Wintering

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OUR WINTERS are faithful and unfailing and we take what they bring, but this season has tested even the most devout among us. The thermometer hanging outside my window reads thirty-two degrees below zero. Five degrees warmer than yesterday, which itself was warmer than the day before. I can hear the pines exploding, heartwood turned to splinter and pulp all up and down the Burnt Wood River.

As if the cold weren’t enough, yesterday brought another unkindness. Gustav Eide came bearing it: his father’s red woolen hat — the one he wore almost every day, the type children wear tobogganing — found by those Bargaard twins as they ice-skated out past the breakwater.

It wasn’t the first time Gus came knocking this winter. Back in November he held his own hat in his hands. Gus, with his father’s lonesome, lazy eyes, standing bareheaded but buttoned up outside my door.

“I hate to drop in unannounced, Berit,” he had said then.

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