The Bucket of Ice
Otis carried the bucket across the yard with both hands. The water slapped and sloshed and then went quiet. Mo came behind him, slow on the packed snow, a red blanket folded over his shell. "Here," said Otis. He set the bucket down beside the woodshed, where the cold always sat the deepest. His breath went up in a white puff and disappeared. He pushed his mittens together to warm them. Tonight the water would turn to ice. Tomorrow it would be a lantern.
He knelt and dipped one finger in. The water bit at it, cold as a bell. Nothing had changed. No skin of ice, no frost on the handle, nothing at all. Mo looked into the bucket for a long time, the way he looked at everything. "The water is still thinking about it," Otis said. He blew on his finger and tucked it back in his mitten. Inside the house the kettle began to sing. The lamps along the lane came on, one, then another, then all of them.
Then the wind came down off the hill, and it smelled like snow. All down the lane, people made room for it. A woman pulled in her washing, stiff as flat boards. Someone carried a bench in under the eaves. A dog trotted inside and the door shut on a yellow square of light. Snow began, small and dry, ticking against Otis's hood. The cold slid in at his collar. Otis pulled his hat down over his ears and did not go in yet.
Snow was falling into the bucket and melting away to nothing. Otis found a flat board by the woodpile and laid it over the top, leaving one corner open to the cold. Then he swept a clear patch in the snow for Mo. Mo settled there and pulled his head in a little under his blanket. The air got colder and colder. Otis felt it on the strip of cheek above his scarf, like a cool hand resting there. He sat down close to Mo.
Otis fetched his cocoa from the step and held the mug in both mittens. It was far too hot to drink. He waited on that, too. Snow filled the lane and made it soft, and everything went quiet, the way a room goes quiet when someone in it is sleeping. The lamplight came down yellow through the falling flakes. Mo breathed slowly beside him, in and out, in and out. "The water is still thinking about it," Otis said, and sipped at last.
He lifted the board to look. Across the water lay a skin of ice, thin as a breath on a window. Otis pressed it with one finger and it broke into little plates that drifted and knocked together. He wished he hadn't. He set the board back, gently, and sat on his hands so they would stay where he put them. Under the board the cold went on working without him. Snow kept falling. Mo blinked once, slowly, which took a while.
The snow thinned, and then it stopped. The clouds slid off the sky and left the stars out, sharp and close above the roofs. That was when the real cold came, the still kind that pinches your nose and makes the snow squeak. Otis leaned against Mo's warm blanket. He counted the lamps down the lane. He counted the slow puffs of his own breath. Somewhere a shutter creaked and settled. He did not lift the board. Not yet.
When the moon stood over the woodshed, Otis lifted the board again. The ice had grown thick white walls, and in the middle there was still water sloshing about. He tipped the bucket slowly, slowly, and poured the water out into the snow. Then out slid a hollow lantern of ice, heavy and smooth in his mittens. Otis set a stub of candle inside. The light came through the walls, blue-white and soft, and lay on the snow in a round patch. "It's finished thinking," he said.
Otis filled the bucket again and set it by the woodshed for tomorrow. The cold could have it all night. Then he took Mo's flipper in his hand, and they went up the path together, slow, because Mo was always slow and tonight Otis was too. Behind them the ice lantern glowed quietly on the snow. "The water is still thinking about it," Otis said, and held on, and the door opened and let out its warm yellow light.
