The Number 6 and the Town of Y
Nellie lowered her head into the weight of the sled. The creak and scrape of iron crossing ice. Snow fell like handkerchiefs, ice milk, hard nuggets of silver. The wind drove down, turned and screeched across the ice, its lone voice echoing back, echoing back. Perhaps David shouldn’t have taken the horse across the ice; but if he went around by land, he’d be two days going home. Stupid kid! his mother’d say.
No.
He’d go the way he knew.
But ice doesn’t tell where it’s weak. Looking out across the surface of the water five miles or more, it all looks flat and clean and safe. Light shining on it blinds the eyes so as not to ask: where’s it solid, where’s it weak? Where do ripples start up, water steam through? Where is it warmer beneath the ice than on the surface? When does it break apart and slam together again, until it booms in broad daylight, creating seams where, if you mapped the ice’s surface, the topography would be different today than yesterday, now than an hour ago?
David was only over twelve feet of water, thirty yards from the home shore, when the first sled runner cracked through the ice. Under the weight of a 1300 pound work horse and a ton of wood logs, it went down with the speed of light; it just seemed to happen slowly, at the moment the crack rippled open like a fissure.
Stacking jelly jars on the porch, Stella heard a long-drawn out howl she thought was the first hint of a gale coming across the lake.
Out on the ice, the wolves lifted their voices. They knew the ice; they knew what it wanted, and what it wanted it would take. In intimate song, their throats rose in crescendo, calling and calling, until the wind and the howls slammed together, opening the wounds of grief.
With the weight of the logs, each thick round as a barrel, the sled rose on end, tipping David and the horse in through a crack which widened, grew wet, deepened then split. Sawdust and nails skittered across its breaking surface. Boxes fell, spilled, broke open. Seams opened beneath the stone boat, growing wider, like a tidal pool the water rips up, starting with a tiny fissure, widening to a river, then a pond so great one can’t climb out.
It was then that her name rose to the air.
“Stel-l-l-l-a-a!”
On the porch, she lifted her head and turned toward the ice, her name shouted like terror on the wind. Fear struck her heart, grasped it with the muscle of a man’s working hand and wrenched it out of her chest. She saw the wolves on the ice, tails down, voices lifted in a howl so mournful, she knew disaster had come.
Darting across the snowy road, flying past the barn she plunged down the cliff path in deep snow, following David’s track. Racing after, her mother yanked her flailing arms and legs out of the snow, bound her down to the child’s sled she’d snatched to fetch her. Tied her arms down.
Dragged her back.
Shrieking and kicking and clawing: Lemme go! Let-me-go!
But her mother slapped her hard.
Where were you going, little fool?
Any ice would have cracked.