The body of the fourteen-year old boy floated just under the clear ice, eyes open, mouth closed, right hand clenched as if he had been trying to pound his way through glass.
Jacob went to the river that Saturday because Ann's mom never trusted Matt and Ann to be alone. They wanted to get away from her all-seeing eyes, so Matt asked Jacob to come along when Matt went over to ask Ann out for a nice long walk. Ann's mom had to say yes, with Jacob right there. And she did. Jacob was her pastor's kid, after all. She thought it was strange that three teenagers would want to spend time outside with the temperatures so far below freezing, but what harm could it be?
It wasn't even half a mile to where the Old 49 bridge crossed the North Fork river. Under the bridge Matt had already set up a windbreak, put down some old blankets he had borrowed from his basement, and built a pile of dry wood. Jacob had even helped gather the wood. Matt was Jacob's best friend. Ann was, by far, the most interesting girl in school. If Jacob could help them get some time together, he was happy to do it. As long as he couldn't have time with Ann on his own, that is. And, of course, he couldn't. Jacob couldn't do that to his best friend. Besides, Ann seemed to really like Matt's broad shoulders or something. Jacob wasn't like that.
At first, the three of them worked to get the fire going. They huddled together for a bit, laughing and joking, but soon the warmth of the fire warmed the makeshift shelter enough that Jacob stopped huddling. The other two didn't stop, and Jacob took that as his cue to go for a walk of his own, a real walk.
The January cold had done its usual good job of freezing much of the North Fork, and though in his lifetime Jacob had never seen it completely freeze over, this year the open water was only a few feet wide, bordered on each side by a good forty feet of ice. Initially, Jacob stayed pretty close to shore, but he liked being on the ice. It gave him a strange rush to be walking on water, even if it was frozen. And then, as he moved out a little farther, he realized he could actually see the movement of the water beneath the ice, beneath his feet.
Growing up, Jacob had been on the ice many times. He knew it was dangerous to go out too far. He knew it the way kids know things -- he had heard it, but only from adults, and he had never actually seen what could happen if you weren't careful enough.
Still, he decided to pay attention to the warnings. He was just turning around to head back to the shore, when he slipped. He fell hard to his knees. He felt the crack as he heard it. A shift in the ice beneath him started his heart racing. He lunged forward, trying to launch his body over the crack, but he only managed to get his arms and head past it before the ice slipped away from under his legs and belly. Jacob wanted to scream out for help, but the intensity of the cold knocked the breath out of his lungs. Frantically, he slapped at the ice in front of him, hoping for a place his hands could grasp. There was none. He stayed up a few more seconds. He forced a short, pain-filled moan from his mouth, and then was swept away.
Jacob made one last attempt to save himself, turning over as he was pulled under the sheet of ice, trying to catch hold of the edge of the ice. The maneuver left him facing the sky, his eyes peering up at the bright blue January sky, through the clear sheet of ice above him. He held on to the edge of the ice with his left hand, and tried, in vain, to break through with his right.
His body stung with pain. He could feel that his feet were caught up against something, but he barely noticed it as his final breath escaped and the cold consumed his thoughts.
As the darkness closed in around him, he saw something astonishing. Colors. Streams of colors. Swirling and mixing around a portal of light. Spreading out from the light, not leading toward it. His eyes fixed on a blue stream. A blue that exactly matched the blue of the sky.
And then he breathed in. And then it was over.
And then it began.
.....
[©Steve Will, 2011]
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