Winter Ends Three Times

          - Richard Strom

1.           In March, the blizzard and the sickness came at the same time. The hack and rattle constant in the chest, till my muscles tore and ached from clearing the pipes.And the fever, Jesus.102,3,4,and in the evening it clamped down hard, chilling and shaking me till I could hardly stand. And no medicine or doctoring, and my snow went unshovelled. And the thermostat at 80, and the Ben-Gay under thermal underwear, and the sleeping bag,sweating it out.          Saturday,sunday,maybe,and I slept.Dreamed of walking in a snowed-in woods, gasping for breath in heavy, wet snow, struggling on. To where? I didn’t know. Weakening, I came out upon a frozen lake, to a single snowmobile trail, leading to a notch between long point and island, where the sun sat like the bead in a gunsight. And I laid down, in the trail, and let the cold light wash over me. Nothing moves in the land but the raven, making a throat-sound like a bell. Perched, it mutters like an indistinct conversation from next door. And I close my eyes.           Wakened by a shadow falling over me I see the wolf lope off the point before the low sun, his shadow stretched before, scenting me, moving loosely from side to side. And stands over me as a bank of cloud rises in the north, his eyes brilliant-oiled and deadly. Stretches,and lies atop me,over my chest like a heavy blanket. The eyes close,and we are joined by the she-wolf, lankier, who curls herself against my right side as the snow comes again. The night comes and in the night the snows drifts over us.           In the morning a hard light enters the hole of our breathing,the shaft of light broken, probably by the raven, and I stir. I turn my head to the right and the yellow-almond eyes of the huntress snap open and shut again.           That was the weekend. By tuesday night,the full moon rose, and I felt better. 2.           I drove out of town and to the bridge. It was my summer place, really,where I came out of the woods wreathed in mosquitoes, long after dark, after leaving my big browns in the water. Where I bit the Pass Lake or Green Drake off the leader. And I mean no fucking around when I say leader. Six-pound,generally. And struggled out of waders sweat-damp on the inside by the car lights, and opened the windows as I pulled out, to blast the blood-sucking bugs to kingdom come. And I generally stopped off for a drink on the way home. That was a fishing trip.That was summer.           But this was winter. I trudged the barely broken trail of crusty snow between the two forks in the fading day. Out of a sheltered,boggy place the deer rose up, like lost wild America. If it had been summer, and I’d been carrying my rod, I could have touched them with the tip, as I’d done before. Feet silent in the snow, off they bounded over the weighed-down brush, not to be seen again. There, but not, like our babies that hadn’t been born.           On to that hushed, holy place, where the river separates, the forks held apart by the thin strip of land I’d been walking. I recognized this spot for what it is the first time. The hushed riffles of the water-coming-apart. The boulder behind the head of the point. I stood as the light began to end, there at the dividing point. And prayed, and thought of luck, and the odds. And broke a cigarette, and dropped the bits to the water, and the flakes of tobacco rolled, to the St.Croix, the Mississippi, the Gulf, the Sea, to forever and wherever.           Then I walked back out, faster than the way in. And I drove away from the bridge, windows closed tight, the anti-freeze death smell pumping from the wide-open heater. A drink for warming the way home. At home, she was in the tub, and we put our hands on her belly, and the baby moved. On the back porch, smoking before bed, I looked at the humps of my rock garden under the snow and thought of the ferns I dug from the riverside that would rise there in the spring. 3.           It was late in April, and way up north.The day after we buried my father, my Uncle Les told me the suckers were running, and he gave me an old blanket-lined chore coat. We got the battered, joke fishing tackle from his garage. And a twelve-pack, maybe two. And some of my cousins. And out over the frost-boiled gravel to the trestle,where we climbed up and over the high bank to the Clearwater.           There’s a wide pool below that bank, with a stony riffle at the head, and when the light got right we could see the dull flash of the sides of the suckers in the resting water below the foam.Once or twice we saw the green and gold sides of a pike slash into and out of the slow schools.           The drill was this:twist-on sinkers somewhere between a foot and two above a small hook wearing a bit of worm. Cast as best we could with the old, grinding level-winds, up into the riffle water, and make the bait bounce, pausing here and there, out there where the fish are. The subtle bump of taking, and reel them in. They don’t fight much, you know. They come out of the cold water with a slight rainbow sheen in the sun, and are put onto a chain stringer anchored under a rock. The kind of fishing you can do with a can of Grain Belt in one hand and never feel neglectful. Winter went away as we reeled in fish all afternoon, as surely as the mud on our boots would soon be knocked off.           Fresh fish for Grandma. We’d fry them crisp and we wouldn’t mind the many bones,we told ourselves. After all, for what did God give us teeth? We cleaned them in a tub, overlooked by the life-size picture of Christ that looms in Grandma’s window, in the lemon sunset. When I straightened up from this work, the beer signs came on at the Silver Creek, at the Country Inn, and it was done. - Richard Strom

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