Page 56 - WTP Vol.IX #3

Only a few long strides from the hole where they’d found the body bobbing below the ice, two of the men and the boy sit outside of the fishing shack and wait for the deliberation inside to wrap up. A hover- ing quiet rests atop the frozen water, eager for some- one to break it.
Finally, the one with the beard clears his throat. “Cold night. Ice gonna be thick for a while.”
The man wearing the neon Columbia jacket, he’s the cleanest of them all, fresh out of the packaging, shiv- ers out a chuckle. “You know, I heard once that you can set a fire out on a lake like this and it won’t burn through. Have you ever heard of someone trying that? I’d never in my life! Never in my whole life!”
The other two sit still and stare at their feet until he stops. Columbia shivers, teeth chattering. It’s dark and getting colder, and Columbia, he’s not even wear- ing long johns. “How much longer do you think they’ll talk this through?” he asks.
Beard takes off his coat. The sleeve is still wet, and he lays it out like he thinks it might dry that way. He feels his shirt sleeves. They’re wet up to the elbows.
“Find a body under the ice,” he says, “that’s something you think about for a while.”
He turns over a bucket and sets it down, offering it to the boy, small for fourteen, who hides his face in his own miniature version of his father’s Columbia jacket and remains standing. So far he’s kept it together, but he can’t un-see what he’s seen, and a boy can only carry so much. After a few minutes, when no one’s looking, he sits.
“Some night,” says Beard. He folds up the ear flaps on
his hat, revealing thick fur on the undersides. “Ain’t got much time for these kinda nights no more.” He looks at the boy. “Maybe not since I’s your age.”
The boy lifts his head and tries to smile, but the dark- ness and his scarf conceal his effort.
Beard’s sleeves hug his elbows in a tight bunch. When he rubs his hands together, it sounds like sand- paper.
“Your uncle thought ice-fishin’d be an adventure for you city folk,” says Beard. “This what you thought you’s gettin’ into when you come up all this way?”
“I’m not from the city,” says the boy.
“Not too far from the city,” says Columbia. He smiles like he’s trying to be polite. “Probably looks a lot more like a city than anything you folks have up here.”
No one looks over. Not even the boy.
Beard looks through the small plexiglass window in the door of the shack. Inside, the oldest one says something that makes the one in all orange put his hands on his head and take a deep breath.
Beard huffs as he walks to one of the holes in the ice. He pulls a tip-up from the hole, scoops some fresh
ice from the water with a skimmer and flings it to the snow. Two, three scoops before he puts the tip-up back and returns to the shack, holding the skimmer out to Columbia.
“You better clear your spot if’n you think you gonna catch somethin’.” Beard slides a bucket across from the boy and sits down.
Columbia looks at his son with eyes that seem to ask permission before he grabs the skimmer and trudges away.
Aside from the crunching of snow under distant boots, the lake is silent. Nothing wanders out when it’s this cold. Nothing but fishermen.
“You sit quietly enough, you can hear the fish,” says Beard. “Right down in the water. This time-a-night they like to slap right up against the bottom of the ice, trynna come up outta the cold.”
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Fire on Ice
Kevin loughRin