Sufficient Grace (14 page)

13

NOW I THINK
IT IS TOO EARLY TO BE OUT ON THE ICE
,
BEING
barely a couple weeks past Thanksgiving. But Reuben and Samuel say that it is December, and December is winter, so they are going ice fishing up at the cabin whether I like it or not. Naomi and I are invited if we have to be. We've gotten a pretty good winter so far, I suppose, with plenty of cold nights and not too much snow since deer hunting closed, so the ice ought to be thick enough. It didn't have no cosy cover of snow to keep it from freezing thick through and through. Strange how we hope for barrels of snow for blood tracking come November hunting, and we pray for God to hold it back a bit for the ice to firm up and get us out on Cranberry Lake fishing in December. I like snow anytime, I guess, but I understand feeling the call to fish, low and deep in my belly, too.

Reuben's been running tip-ups with shiners and sucker minnows as bait since late November, seeing he knows the ice up north is at least three inches thick. Up at the cabin, the lake freezes much earlier than the lakes around Failing. It might be that the water is left alone way up in the northwoods, left to switch its heart to winter, while the town lake and its ice are distracted providing light entertainment to Failing people. Come the end of football season, the boys from the wrecking yard put a banged-up truck or such way out in the grand centre of the lake. Talking about when the truck will go out on the ice come winter freeze and when the truck will go through the ice come spring thaw keeps a majority of folks in our town occupied for a good four or five months each and every year. I've even heard talk that some of the bars in town have a board up where the drinkers can place a bet with money depending on when they figure the ice'll break. I can't say that it is true that they're gambling on nature in the dark corners of Failing's bars, but I can't deny it neither.

But the ice up at our cabin's Cranberry Lake is left alone to her own devices. She's out there in the midst of the tall, white pine and scrubby jack, freezing hard and meaning to ignore the wild turkeys and straggling deer coming down off of the hill looking for a mouthful of water. Meanwhile, there are schools of fish — bluegill, perch, sunfish, walleye and pike — swimming under the forming crust, their slimy hides slowing down for winter, their dawdling breathing becoming shallow, each gulp bringing in freezing water to chill along their skinny bones and flesh. That ice up at Cranberry ain't thin and honeycombed like in Failing; no, she's a clear blue ice — a bit slushy in parts but nice and new, and you can trust her. It ain't crispy river ice, but you still got to take a good look for soft pockets of water that prove a current is running underneath. Sliding through a fissure will get you good and wet and cold as you've ever been. So you got to always keep an eye out, especially when she's still freezing, like she's still freezing in December.

But the boys won't pay me no nevermind and have decided that we are all going out — here at Little Failing Lake barely outside town — and we are all going out today. We are crunching through the snow single file like Indians. Each carrying a bit of the gear — an ice auger, the rusty old bait bucket, lures and hooks and jigs, tip-ups and jigging rods, and a shiny new skimmer — we are packed down heavy. Reuben leads the way, tapping the ice with a stick before he guides us over; his ear can tell by the sound that comes back to him what the ice will hold and what it won't. The shack is already out on the lake near a good spot for walleye, thanks to Reuben begging Daddy for a week solid. We aren't allowed to keep the gear inside, though, as Daddy and Uncle Ingwald still think she might thaw in the night, and we'll lose the shack. Reuben begged like a dog, saying last time he was at the cabin, he listened close to Cranberry; he couldn't sleep for the sound of her making ice: cracking and freezing and cracking and freezing. Daddy said Little Failing ain't Cranberry, and that nobody's listening to the ice in town. Finally, Reuben had to promise that he and Samuel would rebuild the fishing shack, stick by stick, if she went through. I guess the men had no choice but to let them fish.

I don't have trouble sleeping for listening to ice. In my head instead, tangling ropes swim, twisting and pulling tight, hard against me. Sometimes I dream that I am floating around the ceiling, sticking close to the tops of the walls, flying but afraid that I'll come crashing down hard to the floor. At night at the cabin, if the bed and couch downstairs are full of men and boys, the girls got to go up the ladder into the attic and sleep with the squeaking bats and scratching mice. Sleeping at the cabin under my grandma's patchwork quilts, I still fall into the shifting and sliding dark dreams, but at least I've got Naomi lying there beside me. When dreaming, she tends to suck her thumb, and I tend to call out in a fright, but we keep each other company, close enough.

