Life Line

On average, the area around Bleacher’s Pond got 2 months, 4 days, and 22.5 hours where the ground was snow-free. The amount of days without a thick fog hanging over the frozen water was even less.

Not surprising, today was one of those cold, visibility impaired days. Roemer looked out on the iced-over pond, or at least the shore by her house, as she gathered the dried items on the clothes line. The brilliant oranges and reds shone from the opposite side of the globe from the fog as the sun fell from prying eyes. The last article of clothing, a fuchsia tank-top that had been stretched out over many years of wear, still maintained that last bit of dampness. She remembered back to the warmer parts of her life when slightly wet material could just be material that had gotten cold due to an open window. But within the white wastes that she now called home, it was just easier to consider everything cold until proven otherwise.

The whole under the right armpit of the tank-top was getting bigger. Roemer considered throwing to the ground and allowing some songbird to make a nest with. After shaking it out, she put it away from the other, drier clothes as sentimentality won out.

The legends from the closest town, Linten, said that specific clothesline had been there since the house was built, sometime in the late 1800s. Roemer had her doubts about the accuracy of the local historical society, as to be a member you needed to have certain threshold of nosiness and rudeness.

The fact was that the incredibly durable cord stretched far beyond the fog of Bleacher’s Pond. It actually traveled all the way across the small body of water to what she only could imagine was another property. The other side was notoriously hard to reach from Linten and the surrounding area due to a dangerous stretch of mountains and hills. To drive around to the other side was said to take over 10 hours, not including time on a snowmobile.

Of course, one could just cross the frozen pond to see where the ancient clothesline lead. But, this came with the very real danger of falling into the ice as the surface was infamous for having thin gaps that were very difficult to anticipate. The historical society claimed that Toan Burrows and the Horseshoe Kid (name lost to the snowflakes of time) had been the last people to make it across back in 1915, as they tried to escape the draft of World War I. Unsurprisingly, Roemer could find no mention of this online or in the microfiche at the Linten library. There were many times that she had gone from incredulous anger at the society to being envious that they got paid to be professional fable slingers while she had to dig through dusty files at the town’s only law office.

There was one thing Roemer knew about the other side of the pond where the line stretched to; there was someone on the other end. ‘Finley’ was their name. They (or he or she, it was unclear) had a sense of humour fueled by their put on(?) narcissism. They also had once had an extremely fluffy mountain cat named Tanning who had disappeared a few years earlier. Roemer had not received any correspondence or signs from him for months after that occurred. She was scared how much loneliness she felt during that period.

They were also known to fluctuate from being completely inappropriate to being suddenly puritan. The best Roemer could tell was that they were raised within a very strict religious framework, but they never named what dogma it was. Best guess was that it was somehow related to the Hutterian Brethren.

In one of his letters attached to the line with a clothespin, they had sent a picture of their bare ass that had been taken with an old polaroid camera. This was how their argument of electrical heating (Roemer) vs. old-school stove heating (Finley) had ended. They signed the picture and wrote underneath, ‘Does this mean I’m behind on the times?’

Roemer was embarrassed how much she looked at the picture. Sometimes just thinking about it would make her blush.

She had lied to Finley (one of the rare times that she did) about destroying the image. Their next letter was a quarter of page and she knew this meant that they had flipped over to ‘everyone is a heretic’ mode. It contained very simple and blunt sentences. She cried a little as they told her that both of them would go to the place where freezing meets the incomprehensible temperature of the ‘blasphemous nothing’ if the picture was not burned right away.

His awkward joke about struggling to incinerate the intimate correspondence with the ‘inferior’ electrical heating options made things worse.

The folded laundry and one annexed wet tank-top sat upon the bench by the clothesline, begging to go in before the fabric was even more ruined by the cold. Things had been tense between them ever since the polaroid incident 5 months ago; they did not send over gifts or random items as much. Roemer wanted to pull in the line even more to see, hope, pray that something emerged from the fog. She had even dropped a major hint when she asked if Finley was still crocheting. She now had 7 scarves from him, and the number of ones that were unravelling outnumbered the ones that weren’t.

Their next letter completely ignored her question.

The cord shook within the dense soup above the pond, as Roemer anxiously pulled it in. No shadows appeared on the horizon but she kept tugging.

Finally, what looked like a person emerged from the fog hanging off of the line. As she quickened her drawing, the item took shape and it turned out to be a red par of long johns flapping in the breeze. At first she was worried she had pulled in his laundry again, as this happened every so often to both of them. But there was nothing else coming along the line and she saw that a letter was sticking out of the butt flap of the underwear.

She hurriedly grabbed the piece of clothing and the letter when it reached the shore close enough to her. She tore open the envelope and started to read:

Deerest Roemer,

I once saw a deer. I sent it a letter, and it started out with, ‘Dear Deerest Deer,’ which I thought was very droll. Unfortunately, deer cannot read nor do they have fixed addresses so the joke never landed.

She laughed and then laughed at the fact that she laughed.

Listen, this will be my last letter to you. I’m leaving my home come 11pm tonight and moving away, down to the coast. Please do not blame yourself as I know you think me as amazing. This is the fault of those awful blowhards at the Linten Historical Society. I received a warning from them in the regular mail and they claim that this plot of land belongs to your tactless town and is a historical relic that must be preserved and made into a museum. Since one post of the clothesline lay on your bank, that means that my bank is linked to you and that territory.

You know how I value my privacy. I have no love for this place; I have no love for the snow nor ice nor cold nor threatening landscapes. Tanner disappeared out there and I think that was when my soul left this place. I only have love for one thing here, and I think you know what that means.

Please, take care and care for that picture I sent.

Sincerely,

Finley

“NO!” Roemer was surprised by her sudden outburst. She tossed the letter to the pile of folded clothes and started out on the ice. She had never physically met Finley but she needed to see him before his all to jarring departure. Whatever their connection was, it couldn’t end like this.

Cracking noises echoed around her, under her, in the forest through the fog, and somehow, over her. She followed the swaying cable of the clothesline; it would lead her to him.

To the left, a carcass of a wolf half submerged in the icy water.

She did not stare but continued.

The sun had fully set and only the weak rays of the moon were lighting her path.

But it was enough for her to see the lightning in the ice heading to her.

It looked as if the entire bed of ice was going to collapse.

Instinctively she grabbed onto the cable above. It pulled down low due to her weight.

The ice below was suddenly gone. It did not split or float apart or crackle upwards; it was just gone.

Her feet dipped into the icy surface. And then her knees and thighs. The pond lived up to its arctic reputation. The lower part of her torso submerged as the line became more slack. She thought of the only warm thought that she could muster, a behind for a behind, as she felt the numbness of the blasphemous nothing.