Nature is a Holy Terror

The Chevy idled in the driveway. My dad sat behind the wheel letting the engine warm so it wouldn’t kill on the way to Mass. He smacked his gloved hands together. He fiddled with the radio. From the warmth of the kitchen, I watched smoke blow from the exhaust pipe as though from the large cigarette of a chain smoker. It formed dense clouds in the bitter cold still air.

I used to think my dad was kind to endure arctic temperatures to blast the car heater just so the rest of us could climb into a warm station wagon. But watching him then through the window, it occurred to me that he might actually enjoy the calm before the storm of any combination of we six children piled in.

He honked the horn. A mad scramble for coats and hats followed. It hadn't snowed yet, rare for early December. The sun shone. The cloudless sky was an azure blue. But looks were deceiving.

Overnight temperatures had dropped to below zero Fahrenheit. Everything flash froze. I dashed across the backyard and felt blades of grass snap brittle as glass beneath my feet.

I yanked open the car door and slid across the vinyl backseat.

"I'm freezing,” I whined.

“It’ll warm up,” Dad said, cranking the heat.

I huddled next to my two younger brothers. Our two older brothers had gone to an earlier Mass to serve as altar boys and were already back in bed. My sister sat up front between my parents, always in the favored spot, supposedly because once, years before my memories formed, she’d gotten carsick. She played the potential puke card like a pro.

The weatherman on the radio said this extreme cold snap was truly rare. Typically, lakes froze slowly from the surrounding shores to meet in the center. The ice looked cloudy or was hidden beneath snow. Only the foolish dared walk onto a lake that hadn't completely frozen shore to shore because you risked falling through a still slushy spot.

But overnight the city lakes had frozen absolutely solid. Because there was no snow, they appeared clear as glass. It was quite a sight to behold, said the radio host, you may never see anything like it again. Dad took a different way to church so we could drive past Wilson Pond to see for ourselves.

I heard the awful sound first, a desperate squawking cry. Dad thought it might be a duck or a goose. Despite the cold, I rolled down the window; definitely a duck.

As we drove closer we saw the pond, mirror smooth and transparent. Near the center was a snow-white duck squawking and frantically flapping its wings. The bottom half of its body was stuck to the frozen surface, its webbed feet trapped under the ice. This wasn’t a wild bird but the kind sold back then at pet stores as cute, fuzzy, yellow, bits of fluff to put in kids' Easter baskets. Once the novelty wore off, and in the unlikely event these little ducklings made it to maturity, they were typically released into the wild to fend for themselves.

Ducks often dozed off on the pond, instinctively paddling throughout the night to stir the water. But they weren't prepared for this kind of cold snap. The squawking was a terrified cry for help.

My dad put the car in park to help. My mother pointed out we’d be late for Mass and I was horrified by her callousness and that of all the stupid parents who bought ducklings as if they were jelly beans, marshmallow Peeps, or chocolate bunnies.

“We can’t leave it,” Dad said simply and got out of the car.

A handful of kids were already slipping and sliding across the ice toward the duck. A girl who lived in the pink house facing the pond, stepped cautiously over the ice. She carried a stainless steel pot of water in hand, threw it toward the duck, then jumped back to avoid the duck’s flapping wings and snapping bill. I thought she was torturing the poor creature.

“Do you need help,” my dad called out from the top of the bank.

"It's almost free," she yelled back.

Just then, two more woman emerged from their houses on the pond carrying saucepans of steaming hot water. They walked gingerly down the bank so as not to slosh and spill. Then another front door flew open and a man in a green parka hurried out carrying a huge spaghetti pot of hot water. Dad got back in the car and we made Mass on time.

After church and the traditional Sunday breakfast of bacon, eggs and toast, I bundled up and ran down to Wilson pond. It looked as if a giant had placed a sheet of glass over the water. The duck was gone. But I could see the spot where warm water had melted ice and then how it re-froze in cloudy lumps. I walked gingerly across the pond. It was hard to trust ice formed so quickly. I felt as if I were walking atop a window. Everything tossed into the murky pond water during the summer months was suddenly visible. It made me think of grandma's fancy nicknacks displayed in glass cabinets just for looking, not touching. Only this display included green pop bottles half buried in mud, crumpled foil candy wrappers, and a bright red rubber ball.

I shuffled slowly around the pond, in awe of the strange vision unrolling beneath my boots. I was startled at one point to see a gray fish just below the ice, staring up at me. He appeared suspended in space like a lost cosmonaut drifting through a starless sky, the rhythmic in-out-in-out of its gills slowed to a pace just this side of death.