by Joel Arnold
They had argued that day. Another bitter regret. Jack wanted to go fishing and Paul told him no, the season was already over.
“Please, Dad?”
“It’s not safe.”
“Can’t we at least try it?”
“How many times do I have to tell you—”
They’d had some damn good times that winter out on the lake, and Paul wanted it to last as much as his son, but you can’t break the rules of nature. Ice melts. It’s as simple as that.
But Jack didn’t listen. He hopped on his bike and struggled for five miles over roads covered in slush and wet gravel, his jigging rod wobbling behind him, an antenna tuned into the frequencies of cold, deep water.
The ice still looked strong enough on top of the lake, even though there was not another fisherman to be found. Paul knew his son’s heart was filled with such a longing, the lake, the fish luring him — that he must’ve ignored the telltale signs of thin and rotten ice. First was the fact that there were no shanties left on the lake. And second, there was open water along the shore in places, and surely that must have been a clear enough sign. Paul thought he had taught his boy well, taught him about the intricacies of ice, that he should never go if it’s thinner than four inches. But apparently the pull was too great in the boy’s soul.
They found his mountain bike that first day, and two frantic days of searching later, his Twins cap and denim jacket washed up on the shore, belched up from beneath the receding ice cover. Once it melted, they dragged the lake, but it was large and deep, and they had no luck finding his body.
That was one of the hardest things to deal with. The lack of closure. Paul wanted to believe that Jack was still alive somewhere, just run away, or perhaps abducted but still alive, for these are the fantasies of grown men who have lost their children. But deep in his soul he couldn’t deny the overwhelming probability that his boy still laid on the murky lake bottom, communing with the fish he used to dream about in his warm bed at home.
They had a funeral. There was a polished granite headstone in the cemetery, but Paul couldn’t bear to visit it. Instead, he piled up the stones he collected from the lake’s shore, made a mound of them just for him and his son. Silly, probably, but he thought of it as a beacon. A beacon that made no sense except to himself. A beacon he could focus his loss on.
He started coming out to the lake again with his fishing gear in December, when the ice was first thick enough. And he’d come out most days since, even with Peggy fussing about how he should stop torturing himself.
“It’s not going to bring him back.”
“You don’t understand, Peg.”
“How can you say that? How can you tell me I don’t understand? He was my son, too.”
“But it’s not about that.”
It had gotten harder and harder to be with her, to come home to her after work and face her, the guilt of Jack’s death like a dulled ax blade pressed slowly into his gut. If only he would’ve taken Jack to show him how thin the ice was. If only he would’ve…
The list was endless.
So he came out here when he could, which was most nights now, after work. Watching. Waiting. Wondering what would bite.
There were times when he didn’t even drop a line in. He’d just sit, hovering over the dark hole, his thermos of coffee slowly growing cold next to him. He’d sit and watch, the exposed skin on his face and neck not registering the sub-zero temperatures, his breath blossoming before him in ghostly whispers before being snatched away through the hole in the shanty’s roof.
He’d sit and wait, wondering at the movements he sensed not far below the surface. When the wind died to a whimper and all he could hear was his own heart and the deep, dull crack of settling ice — he was sure he felt something stirring below him.
One night, only his second night out this winter, as he sat eating a cracker and thinking about his son, he felt a tug on his jigging rod. He jerked it back with a flick of his thick wrist, feeling the hook set. He concentrated on the hole, on the weight that bowed his rod. Must be one damn big walleye, he thought. A heavy one with not a lot of fight in him.
He began to reel in his line. He’d been using one of Jack’s favorite lures, one that Jack had carved and painted himself. Using it brought Paul that much closer to his son, and now with a big old walleye appreciating his lost son’s abilities, Paul couldn’t help but smile. He continued to reel the line in, hoping it was strong enough.
The tip of the rod bent to the surface of the water. Paul kept turning the reel, his hands growing numb from the pressure, his head steaming with perspiration. He thought he saw something in the dark, murky water, a large shadow slowly rising.
