Winter Loon

by Susan Donovan Bernhard

“The loon. Let’s go look for the loon.”

The sheriff, he looked at me the way I suppose I’d looked at those baby mice.

I felt the white on my skin like dried paste.

MY MIND WANDERED to Jolene, natural as a leaf floats to the ground.

Bull shielded his eyes against the sun and squinted at me. “No way this ends well, Ballot.”

I imagined scornful eyes on us, imagined the whispers. “Stick with your own.”

I felt death swiping at me, like it had missed me by a claw in January, and here it had another chance.

“Listen, though, Wes, right? You may not quite get it, but sometimes people don’t want to be found.

summoned all the conviction I could, but the truth was I didn’t know what kind of man I would become.

How do you convey you’re someone to be trusted when you aren’t sure whether you can trust yourself?

think of myself as a person who didn’t belong, a person who could be left behind.

I headed west toward Fargo,

Nobody can save no one don’t want to be saved,

I thought I heard the sound of a loon, but then my father’s voice told me no, too close to winter for loons this far north.

How too much time could pass, how time could become a river no bridge could span.

“Sometimes it’s easier to build something new than it is to fix something broken.”