On The Ice

CHISAGO COUNTY PRESS, 10/26/89

SCRIBE’S CORNER, pg. 1 – B Section

                                                                                                    On The Ice

                                                                                               by Jeffrey B. Smith

                    Leroy had felt like this, exactly like this, once before. Though that was nearly 45 years ago and he (deliberately) had not thought about it much since then, he was feeling the same way now.        

                    That time long ago, he’d been lying in a foxhole in Germany. Like now it had been dark as death and just as silent. And like now he’d had an overpowering urge to bolt -– to just flat- out light–out. He had kept that desire at bay, 45 years ago, and morning had come.

                    That is just what he intended to do now. Wait it out. Morning will come, and there was no way he was going to go out there on the ice tonight. Because, like in Germany, he sensed there was nowhere to run – except to a certain death. At least now he was in familiar, even comfortable, surroundings.

                    Again he stood up and scratched a hole in the frost on the window pane. He squinted through towards where Charlie had been fishing. Nothing had changed. Charlie’s lantern stood there faithfully, still set upon an overturned bucket and still casting a yellow circle on the ice. The other bucket, the one Charlie had been sitting on, was still waiting for Charlie’s return.

                    But maybe something had changed. The lantern’s light seemed to be diminishing, as if it were slowly being strangled by the dark. And he could no longer discern that shape he had seen before. It had been out there on the ice just beyond the fringe of lantern light. Leroy had desperately attempted to explain that shape to himself, tried to account for it somehow, but it was useless. And he refused to honor his suspicions.

                    He put his cheek to the glass, trying to see the shoreline. No lights.  Even out here, six miles on these mudflats, one could easily see the highway traffic and lights on shore Now  there wasn’t a trace of even that big strobe beacon at Tiny’s where they drove on. Even through crummy weather you cold see that baby. It reminded Leroy of someone taking flashbulb pictures over and over again. It left stains on you eyeballs if you looked at it directly and, he thought, it made the people leaving the tavern, or just walking across the parking lot, look like they were in one of those old-time flickery movies.

                    He craned a look up at the sky and the stars were blotted out too. It was crystal clear when they had driven on. It was like a huge dark fist was slowly clenching about him.

                    He looked towards Charlie’s spot. Charlie rarely surrendered to the comforts of Leroy’s fishhouse. Only the most adverse conditions could drive Charlie inside. And there were few nights that would keep the two of them off the lake. Their movements were closely monitored by other fisherman and, in some circles, Leroy and Charlie enjoyed an almost legendary status.

                    A splintering crack came slicing in from the far distance. One of those rending shifts in the living ice that bear rifle out of the distance high pitched and then thunder by like a hell-bound train. The kind that gives first-time fishermen the bug-eyed jitters out here on the big lake. It ripped by Leroy’s fishhouse shattering and receding into the silent stretches of that trackless slab.

                    “You old fool,” Leroy muttered to himself.

                    He sat down heavily upon his own upturned bucket and, from years of habit, scanned his lines. “No!” he gasped. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly and clenched his fists upon his thighs. He was NOT going to look down there again.

                    Really he had no lines left to check. One line was a tangled mess at his feet. It had remained that way since his last fish. A big eelpout, that one. He was finessing the hook out when Jupe went crazy on him. Leroy always fiddled with hook removal, even on the eelpouts, which had an inimitable way of swallowing a hook to the depths of their loathsome souls.

                    Charlie, on the other hand, had a different method. He’s step one boot on the fish’s tail while pulling on the line. The, with his other huge sorrel, he’d stomp mightily upon the midsection of the fish and his hook would appear (Along with just about everything else that was inside the fish) on the ice.

                    “The oooonly way to fly!” was his patented refrain after this maneuver, and Leroy would keep a secret record of Charlie’s action by that familiar jingle.

                    Well, Jupe had gone crazy, barking and feverishly scratching at the door while Leroy fumbled with that disgusting eelpout. When he had freed his hook, he booted the door open and Jupe charged out on the ice. He had looked over at Charlie’s spot and was about to belt out his standard line, “Stackin’ ‘em up like cordwood!” (Indeed, there was truth to that statement. If an aerial spy photograph could be taken of any area the two of them had been working, it would reveal a patch of ice littered with the remains of discarded rough fish fanning out in spokes from the holes they had used.)

