I heard the lake crack open last night.
No way.
Did too. Woke me up. You know what that means.
Berging.
Yep. Berging. And you’re gonna die.
In your wildest dreams.
You gonna eat that?
John-Paul tossed a slice of burnt toast across the table onto his older brother Roland’s plate.
Call Wally, Chad, Vern and the Kobiskis. Round up the troops.
You do it, you got the big mouth.
Can you spell hy-po-therm-i-a?
Why don’t you go play hide-and-go-seek by yourself.
In 1983, March break landed in April. The backyard rinks had melted and buds were fighting the frost. Spring’s afternoon sun was singing gospel songs in Southwestern Ontario, the home of Berging. No one knows where or who or how the game was invented. The season was fleeting, it could last a single afternoon or three weeks; the previous year was five days, but only two rounds were completed before the local police captain stationed his cruiser on the main pier, prohibiting all Berging activity. The rules are simple: duct tape an old pillow around the end of a broken hockey stick and knock each other into the cold lake. When an opponent goes under, there is a stoppage if needed, players band together and pull the loser onto safe ground. They howl and jeer while the poor bugger runs up the snowy beach, down the slushy trail, tears turning to icicles all the way home to momma, if there is one. Normally, hypothermia doesn’t set in for six minutes; hyperventilation starts at submersion, best to keep the mouth shut if your head goes under, swallowing can be fatal, lungs don’t like slush. Survival depends on how far you live from shore and how fast you get there and if the fireplace at home is lit or not. Late afternoon games are more dangerous, but sometimes the bergs are firmer. Girls never play but are not officially banned, probably just too smart for such ludicrous antics. There is no age limit, but high school kids prefer touring the concession roads drinking beer and pulling donuts while smoking hash oil laced with melted garbage bags. Or practising to make the NHL.
This is my last year, so I ain’t taking prisoners, I’m out for keeps. Roland warned the gang piling off the yellow school bus.
The tyres farted brown snowy mush as it pulled past the Catholic church and down the single lane out of town, parting the remnant stocks of harvested winter corn.
Game starts in fifteen by the small pier. Snooze you lose. Roland commanded.
I got piano. Vern said.
Then flutter away you wuss. John-Paul spat.
Yeah. Go kiss your momma for us and don’t come back! Shosta-Wussy-Kovich.
Yeah bugger off Beethoven!
The church bell chimed.
We playing teams? Asked Wally.
Every Tom, Dick, Jane and Dickslap for himself.
What if dudes team up?
Then dudes team up. But there is only one winner. And you’re looking at him. Ro-land! I am conquest! Hear my song, punks! Prepare to be conquered!
Who talks the talk better walk the walk. Said Chad. His father owned the appliance store. He could move a fridge single-handedly up a flight of stairs without scratching the wall.
You got lucky last year, I was conned. He added.
The boys assembled at the mouth of the river, which was flowing freely between the piers under the drifting knolls of sand-blown ice. Mammoth bergs passed like ghost freighters, one skip and you would be carried away to Michigan, Superior, Georgian Bay, slow death. Bridging these surely solid bergs, thin mirror-like plates slipped and slid just below the surface. They were the real game breakers. Some might hold your weight, at least to push off and crack open for the pursuer. Some might open like a laundry shoot straight into the game-over ice of hell. Some might be solid but slick, creating advantage for the nimble to topple the powerful. Some bergs could be paddled or at least ruddered like a raft. The trick to Berging is reading the lake, and so few are literate in the grammar of ice.
Count down. Roland commanded. The boys began in scattered discord.
10. 9. 8. 7 ... Looky there Vern’s a coming he’s ... 6 ...
Vern came screaming down the harbour path onto the big pier. Without breaking stride, he cannonballed into the gelid river.
5 ... Holy Moly ... the guy is in-bloody-sane ...
Nutter!
Loon!
4 ... 3 ... 2 ...
Vern’s head surfaced, the tide had already dragged him up river. He climbed onto the pier seconds before reaching open water. Shivering and shaking like a prey-less bird dog, battling to get his breath because he had something to say, something important, something memorized, but the convulsions were getting his best. The real cold came after you got out of the water.
Who’s the wussy now? HUH? Ignoramuses! You punks don’t know ...
Before he could finish whatever he had saved to say, his innards iced to cubes and the survival neurons got his legs running; he was out of sight before the waves of laughter finished echoing out to the lake’s horizon, away forever. Roland blew a ref’s whistle.
GAME ON!
