I was sleeping on my mom’s couch at the time. I had had a rough year, a rough couple of years. My dog was barking and I had a headache. It was my day off so I slept in. He wanted to go outside but I told him it was too cold but he’s a dog and can’t talk. So I got up and took a pill for my head and gathered the dogs for a walk.
The night before it had snowed. The news said the temperature would be zero or below. I said how can it be zero, how can a temperature be nothing? But it isn’t nothing, it’s zero, it’s a value, my brother told me. He was also living with my mom at the time.
I put my two jackets on and we went out. The sky was high and, like a well-polished emerald, the color of the deep sea. The snow hurt the eyes but shined like a mirror ball, and the wind was still. The whole damned thing was white on blue. In the distance, the large Sierra Nevadas, normally purple and blue, were blanketed in frost. The trees, and fences, and houses, apartment complexes, the school down the way, cars, hills, and the like were all covered. Pockets of scattered life were visible, a footprint, bunny prints, droppings, and yellow snow, but for the most part, it was flat white and nothing moved, and no noises were heard except the panting of my dogs and myself.
The dogs were pissing in the snow, and I was jealous, but they were cold, so I was trying to get them back to the townhouse. But they were pissing. I felt my headache and the sharp cold air cutting into my skin. The air in the winter, with it being so dry made it feel like your skin was going to crack off. The dog’s snot was beginning to freeze and after that, we went inside.
A few nights before the snowstorm my brother stole a few of my beers and I let him have it. He didn’t know he couldn’t. They weren’t for drinking, but rather for sleeping. At the time I had been having nightmares but couldn’t go to the doctors or tell anyone or anything. So I drank. And anyway, he stole one of my beers and I had to let him have it, I told him about Dad and about Dad’s dad. But I don’t think it did much good.
After that, we hadn’t been talking to each other, and when we did it came at a cost. He would land barbed remarks at dinner and I would look at him and he would look at me. And that was it.
He told me one night to stop being like that. And I said I didn’t know how else to be and he dropped it. I never explained to him that the beers were for sleeping and not drinking.
I was making eggs on Rye when my brother came running in. He said the pond down across the street was completely froze over. I told him I had seen it like that once and he said no I hadn’t. Shows what he knew I did and threw a big rock into it with my friends. It cracked the ice and sank slow like, and I told him the story and he lit up.
We ate and he told me he had an idea. Then he went digging in the family room, where mom kept her treadmill and all the other paper and junk. He came out with one of Dad’s old bowling balls. A sixteen-pound round black thing, I asked what he was doing with it. He said I’ll show you and we both put our jackets and hats on and left again.
The world had turned and the sky was a paler shade of blue. Nearer to a robin’s egg than an emerald. My brother took off ahead of me moving gingerly with the sixteen-pound ball over the snow and ice. I followed behind but near enough to help pick him back up if he ate it. Young people want to move quickly and show the world they can move through it how they want, they don’t understand that half the joy is in the windup. But I follow him.
He makes it to the frozen muddy banks before I do. And he makes mention of that when I finally do make it. Beat ya, he says. And I say that’s just fine.
Usually, the banks are hell to walk in, thick and deep with mud mostly, but between the snow and frost, they were manageable. This pond, while far enough away from the school that it’s nearby, is still close enough that evidence of teenage activity is noticeable. On some sunny days one can find used condoms, cigarette butts, beer bottles, roaches, needles, pornography, and the occasion pipe or bomb, or unspent firework. But all evidence was under ice or snow or frost or a combination. This pond was high above the road which put us in danger of being seen. However, lining the outer rim of the banks were large trees though now bare and covered.
We both stood for a second and listened to each other breathe. We were suddenly struck with nerves and looked at each other asking without saying; if we were going through with it. Just then, in a bolt of action, he heaved the bowling ball. The black ball hung in the bright blue air for a minute or a day, it felt like forever, it felt like the ball would never land, but it was dead on heading straight for the ice. The ball bounced then bounced again, unable to break the ice.
It’s completely solid, I said. He said yeah. Is it safe to get one of us said, but neither of us moved. We just let it sit on the ice in silence.
