P. Parrish: Heart of Ice

Wednesday, December 31, 1969

He was staring at the frozen lake and thinking about his mother lying on a table somewhere, screaming in pain.

He was remembering what she had told him, how they had kept her in that little room and held her down, how it felt like her insides were being torn in half, and how it went on and on and on for two days until she begged to die.

He was thinking about her and how much he had loved her. But he was also thinking that if she had been able to stand the pain for two more minutes- two damn minutes- his life would have been so very different.

But she couldn’t. So he was pulled from her womb at two minutes before midnight on September 14, and because of that everything now had changed.

The ferry was coming in. He heard its horn before he saw it, a white smudge emerging slowly from the gray afternoon fog. It was running late. The straits had frozen over early this year because of the long, bitter cold snap. He pulled up the hood of his parka and looked down at the duffel at his feet. Had he remembered his gloves? Everything had happened so fast he hadn’t given much thought to packing. Now he was so cold he didn’t even want to open the duffel to look, so he stuffed his red hands into his armpits and watched the ferry.

The ferry was taking a long time to get to the dock, like it was moving in slow motion. But everything was like this now, moving as if time no longer existed. It didn’t really, he thought. Not anymore. Time was nothing to him now. By tomorrow he would have all the time in the world.

He looked around. At the clapboard ticket house of the Arnold Line ferry, at the docks, at the empty parking lot and the boarded-up pastie shack. He looked past the park benches and the bare black trees still wearing their necklaces from last night’s ice storm. He looked back toward town where the fog blurred all the places he had known during his nineteen years here, and he tried hard to burn everything into his memory because he knew that once he got on the ferry there would be no way to come back and he would forget all of this and the person he had been here.

He looked to his left.

Canada. It was just fifty miles away, less than an hour’s drive up I-75. He had never been there before.

Until now he had never had a reason to.

The ferry docked. No one came out to take his ticket, so he picked up his duffel, sprinted up the gangplank, and boarded. The cabin was empty and dingy but at least it was warmer. He set his duffel on one of the wooden benches and sat down. He wanted a hot cup of coffee but there was no one at the snack bar. The clouded glass pots sat empty on the coffee machines. There wasn’t a soul to be seen anywhere, and he had the weird feeling that he was the only human being left on earth.

But then the metal floor began to vibrate beneath his feet and the ferry pulled away from the dock. He leaned his head against the cold glass of the window and closed his eyes.

He slept. And for the first time in weeks, he dreamed.

Dreamed of a bald man in horn-rimmed glasses and a blue suit. Dreamed of shooting a rifle that looked nothing like the one he used to hunt deer with his dad. Dreamed of lying naked on a cold steel table in a white room with his intestines pouring out of his gut. And then the bald man was holding up a big bright blue capsule and smiling and telling him that if he just took it all the pain would go away.

He was jerked awake by a jabbing on his shoulder.

He looked up into the red face of an old man wearing a navy peacoat with the ferry line emblem on the pocket.

“Time to get off, son.”

The window had fogged over. He rubbed it with the sleeve of his parka and saw something in the mist. It was the boarded-up pastie shack. They were back in St. Ignace.

“Hey!” he called out to the old man who was heading toward the door. “What happened? Why did we turn back?”

“No choice,” the old man said. “Got out a ways but it was frozen solid. Got a call in to the cutter but she’s working the shipping lines and can’t get here until tomorrow morning.” He turned and started away.

“But I have to get to the island tonight!”

The old man stared at him, then shook his head. “No one’s getting over there tonight, son.”

The old man shuffled off, the metal door banging behind him. The young man’s eyes went again to the window. His mind was spinning, trying to figure out his options. Stay here and wait? No, because tomorrow would be too late. Go home and try to explain? No, because he couldn’t look his father in the eye and tell him one more lie. Leave and try to start over somewhere new? No, because she wouldn’t be there.

And this was all about her.

Cooper Lange reached for the duffel at his feet but paused. The name stenciled on the green canvas was so faded it could barely be read: CHARLES S. LANGE. It had belonged to his father, and U.S. Army sergeant Charles Lange had put in it everything he needed to survive-heating tablets, rations, mittens, compass, bullets, and a picture of his wife and baby son. When he came home from Korea Charles packed it away, emptying it and himself as best he could. Even his wife couldn’t get him to talk about what had happened over there, and when she died three years later Charles Lange withdrew into himself even more. When his son turned sixteen he brought out the duffel and gave it to him.

Cooper had never used the duffel until last night, when he hurriedly packed it with the things he guessed he might need to survive. A change of clothes, matches, some Mounds bars, the three hundred and two dollars from his bank account, his father’s old army compass.

He grabbed the bag and hurried from the ferry. The temperature had dropped since boarding and the cold was a hard slap against his face. He glanced at his watch. Almost four. It would be dark soon. He had to figure out something fast. The dock was deserted and there were no cars in the lot. Chartering a plane in this weather was out of the question, not that he could afford it.

The weather was getting bad fast, a bank of heavy pewter clouds building on the horizon of Lake Huron. His eyes caught a spot of something dark on the frozen lake just offshore. Then he spotted another dark spot beyond the first.

Trees. The dark spots were trees. That meant someone had started laying out the ice bridge. But was it finished?

There was no time to check. If he was going, he had to go now. He unzipped the duffel and found his gloves. He cursed himself for not bringing a flashlight and screwdrivers-it was crazy to cross the bridge without them-but he hadn’t planned on having to do this.

He hadn’t planned on doing any of this. But she. .

God, had he forgotten it? Digging beneath the clothes, he found her picture. It was her senior class portrait. Perfect oval face framed by long black hair, somber dark eyes, and not even a hint of a smile. He turned it over to read what she had written even though he knew it by heart.

When love beckons to you follow him, though his ways are hard and steep. And when he speaks to you believe in him, though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

— Julie .

He started to put it back in the duffel but instead slipped it into the chest pocket of his parka and zipped it shut.

He put on his gloves, slung the duffel strap over his shoulder, and headed across the parking lot. At the snow-covered beach he stopped. Someone had tamped down a path that led to the shoreline, creating a crude entry to the ice bridge beyond.