White

Jaxen averts his gaze from the other children, fixes his eyes on the hole cut into the ice just for him, maintains the law of himself. Chase jerks his poplar stick in and out of the hole. His eyes burn with anticipation.

“Patience,” I say.

“Neath?” he asks.

I nod. He gets down on his belly to check the hole once more. After a moment he jerks his head up.

“Neath!” he yells.

A cutthroat must have swum past. He looks confused, too young yet to comprehend the dark live things that swim beneath the surface. The hockey players flash past too close, then seeing no fish, continue on.

“Watch out,” I warn Chase. “Stay close.”

Chase grins up at me from the ice, two tiny rows of white teeth. I nudge him gently with my Sorrels across the surface like a curling rock.

Then Jaxen yelps, his face ablaze. My husband goes over and tests the line.

“Yeppers,” he confirms.

Jaxen tugs the poplar stick once, twice, five times and out comes the cutthroat, its body ablaze with hoary-steaming colour. My husband removes the J hook from its mouth with a pair of needle-nose pliers; the fish falls the short distance to the ice and thrashes about. Jaxen’s grin broad on his small face.

“Wait,” my husband says. “We need a picture.”

He looks around; we left the camera in the van.

He heads towards the shore.

The three of us stand, watch the fish hammer about on the ice. No Byrne in sight, no beer bottles, nothing but the dilemma of fish versus fate versus cruelty versus kindness. The smile on Jaxen’s face ebbs and flows as the cutthroat struggles. Regardless, he and Chase dance on the surface of Lake Byrne in their small booted feet, no weight to speak of yet, barely a footprint on this immense, round earth. They take turns petting it, Chase speaking softly in his two-year-old gibberish, Jaxen laying his mittened hand on the flank of the fish as if to keep it warm, ease its suffering. Gradually the thrashing subsides, the colours fade to silver, and it looks then as if made of metal, a metal cutthroat, invincible, indestructible, can swim through the muddy heart of the underworld earth and rock and soil.

Jaxen picks up the fading fish. He’s taking it back to the hole.

“Neath?” Chase asks, ruddy child-cheeks.