Page 62 - WTP Vol.IX #3

Fire on Ice (continued from preceding page)
pretty good sized, but the boy pants like he’s pulled in a mythical sea monster, something he’s only read about in storybooks. And Beard supposes that’s not so far from the truth.
The fish flops on the ice and the boy looks scared, like he did when he lit the fire. Beard picks the fish up
by the gills and pulls the hook. The boy reaches for a gill with two fingers, but the fish flaps his tail and the boy pulls his hand back. He reaches again, this time threading the gills with his index and middle fingers. “Is that right? Is that how to do it?”
As the boy lifts the fish off Beard’s fingers, Beard watches the stranger, who’s stopped, fixated on the shack and the fire, frozen in his tracks. Counting it out.
“Not bad for a city kid, eh?” says Beard. The boy ex- tends the fish out toward the stranger and the words break the man out of his stare. Beard smiles and the stranger smiles back, turns, and walks away.
“Is that the cops?” says the boy. Not loud, but when Beard looks, he thinks he sees the man hesitate be- fore taking another step toward the shore.
“No,” says Beard. “Just a guy saw the fire, figured on makin’ sure we’s okay.”
The boy holds the fish up and uses his other arm to measure it, but the bend of the fish changes too quickly. He tries to get closer and closer to the fish’s bared teeth; it’s like something out of a horror movie. A swamp monster or a dinosaur.
They walk back to the fire and the boy drops the fish into a bucket. The fish’s tail drums against the plastic. “That’s a big walleye,” says Beard, but the boy has already run to another tip-up. All the other flags are down, but he skims the ice and checks the tension on the line just to be sure.
Beard tosses another log on the fire. A skeletal ver- sion of the log cabin structure remains, but when he drops the log on top, the bones crumble, the fire crackles and pops.
Beard sits down on a bucket and the boy sits down too. The boy studies the finned creature. He reaches his hand down and touches the fish on occasion, and eventually both boy and fish quit flinching when startled by the other.
“Can he breathe like this?” says the boy. “Outta the water? No.”
“His gills are moving. Like he’s breathing.”
“Well he ain’t,” says Beard. He smiles at the boy.
The boy doesn’t smile back. He looks shocked, like he had no idea that’s how this would end. “Does it hurt?”
“Dyin’? I s’pose it does.”
The boy’s foot starts to bob again, his arms hug his chest. The fish slaps against the bucket, but the boy can’t get himself to look, not now. Still, he stays close and keeps a hand on the bucket the whole time.
“Don’t get many nights better’n this,” says Beard, eyes up at the stars. “Not many nights all year long.” He grabs for the thermos, nestled into the snow by his seat, and pours himself a cupful. “Quiet, clear, fish bitin’. Not too bad at all.”
Beard looks over to the shore. The man in the vest, he’s watching them both, standing a few feet off the lake.
The boy pays no mind to the shore. Nor to the fish. Not even to the hole with the body floating under- neath. His eyes are fixed on the fire and the things inside falling apart, the frozen lake beneath somehow holding it all up.
“Do you think we’ll catch any more?” asks the boy.
“Might,” says Beard. He looks to the shore again. The stranger is gone.
Hours pass without another word. The boy checks the tip-ups less and less frequently. He trusts the flags
to tell him if there’s work to be done. At four o’clock, the boy goes for more firewood. One more load is all they’ll need before the stars fade away and the blue glow of the snow bleeds into the sky. Soon the dark- ness gives way to the soft light and, in a long moment, it’s morning.
And there’s no telling when one day becomes the next. No telling when night ends and morning begins. It just changes without telling anyone. Falling asleep, a clock striking twelve, makes a man think that it’s clearer than that, but every night is the same and it never is.
The thumping in the plastic bucket has faded as well. The fish stopped fighting a while ago, but there’s no telling how long he’s been dead. All the boy knows for sure is that he is now.
When All-Orange comes back out onto the ice, he’s wearing a black coat now, the gear is already packed, and the boy is standing with his hands in his pockets
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