by Greg Enslen
It didn’t really matter to anyone not connected with Trapper’s Lake, but the guys at Centerlake had been out here the longest and took it more seriously than everyone else. Derek avoided them when he could. For him and most of the others, it was all about solitude, not competition. Getting out “on the ice” meant getting away from the wife and kids and responsibilities and just relaxing around a shared activity. The men gathered every year to fish and drink, spending time in each other’s cabins or, more often, hours and hours of alone time. Men came and left, not keeping any kind of schedule, and enjoyed the quiet.
Sometimes they caught fish, and sometimes they didn’t. That wasn’t really the point.
During the warm months, the small huts were stored on a fenced patch of gravel at the southern end of the lake. Every year, usually in late December or early January depending on the thickness of the ice, these small houses made their way out onto the lake, attached to sleds and pulled or pushed out onto the ice where the water was deepest and afforded the best fishing. Holes were dug under the sheds, fishing poles were unfurled, and bottles of beer opened.
The small houses weren’t fancy--wooden and cardboard and plywood shacks that ranged in permanence from cheaply constructed materials only thrown together for a season to solid, ice-resistant buildings with many of the comforts of home.
Grouping shanties together on the ice provided a welcome break from the wind scudding along the surface of the lake. Often thick ropes ran between the various huts, serving as guides when gusting winds and snow made it nearly impossible to walk on the ice.
By spring, the shanties and their occupants would be long gone. The Thaw would chase them all from the lake. Ice fisherman talked about the Thaw with a capital “T,” as if it were some momentous historical event or an approaching monster, shambling toward the lake from a distant cave to destroy their peaceful retreat. But the Thaw was simply the steady, inexorable rise in temperature that signaled the end of another season.
A few shanties had been lost to the Thaw over the years. They made for spectacular stories passed down from fisherman to fisherman like a warning.
The lost shanties inevitably grew into legends, larger and more ornate than they had ever been in real life. The most famous shanty lost to the Thaw was in 1973. It had been owned by a regular ice fisherman named Peter Dawes, a legend on Trapper’s and one of the earliest men to deck out their shanties with creature comforts.
Dawes had pushed his luck, waiting too long to tow in. All the other shanties were long gone before he decided to pack it in for the season. He drove his truck out onto the thawing lake to retrieve his home away from home. And, in a story told with increasing gusto over the years since, Dawes was chaining the shanty to the truck when the ice began cracking beneath him. The man “leapt backward, only to see the truck break through the ice,” the story went.
A cautionary tale, slowly told to and by each in turn. “First one tire, then another. The lake was taking his truck. A hole opened up and the truck began sliding down into the ice, dragging the expensive ice shanty down into the hole with it,” as the story went.
Derek smiled, thinking about the story as he trudged, head down, across the ice. The wind whipped at his coat and the bags and gasoline. He tried to ignore the snow blowing past him, blocking his view across the lake, and concentrated on following the sound of Wilson’s generator.
Finally he reached the grouping of structures. He saw several men he knew moving around outside. Snow fell across the small houses, falling between the shanties and the ropes that ran from shed to shed. That meant the game hadn’t started yet. Derek wasn’t as late as he’d thought.
Several of the men waved at him and one joked about Derek’s shed and how sad it looked. Derek hadn’t made it out onto the ice much this season. He shrugged and said he’d get to it when he got to it.
Some of the shanties were pretty fancy; the two largest ones stood taller than the rest, and both sported outdoor generators, humming along on gasoline power. They provided power, which was shared with the entire community, something Derek thought was pretty cool.
His little shanty wasn’t fancy or anything. Not even close. But it was bright red and easy to spot. Most of the shanties were painted bright colors to stand out against the ice.
Ten years ago, when he’d first bought his shanty from a retiring old man, everyone watched TV or listened to radio on battery power. Now, they all pitched in for gas for the generators. And at the end of the season, they would all work together to push all the structures off the ice.
Derek set the red container of gas down--he tried to bring out a gallon every week--and got out his keys, unlocking the padlock on the door and letting himself inside.
It wasn’t warm inside, per se, but warmer than outside. He brought in the gasoline and his bags, then immediately went to the heater and turned it on. It was powered by the thick orange electrical cord that ran out of the bottom of his shed and snaked across the ice to Wilson’s generator.