The smaller boys ran as fast as they could, envision a rabbit on a greyhound track, to the furthest and highest berg they could reach without being swept away into serious open water. They knew the strategies which had proven semi-successful in previous years. Let the big guys come to you, keep the higher ground and dunk them on a chase. Chad, the full-grown-superheavy-weight began swinging his pillowed-staff like an Olympian hammer thrower. He caught two sleepy-headed Kobiskis in the first second of play. He boomed a Viking’s guffaw as they tumbled into the drink. Go Home to Mama! The soaked Kobiskis scrambled away to warmth.
Unintentionally, Roland and John-Paul formed an efficient duo. Roland chased John-Paul with brotherly hunger, but as the younger brother dodged and ducked staffs and pushes, his opponents were left exposed for the older brother to storm down with a cross-check, an elbow, a shoulder butt, a well-placed pillow-poke into the drink. Roland would never catch John-Paul because he stopped and watched his drenched foes find their footing and delighted in their comic-hobble race home. John-Paul was fast but Roland was patient.
When the remaining players were six, they were spread equally distant around the floe. The sun was a few inches above the horizon, parents would soon be serving dinner and the fairest and easiest conclusion would have been for them all to walk home dry, yet the cardinal rule held the game in motion. There could only be one winner.
Bad luck struck Wally, as the iceberg he was peeing on decided to roll like a sinking ship, perhaps it was the heat of the urine. He had to leap into the current and swim for shore, his pillow-staff becoming summer driftwood. The Dalrymple twins wrestled each other into the lake after a mutual slip. They ran home holding hands, leaving Chad, the natural born-fridge-mover, who had not moved but a few paces from the pier, and the two brothers.
How we gonna do this boys? Chad’s stick sabered the air in figure-eights.
Come and get me ya big galoot, hope you brought your water-wings! John-Paul cartwheeled.
Paddling a thin skin of ice just beyond swinging distance, Roland floated closer to distract and strike. When Roland stepped onto Chad’s berg, the tilt gave him away and Chad charged. John-Paul boomeranged his staff under Chad’s legs, tripping him into the ice water. Chad submerged and stayed under a few seconds too long. When his head popped up, there was none of the usual thrashing and screaming. His face was dopey and glazed. The brothers knew something was wrong. Momentarily abandoning the game, they got down on their stomachs and extended their sticks to Chad.
Hold my legs or he’ll pull me in, the guy’s a moose. Roland sat on the back of John-Paul’s thighs.
Come on Chad, swim a bit, you big galoot, you can make the pier, right?
I ... can’t ... feel ... my ...
Chad, you’ve already wasted two precious minutes, no messing about, move your arms and legs. Doggy paddle it. Come on buddy.
I ... can’t ...
I’m going for help.
No time. You have to go in.
Me?
You’re small.
He’ll drag me under.
He’s gonna die, if we don’t ...
The guy is an anchor.
If you don’t go, I’ll throw you.
Why don’t you go?
Who’ll pull me out?
He’s gone. I can’t see him.
Jesus, he must be under the ice.
There was a moment of dead silence. An arrow of geese flew west.
He’s gone.
Don’t say that.
He’s gone.
There was another moment of silence. The arrow of geese flew east.
I always thought Chad could swim.
He’s in shock. He’s never gone in before.
We need to ...
We need to ...
We have to ... get help.
The lake cracked open, and the leviathan, a natural born fridge-lifter, appeared. His head cracked the surface, his wailing arms saw-milled as his slow tree-trunk thighs propelled soaked bones and flesh towards the heat of home. At the mouth of the trail, he turned and bellowed,
CRACKERS!
Mesmerized by the resurrection, John-Paul and Roland remained still on their iceberg. The weak sun dipped into the horizon. Water gushed and spurted. Mini-eddies patterned the lake. All they could hear was ice melting.
That was mythical. I’ll never forget that. Thank God he got out. John-Paul said.
Roland remained silent.
Guess it’s dinner time. John-Paul filled the silence.
Yeah.
So who won?
This year no one. No one won.
Or both of us?
Roland stood slowly as if drugged, staring at the swirling ice-water. John-Paul rolled onto his back. His older brother stood over him and extended a consolatory arm. No one has won or we both have won together as brothers through survival we are brothers forever, said the simple gesture. Or not. Roland leaned down and took his younger brother’s reaching arm, then abruptly dropped into a squat while placing the sole of his right boot onto the centre of his younger brother’s chest and rolled back, lifting and tossing his younger brother over his head and through a skinny film of ice into the water. The perfect suicide throw.
Underwater, cold panic made up from down impossible to decipher. Adrenaline kicked in and when the fight for shore and warmth was clearly won, John-Paul realized he had lost the game and his brother, and there would never be another season of Berging.