Right near to the shack, a split in the ice races out from where Reuben is walking and cracks loud and rippling across the lake. Echoing off the wall of pines, the sound grows and gives me a shiver probably worse than it ought. Reuben is pretending he wasn't ever scared, that he hasn't already been picturing himself slipping through the ice: sinking down, down, down into the freezing deep, his eyes peering up through the frosted water, trying to find the hole out that was his hole in.

Throwing down his jacket and the jig poles he is carrying, Samuel is scrambling to get on his hockey skates and clear a circle for a bit of practice. I know, though, that those boys can already feel the water filling and freezing their lungs and choking out their breath. I know they can because I can, and it wasn't me that broke the ice.

I guess it is my fault because I am watching Reuben unpacking and Samuel skating and not really keeping an eye on my feet. All of a sudden, the ice beneath me is swirling slush, and I feel my right leg slip deep into the water. Filled up with freezing water and chunks of ice, my boot starts to drag heavy and means to pull the rest of me into the lake and under the ice. Flailing my arms and screeching, I fight the pull downward and grab the edge of the hole to keep my left side, leg and arm and body and head, up above the water. I can't say that I am praying, but I don't know who else I am begging to let me live. I guess you don't need to speak the name of God for Him to know that He is needed, because just as I feel that I will split right in two, Naomi and Reuben and Samuel pull me up and walk me away from the hole quicker than I even remember falling in.

Sopping wet, water dripping from my hip down to my toes, I can feel the rest of my body going numb and tingly. Looking back over my shoulder, I see there wasn't ever any risk of me slipping through the hole, as it is only about twice the width of my thigh; my arms alone would've kept me up above with the living. That slushy hole I stepped into was made by a school of white fish swimming round and round together, whether to get air into the lake or to get revenge on ice fishermen, I don't know. But at this moment, shivering head to toe and teeth rattling in my head, I am sure those plotting, scaly fish were out for retribution. I have a hard time catching my breath at the thought of sinking into the deep mud at the bottom of Little Failing, and my folks waiting until spring thaw to fish me out and bury me. Although the fear of drowning will soon pass, the risk of freezing out here in the sharp wind is mighty real. Wet from my splashing, the hair inside my nose is freezing hard and crisp, and I can see ice forming on the tips of my eyelashes, so I let my brother and cousins bundle me into the shack.

Over his knee, Reuben breaks branches piled next to the shack to make a fire to get my blood moving again. I figure he is awful worried that he will get the blame for my frostbite death and that Daddy might never let him out on the lake again. They pile the wood into the hole in the steel bucket that serves as our stove and get the fire roaring quick. Embarrassed, I stand there soaking, waiting for the boys to leave so I can strip down to my bare skin and wrap up in the wool blanket on the bunk. Naomi catches my darting eye and hustles the boys out for more wood so that I can hold on to at least a semblance of my pride. As she helps me pull off the many wet layers of snow pants, jeans, long underwear and tights, my body twitches and flicks like a muddy cow's tail, and I think I will never again get warm. Naomi wraps me up in the green army blanket, and I lay down on the top bunk, still shivering hard but breathing better.

A hand comes round the door, holding more sticks for the fire. Naomi grabs them up and thanks Reuben for bringing them. At least they are working together and aren't fighting anymore.

Sheepishly, he peeks his head through and barely whispers to ask if I am alright. Reuben's scared, wrinkled-up face looks so worried, I laugh out loud and tell him to go on ahead and get fishing.

‘Watch out for those whitefish, they're gunning for you now!' I tell him, still laughing.

His smile tells me that he is relieved, and with him stopping his worrying, I stop my worrying too. I can see that I will well and truly live through a bit of a wet, cold leg.

The plywood door bangs shut after Reuben, and Naomi plops down on the bottom bunk and pulls out a secret roll of chocolate caramels from her coat pocket. We are shoving them into our mouths, and she is rubbing my wet foot hanging off the side of the top bunk when Samuel comes in out of the cold.

‘You get out there and skate a bit, Naomi.' Samuel always talks in that low voice. ‘You didn't walk all the way out to the middle of the lake to stuff your face full of candy. I'll watch her.'

Naomi gets up and paces the room. She offers the caramels to Samuel, but he shakes his head. She stokes up the fire, but Samuel says it is burning high and right.