Most of the shanties on Trapper’s measured eight feet by eight feet or ten by ten, with an eight- or ten-foot ceiling. They were essentially sheds built on the ice, with few creature comforts other than chairs to fish from, a small cot, and an old TV or radio for entertainment.
The fancier ones, like Judge Wilson’s, were tricked out with fridges and big TV and bigger heaters. Some even sported beds for overnight accommodations. Peter Dawes’ shanty had supposedly had white siding and a small front porch. Every year the story got bigger; soon, if the legend continued to grow, the shanty at the bottom of the lake would acquire stained-glass windows and a cupola on top.
Derek flipped on the TV. It was a cheap flat-screen he’d bought at a garage sale, and it just got the local channels. He didn’t have a dish or anything, but he’d heard the guys at Centerlake all had a dish. To Derek, that sounded like overkill. Why come out here and fish if you were going to watch TV all day?
The game wasn’t on yet, just pregame chatter. People running around the field in Indianapolis, warming up while the announcers went over the match-up. It would be a good game to cap off the 2011-2012 season: Patriots vs. Giants.
After a minute, the weather people cut in to talk about the storm, talking about the snow and how much they were going to get. Derek had planned to stay all night--hence the jug of gas and extra food.
Before he got started unpacking, he needed to set up the pole--might as well try and catch something while he was waiting for the game to start.
Derek flipped open the black cover in the middle of the floor and checked the hole in the ice. It was rimmed over, as expected. If you didn’t fish often enough, the water in the hole froze up and sealed it. He leaned over and tapped it. The ice was solid.
Derek pulled down the ice auger, a metal drill-like contraption used to carve a foot-wide hole in the ice. He lined it up and scribed another circle over the first, following the edges of the hole. The blade cut the ice, and he took off the auger and kicked down, knocking the circle of ice into the water. Black and blue lake water splashed up onto the white ice floor of his shed. After a moment, the water surface settled down and became flat, like glass.
The hole always bothered him.
It looked like a creepy dark portal to another dimension, even though Derek knew it was simply a hole in the lake ice. But he also knew that the lake was deep and dark and filled with fish and other creatures in the darkness. He never stood any nearer than required to the hole in the ice, not here or in any other shanty. He just didn’t like the look of it.
Derek walked over to one wall and hung the ice auger back up on a thick hook, then took down the rig hanging next to it. Some people used a regular rod and reel to fish, although they switched out the lighter fishing line for heavier gauge during the winter. Derek subscribed to the other methodology, which was that sitting there holding a fishing rod for hours over an open hole in the ice was just too damned boring. He used an ice rig, which consisted of a pole that stretched
over the hole and a strong line down into the water. He caught fewer fish than those who used the rod and reel method, but he also got more beer drinking and TV watching done--and he didn’t have to sit there by the hole, staring down into it.
He baited one of the hooks with a wad of frozen fish from a sealed bucket and dropped it into the dark water. The bait and hook disappeared into the blackness. Derek watched for a moment, mesmerized by the portal to nowhere before shaking his head and walking away.
Derek checked the game again. The announcers were still yammering away. Now they were talking about the Giants’ defensive line. At least there were cheerleaders in the background, dancing around in the domed stadium.
He opened his bags and started getting set up. Derek moved the beaten-down chair he’d scavenged at a garage sale, putting it in front of the TV. He moved a little table over and set it up with the hot plate and three beers, then turned and opened the door, grabbing the jug and stepping back out into the wind.
It was getting colder, if that were possible. The sun was nearly gone--it set so early in the winter--but Derek could still see the dark mass of clouds that covered the lake from the west and north.
He walked down the line of shanties--most of the owners he knew by name--and stopped in front of the biggest one, Wilson’s. He could hear men inside, whooping it up, and, with some hesitation, knocked.
After a second, the door opened. It was Wilson, the overweight judge who owned the generator and the largest shanty on the ice.
“Yup? Oh, hey Derek!” Wilson shouted, and Derek could smell the cloud of alcohol that wafted out the open door. The old man was smiling and holding a beer and not wearing a shirt. “Good to see you made it in before the storm,” Wilson said, pointing at the horizon. Derek saw the sweat running down Wilson’s chest. They must be keeping it toasty inside.
