InsaneJournal

Hans Varner and the Not-So-Silver Skates
It is late winter 1923. I am eight, perhaps nine years old and my entire world consists of the house where I was born and the grounds that surround it. We do not often go to town proper, and all my lessons are from tutors. Still, this is not a lonely time in my life - my mother is attentive, and my older brothers sometimes allow me to tag along on their adventures. Still, my favorite thing to do is sit by the fire and read. I read through all my children's books, and sometimes I read some of my father's books - though I do not understand all the words and ideas. When I ask him to explain, he is long-winded, and often winds up shouting by the end. My tutors want me to focus on lessons of their choosing, and are little more help. I wind up making up my own meanings for any words I do not grasp. But I digress.

It is late winter and the trees are heavy with ice, bending their branches towards the snow covered ground. The pond has frozen over, and my brothers are skating. "You are too young to skate, Hansel," my mother tells me when I ask to join them. I sit on the edge of the pond, as close as I dare go to the ice in boots too big inherited from Bernhardt . My mother stuffs paper in the heels and toes. I do not understand yet, that we have poverty - despite the land and the tutors, that she tells me I cannot skate because my brothers have not yet outgrown their skates. I will come to know this in time, but at eight I sit and my resentment grows as they laugh and push each other and wave back to me with taunting smiles.

My nose, and fingers and toes are starting to feel like they might fall off, but still I sit there silently watching. "Hansel, go inside!" Freddi calls, finally, when their taunts have lost appeal. He is the eldest, and feels responsible that I might not freeze and die. I do not respond. He goes back to skating. "Fine then. Baby. You sit there until you freeze," calls Bernhardt. Time drags, the wind blows icicles from the trees and I imagine they are forming on my nose. My brothers come up on the bank and take off their skates.

"You want to skate, baby?" Bernhardt, with his angular face and his thirteen year old bravado staring down at me. He thrusts his skates into my cold hands. They shine like silver. I do not trust in his generosity, and I look to Freddi. "Go ahead," he says. "Just once, though. Near the shore." Fifteen, he gives a warning look to Bernhardt to not tell our parents of this least the trouble fall on him as eldest. The skates also are ill-fitting, and I stumble to my feet but I am so excited. Freddi walks me to the edge of the pond, and gives me a shove, and they take me further out than I could have imagined they would. I am scared, and the world is slippery and I fall backwards and land with a crack onto the ice, hitting my head.

The world is silent, colorless, and expansive. I think that if I die here, I will go to heaven, climbing the bridge of icy tree branches all the way to the sky.

I do not die. Freddi grabs me, tugs me to my feet and escorts me back to the edge. "No more skating for you, Hansel," he says.

"Baby," Freddi says. I tear off his skates, and run inside. By the time Freddi and Bernhardt died, I had already outgrown their skates. But that winter, I walked out onto the ice, I layed down onto my back and imagined them walking up the bridge of frozen trees into the afterlife.