Silence
Lake Wenonga was large and near several sizable towns. Everyone had an uncle or a mother-in-law or a best friend’s brother with a cabin on Lake Wenonga. With clear water, a convenient location, and several lakeside restaurants equipped with docks for speed boats and pontoons to wait for their passengers at. Every winter, Lake Wenonga was dotted with icehouses, fishermen, and the occasional snowmobile or skier from the time it first froze over until the day it became impossible to access ice strong enough to support human weight without the aid of watercraft.
Bud Schneider never went to Lake Wenonga. Forty years ago, he and his wife had bought a run-down cabin on a small body of water known as Leech Lake. Most of the land surrounding Leech Lake was farmland, and even in the height of July, there could only be heard a handful of fishing boats. Over the years, Bud and Myra rebuilt and remodeled their cabin until it was suitable as a house for year-round occupation, and they moved there after Bud retired from his job as an electrician. Their children were not pleased with this and worried that they would be snowed in over winter or be unable to receive help in an emergency, but their grandchildren were delighted that they would now be able to go to the lake every time they visited their grandparents.
Now it was winter. There were no ice fishermen, no trucks, and no snowmobilers on the lake. Everything was a blanket of pure, seamless white save the path of a cross-country skier that had come through that morning and the set of footprints that lead to Bud as he surveyed his property from the ice. Some people would say silence is the same as quiet, but the stillness that Bud heard that afternoon as he stood there, surrounded by the gentle wind blowing across the lake unhindered, was true silence—not an absence of sound, but a new one altogether. For an eternity, Bud Schneider stood there in the trance brought onto him by the silence until it was broken by the faint call of a chickadee. He shook his head and turned around. To one side of him was the mass of grey interspersed with occasional dark green that was the trees. To the other, white. Nothing but white until the large, red barn and accompanying silo on the other side of the lake. It was this direction that Bud decided to walk that day.
The snow crunched with every step he took, and when he bent his gloved fingers, he found that they did too. He was facing the wind head-on now. His nose and cheeks started to burn, but he paid them no mind. It was colder than he would have expected it to be that day, but he had experienced far colder. A little nip in the air never hurt anyone. Besides, the fact that he could feel his cheeks burn in itself meant that he was not too cold yet. As he walked, his mind turned to other things: Myra, their children, and her illness. He continued on until he was a third of the way across the lake. Then he took out his gun and turned it around in his hands a few times. It was a Smith & Wesson Model 19 Classic, an anniversary gift from Myra from a few years ago. He took a moment before setting up some empty beer bottles he had brought and taking aim. As he shot at his targets, his mind wandered to where he and Myra had first met.
It was November, deer season, and he was at her family’s farm. There was snow then too, but it was nothing like this. It was a thin slush on the ground and was melting onto the heads of those who passed under the eaves of a building. Her father had allowed Bud and his friends to hunt on his land, and he had taken a liking to them. He even asked them to stay for supper at his house and meet his family. After that day, Bud and Myra’s father were hunting buddies until his passing, but that arrangement was not initially without an ulterior motive on Bud’s part. Bud and Myra were married with her father’s blessing after Bud completed his apprenticeship as an electrician. Bud’s family did not receive Myra as well as Myra’s had received him, but they still got along well enough.
Bud’s reminiscences were interrupted by a need to reload. He pulled some shells out of his coat pocket and started reloading. Myra never had been much of one for the outdoors like Bud was. She always supported his interests, however. In fact, it was her idea to fix up the cabin for usage all year round. While Bud went out on little excursions like this every day the weather allowed, Myra was content to sit in her chair facing the front window and work on her sudoku puzzles. She loved sudoku puzzles. This arrangement suited both of them perfectly, as Myra had a love for quiet time, and Bud always enjoyed hearing the silence. Living on Lake Wenonga would have been unimaginable to them both. There was just one rule Bud had to follow: never make her wait for him to eat supper. As he remembered this, on instinct, Bud glanced at his wrist to check the time before remembering that it was pointless. His watch had broke two weeks ago. He didn’t need a watch to know that it was getting late. The sky was darkening, and a grey shadow was starting to saturate the, what had earlier seemed invincible, white. He made another shot, and after a few moments, the silence had returned once more.
Now there was just one target left. Bud dug around in his coat pocket to find some more bullets for his empty gun. Unable to feel any, he checked his other pocket. There was only one left, but it would be enough.
Bud took aim one last time.
Then silence.
