Winter Loon(5)

The sheriff hesitated, tugged the matted fur on his coat collar. “Let’s get him loaded up. Ambulance ought to be here soon. Careful there,” he said. “Ice looks thin.”

The tall man stood and pulled the sled up next to me, skirting the busted-up ice. “Your dad’s back in town. He leave you out here by yourself?”

“My mom.”

“What about your mom? Where is she?”

I could feel the truth foaming in the sting beneath my tongue, thickening, lining the inside of my cheeks. “The ice, it took her.” Saying the words turned my mouth cold.

“Ah Christ,” the tall man said. He unclipped the radio from his belt and turned away.

The sheriff sat back on his boots and pinched the bridge of his thick nose. “What happened out here, son?”

I would spend a good bit of time, years, trying to understand it myself, how I ended up out there, how we got to Bright Lake in the first place, what kind of people I’d sprung from, what kind of person I might be. In the moment, I had no answer. The men maneuvered me onto the padded sled. “You can’t leave her here. You have to find her,” I begged. They could only apologize, looking at me like men who knew there was nothing they could do.

As our tiny caravan made toward land, the contours of ice creaked and shivered over my tailbone and up my spine. I craned my neck for one last look, but all I could see was empty sky.





CHAPTER 2

AT THE HOSPITAL, doctors pumped me full of warm liquid, checked my toes and fingers for frostbite. Nurses wrapped me in blankets and gave me hot sweet drinks. They told me how lucky I was I didn’t freeze to death. But my mother’s face, chicory blue, was all I could see. I didn’t feel lucky. When they asked me questions, I turned away. What words I had I’d used up.

When my father finally showed, he stood in the doorway, fingers plowing through his brown hair, yanking the roots, knotting the truth into his brain. “Jesus, Wes,” he said. “What the hell happened?” He threw his coat in a chair, then laid his sour body across mine. The seeping stink of woodsmoke and booze smothered me. I wanted to latch onto him and throw him off at the same time. He pushed breaths out in quick huffs and his chest heaved against my ribs. He was not one to cry, and made fun of me when I did, but I could tell he was fighting tears. He lifted off me, stubbed his calloused hand from his nose, over the scrub of haywire whiskers around his mouth, down to his neck.

“They tell you about Mom?” The words, tiny and clipped, sniveled out of me.

“They told me.”

I could feel my face cinching down as I remembered the unanswered cries for help. “Where were you?”

“I got here as soon as I could.”

“No. Last night. You didn’t come back.”

He dragged a chair across the linoleum floor and sat down. “You try to pull her out?” he asked, changing the subject.

“The ice kept breaking.” The tears came then, along with the rest. “She had such a tight hold . . . She almost . . . I almost went in with her.”

“What were you two doing out there?”

I started to tell him about the loon, but that wasn’t it. Not really. The reason she wanted to go was because she had a wild hair, and the wild hair was because she was drunk, and she was drunk because of him, because you can’t really live in a cabin in the winter with no television and no books and three people to play poker and only bourbon for good company without picking a fight to give you something to do.

“How come you won’t tell me where you were? You told her you were leaving. Where’d you go?”

My father folded over and made an animal sound. “Got in some trouble. Spent the night in town.” He looked up, his eyes bleary and bloodshot.

“What kind of trouble?”

“Jail, okay, Wes? I spent the night in jail. And you spent the night blubbering out there instead of going for help? Why didn’t you go for help, huh?”

“She was scared to be alone.”

“Well, she sure as fuck’s alone now, isn’t she?” He stood, walked to the window, stretched spread-eagle, hands against the scratched glass, prepared for frisking. His head dropped. “Fuck,” he said, turning to me. “I’m sorry, Little. I didn’t mean that. It’s not your fault.”

“You should have come back.”

He scrubbed at his face, removing war paint, the battle lost. “Lots of things I should have done.”

We heard familiar voices at the same time—my grandmother, Ruby, cursing in the corridor, demanding attention, and my grandfather, Gip, telling her to quiet down. I could picture them out there, Ruby with her arms folded high on her chest, her dentures clicking as she talked. She would be wearing a housedress, I knew. I’d only ever seen her in that or the high pants and buttoned shirt she wore to the chicken farm where she worked. And Gip, he’d be behind her, his big head tilted forward, eyes canopied under his protruding brow and forehead like a bull ready to charge.

“Great,” my father said, pulling a can of Skoal from his back pocket and tucking a dip into his cheek.

“You look like shit, Moss.” That was the first thing Ruby said to my father when she walked in. “Suppose it makes sense.” My father and Gip shook hands and touched each other awkwardly. Something about that looked false to me, men behaving in a way they thought they ought to, though I knew from experience they were not friends. Ruby headed straight for me. She sat down and put a twitching hand to her chest. Her tired eyes were rubbed red. She reeked of smoke.