‘Go find Reuben, Naomi,' he says with a sneer. ‘I'm sure he's making another fire somewhere.'

She finally laces up her skates, throws a look over her shoulder at me, and slides out the door.

‘Ahhh, it's getting hot in here, ain't it?' Samuel takes off his jacket and snow pants. ‘My jeans are a bit wet, don't you think?' He slides them off too.

By the time he climbs up into the top bunk, Samuel is wearing just his tight long underwear. He has to warm up now, and he has to help me warm up too. His breath is hot and his hands are cold, and I can see the slit of his thing sticking out the top of his underwear. It ain't an accident this time, and I can't even pretend anymore that it is. I know now that the other times — through the woods when we accidentally saw him skinny-dipping, in my tent when he didn't mean to come in when I was changing, at the swimming hole when he sort of rubbed against us in the water, at church during worship when his arm brushed against my chest — none of those times was accidental neither.
Even a child is known by his actions, by whether his conduct is pure and right.

During, I hear Naomi come to the door, press her face against it and ask Samuel if she could warm up now. He tells her no, and she shuffles away. She comes back; he says no; she goes away. Samuel has laid on me and wriggled around before, earlier in the summer when Naomi was at Bible camp. But it was August and hot then, and because I am wet and cold, he has to really warm me now. He tugs at my nipples and rubs my chest with his rough hands. My heart is beating fast and I can't breathe. He rolls on top of me. It hurts, though, and I push him away a bit, and then I pull him to me, and then I push him away hard.

He says, low and slow like he always talks, ‘You don't have to. I might just go to Naomi.'

Naomi still wets the bed. I have to protect her. ‘Naomi's only a little girl.' An anger rises up in me, and I hit him hard on the arm. ‘You keep away from her.'

Samuel jerks back from me. ‘She might be a little girl, but she don't have to stay that way. And she's more woman than you'll ever be, skinny.'

Now jealousy burns through me, down to my core, like a hot splash of urine melting through snow. My face is wet with tears. But I pull him down to me again and let him stay there until he is done.

Seems like I don't know nothing, don't know what to believe. Pictures twist through my head: a snarling badger hunting a snowshoe hare; Samuel towing Naomi round the ice, her skates slipping in the slush and gleaming in the glare; Reuben stabbing a northern pike through the eye with a maple stick; Samuel, leaning against the side of the shack, pissing a high yellow arc steaming into the snow.

But my spirit sees a spring empty of water, like snowflakes driven by a blizzard. Blackest darkness is just as dry. If a man knows the Lord — escaping the sin slavery of the depraved world — then entangles himself again and is overcome, he ends worse than he began. He should wish he never knew righteousness rather than reject the sacred commands. You don't live long in Failing without knowing what is true:
A dog returns to its vomit. A sow that is washed goes back to her wallowing in the mud.

14

SOME BAD KID
HAS BURNT A CIRCLE INTO THE GREEN VINYL
OF
the
bus seat in front of me. The edges of the hole are brown and smell like leaves on fire; a cigarette has left its mark. I'm sitting alone on the school bus. Naomi decided to share a seat with Reuben, and they are giggling under his big jacket. Samuel's clear in the rear with the rough crowd. High school kids sit back there, swearing and throwing paper out the windows. I can't help but hope they eat him alive.

After school today, Reuben and I are riding the bus to the parsonage. Naomi and I have to make the boys supper, and then Aunt Gloria will take us all home after she and Mom are done with their ladies' prayer meeting. We got to rely on the church van because Daddy's got the truck; he's helping rebuild a burnt-down milking parlour out near the county line. Through the window, I see the too-tall box of the parsonage looming over its neighbours and I change my mind: I will not. The bus slows and stops and the door opens. Carrying all their books, Reuben follows Naomi's swinging, chubby hips toward the exit. I make myself small and still as Samuel slinks from the back of the bus to the front. But I will not get off the bus; I can't follow that boy down that aisle. Nobody notices, and the door closes. When I turn my head again to look out the smeary window, Samuel has already started walking toward his house. Reuben and Naomi, though, are standing looking stunned as I wave slow from inside the bus. Her mouth open, my cousin just gawks at me. My brother starts running, chasing the bus like a dog. We leave him behind in no time; our lady bus driver ain't known for keeping an eye on the rear-view.