Read Online The Angel on the Roof: The Stories of Russell Banks by Russell Banks - Free Book Online Page B

globe and move on to the Southern Hemisphere, there to languish slowly through the long, hot afternoon of the pampas, the outback, and the transveldt. Or, on the other hand, you might measure the approach of winter by the ice, which seems a more direct, less abstract and mathematical way of going about it. You wake up one morning toward the end of October, and when you glance out your window at the lake, you see off to your left, where a low headland protects a shallow cove from the wind, a thin, crackled, pink skin of ice that spreads as far as the point and then suddenly stops. There is no ice yet in the swamp, where the trickling movement of inlets to the lake and the pressure of tree stumps, brush, and weeds forbid freezing this early, though by tomorrow morning or the next it will be covered there, too; and there is no ice where the lake empties across the flat stones of the old Indian fishing weirs to form the Catamount River, though it, too, will gradually freeze solidly over; and there is no ice along the western shore, for here the ground drops down quickly from the tree-covered hills, and the water is deep and black.
    The man named Merle Ring, the old man whose trailer was the last one in the park and faced one end toward the weirs and the other toward the swamp, was what you might call an iceman. When the ground froze, his walk took on a springing, almost sprightly look, as if he were happy to find the earth rock-hard, impenetrable, and utterly unyielding. Every October, the morning he saw the first ice on Skitter Lake, he pulled on his mackinaw and trotted down to the shore as if to greet an old friend. He examined the ice, reading its depth, clarity, hardness, and extension the way you’d examine a calendar, calculating how many days and weeks he’d have to wait before the entire lake was covered with ten or more inches of white ice, cracking and booming through subzero nights as new ice below expanded against the old ice above, and he could set up his bob-house, chisel into the ice a half dozen holes, and commence his wintertime nights and days of fishing for pickerel, black bass, bluegills, and perch.
    For over a half century Merle had been an ice fisherman. Where most people in this region endure winter to get to summer, Merle endured summer to get to winter. Ice fishing is not what you would ordinarily think of as a sport. You don’t move around much, and you don’t do it with anyone else. It’s an ancient activity, though, and after thousands of years it’s still done in basically the same way. You drop a line with a hook and piece of bait attached into the water, and you wait for an edible fish to take the bait and get hooked, and then you haul the thrashing fish through the hole and stash it with the others while you rebait your hook. If you are a serious ice fisherman, and Merle was serious, you build a shanty, and you drag it onto the lake, bank it around with snow, and let it freeze into the ice. The shanty, or bob-house, as it’s called, has trapdoors in the floor, and that’s where you cut the holes in the ice, usually with a harpoonlike, steel-tipped chisel called a spud or with a long-handled, steel auger. At some of the holes, depending on what kind of fish you are seeking and what kind of bait or lure you are using, you set traplines, or tip-ups, and at others you drop handlines. With live bait, minnows and such, you can use the traps, but if you’re jigging with a spoon or using ice flies, you need to keep your hand on the line.
    The bob-house is only as large as need be, six feet by four feet is enough, and six feet high for a normal-sized person. At one end is a door with a high step-over sill to keep out the wind, and at the other a homemade woodstove. Along one of the long walls is a narrow bench that serves as a seat and also a bed when you want to nap or sleep over the night. Your traps and lines are set up along the opposite wall. There is a small window opening, but it remains