What Happened
DuringThe Ice Storm

JIM HEYNEN SPECIAL TO THE APPLETREE

ne winter there
was a freezing
rain. How beauti-
ful! people said
\--, when things outside started to
shine with ice. But the freezing
rain kept coming. Tree branches
glistened like glass. Then broke
like glass. Ice thickened on the
windows until everything out-
side blurred. Farmers moved
their livestock into the barns,
and most animals were safe.
But not the pheasants. Their
eyes froze shut.
Some farmers went ice-skat-
ing down the gravel roads with
clubs to harvest pheasants that
sat helplessly in the roadside
ditches. The boys went out into
the freezing rain to find pheas-
ants too. They saw dark spots
along a fence. Pheasants, all
right. Five or six of them. The
boys slide their feet along slow-
ly, trying not to break the ice
that covered the snow. They
slid up close to the pheasants.
>3 The pheasants pulled their
heads down between their
wings. They couldn't tell how
easy it was to see them huddled
there.
The boys stood still in the icy
rain. Their breath came out in
slow puffs of steam. The pheas-
ants' breath came out in quick
little white puffs. One lifted its
head and turned it from side to
side, but the pheasant was
blindfolded with ice and didn't
flush.
The boys had not brought
clubs, or sacks, or anything but
themselves. They stood over

—

the pheasants, turning their
own heads, looking at each oth-
er, each expecting the other to
do something. To pounce on a
pheasant, or to yell Bang!
Things around them were shin-
ing and dripping with icy rain.
The barbed-wire fence. The
fence posts. The broken stems
of grass. Even the grass seeds.
The grass seeds looked like little
yolks inside gelatin whites. And
the pheasants looked like un-
born birds glazed in egg white.
Ice was hardening on the boys'
caps and coats. Soon they
would be covered with ice too.
Then one of the boys said,
Shh. He was taking off his coat,
the thin layer of ice splintering
in flakes as he pulled his arms
from the sleeves. But the inside
of the coat was dry and warm.
He covered two of the crouch-
ing pheasants with his coat,
rounding the back of it over
them like a shell. The other
boys did the same. They cov-
ered all the helpless pheasants.
The small gray hens and the
larger brown cocks. Now the
boys felt the rain soaking
through their shirts and freez-
ing. They ran across the slip-
pery fields, unsure of their
footing, the ice clinging to their
skin as they made their way to-
ward the blurry lights of the
house. ❑

From The One Room School-
house by Jim Heynen. Copy-
right (c) 1993 by Jim Heynen.
Reprinted by permission of Al-
fred A. Knopf.

17

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