The Angel on the Roof

by Russell Banks

It took Noni an hour to prepare for the journey—first breakfast and then, as she ate and dressed herself in three layers of clothing, bickering with her mother about the necessity for the trip in the first place— and another hour for the trip itself. It was a white world out there, white sky, white earth beneath, and a thin, gray horizon all around, the whole of it centered on the red cubicle where the old man fished through the ice.

  At the bob-house, sweating from the work of skating against the wind and, having come to rest, suddenly chilled, Noni leaned for a few seconds against the leeward wall, knocked at the door, and, without waiting for an answer, entered. The door closed behind her, and instantly she was enveloped by darkness and warmth, as if she had been swallowed whole by an enormous mammal.

  “Oh!” she cried. “I can’t see!”

  “Seat’s to your right,” came the old man’s gravelly voice. The interior space was so small that you couldn’t tell where in the darkness the voice was coming from, whether from the farthest corner of the bob-house or right up next to your ear.

  Noni groped to her right, found the bench, and sat down. A moment of silence passed. Gradually, her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, and she was able at last to see the six holes in the ice, and in the green light that rose from the holes she saw the hooked shape of the old man seated at the other end of the bunk next to the stove. He held a drop line in one hand and jiggled it with the other, and he seemed to be staring into the space directly in front of him, as if he were a blind man.

  “Why is it so dark in here?” she asked timidly.

  “Window’s shut.”

  “No, I mean how come?”

  “So I can see the fish and they can’t see me,” he said slowly.

  More silence passed. Finally, in a low voice, Noni spoke. “How strange you are.”

  Merle didn’t respond.

  “I have some news for you, Mr. Ring.”

  Still nothing.

  “You know the lottery you won back in October?”

  Merle jiggled his handline and continued staring straight ahead. It was almost as if he’d entered a state of suspended animation, as if his systems had been banked down to their minimal operating capacity, with his heart and lungs, all his vital organs, working at one-fourth their normal rate, so that he could survive and even thrive in the deprivation caused by the cold and the ice and the darkness.

  “It seems ridiculous,” the girl said, almost to herself. “You don’t care about things like lotteries and Grand Prize Drawings and all.”

  A few seconds passed. Merle said, “I bought the ticket. I cared.”

  “Of course. I’m sorry,” Noni said. “I just meant … well, no matter. My mother saw in the paper this morning that they’re holding the Grand Prize Drawing in Concord on January fifteenth at noon, and you ought to be there. In case you win.”

  Merle said nothing.

  “It’s a lot of money. Fifty thousand dollars. You have a good chance to win it, you know.” He didn’t respond, so she went on, chattering nervously now. “Think of what that would mean. Fifty thousand dollars! You could have a wonderful old age. I mean, retirement. You could go to Florida in the winter months. You could go deep-sea fishing in Florida. Maybe buy one of those condominiums, play shuffleboard, have lots of friends…” She trailed off. “God, I sound like my mother.” She stood up and moved toward the door. Tenderly, she said, “I’m sorry I bothered you, Mr. Ring. My mother … she wanted you to know about the drawing, that’s why I came out here. She thought you’d be … excited, I guess.”

  “I haven’t won yet.”

  “But you have a good chance of winning.”

  “Good chance of dying, too. Better.”

  “Not by January fifteenth, Mr. Ring.”

  “About the same. I’m old. Not much left to do but think, and then, in the middle of a thought, die.”

  “Oh, no,” she said heartily. “There’s lots for you to do.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well … fishing, for instance. And spending all that lottery money you’re going to win.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, there’s that.” Then he lapsed back into silence again.

  The girl opened the door and slipped out, and the bob-house filled again with darkness and solitude.

  The door to the bob-house was flung open, and a blinding light entered, bringing with it a blast of cold air and the hulking shape of a man in a hooded parka. The man splashed the light from his flashlight around the chamber, located Merle stretched out in his blanket roll on the bunk, and let the beam droop deferentially to the floor. The man closed the door behind him.

  “Mr. Ring?”

  “Yep.”

  “I’m… I’m Leon LaRoche. You know, from the trailerpark?”

