The Boy Did Better in Winter
by Corey Farrenkopf
The boy stood in the water, ankle deep, as the wind pushed cat’s paws across the surface. A kingfisher huddled on a branch arcing over the shallows, searching for minnows. The air was tainted with the scent of late summer, algal blooms and bacteria giving everything a humid, wilting breath. The boy’s skin was light blue. Hypothermic. A color rarely seen in nature. He rubbed his hands over his shoulders, shivering, gazing up the sandy embankment towards a pair of men jogging on the bike trail. One of them stopped, pointing down at the child in his bleached bathing suit, before hopping the split-rail fence, running towards the water’s edge. The other man followed, calling after him.
The temperature was in the eighties.
The air wasn’t cold enough for hypothermia.
The second man knew this. The second man could also read the signs.
As the first man nearly dove into the shallows, the second man grabbed him by the shoulder, hauling him back. The two fell into a heap of pine needles strewn by nearby trees, sap sticking to their clothes.
“Didn’t read the signs?” the second man asked, pointing to a dozen steel squares mounted to posts ringing the pond’s shoreline.
“Why would I read the signs? That kid’s freezing to death. We need to call someone,” the first man said.
“It’s August. When was the last time you heard of someone freezing to death in August?”
“Well, never,” the first man answered, looking towards the blue boy and his pleading eyes, his hands reaching out, begging to be lifted from the water, to be taken somewhere warm. Then his eyes tracked to the rusting signposts, each an exact replica of the one before it.
NO SWIMMING. NO FISHING. NO RECREATIONAL BOATING.
IGNORE THE CHILD. POSSESSED LAKE. DROWNING HAZARD.
“Is this that lake?” the first asked.
“That it is,” the second said. “This is why you read the signs. Otherwise, you’d be hanging out with that guy right now.”
Both turned to the child, whose mouth had dropped open, unhinging, jaw distending to mid chest. There were no teeth inside, only a gaping darkness, wide enough to fit a grown man’s shoulders, wide enough to fit the universe, every star in the sky.
“You’d think the town would put up a better fence,” the first man said, brushing off the pine needles as the two climbed the embankment towards the bike trail.
“The signs should be enough,” the second man replied as his running shoes hit cement. The two began sprinting. They disappeared down the path. Oaks and maples shaded the narrow strip through the forest as the boy reset his jaw, resuming his shivering, his hands wandering over his own frigid flesh, waiting for someone else who might not have a friend to point out the obvious.
Summer was long, but fall was fast approaching.
Winter wasn’t far off.
The boy did better in winter.
Corey Farrenkopf lives on Cape Cod with his wife, Gabrielle, and works as a librarian. He is the fiction editor for The Cape Cod Poetry Review. His work has been published in or is forthcoming from The Southwest Review, Catapult, Tiny Nightmares, Redivider, Hobart, Wigleaf, Flash Fiction Online, Bourbon Penn, and elsewhere. To learn more, follow him on twitter @CoreyFarrenkopf or on the web at CoreyFarrenkopf.com
