I was twelve years old when my mother showed me the frozen man.

I had heard of him before, of course. The ancient man had been kept by the people up in River Bend for longer than even our oldest elders could remember. He was well-known to everyone for many miles around. He was a part of our country, just like the Shoals River and Heron Inlet.

But I was more interested in seeing just about anything else – ospreys, catamounts, the caravels off the coast, the festival day lacrosse games. I also had acquired three coins from the old times; two of them, my father had given to me, but one I had found myself while clearing a drain ditch. All three were silver, and I was always on the lookout for another.

Somehow even dead people had always interested me more than this living, or at any rate not-quite-dead, man just up the river. There had been a storm two years before which had uprooted an old maple tree, by a stream that had flooded; locked in those roots, now vertical over the hole they had left in the ground, were three skeletons – broken, with the rib cages of each one suspended in the dirt. One skull, and arm and leg bones, were visible in the ground below. My grandfather said they were likely warriors from the old Red Nation from the Reivers War of his grandfather’s time.

“That tree grew over their cemetery,” I said.

“Well,” my grandfather had answered. I got the impression he was thinking of how to express this appropriately for a child; he must have decided I was old enough for a harsh truth:

“Son, there probably wasn’t a cemetery for these men. General Woundwort’s boys likely just threw those bodies in a ditch and left them. They were probably completely forgotten by the time that tree got knee high.”

So these were the kinds of things I had all around me, and a frozen old man didn’t raise my interest. But my mother went to River Bend every now and then to visit my aunt, a two-hour trip on the canal boat.

My mother always looked forward to canal trips, and her enthusiasm was infectious. She liked seeing Aunt May, for one thing, and she dressed well for the boat. On that trip she wore a red dress which she had purchased on a previous visit to the same River Bend.

“You had to make a trip for a proper dress to be able to make a trip,” my father had said. “It’s circular.” He was teasing her; he clearly liked the dress, and he would often step to her to touch her back when she was wearing it. I would look away at that point, of course, maybe up toward the sky for an osprey.

“Well, next time I’ll just have it shipped down on the hog barge, and I’ll tell everyone that was your idea,” she answered him.

Her enthusiasm for these trips was infectious, as I said – but it never lasted, for me. She was glad to get away from our farm for a day or two, and board the boat, and watch the canal water glide by with the rougher river beyond. I, on the other hand, found myself after a short while just staring at the mules on the bank in their harness, pulling us along under the driver’s whip, seemingly having fallen into a mindless rhythm similar to how I was feeling as I sat on the bench next to my mother. I would get up and stand by the bulwark, hoping to see something off in the woods, but I thought the real action was out on the river. It was visible from time to time through the trees, in spots where the canal had been dug close to it. It had a few rapids, and a number of islands where you had to wonder if anyone was hiding on them; maybe kids my age sneaking off.

There were two locks the ship had to rise in, on the way, and they were briefly interesting with their great doors being closed behind us and then opened before us, but even they just seemed like a lot of work to raise the boat sixteen feet total.

After a few hours the mules finally stepped up and down over the short stone bridge, on the side of the canal, that marked the approach to the town of River Bend. I left the side of the ship and returned to the bench.

“Acey, you’ve never seen the ancient man, have you?” my mother asked. I shook my head.

“Why don’t we stop to see him on the way to Aunt May’s. She won’t want to come along.”

Stolen story; please report.

“Why today?”

“Why not. The weather’s nice. You should see him. You never have. Maybe you’ll be the one who can figure out how to bring him back.”

I rolled my eyes.

“If he wants to come back,” I said, “I think he’s going to have to – find a switch in there himself.”

“No, I think someday it will be one of us. If he could have come back by himself, I think he would have by now. He seems ready enough to get out, from what I can see. The look on his face. Let’s go and I’ll show you.”

So instead of walking straight up the center road of River Bend, on this day we turned left after a block. The building that housed the ancient man and his casket had been built up a short distance from the river to protect it from flooding.

The building struck me as less than a church, but more than a house. It was stone, not wood like most; and it had an arch over the front doorway. (It had no actual door; the people in River Bend hadn’t bothered installing one because they’d realized very long ago that the case would endure no matter the cold or heat outside.)

So in that regard, it looked a bit like a church; but it was smaller than any other church around, and it had no furnishings, no benches or anything.

When I was older it occurred to me that the relatively formal design of the building was a form of hedging by the townsfolk. Was it a small museum dedicated to a quirky freak? Or a house of reverence for someone or something who might be superior? Or if not superior to us himself, maybe sent down to us by superior others? If the ancient man ever woke up, would he be able to cause any trouble if he wasn’t satisfied by the dignity of his housing? I felt like the stone construction, the size, the archway and so on was a just-in-case.

And this was one reason I had never been too keen to go see him; I suspected it might be a quiet, reverential space where I’d be expected to sit silently for an hour, and so on.

But that wasn’t the case. The building was empty. No one outside had paid it any attention as we walked up. The place and its occupant had been there so long that people seemed to ignore it as much as they had ignored the little bridge the canal boat mules had walked on, on our way here.

The case was mounted up on a small platform. It was white, and clean. Its outer lid was kept raised all the time, apparently, so the man inside could be seen.

He was submerged in a thick but clear substance. Some sort of grease, it looked like, but it was clean. You could see straight through it. He looked like one of us, nothing strange or special. I thought he looked a little disgusted, and impatient. I don’t know what I had expected.

He was naked, but people had cast a blanket on the case lid, to cover him up from about his navel on down. The blanket was tied down with cords that wrapped down underneath the case, but it was clear that they had been pulled loose many times by the curious. My mother reached down and hiked it up a little up his body.

On the side of the white case there was a small darker area, which showed just a green dot and the number -178.

“Do people know what that number is?” I asked.

“No. It has never changed.”

“And how many years has he been here?”

“No one really knows.”

“But since the time of the Red Nation?”

“Even before then. He’s older than that, everyone says.”

“No one ever has to – do anything to this?”

“No. They keep up the building, is all. Make sure it doesn’t fall down on him. It would be such a shame if anything happens to this case before – well, before whatever it is going to do, it does. The people here keep an eye on it.”

“Do you think he’s alive? Do you think he’ll come out?”

I knew she did, but here in front of this oddity, this silent inexplicable oddity, I felt like I had to check.

“I’m sure he’s alive. He looks it, doesn’t he? As for what will happen to him, I can’t say, Acey.”

And that was that. There was nothing else to see, or do. I felt a little bad leaving him there, when we walked out; but as far as that went, it was reassuring to know he had survived in there for so long already. Our departure wouldn’t matter.

*

Sixty years ago, that was, and what a different world it is now. The canal is still there, but steamers make the trip now, and the mules are gone. And only freight goes by water these days; people travel in steamcars of course. I tell my grandchildren about traveling by the canal passenger boats, and they look at me as if I’d told them I got around by paddling logs.

My mother lived to be ninety; Aunt May, ninety-two. I did stop by and see the ancient man a number of more times, after that. The building was altered a bit, over the years, and about fifteen years ago he was moved altogether, but he and his case never changed; the same green dot, the same number displayed, and the same impatient look on his face. I visited him with my own children and grandchildren, like everyone else around our parts does.

The last I saw him was about five years ago. I don’t believe I will be able to make the trip up to River Bend again, but I know he’s still there, looking as old and as young as ever.