The Thaw

They say if you look at the horizon you won’t vomit your lunch. Maybe that isn’t the quote. I still keep my gaze at the junction of water and sky. The freshwater breeze kisses my cheeks with teeth. The ferry drags herself like she’s tired of her purpose. I look down at the water, my reflection unavailable past the frothy wake.

I tilt my chin away from the children who hurl themselves past me, my elbow on the railing. Nicotine hidden in my sleeve. I hold the vapor in my lungs as the blue raspberry burn stabs my tongue. No smoking on the ferry. Nausea hits. Again.

The ferry rocks me away from the rail and back to the bench. The peeling green metal scratches at my bare thighs as my feet spill into the aisle. I rest my skull on my ratty backpack. The ferry rocks me like a mother rocking her child to sleep.

The ferry screams. I jolt back to the land of the living at her warning.

I move like I never left. I move like I never thought I’d come back. The sun-bleached purple GeoTracker waits for me, windows down. She’s coated in a thick layer of dust. The keys are in the cupholder, just like the townie from the online forum said they would be.

The town hasn’t changed. Three bars advertise “food” and “live music” as if they don’t mean refried onion rings and a local band of guitar players drunkenly mumbling sea shanties. It’s tradition to drive from the ferry to the lighthouse at the edge of the town. It isn’t until after I loop around the whitewashed brick phallus that my muscle memory takes me to the one grocery store on the island.

The store’s bell sounds futuristic in the family-owned market. The air conditioning pierces my skin through my clothes. I grab a cart. They all squeak. The squeaking wheels and the hum of the fridges score my circuit through the aisles. Nothing gluten-free here. Vegans aren’t welcome.

The rhythmic beeps as the cashier scans my items punctuate my attempts at small talk. My lips tug into a smile while my teeth grind. Is the local diver still here? Still running that dive shop? He is. Good.

The sun’s singe doesn’t soothe the spearing freshwater of the lake. Two extremes don’t cancel each other out. I float face down. He asks me if I want a wetsuit. Again. I keep snorkeling.

There used to be a tradition here. Clunkers were driven onto the solid lake in the winter and the townies would bet on the date it melted through. Then spend their winnings at the same bars they watched the thaw. Frames of Model Ts and loose tires overgrown with algae. My goggles fog like the lake doesn’t want me to see this.

My synthetic grin allows me the right moment to ask about the lore. He pretends not to know. I ask pointedly. The Winter Carnival. He speaks of it as if it’s fiction. The carnival that would appear on a remote part of the ice, only to disappear just as mysteriously before the thaw. Aside from that one year.

There is no explanation that exists for that year. No one knows why the thaw came early. No one knows if anyone survived. No one knows if there was an investigation. No one knows anyone who was alive back then. Everyone has theories.

The towel I sit on doesn’t prevent the GeoTracker’s seats from absorbing lake water. I leave the door open when I park at the house. Avoiding the family trees and photos of ancestors I never heard stories about, I head down the private trail. Aspens. Pines. Twigs and dirt give way to mud.

Trees go from upright to canted. I pause at an intricate spider web bandaging a rotting evergreen trunk. Dew on the web doesn’t shimmer. The sun doesn’t reach this part of the trail. This is mosquito territory and I don’t have bug spray. I smear their blood on my skin as I push on to the clearing.

Lawn chairs encircle a “firepit”. They’ve been rusted as long as I’ve been alive. I doubt the seatless chairs and the equally rusty barrel even remember their own original colors. Much like the rowboat that lays overturned at the top of the slope into the lake.

This part of the lake isn’t like the part in town where I snorkeled. Where the townies and the tourists swim. I sit on the overturned boat, relishing the splinter that finds its way into my thigh. The loons are quiet this time of day. Humidity dampens everything except the vampiric mosquitoes and blaring cicadas. I watch the murky bottom. The leeches squirming and slinking. If you look at the horizon you won’t vomit your lunch. My stomach growls.

