A Cold War by Russell Alan

Author:Russell, Alan [Russell, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781503945807
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2015-10-05T16:00:00+00:00

“What poem is that?” she asked.

Baer didn’t answer for several seconds. Nina knew if she hadn’t interrupted him, he would have recited the poem in its entirety. It was almost as if he fell into a trance during its telling.

“It’s ‘The Cremation of Sam McGee,’” he finally said.

“Who wrote it?”

“Robert Service,” he said. “I suppose he wasn’t a poet you studied at Harvard.”

Nina didn’t correct him to say that she’d gone to Smith. Nor did she tell Baer that he was probably right about her college not having taught the poetry of this Robert Service. Her alma mater had its standards, and doggerel wouldn’t count as poetry worthy of study.

“I’ve never heard of him.”

“Harvard failed you.”

Terrence had gone to Harvard. She was willing to bet her fiancé had never heard of Robert Service or his poem, either. Baer was looking at her, awaiting her response. Nina regretted having engaged him in conversation and said nothing.

“The poem speaks to the north. You think I give a shit about a Grecian urn?”

Nina was surprised that Baer was even able to make that reference. It wouldn’t do for her to underestimate him. He presented himself as lacking in book smarts, but he wasn’t ignorant. No, he was cunning and all too observant. It would be at her peril if she forgot that about her enemy.

“The poem is about one man’s death,” said Baer, “and another man’s making good on a vow. Didn’t Shakespeare write about those kinds of things?”

“But this Sam McGee dies,” said Nina, “and then he’s cremated, and in the middle of his ostensibly being burned to ashes, he requests the door be closed so as to keep the cold out.”

“You ever cremate anyone?”

Nina’s head recoiled in surprise: “Of course not.”

“It’s not as easy as you’d think.”

“You’ve cremated someone?”

“Three people,” he said.

“Or three and a third,” he added enigmatically.

“How did that come about?”

“They died.”

“Who died?”

“Why are you so fired up to know?”

Baer seemed proud of his pun, or maybe he was just using it to try to deflect her questions.

“I don’t think most people in this world have cremated one person,” she said, “let alone three and a third.”

Baer added some fuel to the stove fire and took his time before replying. “The first person was my mother,” he said.

“Your mother?”

“Father wasn’t pleased when she skipped out without telling him.”

“He killed her?”

“She took a bad fall, he said.”

“How terrible that must have been for you.”

“It was her choice to take off. It was her choice to abandon her own flesh and blood.”

Those sounded like his father’s words, thought Nina. “How old were you?”

“Eight, I suppose.”

“I am sorry.”

“I wasn’t the one who was cremated.”

Nina wasn’t so sure.

“It’s not easy to build a pyre that does the job,” he said. “I helped my father pile up wood waist-high, but that still wasn’t enough. For a body to burn to ashes, you need a blazing heat that lasts for hours. The fuel ran out before she did, but it was so hot we couldn’t approach anywhere near to where her body was, so we had to toss the logs from ten, twelve feet away.

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