  Merle swung his body into a sitting position. “You can shut out that light.”

  Leon apologized and snapped off the flashlight. “May I sit down and get warm? It’s mighty cold out there tonight.” He chuckled. “Yes, sir, mighty cold.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  They were silent for a moment. Merle opened the stove front, throwing shadows and sheets of dancing red and yellow light into the room; he tossed a chunk of wood onto the crimson coals and closed the fire door again.

  The young man nervously cleared his throat. “Well, Mr. Ring, how’s the fishing?”

  “Slow.”

  “I’ve been hearing a lot about you lately, from folks at the park, I mean … how you stay out here night and day, only coming in now and then for supplies…”

  “Whiskey,” Merle said, and he went under the bench with one hand and drew out his bottle. “Drink?”

  “No. No, thank you.”

  Merle took a slow pull from the bottle.

  “Anyhow, it’s all very interesting to me. Yes, maybe I will have a drink,” he said, and Merle fetched the bottle again and passed it over. “So tell me, Mr. Ring, what do you eat out here? How do you cook and all?”

  “Fish, mostly. A man can live a long time in this climate on fish and whiskey.”

  “Very interesting. And you use lake water for washing, I suppose?”

  Merle grunted.

  “How long do you plan on staying out here, Mr. Ring?” Leon took another drink from the bottle and passed it back.

  Merle said nothing.

  As if his question had been answered, Leon went on. “And do you do this every winter, Mr. Ring? I mean, stay out on the ice, isolated like this, living off fish and whiskey and solitude?” He chuckled again. “I’m relatively new to the park,” he explained.

  “I know.”

  “Yes, of course. Well.” He wrestled himself free of his parka and flexed his shoulders and hands. “Say, it’s really comfortable in here, isn’t it? Smells a bit of whiskey and fried fish, though,” he said with a light laugh. “You wouldn’t mind if I had another sip of that, would you? What is it, by the way? It’s quite good! Really warms a man’s insides, doesn’t it?”

  Merle handed him the bottle. “Canadian Club.”

  Leon unscrewed the cap and took a long swallow, then slowly screwed the cap back on. “Yes. So, yes, I was saying, do you do this every year?”

  “Man and boy.”

  “But why?”

  “It makes the rest of the year more interesting,” Merle said wearily.

  Leon was silent for a moment. “I wonder. Yes, I’ll bet it does. I couldn’t stand it, though. The isolation. And the cold, and the darkness.”

  “It’s a good idea to get used to the idea. Like I said, it makes the rest of the year more interesting.”

  Leon’s voice was tight and frightened. “Are you talking about dying?”

  “I’m talking about living.”

  “Speaking of living,” Leon said, suddenly hearty again, “you are probably wondering why I came all the way out here this evening.”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Yes. Well, anyhow, it has to do with the Grand Prize Drawing next week. You know, the state l
ottery?”

  “Yep.”

  “Folks in the park have been wondering, Mr. Ring, if you plan on attending that drawing over in Concord, and if not—assuming you win, for you just might win, you know—folks are wondering how you plan to pick up the prize money. You have to be there in person to pick up the prize money, you see…,” he trailed off, as if waiting to be interrupted.

  Merle said nothing.

  “Well. It occurred to some of us that you might not care to take the time off from your fishing to go all the way in to Concord and deal with those state officials and the reporters and so forth, seeing as how you enjoy your privacy and like to spend your winters alone out here on the lake, and we thought you might be able to empower someone else to do that chore for you. So I did a little checking around at the bank, which is where I’m employed, and, sure enough, you can empower someone else to pick up your prize money for you!” He waited a few seconds, but nothing more than the crackle and spit of the fire came out of the darkness, so he went on. “Anticipating your reluctance to leave your fishing at this time of year, I went ahead and took the liberty of having the necessary document drawn up by the bank attorney.” He went into his shirt pocket and brought forth a crisp, white envelope. “This document empowers me to act as your agent, should you win the Grand Prize Drawing,” he said, handing the envelope to Merle.

  The old man took out the paper folded inside, and, at the sound, Leon snapped on his flashlight. “Where do I sign it?” Merle asked. His voice was strangely woeful and riddled with fatigue.

