Two Chickens and a Boom in the Night

There are bicycle tire tracks on the frozen lake near my house. The lake doesn't look that frozen. It's covered in a little snow, but there are large spots on the lake that are slushy and transparent looking. It can't be trusted.

Last February Patrick flew here from NYC. We drove to the family cabin in Wisconsin, counting all the Old Style signs along the journey (24). The cabin's on a hill above the lake. We hauled in firewood and made martinis and played rummy. The whole east wall of the cabin is a 2-story window. We saw little creeky shacks out in the middle of the lake. There were pickup trucks. A recliner. Smoke coming from a small chimney stack.

At dusk, a thread of colored lights glowed between fishing shacks. Smoke wafted up from chimneys. From our balcony, you could hear the faint sound of polka music and laughter and see figures of friends milling about in their parkas and flannel vests and John Deere hats. From afar, it looked like a village--where friends no doubt roasted marshmallows and shared chocolatey drinks and dirty jokes.

Patrick and I wanted a hut. We wanted to be invited in for stories about crappies and bait. We wanted to peek in the fishing hole and tell the one about the Rabbi the Priest and the Antelope. We wanted to go make friends. We wanted to see what was going on out there.

Just before dark, we started to walk to the middle of the lake. The ice was surely many feet deep, but we didn't have ice like this at home where we grew up. At home, lakes that appear to be frozen actually shatter like glass and swallow up curious little children.

We wouldn't fall in--that's absurd. There's a pick-up truck out there! A recliner with an old fat man in it! We felt confident, running and skidding on the ice. We were almost there! Then, there was the sound--the sonic boom-like explosion that reverberates against the hillsides. It's the sound of the lake cracking and splintering from some great point of icy pressure out to the edges. We ran. We decided we liked our cabin on the hill better than a fishing shack with merry neighbors and hot drinks and flopping sticky bluegill.

The End.