A log? But it couldn’t be a log, could it? Hadn’t it tugged a bit, played with the line at first? Could a log do that?
He pulled at the rod, strained at the reel, now worried that his son’s lure would be lost forever in the cold depths. He squinted. Thought he could see a large silhouette close below the surface. It was a familiar shape. He felt his heart in his throat, his breath spurting from his mouth in frozen blasts.
My God, it can’t be.
But just as Paul’s desperate hope turned to a longing to believe, the line snapped. He fell hard on his back, seeing real stars blur above him through the hole in the roof. He blinked and shook his head, sat up and scrambled to the hole, leaning over it until the tip of his nose touched the cold surface of the water, hoping, praying that his eyes could penetrate the impenetrable murk. He saw nothing but his own panicked face reflected back at him.
He rolled over onto his side, curled his knees up to his chest, and stared at the plain wooden walls of the shanty. What had he hooked? His mind told him one thing while his heart told him something else entirely.
But that was over a month ago. Now he sat twitching his jig, wishing Sven’s dog would stop its miserable barking. He wanted silence. He wanted to be able to listen, to hear the shifting subtleties of ice and water.
He’d spent the last month wondering what had brought about that tug on his line, and it finally came to him just the night before.
The lure.
It had been Jack’s favorite. Perhaps it still was.
Paul had to find something else. Another lure. He had to try again. He’d gone through both their tackle boxes, spreading the contents out on the surface of his worktable at home. There was nothing else; nothing like the lure Jack had carved only the year before.
What else could he use? What else would coax his son to the surface, cross through the icy threshold back into this world?
The answer was simple, really. Obvious. He twitched the jig up and down, up and down, trying to entice that which he knew deep in his soul resided below the frozen surface.
Something tugged hard at the line, almost ripping the pole from his hands. He fell forward hard onto his knees as the tip of the rod arched dangerously, it’s tip smacking the water. He hoped the line would hold, hoped the rod wouldn’t snap.
The bait was working. Whatever had grabbed it pulled it frantically deeper. Paul strained at the rod, staring wide-eyed at the unblinking hole. Why was the line playing out so fast? He didn’t want that, didn’t want the bait to be taken like a token to whatever lair existed below. The bait was meant to be an enticement. A lure to this world above.
“Don’t be so greedy,” Paul whispered hoarsely, struggling not to let the rod jump from his hands. He wedged the handle between his arm and chest so that he could free one hand to grab the bait bucket. He knocked off the lid, the smell of the bait bringing fresh tears to his eyes. He reached into the warm, steaming contents and grabbed a handful of the bloody mixture. He dropped it into the hole, grabbed another handful and dropped that in, too.
“Come on. There’s more where that came from. Come on.”
The rictus of the hole turned a bright red where the chum touched. Chunks of bait floated in the small circle of water, some of it sinking, some of it clinging to the edges. The spin of Paul�
�s reel slowed. It stopped. There was hesitation below.
Paul ignored the stinging sensation of the chum freezing on his bare hand. He cranked the reel. There was a bit of give. He slowly took in the line. Grabbed another handful of bait and tossed it into the hole.
“That’s right,” he whispered, his hand moving faster now on the reel. “That’s right.”
It was a mad elation, an excitement filled with terror and love, his mind racing as fast as his hand. What would come of this reunion? What secrets of that strange other world would be shared? There was so much Paul wanted to tell his son, so much to catch up on, yet Paul knew that perhaps his son wouldn’t be the same, the Jack he knew already gone, this thing on his line only the husk of a long drowned boy inhabited by tiny worms and instincts both primal and fierce. But he kept reeling in the line, all these emotions incendiary in his mind, all these thoughts overridden by the need, the complete and relentless need, to see his son one more time. How dare he be taken from him without any warning. How dare he disappear from the face of the earth without a chance for Paul to experience one last smile, one last laugh, one last squeeze on the shoulder. How dare—
He could feel him rising to the surface, could feel the heavy bloated weight nearing the lips of the hole.
