Glacial pace

Lorencz the Hermit's wedding gift for $erena and Hasky

by Sally Cragin

Illustration by Lennie Peterson

The unseasonable weather means Lorencz the Hermit can spend more time reading than foraging for food or fuel. Literature is strewn across the floor of the wheel-less yellow schoolbus: issues of the Tritown Bugle dating back to the Civil War, old US Geological Survey bulletins, Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West, A Kayak Full of Ghosts -- Eskimo Tales, and An Evening Among Headhunters by Lawrence Millman, Uncle Wilton's weather diaries, and dog-eared editions of Thoreau.

When not befuddled by mushroom ingestion, Lorencz has a keen mind. And he is bothered by the bizarre December warmth. Surely tepid weather around the winter solstice couldn't be blamed on the hole in the ozone. But is it a harbinger of the next glacial period?

About a thousand years ago, Greenland was truly a "green land," and Eric the Red had persuaded fellow Norse to found a colony. Yet an event known as "the little ice age" that lasted from 1000 to 1300 had wiped them out. One day, Lorencz read, the settlers had woken up to a world of ice. With no local wood, there were no boats; but who could travel on frozen seas?

Lorencz realizes that climactic change occurs suddenly, and when a glacier is due, you don't measure a 20th of a degree over hundreds of years. Instead, add up the amount of cold weather and factor in shorter, colder summers. Ice cores from the Greenland ice cap show that glaciation has been preceded by wild fluctuations in temperature over thousands of years. A close reading of Uncle Wilton's and Thoreau's diaries took a more local view of weather patterns. Usually there was a hard frost toward the end of October. Yet this year, two months later, Tritown is still waiting for the freeze. In December, birds that were silent in September chirp confused melodies, and flowers continue to bloom. If that doesn't tell you something about climate change . . .

While guests drive to the VFW and Bowladrome for Hasky Tarbox and $erena the Waitress's testimonial, one lone figure walks carefully down Main Street, intent on arrival. Big Teresa and Little Terry have been baking for a week, and the ladies from All Faiths (formerly the Congo-Metho-Presby-Baps) have stirred vats of three-bean salad. He still has fond memories of the notorious seven-bean salad church supper, but they are edged out by his persistent refrain: "Interglacial warming period."

One reluctant guest, Hollis the Mountain Man, is already inside. Now he isn't put off by the message on the marquee: SMOKRS WELCME. He isn't even wary about a possible donnybrook between the bullet-shaped Leblancs and the lanky, bony Levesques. It is the prospect of having to socialize that put him on edge.

And then Hollis sees his oldest friend, Delia Ellis Bell the Partial Yankee (there was a questionable great-great-grandmother), dancing happily with Whitey Leblanc (of Leblanc Brothers Salvage which has more junk than the Yangtze River). She looks so -- well, different. Her straight brown hair had been curled by $erena's hair-dressing cousins, her pale-yellow frock gleams under the function room's dim lights, and her expression is not the usual moue, of distaste whenever she is in proximity of Whitey. The scourge of the skating pond, who'd teased her mercilessly all through grade school, is waltzing her around.

Queasy and confused, Hollis finds a folding chair at a long table covered with green crepe paper. He is glad he has a plate of three-bean salad and a bottle of beer -- for the past two weeks, he'd been down to homebrew, and homebrew is what you drink when you have to stay home. He is barely conscious of anyone else in the room as he eats and drinks hastily. Only when the bottle is nearly empty, does he look up again.

A large, redheaded woman in a purple flounced gown seated at the other end of the table meets his gaze. "Hungry?" she asks.

Hollis nods, and reaches for his beer. "Have mine," says his table companion. "Ricky Levesque bought it for me, and I hate Bud," she says.

Beer and a conversational opening! Hollis takes both. "You related to the Levesques?" he asks.

The redhead laughs. "Ricky's my cousin," she says, gesturing toward the floor. "I'm Nancy, and we're all Levesques, except for the Leblancs from up north, but some of them are Levesques." She laughs again. "It's complicated."

And then Hollis feels a tap on his shoulder. Delia yanks out the chair next to him and sinks into it. "Didn't you see me waving at you?" she asks. Hollis draws back his shoulders. Jeez, Delia can have a loud voice. "I was dyin' out there," she says, taking a swig of his beer. "Didn't you get my Vulcan mind-meld? Like H-E-L-P?"

Hollis is puzzled. He thought she was having a fine time in the arms of Whitey Leblanc. Sure, Whitey is nearly a head shorter than he is, but slinging all those dead fridges around probably built up his muscles. And didn't women like that?

"Hollis," Delia huffs. "That was, like, three songs in a row I was held hostage. What is with you?" She hands back his beer, and says, "I need a refill," before flouncing off.

Redheaded Nancy watchs this exchange with amusement. "That's not a very nice way to treat your girlfriend," she says.

Hollis mumbles. "She's not my girlfriend."

Nancy lowers her chin and leans forward. A smile creeps across her freckled face. "Oh, really . . ." she purrs.

Lorencz the Hermit has providentially lined his pockets with plastic bags, and within moments his tux bulges discreetly with purloined food. Those church ladies sure can cook, but then he remembers he has something to tell the crowd. The DJ takes a break, and Lorencz darts to his table. A piercing shriek of feedback fills the room, and Lorencz speaks:

"I just wanted to tell Hasky and $erena what a good thing it is that they're finally getting married after so many years of, well, whatever it was." Scattered applause bursts across the room. "I also came here to say that I've figured out what's going on with the weird weather."

Some people recognize Lorencz, and there is a movement to remove him, but the word "weather" provoked respectful silence. Everyone in Tritown is obsessed with the weather -- some gleeful, like the gardeners thrilled at free blooms, others woeful, like the plowmen, cheated of income. "It's an interglacial warming period," Lorencz tells. "We can expect another glacier soon."

A gasp sweeps the room. "By this time next year," Lorencz continues, "we could all be wading through several feet of snow and wondering what happened."

"But it's so warm!" a Levesque yells drunkenly.

"Sure," says Lorencz, his voice echoing weirdly through the microphone. "Now it's warm, but wild pendulum swings between extreme heat and cold are typical of weather patterns before a glacier. Our last glacial period was the Wurm," he says, gingerly tapping his pocket to make sure the plastic bag still held its cargo of three-bean salad. "That ended 10,000 years ago, so we're in the Mid-Wisconsinian Interstadial. I've been analyzing accounts of temperature fluctuations, and I'm convinced a glacier is on its way."

Lorencz puts down the microphone and slowly shuffles to the door. But there is one table he missed. The ladies of Tritown were prodigious bakers, and he pauses at a table laden with gingerbread and divinity, coffee cake and yule logs, snickerdoodles and pecan sandies. His eyes sparkle like icicles on the eaves at noon.

At a back table, Nancy Levesque shivers and moves closer to Hollis. "Glaciers, wow," she says.

"Yeah," says Hollis, not wanting to admit that Lorencz is his nearest neighbor. "Well, ya never know," he replies.

"Guess not," says Nancy. "But that still gave me the chills." Then, she leans so close that he could feel his cheek redden under the heat of her breath. "Know anyplace warm?" she whispers.

Sally Cragin thinks that everything she ever lost is under a glacier somewhere.

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