you’re gonna die...
He looks out the window at the snow. “Why Things Are. Well, I’ve got some questions for the man. One: why doesn’t snow ever come down in major chunks? Get packed together up there somewhere and come smashing down in big, huge snowballs and get it over with? why those slow, gentle flakes? Two: why does water freeze from the top down? That I’d like to know. Doesn’t it get colder the deeper you go?”
“I’ve got one,” she says. “How come an ant can carry forty times its weight and some humans can’t even carry their own weight?”
“That’s a good one,” he says, nodding soberly. “That’s a very good question. Hey,” he says, “that’s a good fire. Those andirons. Gee they look heavy. what are they, anyway? What does the design represent?”
“That looks like a fleur-de-lis on top,” she says.
“Fleur-de-lis. That doesn’t seem right, for an andiron.”
He stares into the fire. “Oh shit. Oh shit. l think I’ve got it. An andiron factory.”
“An andiron factory,” she repeats slowly.
“With gag andirons! Say, like a pair of fireman with big hats: the bars that hold the wood could be shaped like hoses. Or a couple of steelworkers, with those poles they use to feed the furnaces. Or welders, complete with little masks made of fire-resistant glass. It’ll be great! All we need is our own forge, a little foundry.”
“A little foundry,” she says.
“You bet! How about this: a pair of witches stirring cauldrons.”
“The cauldrons could be hollow,” she says. “You could fill them with toddies or the hot drink of your choice, and the fire would keep them hot.”
“There you go.” His gaze rolls down at her like a rearing horse’s as he tilts his head back for another slug.
“Two dragons,” he says, wiping his chin. “Also hollow. Their mouths wide open, you can see the flames and smoke inside them.”
He leans over and breathes fire-air into her face. She pushes him away and he loses his balance and collapses, with a laugh, against the pile of damp firewood.
She turns back to the fire. “Phoenixes,” she says. “Rising from the ashes.”
“Hey! Right there’s the name of our firm: Phoenix Andiron Go. I love you, baby.” He thrusts the bottle at her. “Toast?”
She ignores him.
“Bosnia’s best,” he shrugs, and drinks.
The snow cracks a branch outside like gunfire. She gets up and walks to the door. He grabs her ankle.
“Naked guys with hard-ons,” he growls, “big old iron hard-ons sticking into the hot, hot fire...”
She pushes him back with her booted foot, leaving a broken waffle of dirty snow on his warm throat. “Goddamnit, Stephen, I’ve got to get more wood!”
He staggers to his feet. His throat and his face and his brain are on fire. He stumbles to the door of the cabin and tries to help her push, but already the drifting snow has sealed it shut.