I order another beer. It lands before the onion rings do. A group of townie elders drunkenly ramble through inside jokes in the corner of the bar. All four men are missing teeth. Each of them strums a guitar. One of their wives brings me the onion rings and my third beer. I finally wonder if this was a mistake. I feel the grease hit my stomach before it hits my tongue.

My plume of vapor hits the framed photo of Depression-era miners and their wives. Longshoremen and their wives. The preacher and his wife. I wish my vape were weed. Nicotine will have to do. The blue raspberry slides its fingers down my throat. The maroon shag of the carpet bites my bare soles. I grab a bottle from the fridge, a box of lighthouse-shaped cookies from above the fridge.

I sink into the maroon shag sea. The fibers grab me and crowdsurf me in place. I wonder if I can die choking on beer and overpriced tourist cookies or would I just add a highlight of vomit on the already stained carpet. My brain burns with the shadow of the lightbulb I look directly up at. The chandelier’s fake crystals fire prisms over the wood-paneled walls.

Family members I’ve never met watch me from their frames on the mantle of the defunct fireplace. A large portrait of my grandparents hangs on the main wall, their smiles sneering down at me. We never met but I know they hate me. The cinnamon in the cookies grates my throat. I grab another bottle. I slip on the shag stairs leading to the front door. Two unrelated actions.

I don’t breathe easier in the front yard. No moon means no light but the fireflies have other intentions. Remaining slabs of Adirondack chairs, devoid of lacquer litter the yard. A child’s plastic picnic table squats next to its adult twin. I lower onto the plastic lounge chair that looks like the keys of a neglected piano. Still more cozy than the period-colored shag carpet under the eyes of my family’s photos. I gaze at the stars, pleading. None of them volunteer. I don’t know what I’d wish for. I know what I’d wish for.

I groan awake at the thrumming. I can’t move. Cicadas? I’m trapped. No. It’s more like… a heartbeat. Soft and solid, like the trees surrounding the house. I look down at my body, my ass planted in the dirt. The rest of my body rests on the remaining straps of plastic on the lounge chair. Then a flash in my periphery. Who’s there? No answer other than the whispers of aspen leaves. Past them, a soft flash pulses. A light. I careen over with the chair. The lake.

It is no longer night on the trail. Even the marsh looks the same as in daylight. The spiderweb’s dew gleams. The Aurora Borealis? It’s been spotted above this island before. This light, though. It’s not the celestial oil spill of the Northern Lights. It’s warm. Welcome. Womblike.

A fire rages in the metal barrel of a firepit. Shadow figures dance in their rusted chairs. The flames melt the air they kiss. My vision distorts. I pinch my inner elbow. A bruise blooms immediately. I walk in a straight line. I touch my nose. There’s no explanation for what I see.

Fairy lights above and below, reflecting on the water like miniature suns. My nose joins the party, picking up notes of sugar and diesel. Oil grease. Sweat. My ears are next. Vendors call out in distorted timbres. Rings land on forty bottles, still full of malt liquor. The strongman bell rings repeatedly. Calliope whistles fold into accordion farts. Bells ring. Laughter rises. Somewhere, someone screams.

I don’t see the souls I smell. Shapes move where air should be. Funhouse mirrors levitate over the fanfare, reflecting the lake’s demons back to itself. The merry-go-round whirs like a slowed down vinyl record. Ponies with sadistic eyes prance next to scorpions and snakes. The tunnel of love has no exit. The swing ride doesn’t have seats, just knotted ropes like the gym class from hell. Shooting games with real bullets. Piranhas in plastic bags for prizes.

The breeze that slides its palm up my spine warns me and pushes me forward. Will I stand on water like the carnival? Will I lose myself in the tunnel of love? Is this what I’ve been searching for? My feet carry me down the slope. Let the leeches get drunk off my blood. For the first time in a long time, I feel it. I’m home.

Morning comes. Tourists clamber to the ferry back home. One of the townies finds my blue vape in the fallen leaves. He leaves it there. The frost comes. The lake hibernates with its secrets until the thaw. Lilacs and yellows frame the faded blue, dead battery. A foghorn sounds on the other side of the island as the first few tourists of summer start pouring in.