  Leon directed him to a line at the bottom of the paper and handed him a pen.

  Slowly, the old man placed the paper against his knee and scrawled his name on it. “There,” he said, and he handed the paper, envelope, and pen back to the bank clerk, who doused the light. “It’s your problem, now,” the old man said.

  “No problem at all, Mr. Ring. None at all,” he said, as he stood and pulled his parka on. “I assume,” he went on, “that, if you win, you’ll want your check deposited in a savings account down at the bank.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “Bring the money here.”

  “Here?”

  “In cash.”

  “Cash?”

  “Cash. No point letting some bank make money off my money. The government owns all the money anyhow. They just let us use it for a while. It’s the banks that foul everything up by getting in the middle. You bring me anything I win in hundred-dollar bills. You might use one of them to buy me a case of Canadian Club. I’ve always wanted a case of Canadian Club,” he said wistfully.

  Leon seemed to have been struck dumb. He moved toward the door in the darkness, groping for the latch, and finally found it. Then he let himself out.

  From here on out, it was as if everyone who knew Merle knew that he was going to win the lottery. Consequently, his solitude rarely went a day without being broken by a visit from someone who wanted to congratulate him and talk about the money. Also, the weather broke into what’s called the January Thaw, and people found the half-mile walk over ice and log floes of crusted snow less formidable than before. The wind died, the skies cleared to a deep blue, and daytime temperatures nudged the freezing mark, so at one time or another during the week following the visit from the bank clerk, practically everyone else in the park found an occasion to visit the old man. Even Claudel Bing (though he had not lived at the trailerpark for several years, he was still paying for a trailer there and, in his fashion, was courting Doreen Tiede, and as a result had kept up his links with the park) came out to Merle’s bob-house early one sunny afternoon.

  He was already drunk when he arrived, a not uncommon occurrence that year, and, therefore, he wanted to talk about luck. In particular, his own bad luck. As compared to Merle’s good luck. Luck was Claudel’s obsession that year. It was the only way he could understand or even think about his life.

  “You, you sonofabitch, you got all the luck,” he told Merle, who silently arranged his lines in the tip-ups and scooped ice chips away from the holes. “And that means there’s none left over for people like me! That’s the trouble with this goddamn country.” Claudel had brought his own bottle of whiskey, which he held between his legs and every now and then swigged at. “Now you take them fucking Commie bastards, like that Castro and them Chinese, their idea is to get rid of luck completely, so nobody gets any. That’s as bad as what we got here. Worse, actually. What I’d like to see is a system that lets everybody have a little luck. That’s what this country needs. Nobody gets a lot, and nobody gets none. Everybody gets a little.”

  “How about bad luck?” Merle asked him. “Everybody going to get a little of that, too?” His beard and face and hands were pale green in the light from the holes, and as he moved slowly, smoothly over his traps and lines, checking bait and making sure the lines were laid precisely in the spools, he resembled a ghost.

  “Sure! Why the hell not? When you got a little good luck, you can handle a little bad luck. It won’t break you. If I had money, for instance, it wouldn’t bother me that Ginnie run off with that goddamn sonofabitchin’ Howie Leeke,” he said earnestly. “But you wouldn’t understand. Not with your kind of luck. Shit,” he said and took a long drink from his bottle. “You ever lose a woman you loved, Merle?” he asked suddenly. “No, of course not. You’ve had all them wives, got wives and kids scattered all over the country, but none of them ever left you. No, you left them. Right? Am I right?”

  “Can’t say exactly that I intended to leave them, though,” Merle said. “I guess I just willed it. You can will what you actually do, but what you intend is all you accomplish in the end.”

  “You preaching to me, Merle, goddamnit?”

  “Nope. Just thinking out loud. Not used to company.”

  “Hey, that’s all right, I understand. Shit, it must get awful lonely out here. I’d go nuts. It’s good for thinking, though. Probably. Is that the kinda stuff you think about out here, Merle, all that shit about will and intending?”

