Ice Cold

Peter stares at the hole and admires the perfect circle he cut in the ice the water deep blue and cold rushing underneath. The slush will form soon he thinks looking up to the cloudless sky knowing the sun is a cold sun and only gives light at this time of year. Today he is alone on the river and he is glad of it. He likes his solitude, knowing he is the only single living person among the jams of an early January thaw caught solid in a high pressure system that moved in from Canada. The wind tears at his back as he flicks his wrist to move the tip-up. He feels a tug, a walleye nudging but not taking the bait. "Maybe they will not bite today," he thinks. "Maybe it is too cold or too bright." He looks to the west, down river where it narrows and twists to the south, a white ribbon in the cradle of the hills. A movement from above catches his eye and he sees a red tail hawk circling over a blanket of white interrupted intermittently by a withered cornstalk that didn't make it to the silo. "Are you as lonely as I?" he asks the hawk. He stares back into the hole and thinks of Teresa his only true love. "Why did she leave? And why without a word, just walked out of my life?"

His line dips and he jerks his wrist upwards setting the hook and pulls in the line with his thick now frozen fingers. "It is a big one," he says and continues to bring in the line. It snaps. "Damn." He looks into the hole. "You will have a sore mouth for a few days." He looks at the line and wonders why it broke after the meticulous care given it through the season. "Why do I think of her only now, on the ice and never in spring when I cast with a fly or in the summer when the sun is warm on my neck?" Why doesn't her memory come to me when the trees are dressed in their finest and the hills sing with the cries of the pheasant?" He looks again to the hawk now lower and more difficult to discern against the gray of the trees. He reels in the line and stands, his legs sore and cramped from the crouching. He feels the cold that has settled into the small of his back. "I did not love her right." He sees something to the north, a flash of white from the tail of a stag. "Maybe I don't know how to love." He picks up his auger and his sack of tackle and finds his way through the jams carefully, the wind stinging his face leathering the flesh drawn tightly against the bones.