Snapback

The children from the apartment complex next door hollered and carried on all Saturday morning and into the late afternoon. The pond behind the old folk’s home had frozen over and was now hard enough to skate on.

Annie Clarke sat at her bedroom window, knees tucked beneath a knitted throe and watched, remembering her childhood and living vicariously through the boys and girls she saw playing atop the pond’s frozen surface. In recent months it had become difficult to remember things, including her own name, which had been Annabelle Thornton before she married Aldon Clarke nearly 65 years before.

But today, Annie recalled in vivid detail how her Aldon had proposed to her on a frozen little pond like this in Turtle Lake, Wisconsin, all those decades ago. They were a happy couple, having raised two daughters and a son, all who would be here tomorrow with her grandchildren, to celebrate her 88^th birthday.

“Fun times,” came the familiar voice behind her. She turned and saw her Aldon, though most folks insisted on calling him ‘Bull,’ which is due to his size.

Even at 90-years of age, her husband had a demanding presence. And he was still as handsome as the day she’d first met him.

“Yes,” she said, “Wish I could get out there and take a spin.”

“You could,” he said.

She looked at him with surprise. “What do you mean, I can barely stand up.”

“I can help you stand up and I’ll even let you hold on to me, if you’d like to have a try.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“Feelin’ a bit shy, are you?”

The sun had set and the sky was clear, with a full-moon reflecting of the now-battered ice. The children had long retired and it was nearly bed-time for Annie and the other residence of the home.

As she began to get ready for bed by first closing her curtains, she saw Aldon again. This time he was standing in the center of the icy pond and looking towards Annie, waving his arm, inviting her to come down and join him.

“Damned fools gonna catch his death,” she thought. Then she smiled, went to her closet and pulled down her red wool jacket, her favorite and slipped it on.

Then she stepped out into the hallway and walked towards the back door and stepped out into the evening’s cold. Next she found herself walking, albeit carefully, down the hill side to the pond, where Aldon waited.

True to his word, her Aldon took her hand and led her onto the ice. And with her left arm tucked tight in his strong right, she glided in her house slippers across the ice.

By this time a light snow had begun to fall from the otherwise cloudless night. “What a treat,” Annie laughed as Aldon held her tight to his side.

As they twirled across the ice, the snow began to come harder and harder. The sky also began to cloud over and a certain darkness fell over the pond, save for the two faces that skated there, glowing in an otherworldly manner.

Their laughter echoed across the pond and through the asphalt parking lot of the rows of apartments next door. A woman in an apartment, whose kitchen window overlooked the pond, heard the laughter and upon seeing an old woman spinning and twirling, wondered, “What in the hell is she up to?”

Seeing that the woman was clad in nothing more than a red robe, light blue slipper and little else, she grabbed her jacket and started for the door. She rushed as quickly as she could, taking care not to find an icy patch of sidewalk to slip and fall down on, to the front door of the care facility.

It took a few minutes to get anyone of the staff’s attention to come to the locked door. By this time, the sky had clouded over and the snow came down so thick that it could be called blinding.

Two staff members raced down to the pond to find Annie and return her to her room. Once there they found no one on the pond, though they did locate a pair of baby-blue house slippers and a worn out fishing cap.

After two days of divers scouring the pond and finding nothing, the search was called off. A week later, Annie’s two daughters, their husbands, along with her son and his wife, 11 grandchildren and two great grand-babies all gathered to say goodbye to the empty coffin that they laid to rest next to Aldon Clarke grave site.

The three adult kids of Annabelle and Aldon ‘Bull’ Clarke couldn’t explain where their father’s work hat, a Long Bill Fishing Snapback, came from when investigator’s turned it and the slippers over to the family. As far as each knew, that hat, clearly recognizable to each of them since they’d given it to him on his 56th birthday, a year before it was lost and long missing, along with their dad, when the charter fishing vessel he was operating, disappeared in a sudden white-out on Lake Superior 33-years before.