The Iceman Cometh to the Desert
Keeping Tabs Weekly, Summer, 2015
In Death Valley is a dead man, frozen in ice.
On a day when the temperature climbed to over 127°F, the frozen man’s companion, a woman, dragged herself out of the locker where they were both kept and into the desert. She left a trail of water that evaporated in mere hours, a trail that ended at her bones, drying beneath a blazing sun.
At least, that’s the story Johan Spitz tells to those who find his store in the literal middle of nowhere: the Devil’s Arcade off of Badwater Road in the Mojave Desert.
His store has no electricity. Yet his best-selling product requires it.
Unless…
I Scream, You Scream
Frozen people have long been an urban legend, perhaps inspired by an estimated 200 frozen climbers on Mt. Everest’s “Rainbow Valley” route just below the mountain’s summit or maybe by the over 500 people who have chosen cryopreservation, including famed baseball player Ted Williams (but not, despite the tall tales, Walt Disney). Or maybe the legend was sparked by
Johan Spitz won’t say where he found the frozen couple he brought to the Devil’s Arcade. He won’t say when, either.
But he will say why he brought them.
“They radiate cold,” he confides to listeners who stop for warm water or sunscreen in the small, ramshackle store with a faded image of a devil playing pinball gracing its entrance. The air starts freezing as you get near them. They’re cold snaps shaped like people.”
But as many a customer, caught up in the story of the frozen people, has asked: So?
“So,” Spitz says, “I can sell ice cream in the middle of the desert because I have a walk-in freezer-locker kept cold by the frozen people.”
Or, in this case, by a frozen person, he notes. One of them decided she would rather be thawed than support 82 flavors of ice cream with names like Mojave Java, Badwater Taffy, and Frozen Explosion.
“I came in one morning, and she was just gone,” Spitz explains. “The door to the locker was open. Blaine was still inside, but he’d changed positions. He used to be seated, like that statue of the guy who’s thinking. That morning, Blaine was just standing with his face in his frozen hands.”
Neither Blaine (named for magician David Blaine, who froze himself in a block of ice for over sixty hours in Times Square, New York City, and survived) nor Jean (named for Jean Hilliard, the teen who survived being frozen alive for six hours in sub-zero temperatures in 1980) had ever shown signs of life before, according to Spitz.
Frozen Fugitive
“She went right down that way,” Spitz says, pointing to nowhere in particular in the rocky desert landscape. “I saw the water trail. But the sun was coming up fast, and that water was evaporating. I hurried as best as I could, but by the time I found Jean, she was nothing but a puddle and bones.”
He claims he had no idea there might be living beings inside those frozen shapes, so it never crossed his mind that they might decide to simply walk away one day.
“If my shop was in Anchorage, she might’ve been fine to decide she was leaving—if it was December. But July in Death Valley?” Spitz scoffs. “At least Frosty the Snowman knew what was gonna happen in that greenhouse. Jean must’ve been quite surprised.”
As for Blaine, Spitz says the frozen man changed his stance again a few weeks after Jean vanished. “Now he just stands rigid, like a soldier at attention, but his head’s turned toward the door to the locker. I kind of think he’s watching to see if she’ll come back.”
Cold as Ice
When asked for a glimpse of his frozen friend, however, Spitz insists he won’t allow it. Blaine, he says, is a treasure to be guarded and protected, a unique find. Instead, Spitz passes around a grainy photograph of what appears to be a man standing vigil in a gloomy freezer unit of ice cream.
“He wouldn’t smile,” he says with a twinkle in his eye. “What can I say? He’s a frigid man. So, I just snapped this picture and left him to chill out.”
It sounds rehearsed, but the few patrons stopping in the Devil’s Arcade before venturing out to take their own photos in Death Valley seem entertained. When pressed about the frozen man’s actual existence, however, Spitz shakes his head and brings out his number-one seller.
“Here, try some Times Square Pear,” he says, handing out free cones topped with ice cream. “Refrigerated by old-cold Blaine himself.”