What the Eagle Sees

What the Eagle Sees

By Heather McLeod

Chapter 1

Saturday, February 18, 2023

It wasn’t the first time a mule deer had been pulled down overnight on frozen Lake Windermere, its hooves sliding, frantic as some free-ranging dog bit at its ankles.

Like most of the other volunteers on the snowy ice that February morning, twenty-three year old Bella Gray had seen it before: the still mass of brown in the distance, a smear of red on disturbed snow.

Maybe someone would have walked out the few hundred feet, curious, if they hadn’t been working against a deadline.

But when the sun finally rose just before 8 a.m. that Saturday, its slow dawn revealing the dark lump out at the curve of land where the bay joined the Columbia River, they were only a few hours into setting up for the annual polar plunge. So they clicked off their headlamps, stamped their boots for warmth, and continued with their tasks.

The stink of oil and gasoline drifted in the crisp, dry air as a burly volunteer chainsawed through eighteen inches of greenish ice. There were eight of them out on the lake, layered in long-johns and snow pants, wool or fleece and anything waterproof they could find. They wore toques and thick work gloves, neck warmers or scarves. They’d been on the ice since six but worked steadily, fuelled by greasy Tim Hortons breakfast sandwiches and thermoses of coffee with Bailey’s.

Bella’s dad wore the brown Carhartt work jacket she’d given him for Christmas, his thick, rust-coloured hair covered by a vintage black toque with a red pompom. Mathiesen paced the work site, his black snow pants whiss-whissing, waiting for the fourth block of ice to be cut free. He was clean-shaven despite the early hour. A line of freckles ran across his nose.

Raising her voice to be heard over the chainsaw’s drone, the scream of the chain cutting ice, Bella reported in to her dad:

“I cleared out the fishing huts. Wood stoves are ready to be lit.” Her breath steamed white, as if she still smoked.

She wiggled her fingers in the work gloves: they’d grown numb as she crumpled newspaper in the plywood huts. It was twenty-six degrees below zero, and colder in the shade.

Mathiesen nodded and assessed the volunteers’ progress, standing straight-spined, hands on his hips like Superman.

Drills whirred and whined twenty feet away, where others assembled the scaffolding that would hold the sponsors’ banners and barricade three sides of the hole.

“Your sleeves are wet, dad,” Bella said, tugging at his coat. “Do you have anything dry to change into?”

“Later, bear.” He pulled out his phone and checked the time. “How about you do the fire pits?”

Bella’s photographer, Samantha, tickled the shoulder of her purple goose-down coat. Bella barely felt her touch through the warm layers. “I’ll help.”

The young women placed the large metal fire discs on stands every twenty feet in a circle around the expanding hole in the ice, then loaded a black rubber sled with split spruce from Mathiesen’s pick-up truck and stacked a supply by each pit.

Sam wiped at a smear of charcoal on Bella’s puffy coat, until Bella waved her off. “We aren’t shooting the coat today. Just swimwear.”

“Sorry,” Sam said. “It’s become a habit.” Her own coat was black Gore Tex and showed no evidence of charcoal, but was spotted with short, white dog hairs. Her long, wavy brown hair frizzled with static.

Bella stretched and surveyed the scene: she still hadn’t decided when to take the photos.

Last year she’d waited until the event had ended, but it was too close to sunset and the lighting had been all wrong.

If they shot during the plunge, Sam would have to angle the camera or edit out the crowd of onlookers.

Worse, some rogue wannabe-photographer might snap a picture without Bella’s permission. Not all the bathing suit tops covered her tattoo completely. Only Sam could be trusted to photoshop the lines from her skin.

And: Bella was used to posing alone on mountain summits, not surrounded by gawkers. Could she stay composed and get all the shots they needed with that crowd staring at her, judging her as she positioned her pale curves in a succession of bikinis?

Mathiesen had offered to let her in the water first. Bella could get the pictures she needed for her sponsor before the event officially started. But there was always an eager audience, long before Mathiesen rang the bell to launch the plunge.

She had four hours to figure it out.

Bella found more newspapers for the firepits on the backseat of Mathiesen’s black pick-up. “What happened to your truck?” Bella called to her dad. The right front of his supercab had split around the headlight.

With grunts, Mathiesen and another man hefted the fourth ice block away from the hole. He caught his breath before answering.

“Clipped a deer after I picked up the straw last night.”