The reel suddenly jammed. He tried to force it, and the handle snapped off. Paul’s eyes fixed on the hole, the wind outside howling over the thin wooden walls of the shanty.
“Jack!” he cried.
He was so close, yet the water was too dark, the chum on the surface clouding it even further. He grabbed his flashlight, a sturdy black metal one, and flicked it on. He pointed its harsh beam at the hole, threw the rod to the side and lay flat on his stomach, his face hovering over the water.
“Jack!” he called, the flashlight merely bouncing off the surface. He thrust his arm in the water, the wetness biting through his flannel shirtsleeve and into his arm. The flashlight beneath the water caused a red glow through the surface chum. He tried to scoop it away, but most of it slid back through his fingers.
There was something there all right, something so close. Even though his hand felt like it was being jabbed with a thousand tiny shards of glass, the water so cold it burned, he felt something brush against his fingers, something large and solid. He yanked his hand out to free it of the flashlight. It lay precariously close to the edge, shining sharply into Paul’s eyes. But none of that mattered. He thrust his hand back into the chill of the lake, reaching blindly, his face pressed onto the ice, his arm in the water up past his elbow. When he felt a hand clamp around his forearm beneath the layer of ice, he knew it was his son. He knew it was Jack.
He pulled with all his strength. The fingers of his dead son were even colder than the water that cradled him, so cold, Paul felt as if all the bones in his arm had turned to ice. Jack’s fingers erupted from the water, slender bone poking through loose milky flesh. Paul pulled until most of Jack’s arm had emerged. He reached frantically behind him for the ice chisel. He needed to widen the hole. There was no way Jack could fit through.
“Damn it, hold on,” Paul said.
And then there was Jack’s face, rising an inch above the surface, his lips peeled back and sputtering, gurgling sounds erupting from the back of his throat, the hook that held the bait firmly set in his blackened cheek.
Paul watched, listening, trying to make out the words issuing from the purple swollen tongue and chalky white chunks of remaining teeth. He listened, watched, realized his son wasn’t talking at all, but rather continuing to bite at the chum that clung to the surface in a thick crimson film.
“Look at me.” Paul lost all the feeling in his arm as Jack continued to squeeze. “Open your eyes, boy.”
And Jack did open his eyes, the tattered lids fluttering back to reveal empty sockets. A minnow leapt free from one only to land between Jack’s gnashing teeth.
Despite the horror of it, the knowledge that Jack was no longer the same boy he’d taken fishing a year ago, was in fact a cold rotting thing, Paul said, “Listen Jack. Listen closely. I love you, okay? I love you.”
The words were like a torch set against the wall of ice that had built up around Paul’s own heart over the past year. His free hand brushed across the ice chisel behind him. He grabbed it and began stabbing at the ice around the edge. He would free him. Free Jack. Pull him up out from the cold waters of death and bring him into the world of the living. The ice chips flew.
Wasn’t it worth it? So what if Paul had cheated a little. So what if he tricked Jack to the surface with the only lure he knew would work. That was the sign of a good fisherman. It was the sign of a good father. The one thing that would bring Jack back to him.
And it had worked hadn’t it? Wasn’t it worth it to see him once again, a reunion of father and son where love had coaxed a dead rotting thing from the bottom of a deep, dark lake? A boy’s true love.
The love a boy has for his mother.
The door to Paul’s shanty burst open. Blackie bound in, his loud barks ringing sharp and painful in Paul’s ears. Jack’s hand loosened its grip. Paul tried to grab hold, but the dog jumped between them, lunging for the worm-riddled flesh of Jack’s wrist. The dog missed, kicking the black metal flashlight into the hole. Jack slipped once again beneath the surface, the flashlight caught on the protruding bones of his rib-cage. Paul watched the red glow diminish into the depths, his eyes wide with loss.
