Page 58 - WTP Vol.IX #3

Fire on Ice (continued from preceding page)
Columbia snaps another picture. He looks into his phone and uses his fingers to expand the image, whispering something to himself. Beard looks over as Columbia sticks the handle of the skimmer down into the water to give the body a good poke.
“Get away from that hole, City,” Beard says, standing up from his bucket.
“Got a shot of his face. Got a good one.” He smiles and points the screen back at Beard.
“You take another one, I’ll drop that phone down to the bottom-a-da lake.”
Columbia’s smile wilts as he puts the phone in his pocket and walks to another hole.
Beard sits back down and scuffs the ice with his boot. The boy’s knee bobs up and down and his head shakes back and forth to the same rhythm.
“Ya, there’s fish in there. Heard a buddy got a big one last week. Says he got’er right around here.” He spits a few shells.
“Hopin’ we get something good sized. Send something home wit’ you’s.”
The boy’s foot keeps thumping.
Someone inside the fishing shack bellows a laugh. Beard stands up and looks through the window. The boy shakes his head again and closes his eyes tight as the door of the shack opens up.
“Okay,” says the old one as he walks out into the cold. “Kid, you want to step inside, warm up a bit?”
“He’s okay. He’s tough,” says Beard.
Columbia scurries across the ice with quick, choppy steps so as not to slip. “What’s the word, gentlemen?” he asks.
“Well,” says All-Orange, “I s’pose ain’t nuttin’ we can do. Can’t get’m out. And we won’t get a cell reception to let nobody know ’til we’re back closer to town.”
Columbia pulls his hand out of his pocket just long enough to pat the boy on the shoulder. “So I guess we pack it up then?”
All-Orange grabs a steel thermos and a rattling tackle- box out of the shack. “Still gonna be fish out there tomorrow.”
“Ain’t gonna be around tomorrow to catch’em,” says 51
Beard. “City and his boy head out in the mornin’.”
Columbia, empty bucket in hand, scoffs as he scurries towards the nearest tip-up, pulls the ice-covered line from the water, and clunks it down into the bucket. His sudden determination is that of a man with an expertise in the field of calling it a day.
“He don’t wanna stay,” says All-Orange.
“I’ll stay out.” The boy’s voice sounds funny and high pitched and he knows it. “I’m not that cold,” he says, but a little deeper.
Columbia makes his way back to the shack and drops the bucket full of tip-ups down to the ice. “We’re not staying out here.” He hasn’t said anything that sound- ed like he meant it all night. Now he has. “It’s 11:45 already, we all have to get some sleep.”
Beard crunches a seed in his black molars. “I didn’t invite my mother out here and if I knew you was gonna act like her I wouldn’t’ve invited you.” The
boy hides a smile by pretending to tie his shoe. “Boy says he wants some fish he can take home with him, I s’pose we fish till we got some to send.”
“He doesn’t want to stay—”
“Dad!” A perfect mix of volume and tone. His father gives him a look, but says nothing.
The old one emerges from the shack with a tacklebox in one hand, an ice fishing pole in the other. “Let ‘em stay,” he says. He laughs a bit and wanders off in the direction of the shore, mumbling. “He wants to freeze his ass off, let’m stay.”
All-Orange looks from the boy to Columbia. “I’s gonna ask if someone wanted to stay out if’n the police make their way out here before the sun comes up, anyway. I’s gonna call ‘em before we got home.”