“Here you go, Judge,” Derek said, holding up the red gas can. The liquid sloshed inside the tank.
Judge Wilson nodded at the stack of cans next to the generator. They had plenty of gas, but more never hurt.
“Oh, thanks man. You don’t have to do that every time,” Wilson said. “You know that, right? But I do appreciate it. Say, you wanna come over?” He pointed inside and smiled. The door opened slightly and Derek could see other men inside, watching TV and playing some kind of board game. “We’ve got brats.”
Derek shook his head. “No, but thanks.” He pointed over his shoulder. “Is everyone staying? The storm looks pretty bad.”
Wilson looked up at the sky with bloodshot eyes and nodded. “Jameson said he was only staying for the first half. By then, he figures the Pats will already be down by fourteen or twenty-one. And he’s got something to get to.” Wilson turned around and shouted into the shanty. “Though what’s more important than the Pats in the Super Bowl, I can’t imagine!”
Wilson turned back and Derek could feel Wilson’s eyes on him, sizing him up. Derek liked the gasoline-for-electricity arrangement just fine, but he wasn’t really interested in getting into Wilson’s group. Wilson was rich and important and already had plenty of friends.
“Well, thanks again,” Derek said, nodding, and turned, adding his can to the pile of cans next to the generator before heading back to his shanty. The wind gusted and Derek grabbed the rope line that ran along the fronts of all the shanties. He passed three more sheds, a large sled for hauling things across the ice and a snowmobile before he heard Wilson’s door close behind him.
Back inside his own place, Derek turned on the hot plate and unwrapped the sausages, rubbing his hands together to warm up. Derek had his own food and didn’t need to hang out with Wilson. There were rumors that Judge Meyer Wilson and his male buddies got up to things out here on the lake when they were alone. Private things. Not that there was anything wrong with that, Derek thought, smiling and remembering an episode of Seinfeld.
He didn’t begrudge people coming out to the lake to get some privacy. Derek had brought a few women out here for the same reason, even though they’d always hated it. Too cold. Always shivering and complaining. Took the fun out of it, almost.
But Wilson and his friends were out here a lot of the time, hanging out for hours in their locked shanties. Whatever they did out here on the ice when they were alone was completely their business. Derek just thought it was interesting that they were all happily married men, with wives and families.
He guessed everyone had their secrets.
I hope you enjoyed this preview of “Black Ice.” Follow the links to order the book on Kindle and in paperback.
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Acknowledgments
This book was, like my others, a collaborative effort. If it weren’t for the immeasurable assistance of some amazing people, this book would never have crawled its way out of my brain and onto the printed page. This book took about two-and-a-half years to complete, going through several rewrites and revisions until something emerged that I could be happy with. Anything great in this book is probably as a result of a suggestion one of these people made, whereas all the mistakes and miscalculations fall squarely on my shoulders.
I’d like to thank the following people for their hard work to help make this book a reality:
• My wife Samantha, who had to listen to me talk on and on endlessly about Frank Harper and the other characters;
• My parents, Mary and Albert Enslen, for reading and rereading this--along with my father’s attention to time lines and details--and marking it up until it was perfect;
• My editor, Diana Ceres, who vastly improved the book by giving it a rigorous edit and bringing up a lot of questions that made me think;
• And the wonderful folks of Tipp City, Ohio, upon which the fictional town of Cooper’s Mill is based.
-- Greg Enslen
About The Author
Greg Enslen is an Ohio author and columnist. He's written and published twelve books, including five fiction titles and seven other books. Several are available through Gypsy Publications of Troy, Ohio.
For more information, please see his Amazon Author Page or visit his Facebook fan page. Find out more www.gregenslen.com.
Books By Greg Enslen
All titles are available on Kindle:
Fiction:
Black Bird
The Ghost of Blackwood Lane
The 9/11 Machine
A Field of Red
Black Ice
Field Guide Series:
A Field Guide to Facebook
Viewer’s Guide Series:
A Viewer’s Guide to Suits, Season One
A Viewer’s Guide to Suits, Season Two
Newspaper Column Collections:
Tipp Talk 2010
Tipp Talk 2011
Tipp Talk 2012
Tipp Talk 2013