The Frozen Lake

Justin Heckert:

"Nature never did betray the heart that loved her." — William Wordsworth

Not long after he saw his brothers drown, Andrew Smith fell in love. Her name was Ruthie Grimes, and she was a girl from back home with straight dark hair. Andrew saw her at the first of two funerals, which was for his older brother, Noel, in the town of Burney, California; he knew little about her, only that Ruthie was one of his sister's best friends, a waitress who used to go to his high school, and who had volunteered to help facilitate the burials of two men from the same family within the span of four days. She'd been around Andrew and his brothers often, as they grew up with their sister in a house at the top of the hill in Browns Valley, but Ruthie had been nothing more than a familiar face as the years passed.

Andrew walked toward the door of the church, comforted by the presence of other people gathered in the hallway. Ruthie came up to him and placed a hand on the shoulder of his brown sport coat, her hair held behind her head by a bow. The guests had watched a slideshow on a big projection screen at the front of the church scroll through a series of slides poking fun at Noel Smith, who was laid to rest at 39 years old, a 6-4 tough guy with a shaved head, broad shoulders and thick forearms, an avid outdoorsman in the pictures holding kittens and flexing his muscles in a cutoff T-shirt.

"See you later, Andy," Ruthie said, taking her hand away from his shoulder. She started to walk out the door, and then something told him to stop her.