Crows

by Charles Dickinson

  He leaned the auger against the outside of the house. Everyone was in the kitchen. On the table were three looped fishing lines, clear and strong; blue hooks; an array of lugs; a half-­dozen bobbers, half the sphere red, half white; and a plastic container of bait.

  Duke and Buzz stood when Robert came in, but he waved them to be patient and poured himself cocoa. The walk home had frozen him and turned the whiskers around his mouth white, as though they alone had seen a ghost. He ran upstairs and took clothes from his closet, then carried them down to change in Olive’s room, where the temperature was 59˚. The temperature on the fourth floor was in the high thirties, he was certain. He dressed in long underwear, trousers, sweat pants, T-­shirt, flannel shirt, hooded sweater, three pairs of socks, insulated rubber boots.

  Dressed, he had more cocoa in the kitchen, and Ethel now had almost freed him from the responsibility to go out in the cold with her news about their Christmas guest. Robert kept silent. Ethel was on a course whose ultimate destination he could not guess; he knew she wanted no comments from him. He felt safer at work. The edge of the family life he had walked for so long felt wider now that he had a job. Only occasionally did it trouble him that this Stephen might now be walking the same edge with him, thus halving the space.

  Robert tore open the envelope Joe Marsh had passed along to him from Herm. Surprisingly, no check or cash fell out, but rather a folded photocopy of a newspaper clipping. Robert instantly recognized the faintly blurred type that characterized the Daily Scale. It was a copy of a story Robert had written some years before, coverage of an M.C. basketball game. His by-­line at the top looked out of place. BY BOB CIGAR. Scale Sportswriter. The type was wrapped around a fuzzed picture of Joe Marsh in flight, his mouth open as if in public ecstasy, his thin, pale arm stretched to deliver the ball to the basket, which had been cropped from the picture but for the merest curve of rim and half loop of hanging net. Joe Marsh’s name was prominent throughout. He had scored forty-­one points and M.C. had beaten Ripon, 84–78.

  But Herm Branch’s purpose in sending the article to Robert was to critique the writing. With a pen whose ink was as black as his wormy hat, Herm had circled at least two dozen phrases, clauses, punctuation marks, entire paragraphs. He appended to these ink balloons remarks such as “cliché,” “forced metaphor,” “awkward,” “needs a semicolon,” “poor usage,” “Huh?” “Better word,” “What does this mean?” and “sophomoric.”

  Robert read the story four times and on the fourth reading was able to get through it without paying attention to the marks. He stood by the solidity of the story; he had spelled the names correctly, gotten the score in the lead, captured some of the cadence of the game, quoted both coaches accurately. Taking into account the boredom he experienced covering games by that point in his career and the time pressures of deadline, he thought the story was decent.

  Herm had added a note at the end.

  “Perhaps,” he wrote, “you remember incorrectly your talents as a sports scribe. A career in retail sports equipment sales may be just right for you. Merry Christmas, Herm Branch.”

  “What’s that?” Ethel asked.

  “My Christmas bonus,” Robert said.

  THE ICE SHELTER, packed in Ethel’s car with the portable stove and the ice auger, was still painted copper from Duke’s Halloween guise as a refrigerator. Buzz did all the packing while Robert stood at the kitchen window, and finally there was nothing to do but just go. Robert had a moment’s hope that the car wouldn’t start, but it was in the garage and turned over nicely.

  The lines and hooks and other equipment were stored in an old tackle box whose locks, hinges, and interior compartments were coated with a viscous, oily fur of age and disuse. Some trays in the box held lures the length of hot dogs, with evil three-­pronged hooks that made Robert shiver, the idea of them ripping into him as he dove for Ben.

  “For muskellunge,” Buzzard said, holding up one such lure.

  “Do we need a record player?” Robert asked. “With a record of two fish fighting?”

  “Fun-­ny,” Buzz said.

  “Stay warm,” was Ethel’s benediction. “Come home before it gets dark.”

