Merle, naturally, stayed on at the bobhouse for the few weeks of winter that remained. In early March, the ice began to soften and turn mushy in places. Gauzy fogs hung over the wet, pearlescent surface of the lake, obscuring the bobhouse from the trailerpark and erasing the opposite shore altogether. Before long, V’s of Canada geese were passing northward overhead, and then, at the weirs, a narrow wedge of open water appeared. Long, shallow pools of water lay resting on top of the ice, swelling and spreading in the sunlight, while beneath the ice deep, dark, slowly warming water chewed its way patiently toward the surface, which gradually got blotchy and pale green and then actually broke away from itself in places, making fissures and wide, tipping plates.
No one knew the exact day Merle left the bobhouse, but one morning there was a sheet of open water where the bobhouse had been, dark water sparkling under the morning sun, and Merle himself was seen by several people that same day outside his trailer somberly scraping the bottom of his old dark green rowboat.
He built another bobhouse the following winter, and as usual spent most of the winter inside it. He never spoke of the lottery money, and you can be sure that no one else ever mentioned it to him, either. Until now, that is, when Merle seems to have gotten over his despair and the others their shame.
About the Author
RUSSELL BANKS is the author of Cloudsplitter, Rule of the Bone and Continental Drift, among other titles. He has received numerous prizes and awards for his work, including the O. Henry and Best American Short Story Awards. He lives in upstate New York and Princeton, New Jersey, where he is the Howard G. B. Clark University Professor at Princeton.
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