Birdy

We’re having such a great time we aren’t even cold. The other guys were jerks not to come with us; but we’re not missing them. Birdy and I already know we’re making a little bit more of our own personal history. We’ll have fun telling about it when we get back to school. We’ll lie about it some to make it sound better and we’ll add things each time we tell it. It’s something Birdy and I do automatically without even talking about it beforehand. Birdy makes up the lying part and I back him up with details to make it seem real. What a team.
    About three miles up the creek we come to a frozen waterfall. The fall is formed by a wall at an angle. In summer, water trickles over the wall and it’s covered with moss. At the bottom there’s a good place to fish. The ice has formed great rounded white balls all down the sides of the wall. The balls are perfectly smooth and you can see through some of them.
    We want to see if we can climb to the top. There’s a good-sized pond up there that ought to be great skating. We could’ve just walked in our skates around the falls, but climbing up a frozen waterfall sounds like something Richard Halliburton would do. Birdy and I are both big fans of Halliburton. We think his wasthe greatest message ever sent. It was from a Chinese junk as he was trying to cross the China Sea: ‘Having a wonderful time, wish you were here, instead of me.’ It’s the last word ever heard from him.
    The wall of the waterfall must be about fifteen or twenty feet high. We use our skate points to dig in and we push our butts out for balance while our hands and face are against the ice. Birdy gets to the top first.
     
    I’m at the top and Al scrambles to the edge near me. The ice over the edge of the dam is smooth as glass. There’s nothing to get hold of. When I lean forward across the ice I lose grip with the skates. Al says he’ll give me a push. He reaches under my skate and pushes me up over the brink. I hear him tumbling down the side of the wall to the bottom. I look back and he’s turning and spinning as he goes, thumping over the ice bumps. Then he slides across the ice at the bottom.
    The pond up there is beautiful; bigger than the millpond, and there are no reeds growing through the ice. I stand up and look down at Al. He’s standing, brushing himself off. He says he’s fine. He’s going to try climbing the wall again. I get down on my stomach to lean out and give him a hand when he gets close.
    Al works his way to the edge and I grab him. I start pulling him slowly, my clothing is just warm enough to stick to the ice. We’re almost there, when Al pulls a bit too hard and unsticks me. We both begin sliding over the edge. There’s nothing we can do and we start laughing. For a few seconds we’re balanced, then down we go. I’m going headfirst and Al turns onto his back. The bumping isn’t as bad as it looks because we have on heavy coats. When we hit bottom there’s too much weight and we go through the ice.
    I go completely under, headfirst, and come up under the ice. I bump my head against the ice and can’t break it. There’s an air space and I can see up through but the water’s freezing cold. Al breaks ice over to me and pulls me up and out. The water at the bottom of the fall there must be seven or eight feet deep. I’ve swallowed a lung full and can’t get my breath. Al spreads me on the sidebank and pumps water out of me. When I sit up I’m surprised I don’t feel cold, only limp and tired.
    Al’s jumping up and down and pulling off his wet clothes. He says we have to get them off and wrung out so we can skate back to the fire before we freeze. I start getting undressed and trying to jog in place but my legs are numb. Al wrings out the clothes as we take them off and then we put them back on. They’re already freezing. Then we make the mistake of taking off our skates to wring out our socks. We can’t get the skates back on because our feet are swollen and our hands are too cold. The matches are soaked so there’s no way to build a fire. Al ties the skates around his neck somehow and says we’ll have to run back down the creek bed.
    We start running and that’s when I find out I can’t breathe right. Whenever I breathe deeply I cough and can’t get my breath. Spots come before my eyes; black dots against the snow. I want to stop and rest. I’m not so much cold as tired and I can’t breathe. I stop and sit down on the ice. Al comes back and