  It took only minutes to drive to the lake. Duke and Buzz wore blue ski masks, the eye, nose, and mouth holes rimmed in crimson.

  Robert could walk to the Cow and the Calf if he wished. This amazed him, as it had amazed him every winter since Ben vanished. Duke, his eyes swinging uneasily out across the flat ice, might have been having similar thoughts. Only Buzz seemed in a hurry to get out there.

  “Last chance to go home and hang out in the kitchen,” Robert said.

  “Come on,” Buzzard whined. “No guts, no glory.” The words struck Robert as being pulled directly off a T-­shirt.

  “No sense, no feeling,” he replied.

  Out in the open again, the cold was worse than he remembered. It filled his mouth, his ears, the pockets of air in his clothes. His eyes watered and froze.

  They shuffled seventy yards out onto Oblong Lake, to a place Robert remembered the water’s being about fifty feet deep. He had dived there, a careful covering of the area beneath him, a picking through rocks as though through a selection of bad alternatives.

  The first trip out they took the shelter and stove, and Robert helped Duke with his crutches skittering on the ice. While Buzz erected the shelter, Robert went back for the tackle box and ice auger. When he returned, the shelter was up and the stove lit. Buzz, sitting on one of the benches that folded out from the shelter walls, wore a smile of absolute smugness and pride.

  “Very nice job, Buzzer,” Robert said. Already the shelter felt warmer than his fourth-­floor room.

  They selected a point in the center of the ice surrounded by the shelter to drill the hole. Robert did this while the boys readied hooks and lines. The auger as he turned it produced fine white ribbons of ground ice; there was a high shriek, almost of tearing metal. Robert leaned into the auger, tentatively at first. He could not put his faith in the strength of the ice. Any moment it would fall open under him and into the dark cold water he would go. But the auger went deeper and the ice held like marble. In minutes he broke through. Lake water bubbled out.

  The shelter had the dimensions of a small outhouse or a large refrigerator. The three of them and the stove made a tight fit around the hole they had opened. But in out of the wind, the stove roaring out heat, Robert began to feel better.

  “Now,” Buzz said. “Dad told me about ice fishing. He said to use small amounts of bait because the fish aren’t very hungry. They’ve slowed their systems down for the winter and don’t eat much.”

  “Think of it,” Duke said. “You’re half asleep, just dozing in the cold, and you take a bite of passing food and have a hook ripped through the roof of your mouth. What a rude awakening! What a jolt to a fish brain.”

  “Long lines are called for,” Buzz went on. “All the fish are asleep at the bottom.”

  Duke opened the bait container. Inside were small portions of raw ground beef wrapped in strips of American cheese.

  “Christ,” Buzzard said. “What is this?”

  Duke looked over at him; he had been contemplating the hole in the ice. He said, “It’s bait.”

  “Cheese balls? Fish are going to eat cheese balls?”

  “Dad told me about it.”

  Buzz shifted in his parka. “OK,” he said.

  “I think we should use three lines of differing lengths,” Robert suggested. “Then if one of us is having a lot of success, the other two can set their lines for that depth.”

  “No way,” Buzz said. “Every man for himself. You fish with your secrets. I’m not giving away any more tips.”

  “I shared my bait,” Duke said.

  “But it’s my stove,” Buzzard said. “I think we’re all even.” He stuck an orange pill of cheese and meat on his hook
and dropped his line through the hole.

  They fished for three-­quarters of an hour and caught nothing. The sun behind the gray ice sky moved and diminished. The cold deepened. A number of times they had to break the ice that tried to reclaim the bored hole. The hooks came up from the water empty at times, at other times still carrying their bright orange cargoes of spurned bait.

  Robert stayed close to the stove. He charted the onrushing darkness. He looped the line over the top rim of his glove. He had brought the hook up once and his bait had been gone and he had not bothered to rebait it.

  He spent most of his time thinking about the dives he had made and those he would make when winter was over. Through everything that went on from day to day, Ben remained at the back, waiting to be found.

