The Power of Testimony

DIKKON EBERHART
In the melt days of early spring, Dad and his brother, Dry,
would chop enormous cakes of ice loose from the river banks
and launch them into the stream. They’d take big branches of
downed trees aboard, and using these clumsily for oars, they’d
try to maneuver their unsteady craft downstream. The river was
cold, and though it was not deep in summer, in spring its current
ran very high and fast with the snowmelt water, and once
it entered the woods, its way was tangled with fallen trunks and
rock outcrops. The goal was to ride the urgent current all the
way to the falls . . . of course, when no one was looking—​no
parent, that is—​for this was a daring and dangerous thing to do.
When I was young and enthralled with the stories Dad
would tell, the Cedar seemed to me to be as wild as Huck Finn’s
river, and just as fine a place for a boy to lie on his back, adrift
upon a raft, and to feel that the world is, indeed, awful purty.
“Tell the one about the ice cakes,” I’d plead. Then I’d snuggle
against my father, he of the scratchy face and pipe smoke. For I
was little, and he was big, and I’d know the story would come
out okay.
As the boys float along, the day grows colder, and it
begins to snow. And the trees close in. It’s darker. And
the river runs faster now as it dips into the darkness of
the forest. And there are—​ of course—​the falls ahead.
Not yet heard, but waiting, dark and toothed. Then, in
the dark: a lurch. The ice cake hits a fallen tree, rides
up a little, whirls, hangs precariously, and . . . cracks in
half ! Plunges into the stream. The boys are wobbling
now, crouching, terrified. Another piece of ice breaks
off. Water covers the top of the ice now. Now they’re
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