ICE

In the afternoon, my mother leaves to walk in the woods on snow paths packed down by snowshoers and cross-country skiers. She wants to gather greens for Yiey’s shrine for Observance Day of the new moon. She and Yiey have been to see a monk and hired him to come to do a blessing for the baby when the time comes.

Yiey urges me, “Just walk behind. Make sure she okay.”

The paths crisscross the snow. It’s one of those perfect winter days when the air is just warm enough so your fingers don’t ache. You don’t have to cover your nose and cheeks from the burn of the cold. The sun shines down, and after all these days of snow, it looks like a winter thaw. Pilot races the length of the woods from the road to the river and back again.

“Just some red berries,” my mother had called.

I don’t pay attention. I’m counting days till this is over like soldiers in war. Tomorrow is a vacation day, and then I’m free to go to Luke’s. I plotted it out. Work. Overnight with Rosa, I tell them. Tomorrow Luke and I will have all night. I dream, what if we could actually get in Luke’s car and drive south, keep driving south till we come to Savannah. And have jam on toast in the mornings.

I see red berries on a snow-covered drooping branch. They hang heavy with winter wear. Pilot races up the riverbank, down to the river the length of the beach. It is low tide. Herring gulls hang out on the pier, raucous, waiting for a human and a little trash. Pilot on their trail. She chases them from pier to beach, running and running. But something ominous is happening on this sunny winter afternoon where the sun has begun to warm long-frozen edges of the river.

Although the Piscataqua is a fast-moving river, sometimes in a winter so bone-aching cold, room-sized ice chunks break off from the coves and wedge in the curves of the river. These floes are a big problem for fishermen, who have to avoid slamming their boats into any that break away and scream out to sea with the current. What if a rescue bird dog like Pilot, the tracking instinct deep in her blood, discovers she could track the birds farther out on the river than she has been able to track them all her life? Her temptation.

But a dog, my father had always said, is no match for this river.

Now I look out. My fist is full of drooping branches bearing thin, red berries. There is my dog, her right forepaw lifted, tail straight out, absolutely still. She is already out on a frozen chunk of the river as she holds this pose. From her stance I know, even from my distance, she trembles with focus and unbearable excitement.

When she bolts from her alert, the ice could move out and be taken by the rushing water. She would be swept into the current of the river at a temperature too cold to survive.

I race through the woods, along the cyclone fence, toward the river with the I-95 traffic flying overhead on the Piscataqua River Bridge to the beach and mudflats turned to ice where the gulls taunt my dog. They pose at the end of the pier and then all lift their wings and descend on a morsel I don’t see on the ice.

Here is my mother, in her white coat and black hair, grasping winter greens for the shrine, but her eyes are on my dog. Pilot turns toward the gulls. From a statue, she transforms into a bird dog in flight on the trail of the screeching gulls. I hear the sound of the ice. It groans under Pilot as she grips for her footing, slipping, scrambling. I scream at her, “Come! Come now!”

This happens in seconds—something extraordinary. Something I don’t think to do. My only thought, I am on the edge of the river, about to go out on the ice—on water! The thing I am most afraid of. I am driven by the picture of Pilot swept away in the current under the massive bridge and out to sea.

I take a step on the ice toward my dog. But my mother puts out her hand. “Wait,” she calls.

“I can’t,” I scream. “She’ll die.”

But my mother too is transformed. She is composed, like Yiey. Like Luke. I hear the ice crack. She moves toward the steel framework of the pier. Now, at low tide, a person can walk halfway out the long pilings. She begins to walk through mudflats and then into the water. I see her slip. She grabs the metal frame for support. “Where are you going?” I shout. She can barely walk on the flat living-room floor. Pilot barks at the gulls. At the end, at what used to be a loading pier, hanging at an angle as if barely connected after all these years, is a ladder. She lifts her arms high, grabs ahold of the ladder, disengages it from what held it dangling over the water and half-formed ice. Then she turns back, dragging the ladder.

She is coming through the frozen mud and muck, breaking through ice. This is a woman who lies on her back and moans. I am awed. On the beach we drop the ladder, then push it slowly out onto the ice. She is clever to know what my father has said about a rescue on ice—you have to distribute your weight over as much space as you can.

“Now,” she says. “On your belly.” She places her hands on her own belly, and I believe she would have gone herself if it weren’t for the baby. The ladder reaches almost to Pilot, who is frantic. I get down on all fours, then crawl out on the ladder until I am on my belly. I hear the ice crack. Just ahead a fissure shifts, opening under Pilot’s weight. I am terrified. My mother holds the bottom of the ladder and in that way holds me.

“This way, Pilot,” I call. Keep the panic from your voice. “Come, girl.” My body is numb against the ice. My ice could break off, too, and become a floe. But my mother holds me. Just as I can almost touch her paw, Pilot gets her footing. I need her to jump. She’s just three feet past me. Her haunches grip the ice.

Moving as gently as possible, I pull my scarf over my head, tie the tails in a knot. “Mom, push, one more foot.” Pilot is crying as space grows between us.

My mother slides the ladder. I’m one foot closer. I toss the scarf, aiming to wrap it around her head and neck. She ducks, slipping on the ice, and I miss. Again.

Finally the ring of the scarf wraps around her neck. I pull. She leans down into the scarf. Her paws scramble, and then she leaps like a horse from the moving floe onto my peninsula of ice. It holds. We don’t crash into the river. I wrap the scarf tight around her and hold her to my chest on the ladder. My mother pulls us back to the beach. Gingerly, we crawl the length of the ladder back to the sand.

I unknot the wet scarf from my dog. My mother takes off her white coat she always wears.

“You don’t even like her,” I say.

She is on the ground with Pilot. Her boots are ruined. Her coat is ruined. She places her muddy white coat on Pilot and wraps her body around my dog’s shivering body.

“You do,” she says. “I saved her for you.”