Notes From a Small Pond: Masks

There’s a spot on the walking path along the north side of the river, west of the trestle, directly across from where my brother works on the trains that bump back and forth between there and Sappi, chugging away like determined old ladies, where, on clear days, the late afternoon sun pours through the 93 million miles and dapples coolly through the twinkling leaves, raining down dappled jangles of white light, glinting.

Autumn hints.

If you pause there, you’ll smell what must be the leaching of chlorophyll and traces of dirt from evaporating mud. And you’ll think, for sure, you’ll see a turtle but you won’t because they’re hiding and waiting for you to leave.

If you time it right, like I did, you might happen upon a guy and his kid — about 5 — and an older gentleman in green work pants, checkered shirt and black suspenders, the three of them talking at the bank of the river, their masked faces nodding in conversation, like surgeons, inherently suspicious.

And, if you sneak, you might hear them, the gentleman in suspenders pointing over the water with a long, boney index finger.

“That right there over there is where that fella with his snow machine fell through the ice and didn’t find him until spring up against the dam,” nodding over his shoulder toward the mill. “Either cockiness or dumbness — no cure for either, I guess. River ice ain’t ever safe, irregardless how smart or invincible ya are.”

The kid looks at his dad and his dad looks at the river, black and gliding and unforgiving.

“What ice?” the kid asks.

“A while ago now,” the gentleman answers, directed at the kid, chuckling muffled through his mask. “Way before you were around.”

“What ice?” the kid asks again and his dad looks down at him to answer.

“Well, there’s ice on the river all winter,” he says. “That’s what he’s talking about.” He looks to the gentleman and hints at shutting him up by escalating the adult nature of the exchange. “Probably happens pretty often, I’ll bet.”

“Not as much as you’d think,” the gentleman plows on. “You from around here?”

“We moved here,” the kid chimes in. Then the dad.

“Been here a couple months,” he says. “Still getting our bearings.”

“Where from?” the gentleman asks, leaning forward a little at the waist, to hear through the mask.

The kid pipes in again, before his dad can answer.

“Even Prairie.”

“Eden Prairie,” the dad corrects, amusedly, grabs his kid’s skull like a cantaloupe. The older gentleman thumbs his suspenders.

“Eden Prairie, eh?” His mask billows in and out. “What got you here, from there?”

The kid bends for a rock, sensing the launch of a boring conversation, tuned out, but antennae still scanning.

“Work,” the dad says. “Tracking Covid-19 in northeast Minnesota. I work for the state.”

“Ahh .…” the older man nods. “You a scientist?”

“Epidemiologist,” the dad says back, exhaling, and moves his sightline to his son, trying to conclude the conversation.

“So,” the gentleman asks, something between kidding and not kidding, “We all goners then, around here?”

The dad’s head turns.

“I mean us old folks, anyway, right?”

The kid notices his dad’s changed affect.

“Can we go, Dad?” Behind him, the wide water swirls and hides everything beneath it.

“Of course not,” the dad says, waxing incredulous, taking his kid’s hand in his own and walking. “Take care, now.”

“I sure will — and you, too.” And then, “I know you know more’n me about it, but seems this thing is liable to get just about anyone that ain’t careful — old or not old.”

The dad nods in affirmation. “We all have to be smart, no question.”

The son looks back at the gentleman and waves, the river behind him, looming.

“Dad,” the kid says, looking for Truth, “Why do we have to be smart?”

As the dad begins his answer, the gentleman turns back to the wide water before him and looks again at the spot where the guy went through the ice, his body in the spring pressed up against the dam with the garbage and errant wood, his snow machine somewhere out there, under. Invisible, but there, planted in the muddy bottom.

“Well, son,” the dad says, as they stride out of earshot, “it’s just smart to be smart.”

The kid hears, dimly understanding, tugs on his mask to breathe better.

Parnell Thill is a Cloquet-based author and marketing executive.