“This little footbath you’re about to get.”
There was a water-boiling pot hung from a nail on the wall and Portis took it outside, the wind howling and snapping the door shut behind him as he went to gather snow. I felt sick inside, like this was about to be some Civil War medical tent type of business, the sort of shit they don’t put on the postcards about Cutler County in the winter.
Cutler lived on the summer tourist dollar, but there were fudgies in the winter too—downstaters named for their willingness to drop coin on a particular top-shelf confection. Cutler will always have its beaches and ski hills, but is just north of prime cherry country and so its primary exports remain fudge and the Petoskey stone, which is an interesting and uncommon stone, the state stone in fact—but is mostly just a stone. Still, people went in for it. They bought their fudge and rock ornaments and for a few weeks in December it was all winter wonderland time in northern Michigan.
Downtown was empty now, but it was hopping when they had the lights strung and carolers wandering up and down Mitchell Street. There were wreaths on the streetlamps, stands for hot cocoa with marshmallow floaters, and the football team in Penn Park selling trees. You walk around town in December and it starts to feel like you’re in a Dolly Parton Christmas movie—those are Carletta’s favorites—but when the fudgies go home for the season the city cuts the power to the twinkly lights. They board up the big houses along the bay and there’s nothing left in Cutler but the locals, everybody bracing for the real winter to set in and bare its teeth.
Fudgies get all misty over a white Christmas and they’re always snapping selfies in the snow—but the real winter is months long and it will gnaw your goddamn toes off if you let it.
Portis came back inside and dumped a little water from the jug into the snowy pot, then set it on the stove beside the papoose.
“She’s got to come to a boil,” he said, then snagged a fishing pole. He baited the hook with a cigarette butt he’d blunted earlier, dropped the line in the water, and plopped back down on his ten-gallon bucket. He had a drink of whiskey and set the bobber. I could not believe my eyes.
“Jesus Christ,” I said. “Are you fishing right now?”
“All along I have planned to fish when we arrived.”
“We don’t have time for you to fish.”
“I believe we do,” he said. “I believe that water is yet to boil.”
“You have got to be kidding me, Portis! We need to get this baby some help and I swear I can’t believe you’d even consider fishing at a time like this.”
“Why’d you think I cleared the ice?”
“I don’t want to say. I don’t want to give you any more bad ideas.”
He exhaled dramatically.
“Don’t do that,” I said.
“Don’t do what?”
“Breathe in that manner. Attack me without having the balls to do it directly.”
“Are you now telling me how to breathe?”
“No,” I said. “I am telling you how not to breathe.”
“Jesus, God almighty!” he said. “Can you let up for one damn moment? Can you let me sit here in peace and fish? Can you please allow me that simple pleasure for the next five minutes?”
“You haven’t even dealt with your leg,” I said.
“What would you like me to do to my leg?”
“You should pour some whiskey in it to sterilize the wound, then wrap it to keep off the cold.”
“That is an offense to the whiskey,” he said.
I dropped my head in my hands and breathed out.
“Now you are the one exhaling,” he said.
“I thought you had a plan,” I said.
“This is the plan!” he said. “We are resting and safe from the storm. We are waiting for that water to boil. And while those things happen I would like to wet a line and I refuse to believe that is a problem in any way whatsoever. Despite your harassment.”
“Harassment?”
“This is a cross-examination,” he said.
“That’s a little dramatic.”
“No, it is not. It is not dramatic in the least. I think you would make a fine prosecutor of the law, Percy James. I can see you now. One of those fire-breathers in a man suit, stomping around the courtroom and scaring everybody shitless with your short haircut and meanness.”
“Maybe you should try some bait.”
“You don’t know nothing about it.”
“What don’t I know? That you can’t catch any lakers with a Pall Mall filter?”
There was steam billowing from the pot on the stove and I could feel the heat push toward me from the fire. Portis was right: my toes hurt worse the warmer it got, and I braced myself by gripping fistfuls of blanket when he wasn’t looking.
He leaned his rod against the wall and watched his bobber while the whiskey bottle hung loose from his hands. I could see that he was thinking on something heavy. I could tell by the way his brow arched up and made his face narrow and mean.