Ice Man

On the fifteenth day of the ice season his daughter came to see him.

“How long are you going to sit in this hut?” she said.

He lifted his little fishing rod high above the hole, then slowly lowered it again. “Until I catch that pike. Or the ice thaws.”

She shook some snow out of her hair. A fruity scent filled the shanty. Shampoo? Strange. He’d already forgotten what shampoo smelled like.

“This isn’t healthy behavior,” she said. “Your interpersonal relationships are suffering.”

He laughed and took a drink from his thermos. Hot chocolate dribbled down his beard onto his crusty bibs. “My door is always open.”

“Nobody wants to walk across a frozen lake to talk to a weirdo who hasn’t showered in two weeks.”

He jigged the rod like a puppeteer; the bait danced below the ice. “You did.”

“Yeah. And I’m starting to regret it. Ever hear of an air freshener?”

She unzipped her jacket, exposing the cartoon t-shirt underneath. Some kind of crazy cat. How old was she? He glanced out the window at the row of six tip-ups stretching down the ice. Their flags were all bent low, unsprung.

“One of these days I’ll look out there and see a flag sticking straight up in the air. Do you know what will be on the line?”

She sighed. “A fish.”

“Not just any fish. A pike. The biggest pike I’ve ever seen.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“She’s been in here for twenty years. Getting fat on stocked trout. Had her to the side of the canoe one spring. Broke the—”

“Heard it a thousand times. What are you even eating out here?”

He noticed the shiny ring in her nose. Why? What did it mean? “Just about to throw some tots on the cooker. You like Cajun seasoning?”

“Why don’t you come home for lunch?”

“Have to watch the flags.” He looked outside. Wind whipped snow across the ice and some fisherman’s plastic bucket came skidding by. “Starting to blow. You should stay. Fish for a while. This pike bait is easy to catch.” He prodded a pile of dead trout with his boot.

“I have to get back to my anime.”

“Your what?”

“It’s like a TV show. I’m at the end of season twenty and I need to see how it ends.”

“You watched twenty seasons?” He put his fishing rod in a holder and turned the propane heater up a notch. “How many episodes is that?”

“I don’t know. Like two hundred some.”

“Two hundred?”

She stuck her chin out, balled her fists. “Yeah? So?”

Was she always so skinny? And that nose ring. “Sure you don’t want some tots? You used to love ‘em.”

“Later, Dad. Good luck with your fish.”

She left, closing the door tightly behind her. He watched her slide-step on the ice for a while, worried she might fall, but soon shifted his gaze back to the row of flags. None were up.