                    Leroy’s words had caught in his throat, however. Charlie had vanished but it’s what happened to Jupe that left Leroy mute. Old Jupe had shrieked, there was a crushing, crunching thump and then all was silence and dark.

                    Leroy had turned in Jupe’s direction but, except for this own shadow in the pale square of light spilling through the  open doorway, there was nothing to be seen. Transfixed, eyes wide, ears ringing, he had stood there, nostrils flaring tiny clouds of vapor into the still air.

                    The eelpout, still in his grip, writhed suddenly and Leroy looked down at it with horror, as if it were something that had materialized in his hand from some foreign and bizarre dimension. He threw it down and retreated into the fishhouse.

                    Then too he had looked automatically at the remaining line. He watched as the float toppled onto its side like a felled redwood. When he later braved an inspection, he found the line had been severed at a point just below the foot of the hole, at the bottom level of the ice. He then had managed a look down into the hole and, even though it was just a glance, he saw an ominous reddish glow down in the depths below.

                    For a while he called for both Charlie and Jupe. At first he felt slightly self-conscious of his own voice hollering like a kid for his ma Then he began sounding more desperate and helpless, so he quit.

                    He couldn’t guess how long ago that had been. He leaned back against the damp wall. He needed to relax a little. He had light, he had a full pig of gas out there and he was warm. He could wait it out.

                    The walleye in the pail below him gave one final flop. Leroy shot to his feet. Realizing the walleye, he dropped back down to the bucket. Icy drops of sweat trickled down his sides, so cold it made Leroy jump again. His heart was slamming against his chest.

                    After his breathing had nearly returned to normal he heard a small tinkling sound form his fishing hole. A thin, filamentary wire was poking through the skin of ice that was forming on the surface. IT telescoped upwards for several inches and paused. Leroy’s stove sputtered and went out.

                    A fish house gets cold very quickly. After all, it’s just a plywood shack perched on an immense ice cube. Instantly Leroy was on his knees fumbling with the valve and his lighter. He couldn’t produce even a spark. He snatched at the wooden matches and they wouldn’t light either. It didn’t matter much now anyway because the flow of gas had dwindled to nothing.

                    He would have to make a run for the pick-up. He stood and scratched at the frost on the window again. No trace of Charlie’s lantern now; all was dark. The candles were flickering. He reached for his choppers as the candles fizzled out. He grabbed his heavy steel chisel instead. It was becoming noticeably colder in there now. Leroy paused at the door.

                    “That’s it!’ he said and he crashed thorough the door. He made about thee strides and they were on him, encircling him. He could see them illuminated by the dim red glow leaking though the ice. Their mouths moved with that same stupid rhythmic motion Leroy had always despised. The largest one, their leader, was bigger than Leroy and clearly a powerful creature. It was addressing Leroy.

                    It’s words formed in Leroy’s mind and were delivered in Leroy’s very own voice. “We’ve been waiting, Leroy,” it said, “We’ve been waiting to get you out on the ice.”

                    As Leroy went down something else crossed his mind. Although this is not the exact thought it was roughly the equivalent of, “Invasion of the Enemy Eelpouts?”

                    The next morning Runty found their stiff bodies out there on the ice. A frozen geyser of viscera had jetted out form the gaping , dislocated jaws of Leroy, Charlie and Jupiter.

                    Runty had come to plow the road, a ritual he compulsively performed daily. He was one of Tiny’s sons. He was “the simple one.” Although he would never qualify for a driver’s license, he was a regular demon with a snowplow. He single handedly kept the resort and its miles of toll roads on the lake open. Sometimes he’d have roads out there that were four lanes wide. If the ice was right, and you wanted to, you could dive 80 miles per hour on one of his thoroughfares.

                    That particular morning, Runty told the deputy, “Looked like somethin’ stomped on ‘em.” 

                                                                                                   The End