Winter Loon(4)

And there I was again, this time in winter, the loon returned for my mother, who stamped and whirled, arms spanned, head thrown back, a summoning dance to some cold god. I could almost see time lagging behind, unable to catch up with the quick work of a thing bound to happen. The ice groaned and gasped, opened its frozen maw in a hibernated yawn. My mother broke through the teeth of ice like she was dropped from the seat of a dunking machine.

The world sped up around me and, forgetting caution, I ran onto the ice. I dropped to my belly and skittered toward her, reaching, begging her to take my hand. Drunk, stubborn, she kept saying no, that she could do it herself. We were frantic and desperate, pleading with each other, yelling over each other. But the more she grasped, the more ice broke off, until peril set in.

“You have to keep trying,” I said. “Please.”

Her expression calmed, shivers falling from her like shed skin. I peeled my coat off, thinking I’d throw her the sleeve and pull her out.

“You’re all white.” She huffed out breath in frozen bursts. “Like an angel. Like the moon.”

I wrapped one sleeve around my wrist and held the end in my hand. “Grab this!” I tossed the coat and it grazed her fingertips. She didn’t even try to reach for it. The elbow of her other arm chipped at the thin ice, like a second hand ticking time away. “Mom!” I pleaded, tossing the coat again and again. “Mom.”

“Your dad is going to be p-pissed about his s-slippers,” she stammered through chattering teeth.

“I have to go for help then!” I stood, turned my back to her. Where would I go? Not a single light was on. I made for the cabin, calling for help, calling for my father, waiting for a light to flicker on somewhere, for the sound of a voice that was not my own. With her draining strength, she shrieked, begging me not to leave her out there alone. The expanse of ice between us grew and I knew it was too much.

I went back, elbowed my way toward her. The ice shuddered and bent. She shifted her right shoulder and arm toward me, her fingers reaching for mine. We gripped each other’s wrists and for a second there, I thought we were saved. I remember the relief of it, the power even. I’d finally done what my father had asked me to do. I let out my held breath and pulled. But she shifted the balance and pulled back with her left shoulder and down with her right hand, which dragged me closer to the hole she was in. She lurched like she was kicking fiercely under the water. I could see it in her eyes, a familiar intent, a thing hungry and alive. She knew she was done for. And right then, like so many other nights when she made me sleep with her or crawled into my little bed with me, she was afraid to be alone. I let out a cry that raced across the lake as we struggled, fisherman and catch.

I yanked free and she dipped below the waterline, then surfaced, sputtering, bluer than before. She seemed to forget what had happened and focused instead on something behind me, riding in on an arc of clouds. “He’s coming,” she whimpered, reaching for me again though I’d backed farther away. “Please. Don’t leave me.”

I scooted onto my coat and curled up, never taking my eyes off her. The last thing she said to me, I echoed back to her. She was there, then she was not.



A WOMAN ALONE IN THE cabin not far from Charlie Something’s had heard a sound that woke her. She’d sat up in bed, pricked her ears, chalked it up to the wind. That’s what she told the sheriff. Plus, she said, she wasn’t about to go investigating on her own. It was the persistence of the dog that whined to go out in the bare first light of morning, then seeing our cabin door wide open, the thing not right on the lake, that prompted her to call for help. And so I was rescued, though as it came—in the shape of men emerging from the trees, shouting for me to hang on—what I wanted was a do-over. I wanted to see the whole thing again, to rewind, to make it so she wasn’t under the ice, so that we were back in the cabin, so that my dad was there, too, so that they were sober and the fire was stoked, so that beans and a ham hock were cooking in an iron pot on the green stove. But my fierce wanting couldn’t make it so. All I could do was watch the men as they came for me on ice pink with sunrise. Their pace became more urgent as they got closer, realizing, I guess, that I was a boy, alive and alone. They wore uniforms, hats with earflaps tied on top, black boots, tank-colored jackets with a county sheriff patch in the shape of Minnesota. The tall one dragged a yellow sled behind him. The one who kneeled on the ice next to me was stumpy, with wide-set eyes and a runny nose he wiped with his sleeve. He motioned for the tall one to pass him a blanket.

“Hey, there. Hey,” he said, covering my shoulders in dark wool. “It’s okay. I’m the sheriff. We’re here to help.” He patted me all over, up and down, all the way to my socks. “You’re dry. You didn’t go in?”

I shook my head, my mouth clamped shut with guilt.

“What happened here, son? Why are you out here? Where are your folks?”

I closed my eyes and a span of winged sleep engulfed me. In that brief darkness, she was there again, blue and silver in the moonlight, reaching for me.

“What’s your name, son?”

“Wes,” I said, sure of little else. “Wes Ballot.”

Bits of tobacco caught in the tall man’s mustache as he spat on the ice. He crouched next to the sheriff. “Ballot? Your dad Moss Ballot?”

I nodded. “Is he at the cabin?”