Thin Ice

It was practically dusk when the boys started home, and the neighborhoods they walked through had an eerie twilight glow. Neither had caught anything, but that wasn’t usually the point. Their tackle boxes rarely ever contained bait. Ethan didn’t even like the idea of piercing a worm with a hook, let alone splitting a fish in half with a knife. It repulsed him. But Tom was different. He could gut a deer, skin it, and quarter the meat without so much as a stomach tumble. But he never enjoyed it, he was simply trained to carry out the processes, handed one set of skills from a step-father that didn’t have much else to give.
    He never brought any bait either.
    They wouldn’t talk much at the spot. It wasn’t about that either. Sometimes Jenny and her little sister Enid from down the street would want to tag along, and they would gab endlessly there. The boys always silently hated that. There was something about sitting at the water’s edge like that, far enough away from Man’s world to feel small and part of something--to feel insignificant in the eyes of the world. Talking always ruined it.
    The boys crested a steep hill, and stopped for a moment. Ethan caught his breath, wheezing quietly, and they looked out over the landscape behind them as the last few slivers of sunlight painted the sky in brilliant purples and reds. The hill sloped down for about a mile, with faded pastel ranch-homes squatting silent alongside the cracked asphalt. There was a sharp turn to the left at the end of the houses, where the road sped away from them and attached itself to the river, where it ran alongside it until the road turned to gravel and then to dirt, before petering out into a rough, bumpy trail that led to their spot. On the other side of the river was a skinny island peppered with spruce trees, and when the river froze in the winter, you could walk all the way across to it, if you were brave enough and the ice wasn’t too thin. 
    The boys sat in the middle of the road, looking out over the world.
    “Does Bobby still write home every week?” Ethan asked.
    “Yeah. My dad says he is good and will be home soon, but he won’t let me read them. I think it’s crapola,” Tom said.
    “Did you hear that Penny Haliday flashed Mr. Benson’s whole class?” Ethan said. His eyes were lit up with mischief.
    “Nah, she didn’t flash ‘em. Her dress caught on the doorframe when they were all coming back in from lunch, and it split the front. Richie Carmine said she had on big grey panties and a little training bra. Said there wasn’t much in the bra,” Tom said. He picked pebbles off the road and tossed them, watching them roll down the hill.
    “Oh,” Ethan said, undercut.
    “I found a bunch of Playboy’s once,” he offered.
    “Yeah?” Tom asked. He wasn’t really listening. All the thinking at the fishing spot always left him drained after.
    “Under the Graham’s old crabapple tree, you know, where the bus stop is? I got there early once last fall, and I was kicking the leaves around that edge of the property where we all stand. And I saw ‘em, just sitting there under some leaves, like they were buried treasure, you know? There wasn’t anybody else around, I kept checking, and so I opened them and started to look,” Ethan said.
    “And?” Tom said, moderately interested.
    “Most of ‘em were all stuck together and wrinkled from the rain. They all smelled like leaves. I tore out a few pages and stuck ‘em in my pocket when the bus pulled up. Sold a few to some kids for a quarter at school,” Ethan said.
    “What a huckster,” Tom said.
    “Yeah. When I went back the next day, the rest of the stack was gone. Some other kid must’ve found ‘em,” Ethan said, a little heartbroken.
    “It always gets taken away from you,” Tom said.
    Ethan was quiet.
    They heard a car coming, and the boys stood up and moved to the sidewalk, noting the dissatisfied look of the driver as he passed the two boys.
    “Guess we should head back?” Ethan said.
    “Yeah,” Tom said, giving the view one last encapsulating stare. He tried to note every detail of the world just beyond his, where there were no straight lines, no hard concrete to scrape knees and elbows on, and no far away places where brothers went to die.
    The boys turned round and started down the hill, where soon the sprawling Missouri and its captive island were out of sight, and now all that could be seen ahead were the lights of town, and the innumerable rows of houses, lined up like soldiers.
   

   

Reviews

[DavidRyanM]

Dig this as well, man. A shot piece capturing what it's like to be a young guy with your friends. The only thing I would change is the line "Ethan was only ten, but he had an idea of why Tom wasn’t allowed to read the letters. Ethan’s father didn’t talk about the war either," only because it seems when you were younger, all you would do is agree with your friends. You rarely would have you own opinion on subject aside from video games and movies. Just the flow of it didn't go along with the rest of the story. Love the flashing part and how she didn't, it was just an embarrassing moment made to sound heroic (if that's the word I'm looking for). I love the small mentions of war though -- with the brother, the father, the mention of brothers dying, and the houses lined up like soldiers. A constant theme that made this story a "Soon to be men" type. Good stuff, man. Glad to see you're inspired...give me some of that.