Chapter 5: Ice

"I signed an order that turned off a safety lock on a conveyor belt," Cal told the boy.

"A man named Ray got hurt because of it."

The boy didn't blink.

"Did you mean to?"

"No. But I knew the lock was off, and I let it stay off."

"That's worse," the boy said.

"Yes," Cal said. "It is."

The boy thought about it, nodded once, and walked to the bags without another word.

Cal stayed crouched for a few seconds with his hands hanging between his knees.

Frank clapped twice and said, "Line up, you animals," and the room started breathing again.

I went and stood by the desk so no one would see my face.

I'd expected Cal to lie, or to dress it up.

He had given the kid the exact sentence and had not tried to make it smaller.

I wrote the time on the sheet with a hand that wasn't quite steady.

Three weeks went by in a rhythm of five a.m. and mops.

He learned to wring the mop, to wrap his own hands, and to throw a jab that didn't ask permission.

Ray came every Thursday, and Cal worked at the far end of the gym every Thursday.

The two men never spoke.

On the third Friday in November, the ice came.

It started at three in the afternoon as a gray drizzle.

By six it was a glaze on every wire and every branch on Fairview Street.

The junior class went home early with their parents' cars sliding at the curb.

Frank left at seven, white-knuckled behind the wheel of his old Buick.

At seven-fifteen there was a crack outside, and every light in the building went out.

"That'll be a transformer," I said into the dark.

"Or a tree."

"Or a tree. Don't move, you'll hit the ring."

I found the headlamps in the supply closet by feel.

I clicked one on and set it on Cal's forehead, and the beam lit up his face from below.

He looked like a man being interrogated by a fifteen-year-old with a flashlight.

I put one on myself and went up to the roof hatch to check the skylight tarp.

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