I let the wind shuffle me along again. But now I'm only heading back to the car, not looking for something I'll never find. I tell myself this, but not out loud. I'm not crazy, I say. This was worth a look. 1 have to stop to climb over the leaning remains of a fence I find poking out of the reeds. The wind makes it hard to balance, to keep from snagging any of the nasty, rusted barbs, each one tetanus waiting to happen. With one leg over, my hands pressing the wires away from my legs, I notice the sign on the near post: Hunting Closure Area, No Hunting Beyond This Point. This is where Dad'd be, I think. Hiding out here away from the guns. I wonder if I should break through the reeds, try to find some ground, some road, some dip that might have hidden his truck all this time. But somebody would have had to have seen it, right? Some airplane? Some game warden making a last sweep after the lake froze over? I get my other leg over the wire and let the fence go, jerking my hands away before the barbs can snag the wool of my mittens. Snapping back, the wire makes a loud, whistling, twang, a ricochet kind of noise. But even before the wind wisks away the wire's song, there's a new sound, a crackling, rushing commotion in the reeds, close, moving fast, breaking things. Scared senseless, I fall into a crouch, leaning back toward the fence for support, bringing my hands up to protect my face, though the only thing I imagine is that it must be Dad, rushing to scoop me into his arms as soon as he found me searching for him. Then, before I realize it couldn't be Dad, before I can even take a breath, a snow goose breaks free of the reeds that have hidden it, sheltered it from the wind. Not ten feet away. It thrashes away from me, one wing flapping hard while the other drags sloppily across the ice, catching on the last stalks of broken reeds poking through. It's the same dirty white of the sky and the ice, except for the startling black flashes of its wing tips, the open orange surprise of its bill as it honks and honks, left behind and doomed.
FREEZEOUT I 21