Ice Fishing Near Black Canada
We were on Trinity Lake near the Canadian border. I’d bored a hole in the ice. The auger chewed through the snow and ice and when it reached the lake water three feet beneath the ice, the spiral bit levered gallons of brown water around my boots which froze against the snow and ice.
I began to walk away. We spaced holes ten paces apart. A black band of pine stretched into the horizon. The blue sky felt closer than the earth. Pike cruised that section of Trinity year round; the theory having to do with a row of sunken ice houses beneath us, which added a sense of good-hearted dread to the fishing. A man in a purple jacket shouted that he would not have gone to college could he do it all again: I was never taught to think, only replicate!
At first I thought he was walking towards the snowmobiles; I could not imagine the chaos had he stolen one; but he was walking away, towards a far point on shore with a mansion owned by a Maine construction magnate. He was not the magnate; I don’t know who I thought he was. People came and went from the ice cabins. My blood was up. I screamed: Get the gas from the red snowmobile! The auger was running low.
He wheeled around. No one ice fishing ever took surprise to a sudden chore. A wind ripped between us blistering my pores, and he shouted: The hours I spent checking the internet at work equaled the hours they cut from my job! The trap next to him signaled a fish-on. I screamed: Flag! I knew the wind had tripped it but we needed to check. He added: The percentage time I spend on my phone during a date equals the relationship’s proximity to death!
I threw down the auger. Rock n’ roll blared from our ice house as I ran past; they were playing cribbage. Someone had fired up the stove; I could smell kielbasa and baked cheese, and corn muffins. I overhead, “Yellow carnations?” Another black wind ripped through. Another orange flag went up. I began to leap so that each of my boot-steps landed with bravado. The man wore a green cap that flew onto the snow and ice when I tackled him. I couldn’t quite tell what he shouted, something about teaching himself Japanese water colors. I sat on his chest and screamed: Are you going back to the trucks? I took him by the collar and lifted him to his feet and asked if he would retrieve the box of hand warmers under the backseat.