  Buzz got a bite then. The line went taut but the fish did not run. Too tired, or too large, it seemed content to let its submerged weight fight against Buzz’s efforts to bring it to the surface.

  “It’s a monster,” Buzz announced. He tore off his ski mask. His face was red and sweating like a man hard at work in a summer field.

  “I’ll bet it’s a muskie,” he said, retrieving line hand over hand. “A hundred pounds, minimum.”

  Robert and Duke watched the hole in the ice and waited for the fish to break.

  “The dreaded muskellunge,” Buzz panted. His face was red but his ears were a troubling white. Robert tried to force Buzz’s ski mask back on his head but he swiveled his head madly and barked curses at Robert.

  Unmoved between the shelter dimensions, the burning stove, and the excitement of the day’s only catch, the cold squatted. A shiver of realization tore down Robert’s spine. They had stayed too long out on that frozen table. It was nearly dark in a dangerous cold.

  They would have to go soon.

  Duke was looking for something in the tackle box. Buzz hauled endless taut line out of the dark hole in the ice. Duke found a pair of cutters and leaned forward and snipped Buzz’s line. The air grew even colder.

  Buzzard looked over at his brother. “What did you do?” he asked, not even sounding angry.

  “I cut the line.”

  Buzz examined the line end in his hand. A fresh skin of ice was already growing in the hole.

  Duke said, “I was afraid you were bringing up Dad.”

  Buzz opened the tackle box and dropped the line inside. Frozen bait balls rattled like shot in their container. Buzz didn’t say a word. With a quick motion of his hand he cut the gas to the stove, killing their heat. He drew the ski mask back over his face.

  They took down the shelter and carried the equipment back across the ice and repacked it in the car. The hole they had fished through was gone.

  A fringe of daylight clung to the farthest rim of Oblong Lake. Robert feared they had stayed out too long. He could not see Ben’s house, nor any of the familiar lights along the lake side. They might be anywhere or transformed into crystals of ice themselves and removed from the dimension they knew.

  In the car, the breath they had expelled on the drive to the lake had turned to ice on the inside of the windshield. Robert and Buzz shaved this thin skin off as best they could. Robert prayed over the key, the ignition, the required spark he doubted existed. He put the key in his mouth to warm it, then dried it inside his coat, then slid it into the ignition slot. He repeated his prayer, then turned the key. God, it started like a summer’s day.

  STEPHEN, TRYING TO fit in, arrived at 5 a.m. Christmas morning. He entered with a key given him by Ethel. He turned on the downstairs lights and the lights on the tree in the kitchen. Three trips out into the cold were required to get all his packages from the car.

  His sounds downstairs awakened Robert. Olive was asleep on his arm and he couldn’t move. For quite some time he lay wondering what he should do, but then the noise and the stirrings from below became so obvious he decided it couldn’t be a burglar. In moments, he was asleep again.

  Ethel got up and washed her face. She had passed Stephen the key on a previous night and asked him to come early Christmas morning. She was curious to see if he would give the key back at the end of the day, or use it for some future entries; she wondered if he would slip the key into the house’s old lock in the days before Christmas, or if she would find him scaling Ben’s birch tree to where Ben had told Stephen they slept at night. But nothing like that had happened. Stephen had none of Ben’s precarious unpredictability. She appreciated this and was at times bored by it.

  She went into the kitchen where he was making coffee. He smiled sleepily at her; he told her he had been up all night wrapping packages, then grading tests. He had feared going to sleep, afraid of sleeping through the magic early hours of Christmas.

  Ethel crossed the floor and kissed him on the chin. She was always pleased to see him, but in his absence hardly thought of him at all. She had thought about Ben all the time, but rarely had she been glad to see him.

