Wilson's Pond

Winters in Vermont are brutal. Temperatures drop so low, the inside of your nose freezes. Everything gets covered in thick ice that gives the appearance of icing. The landscape becomes a blank white canvas from November to March. This doesn't stop us from our weekly hockey game on Wilson’s Pond.

Thwack!

I slammed the butt of my hockey stick onto the ice. I can tell the thickness just by the sound the maple stick makes hitting the frozen surface - something my father taught me on our first ice fishing trip in Maine. Satisfied it was safe, I took a few steps further out onto the pond and repeated the process. I made it about a quarter of the way around the pond before I noticed two brothers that lived in the area approaching. They wore matching Buffalo plaid wool coats and long gray stocking caps their mom had knitted.

Pete Fermier and I shared a birthday and a love of the Bruins. His brother, Hank, was a couple of years older. Both boys were of hardy Acadian stock - thick and bristly like two pine trees - which made them excellent hockey players. They came traipsing across the snow covered cow pasture between their house and the pond, leaving behind huge footprints that stood out like ink drips on a clean sheet of paper. They carried hockey sticks over one shoulder and black leather skates over the other.

I didn’t know they were on the edge of the pond watching me until I heard the rhythmic drumming of their sticks on the ice and the bellowing voices. Un salaud! Un salaud! Un salaud! Bastard! Bastard! Bastard! When I finally acknowledged them with a flip of my middle finger, they charged onto the ice, sliding into me.

We were joined by a few more kids and the game began. We didn’t have referees so it was truly down and dirty hockey resulting in many bloody knuckles and a few black eyes.

At the conclusion of the first period, which ended only when we were too tired to continue, we collectively collapsed under an ancient maple on the western shore. Hank and his best friend, Jack, sat against the tree facing a faded gray dairy barn.

“I’m telling you. In a year no one will remember Bobby Orr,” said Jack, whose real name was Jacques.

“Yeah, well. Esposito is a washed-up has-been!”

While Hank and Jack continued arguing over the two Bruins superstars, Pete and I sat on the opposite side of the maple, staring quietly out at the pond. The silence was finally broken by Pete.

“Any word from Ray?”

Ray is my oldest brother. Right after graduation he enlisted in the Marines to go fight the “damn commies in Nam” as my dad put it.

“Mom got a letter from him right after Christmas. He was doing okay. Of course, he can’t say much,” I said.

“I hear things are winding down. I bet Nixon is signing orders right now to bring him home.”

Before I could reply, a pebble hit the brim of my Stormy Kromer hat and bounced into my lap. I looked up to see Jack standing over.

“Let’s go, tabarnak!”

We all grabbed our sticks for the second period. Immediately after the face off, I noticed something bouncing across the pasture towards the pond. My little brother, Michael, in a brown woolen one piece snow suit, dragging my dad’s too big hockey stick behind him, reached the shoreline and froze.

The last time Michael was this close to Wilson’s Pond was last Fourth of July. The family had gathered there for a picnic to celebrate the holiday. Mom was placing a plate of chicken onto a handmade quilt that was already laden with a variety of side dishes. Dad was asleep, a Red Sox ball cap over his eyes. I was pitching rocks into the depths of the water. Michael swam out too far. He panicked when his toes couldn’t feel the muddy bottom. We all teased him after dad had to drag him back to the picnic, arms still flailing. We were all pretty relentless with the teasing so, I understood his hesitance as Michael stood at the edge of the frozen pond.

“Come on, Mikey,” I shouted.

He took a careful step onto the ice. After several more steps, his confidence building, he trotted towards us. About twenty yards from us he stumbled. The hockey stick slammed into the ice with a sharp crack. It took me a moment to realize it wasn't the stick that made the sound.

In a flash, Michael was in the freezing water. It was only then that the realization hit. I hadn't finished checking the ice’s thickness after the Fermier brothers arrived. Michael was now paying for my mistake. In a blind panic, I ran towards my brother before Pete grabbed me.

"You'll only end up in the water, yourself," he warned. Even though I knew he was right, I didn’t care. I carefully approached the hole in the ice. Michael was shoulder deep in the water, bobbing up and down like a lobster buoy.

“I can’t feel the bottom,” he said, his breath quickening.

“You’re going to be okay, Mikey. Stay calm,” I said.

I laid down on the ice, piercing cold seeping through my wool coat. Pete stood behind me, gripping my foot. Up close I could see that my brother’s lips were turning blue and his skin was losing color.

“Give me your hand.” Mike didn’t respond and didn’t move. I slid closer, reaching out to him. His breath came in deep gasps. My fingers touched his shoulder. He kicked out in a panic, his foot catching the edge of the icy hole. A large chunk fell on top of him, forcing him further underwater.

“Mikey!”

Michael’s unconscious body drifted, finally surfacing under the ice. I kicked and Pete released my ankle. I slid across the pond until I was right above my brother. I punched the ice, trying desperately to break through. I clawed at it like an animal desperate to escape a trap. Flecks of blood from my torn knuckles dyed the surface a fleshy pink.

Through the foggy ice, I watched as Mikey's body slowly sank. A moment later, Hank, naked from the waist up and barefooted, swam past under the ice. He scooped up Michael in his thick forearms. Upon reaching the surface, he gently placed Michael on the ice. My brother's skin was colorless, his body motionless. Hank walked away from Michael towards me. As he trudged past, he whispered, " I tried."

I ran to my brother's side, frozen tears streaming down my face. My friends stood by, silent in their grief.

What seemed like ages later, my parents, followed by Jack, trod across the pond. My mother put one hand on my shoulder and the other to her mouth, as she too wept. Without a word, my dad picked up Michael’s body and walked across the pond in the direction of our farm and the setting sun.

“It’s my fault,” I cried into my mothers chest.

A week later a man from the government visited us. Ray had been killed in action at a place called Long Binh. Michael and the purple heart Ray received, posthumously were buried side by side in a small plot among the paper birch, facing Wilson’s Pond.

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