Bella grimaced. Her dad had been tightly wound for weeks, getting ready for this annual fundraiser for his charity: now he’d have to deal with insurance forms and expensive repairs.

She hoped the event was a success, at least. Today, Mathiesen’s charity, Peaks and Valleys, was raising money for a local family: the mother had died last week while driving her minivan, the victim of a young driver too high to stay in his own lane.

As the team of volunteers worked, the sun rose above the ridge of jagged mountains. A blue sky day meant no clouds to hold the heat in, which meant it would be cold for the afternoon event. Bella hoped people would still come. Her dad counted on another record-setting turnout.

Something fluttered in her peripheral vision. In the distance, the deer carcass had grown wings.

No: it was only a bird, landing to feed. Its wings spanned the length of the dead animal. The white head lifted: it was a bald eagle, its size distorted because it was so far away.

“I hope someone gets that off the ice soon,” her dad said from behind her. “Before the birds tear it apart and it’s an even bigger mess.”

“I can call the Conservation Officer,” Bella offered.

“Yes, please.” But then a navy blue truck crawled down the road at the east side of the beach, passing behind Bella’s Land Rover parked in the gravel lot. The truck eased onto the frozen lake. “Never mind. They’re already here.”

He strode toward the lake’s entry point, his heavy workboots crunching the packed snow. Bella followed.

The truck paused just offshore, exhaust clouding at its back bumper. “Conservation Officer Service” was printed in white on the box. The passenger-side window lowered. Bella didn’t recognize the middle-aged driver, but Mathiesen did: he crossed his forearms on the sill and leaned in. Stale, warm air wafted from the truck.

“Morning, Doug. Any chance you can get that deer off the ice in the next couple hours?”

Doug glanced at Bella, just beyond Mathiesen’s shoulder, moved his bloodshot eyes away and back again.

Bella was used to the double-takes. She met his eyes, then raised a shaped eyebrow and looked pointedly at her dad, to bring Doug’s attention back to Mathiesen’s question.

“Sure thing,” Doug said. His voice was phlegmy, as if those were his first words of the morning. He cleared his throat. “I’ll get to it right away.” He had a British accent, which Bella had only ever heard in real life when encountering hikers on the more popular trails.

With his splotchy complexion, patchy beard and the dark bruises under his eyes, Doug looked more haggard than Mathiesen.

Bella gazed past the two men, through the windshield to the carcass of the deer beyond. The eagle was gone.

This close, roughly two-hundred feet from the body, Bella realized how close the deer had fallen to the lake’s cleared skating trail.

The trail, the Whiteway, was always busy on weekends: ice skaters and cross-country skiers would show up soon, locals out for their morning exercise or tourists eager for souvenir selfies on the world’s longest ice skating trail. Everyone would see the carcass.

She hoped Doug cleaned it up quickly.

Doug drove off and Bella’s muscles clenched. Even after seven winters in Invermere, after seeing the thick blocks chainsawed from the lake every February long weekend, she didn’t trust the ice with a vehicle.

Every time she saw someone head out across the lake, taking the shortcut from Invermere to Windermere or heading to the cluster of fishing huts on the southwest side of the bay, she expected the crust to crack open, the car or truck to pitch forward and pull the hapless driver down into the freezing water.

But Doug’s truck continued slowly, ignoring the worn lane that led drivers west to cross the Whiteway, instead veering south toward the bloody mess in the snow.

The ice held.

Bella’s dad pulled her in sideways for a quick hug, squeezing her shoulders.

“He’s still hungover, but he’ll get the job done. One less thing to worry about.”

She pressed her toque against his, and squeezed back.

Tomorrow the plunge would be over. Mathiesen would hand that stack of donated cash over to the grieving widower. Her dad’s hard work, all those months of preparation and stress, would be validated.

They walked back, their boots gripping the snow, Bella wary of slipping.

Everyone except Bella had parked without fear on the ice. They passed the other volunteers’ vehicles and Bella ran her gloved fingers over the scrapes in the black paint of Samantha’s Dodge Ram: souvenirs of their backcountry photoshoots.

“Time to build the hot tub,” her dad said.

Minutes later, Mathiesen and Bella reached for the first bale of straw from the trailer. She sneezed at the thick smell of horse in her nose.

Meanwhile, three hundred feet away, Doug was the first to see the body.