  Stephen did not hold any flame within her. He did not pursue her. They had never been to bed. Their kisses were friendly, rewards for kind deeds or nice words, and this sometimes made her antsy with desire. He feared his teeth were going bad and chewed sugarless gum in a last bid to save them, his jaw muscles bunching and smoothing faintly, and when they kissed his breath was cool and sweet. She liked this. Also, she liked the moistness of his kisses. But always when he seemed about to move forward he would turn away to find his car key in the porch light, or to pour her more coffee, or to squeeze her shoulder and move on.

  His Christmas gifts were wrapped like a jeweler might, with perfect tape and taut ribbons curled with a scissor blade. He had three presents for each person in the family except Robert, for whom he had bought nothing. He had also bought a box of jelly doughnuts. He put two on a saucer for Ethel and set them before her with her coffee.

  “I expected the kids to be up by now,” he said, sitting across from her, chewing his gum, fiddling his hands.

  “They’re just older,” Ethel said. “I remember when they’d sit and talk in the hall at the top of the stairs from three o’clock on.” She drank coffee. The jelly doughnut’s sugar-­topped lumpiness was not appealing.

  “What are Rob’s plans?”

  “He’s visiting his parents later,” she said. She saw Stephen’s disappointment that Robert would be down soon with the others, one of the family.

  “Why don’t you like him?” Ethel asked.

  “We’ve barely exchanged two words.”

  “But you still don’t like him.”

  “He’s a mooch,” Stephen said, “as far as I can see.”

  “Ben helped him out a while back. We’re in the process of getting disentangled from each other. He’ll move out soon enough.”

  “Do you like him?”

  “I can’t lie,” Ethel said. “He’s a pain at times. And a mooch. But I like him.”

  “The kids like him, don’t they?” Stephen said.

  “Now and then. Olive and he sleep together,” she said, watching his eyes for something she might use herself later, “and I think of my three kids she likes Robert the least. He does things with Duke and Buzz without making a production out of it. Ben always had to stick a big father-­son emotional flag in everything. That’s because he rarely did anything with them. Consequently, he was stiff with his own boys.”

  “Stiff,” Stephen echoed.

  “He tried too hard,” she said. She was amazed: It was half past five and again—­for the millionth time, it seemed—­she was talking about her missing husband with this man who would not touch her beyond brotherly kisses. She said, “Because he didn’t spend much time with them the time he did spend always had to be special. He tried too hard to make it special.”

  They heard a thumping overhead. Then they heard water running.

  “Somebody’s awake,” Ethel said. She bit into the jelly doughnut and strawberry filling ran
out the corners of her mouth. She set the doughnut down and worked her mouth clean with her tongue. Stephen watched all this with a mile of space between his eyes and his true thoughts.

  She drank more coffee; she was abuzz now. She had to admit that she was horny. And, sadly enough, for Ben. They had always made love on Christmas day, slipping away through the battlefield of ripped paper, kids playing raptly or kids asleep, to their chilly bedroom and their electric blanket. Ben would lock the door while she shed her robe and got into bed. His erection would already be pushing against his robe, sometimes having sprung through the gap in his pajama bottoms. Sweet teacher of biology home for the moment.

  She shifted in her seat. No percentage in those thoughts. She had an instant of anger at the man across from her, that he was so out of tune with her. There could be no stealing away later. She expected their every word and movement to be closely monitored. Her children feared this man would come and live with them someday.

  Behind her, Duke clumped into the room, the tree lights sparkling on his crutches. He looked pale, his hair disrupted by sleep, but he shook Stephen’s hand and kissed his mother’s forehead and wished them both a Merry Christmas.

  “You remember Mr. Rice,” Ethel said.

  “Sure.”

  “Call me Stephen.”

  Duke leaned his crutches against the table. He was in an area where handholds were abundant and travel easy. Stephen watched him hop along the counter, getting down a glass, pouring orange juice into it. He stood for a long moment drinking.

  A ­couple of times Stephen thought the boy was falling, tipping toward the side without the leg, but it was only the absence of the leg that gave the impression of a sliding away of balance.

  “Where’s everyone else?” Ethel asked.