Heart of Ice

1

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.

The huge gray expanse of Lake Huron lay before him. And somewhere out there in the fog was Mackinac Island.

The channel was only four miles across, but he knew what he was up against. He had grown up in St. Ignace and spent the last five summers on the island making good money slapping fudge in the shops on Main Street and cleaning stalls at the stables. When the tourists left in October, the island closed down and the hard winters left the couple hundred residents there isolated and dependent on the coast guard icebreakers. But when it was cold enough the straits between the island and St. Ignace would freeze over. Someone on the island would venture out onto the lake with spud bars to test the ice’s thickness. If he made it to St. Ignace he’d call back with the news that it was safe. The townspeople would take discarded Christmas trees and plant them in the ice to mark the safe path across.

He glanced back over his shoulder at the redbrick coast guard building on Huron Street. There was a light on inside. The coast guard guys didn’t want people out on the ice bridge but they couldn’t stop them, so every year they sent out the same warning-tell someone if you go out on the ice bridge. For a second he thought about going up to the station.

But he couldn’t. He couldn’t tell anyone where he was going. That was what they had decided. She wouldn’t tell her parents and he wouldn’t tell his father. No one could know.

He hoisted the duffel and stepped onto the ice. It groaned but held firm. He pulled in a deep breath and headed toward the first tree, just a dark shape in the mist.

At the tree, he stopped and looked back. The lights of St. Ignace were just yellow blurs in the fog. Looking ahead again, he spotted the next tree and started toward it.

The sun was now just a pale pink glow above the gray horizon, and out on the exposed lake the wind hit his face like needles. But he kept moving in a tentative shuffle, trying not to think about the deep cold water beneath his feet.

His head was throbbing by the time he reached the fifth tree. Its web of fake silver icicles danced in the wind. One small blue Christmas ornament clung to a branch.

Seeing it brought back the dream about the blue capsule and he realized now what it had meant. Just one month ago he had sat with his father in front of the TV watching a man pour hundreds of blue capsules into a huge jar. No Mayberry R.F.D tonight, just Roger Mudd staring back over his shoulder into the camera and whispering as a man in a suit and horn-rimmed glasses pulled out the first blue capsule.

September fourteenth, zero zero one.

His father, sitting in the shadows, had said nothing, just got up and went into the kitchen. Alone, Cooper watched as they put the little slip of white paper with his birthday on it up on a big board next to the American flag. He had never won anything in his life-except this. The luck of being among the first young men drafted into the Vietnam War.

His eyes drifted left again, toward Canada. He would be there soon enough, but right now he had to get to the island. Julie was waiting for him.

A loud crack, like a rifle shot.

He froze. Afraid to look down, afraid to even take a breath. Another crack.

Suddenly the world dropped.

Blackness. Water. Cold.

His scream died to a gurgle as the water closed over him.

He groped but there was nothing but water. Everything was getting heavy and darker. He had to get some air. He pushed the duffel off and kicked upward. But his hands hit only a ceiling of ice. He couldn’t find the hole; he couldn’t see anything; he couldn’t breathe.

He could almost feel his heart slowing in his chest, his blood growing colder.

Mom, I miss you.

Dad, I’m sorry.

Julie. .