He didn’t hear the crunch of Sven Johnson’s cleated boots behind him, Sven’s admonishment of Blackie. Didn’t hear Sven gasp at the stink of the open bucket of bait.
“What the hell is that?” Sven asked.
The red glow of light was barely visible now. Paul reached into the ice hole and touched his fingertips to the water’s bloody surface.
“What’s a wedding ring doing in your bait?” Sven asked.
The retreat of the flashlight’s glow stopped, barely visible, a beacon to the bottom of Shady Lake. Paul looked at it with longing. He imagined himself going in after it, now his son the fisherman, the flashlight his lure.
There was no way he could fit through the hole. He’d have to wait.
He finally noticed Sven behind him, heard him puking on the ice.
He’d have to wait until March, April at the latest, until the ice had grown thin and rotten. Wait until there was no one around, no one to drag him kicking and screaming from the pull of the lake, the pull of his son.
Paul stood up, the bucket that contained what was left of Peggy still steaming. He picked up the ice chisel. Turned to Sven as Blackie barked at him, the choppy breath of the dog rising in small bursts through the twelve inch hole in the roof.
He could wait. He could wait.
He lifted the ice chisel in the air. Brought it down hard. Again and again. Until there was only the barking of the dog.
And soon after that, only the sound of Paul’s labored breathing and the sound of blood dripping over the hole’s edge into chilled water.
Some Things Don’t Wash Off
I’ve seen a lot of things here. A lot of things you don’t necessarily see anywhere else.
Name’s Nate. I run the tattoo parlor here at the Slaughterville Roadhouse. Been doing tattoos for well onto fifteen years now. Started here three years ago when Jim came into my shop in Hayesville and I gave him a tattoo of Crazy Horse across his left shoulder blade. Guess he liked how it turned out, cause he asked me to come work here.
You can pick a design off the wall or bring in your own. Don’t matter to me. I’ve got a good eye and a steady hand. The only rule is, if you’re drunk, come back later when you ain’t drunk. Then we can talk tattoos. Last thing I want is some scrappy bitch come in asking me why the hell I inked the name of her husband’s old girlfriend across the cheek of his ass.
I suppose there’s been a few times I bent the rule. Every now and then a college kid comes in all shit-faced, showing no respect for my parlor, no respect for me, acting all belligerent. So I tell ’em, ’S
ure, sit on down here’ and I motion them over to my chair. Maybe I misspell their name. Maybe my needles slip.
But that’s few and far between.
Mostly I’ve gotten a lot of compliments, a lot of referrals. Like I said, I’ve got a good eye and a steady hand. I’ve got a good reputation.
But it wasn’t too long ago that my reputation had me on the verge of seeking another line of work.
I was already packing my needles away when I heard his hard black boots stomping slowly, deliberately on the wooden floor.
I didn’t even look up. “Closed,” I said.
I heard him stop, felt his shadow on me. Felt his eyes on me.
“You’re a black man.” He had a German accent.
“I guess you win the prize.” I still didn’t look up. “Black as they come.”
The floor creaked with his weight. “I hear you’re good.”
“I do alright by the folks here.”
Finally I looked at him. Bald, thin, muscular and his body covered with tattoos. I mean everywhere. On his face. His ears. All up and down the front of his back. He wore jeans and suspenders. No shirt. Just suspenders.
I caught myself staring at his teeth.
“Scrimshaw,” he said, widening his smile to expose more detail. “An art practiced for centuries by sailors.”
Each tooth was etched with a picture of a man hanging from a tree. The etchings disappeared into his throat.
“I’m familiar with the term,” I said. “Never seen it on human teeth, though.”
He circled the room, his hands behind his back as he examined my Polaroids of past customers. There was a large SS tattooed on his back over a red and black swastika. He flexed his shoulders.
