The afternoon of the fifth day of our visit was reserved for leisure, to be followed by a dinner to celebrate our partnership. Earlier, while touring the Delacroix property, we had passed a pretty little pond, now frozen over, and James had been excited to skate on it. It was a frigid day, but clear and calm, and as the pond was just a few hundred meters from the main house, and he had comported himself well, I said he might.
He had not been gone an hour when, abruptly, the weather changed. In minutes, the skies had turned first white, then a deep pewter, and then nearly black. And then, at once, it was snowing, the flakes falling in clumps.
My first thought was of James, and it was the first thought as well of Olivier, the family’s patriarch, who came running to find me as I was running to find him. “We will send Percival with the dogs,” he said. “He can walk this route in the dark, he knows it so well.” To ensure his safety, he tied one end of a long length of rope to the bottom of the staircase banister and the other to his nephew’s belt, and told the boy, armed with an ax and a knife as a precaution, to return as quickly as he was able.
Off the boy set, unafraid and calm, while Olivier and I stood at the staircase, watching as the rope unspooled itself and, eventually, grew taut. By this time the snow was so thick that I, standing at the door, was unable to see anything but white. And then the wind began, gently at first, and then so fierce, so howling, that I was forced inside altogether.
Yet still the rope remained taut. Olivier gave it two sharp tugs, and a few seconds later, received two sharp tugs in response. By this time, the boy’s father, Marcel, Olivier’s younger brother, had joined us, silent and anxious, as well as their other brother, Julien, and their respective wives and their aged parents. Outside, the wind blew so loudly that even the sturdy cabin shook.
And then, suddenly, the rope went slack. It had been some twenty minutes since Percival had left, and when Olivier yanked on the cord once more, no one returned his signal. They are stoic people, the Delacroix: One cannot live in the part of the world they do, with the weather they have (not to mention the other dangers—the wolves and the bears and the cougars, and of course the Indians), and not remain calm under dire circumstances. And yet they all treasured Percival, and a hum of nervousness immediately circulated through the entryway.
There was some swift, murmured discussion about what to do. Percival had two of the family’s best hunting dogs with him, which would offer him some protection—the dogs were trained to work as a unit, and one could be trusted to stay with him while the other returned to the house for help. This was assuming the dogs had not, for example, been urged by Percival to find and remain with James. By now the snow and wind were so intense that it seemed the entire house was listing to and fro, the windows rattling in their casements like chattering teeth.
We had all been timing how long he had been gone: Ten minutes. Twenty minutes. Half an hour. At our feet, like a dead snake, lay the length of rope.
Then, nearly forty minutes after Percival had left, there was a thudding at the door, one we at first mistook for the wind and then realized was the noise of a creature tossing itself against it. Marcel, with a cry, quickly threw off the heavy wooden bolt and he and Julien pulled it open to discover one of the dogs, his coat crusted so thickly with snow it appeared as if he’d been baked in salt, and, clutching at his back, James. We pulled him in—he was still wearing his skates, which had, we later realized, probably saved him, allowing him purchase as he made the walk uphill—and Julien’s and Olivier’s wives fell upon him with blankets and hustled him away to a bedroom; they had been heating water for the boys’ return, and we could hear them running back and forth with pails full, and the sound of water splashing into the metal tub. Olivier and I tried to interrogate him, but the poor boy was so chilled, so exhausted, so hysterical, that he was making very little sense. “Percival,” he kept saying, “Percival.” His eyes flicked back and forth in a way that made him seem crazed, and I was, I will admit, frightened. Something had happened, something that had terrified my nephew.
“James, where is he?” Olivier demanded.
“Pond,” James babbled, “pond.” But we could get no more information from him.
At the entryway, Julien told us later, the returned dog was pawing and scratching, whining to be let out. Marcel grabbed him by his collar and yanked him back, but the dog was desperate, yelping and straining, and finally, on their father’s command, they again unbolted the door and the dog ran out into the white.
Once again, the waiting commenced, and after I had dressed James in clean flannels and held him while Julien’s wife had him drink some hot toddy and then put him to bed, I rejoined the party in the entryway in time to once again hear that sickening thump against the door, which Marcel this time opened at once, with a cry of relief that soon became a wail. There, at the door, were both of the dogs, frozen and exhausted and panting, and, between them, Percival, his hair in icicles, his young handsome face the particular unearthly shade of blue that means only one thing. The dogs had dragged him all the way from the lake.
The next hour was awful. The rest of the children, Percival’s brothers and sisters and cousins, who had been instructed by their parents to stay upstairs, came running down and saw their beloved brother frozen to death, and their father and mother keening, and began to sob as well. I cannot remember how we managed to calm them, nor how we managed to make everyone go to bed, except that the night felt interminable, and outside the wind continued to scream—spitefully, it now seemed—and the snow to fall. It was not until well into the following afternoon, when James had finally awoken and become sensate once more, that he was able to relay, tremblingly, what had happened: When the storm had come, he had panicked, and had tried to make his way back on his own. But the snow was so blinding, and the wind so ferocious, that he was driven back again and again to the pond. Then, just when he had convinced himself he would die there, he had heard the faint sound of barking, and had seen the top of Percival’s bright-crimson cap, and knew he was to be saved.
Percival had reached out his arm, and James had grabbed it, but at that moment there had been a particularly strong gust of wind, and Percival had skidded onto the ice with him, and the two had tumbled into a heap. Again they stood, inching together to the edge of the pond, and again they fell. But this second time, after being once again pushed by the wind, Percival fell at a strange angle. He had had his ax drawn—James said he meant to stick it into the shore and use it as a lever to pull themselves out—but it instead pierced the ice, which cracked beneath them.
“Christ,” James said Percival had shouted. “James, get off the ice.”
He did—the dogs moving close to the water so he could grab them by their ruffs to steady himself—and then turned to reach for Percival, who was once again sliding on his boots across the frozen surface toward ground, but before he could reach it, he was buffeted by another gale, and fell back a third time, this time landing on his back near the spiderwebbed crack. And now, James said, the ice gave a groaning, sickening noise, and split, and Percival was swallowed by the water.