through the ice

two teenage boys had gone ice fishing with their fathers way up north
where isolation is the word of the day &
the snow is so deep that snow shoes are something of a prerequisite to
stepping outside your house---
as the two fathers were out on the ice
setting up the holes & getting the tip-ups ready,
the two boys were fighting on a hill that was so freshly covered with snow
that not one footstep or animal track
had descended down to the shore of the frozen pond &
as one of the boys ran down the hill after getting a good thrashing with the other’s
stick,
his legs suddenly dropped through,
apparently where he thought the land still continued &
the ice would not have began yet---
however, as he was wrong,
he promptly fell through.

thinking quickly, instinctively perhaps,
the boy left on land threw his stick
(the one which he’d been beating his friend with)
down towards the other that had just fallen through &
was subsequently sinking with a look on his face
of fear & shock combined---
after being shouted at to grab the stick,
one friend pulled the other from the icy water
before he fell completely under &
dragged him to land quickly enough
so that they both did not fall in again.

though the boy who’d fallen through
now walked in frozen jeans &
could hardly feel his legs,
he was taken to where the fathers had started a fire
near the holes they drilled &
after stripping him down & basically putting his legs in
the fire,
the boy’s father was able to keep his son from
getting hypothermia.

the fishing was cut short
as the small group made haste down the long trail
back to the trucks
where the father of the nearly frozen boy
sat him in the cab of his truck
with his bare feet in front of the heater
all the way home.