  “Yep.” A red flag on one of the tip-ups suddenly sprung free, and in a single, swift motion Merle was off the bench and huddled over the line, watching it run off the spool and then stop. He jerked it, set the hook, and started retrieving the fish. “Black bass,” he said to no one in particular. It was a small one, not two pounds. Merle drew it through the hole, removed the hook from its lip, and deposited the fish in the bucket of ice chips scooped from the holes.

  “If I was you, I’d be thinking all the time about how I was going to spend all that money,” Claudel went on. “You talk about will and intentions!” he laughed. “How do you intend to spend the money, Merle? Fifty thousand bucks! Jesus H. Christ.”

  “Can’t say.” He rebaited the hook and wound the line back onto the spool.

  “You mean, you don’t know?”

  “What d’you think my intentions toward that much money ought to be? Can’t spend it, not the way I live. ’Course, I haven’t got it yet, so it ain’t like we’re talking about reality.”

  “No, we’re talking about money!” Claudel said, leering.

  “All I know is death and taxes. That’s reality. I intend to pay my taxes, and I intend to die.”

  “Merle, you are fucking crazy,” Claudel said. “Crazy. But smart. You’re smart, all right. You coulda been a lot of things if you’d wanted to. Big. A businessman.”

  “I always did what I wanted to,” Merle said gloomily. Then, as if writing a letter, he said, “I was a carpenter, and I was married, and I fathered some children. Then I got old. Everyone gets old, though, whether he intends to or not.”

  They were silent in the darkness for a moment.

  “Yeah,” Claudel said, “but you got lucky. You won the lottery!”

  “It don’t matter.”

  “Of course, it matters, you asshole!”

  “Not to me.”

  “Well, it matters to me, goddamnit!”

  Merle remained silent this time, and, a
fter a while, Claudel’s bottle was empty. Without leaving his seat, he reached over, opened the door, and pitched the bottle out. “It’ll sink in spring,” he mumbled. Then slowly, awkwardly, he pulled his coat on and stumbled out the door, not bothering even to say good-bye.

  Daily, with and without ceremony, they came out to the bob-house. The younger ones, Terry Constant, Noni Hubner, Bruce Severance, Leon LaRoche, Doreen Tiede, and poor Claudel Bing, could pretend they just happened to be in the neighborhood, ice-skating, skiing, walking, or, as in Claudel’s case, bored and lonely and thought to drop in for a visit. The older ones, however, found it difficult to be casual about their visits. As Merle had said, you expect the actions of adults to have intention behind them and therefore meaning. The adults tend to expect it of themselves, too. Carol, Terry Constant’s older sister, claimed she walked all the way out to the middle of the lake against a cold wind because she had never seen anyone ice-fishing before and wanted to learn how it was done. While there, the only question she asked Merle directly was how would he spend the money, if he won on the fifteenth. He said he didn’t know. Nancy Hubner baked Merle a minced meat pie (she said it was his favorite) and insisted on carrying it to him herself. While he ate a piece of the pie, she told him how excited she was at the prospect of his becoming a wealthy, carefree man, something she said everyone deserved. He agreed. Captain Dewey Knox appeared one morning at the bob-house to confirm Leon LaRoche’s claim that Merle had signed a document authorizing Leon to act as his agent at the Grand Prize Drawing. Merle said yes, he had signed such a document. “Without coercion?” the Captain asked. Merle said he couldn’t be sure, because he didn’t know how a person went about coercing someone to sign something. “But you understood fully the meaning and consequences of your act?” the Captain asked. Merle said he wasn’t drunk or crazy at the time. “And is it true,” the Captain went on, “that you requested young LaRoche to bring your winnings out here in cash? Hundred-dollar bills?” Merle said it was true. The Captain thought that extremely foolish and told Merle, at great length, why. Merle went about his business of fishing and said nothing. After a while, when the Captain had finished telling Merle why he should have Leon LaRoche deposit the money in a savings account at the bank where he was employed, he departed from the bob-house. The last person from the trailerpark to visit Merle’s bob-house came out the day of the drawing, January fifteenth. It was Marcelle Chagnon, and, as the manager of the trailerpark, she felt it was as much her duty as her privilege to announce to Merle that on that day at twelve o’clock noon he had won the $50,000 Grand Prize Drawing.