Ice

I grimace a little.

The sound makes me.

Is it the rubbing? Kind of like metal on metal.

But not really.

More like the squeak-shriek of a clown twisting a skinny yellow balloon into a poodle.

Only different.

Maybe fingernails on a chalkboard.

Except not quite.

::

I started the search for words to describe it about four hours ago. I even drove the post office just to listen to it again and see if I could work it out. I’m glad for that to be a short trip. My muscles contract with the noise, and I’m just now starting to relax again.

It’s ice.

As simple as that. Ice and snow pack built up heavy under my car, coating the undercarriage and jamming itself in between movable parts. It happens around here. When 60 inches of snow starts to melt a little bit on days when thermometer’s red creeps up over zero, the road softens slightly and attaches another layer of cold rock to my car.

The ice creaks with every bump in the road, grinds with every turn.

I can kick it off the mudflaps. But the rest, it’s solid. Too cold, too hard, too far underneath.

It is, for now, unyielding.

The sound reaches past my winter gear and chills me at least as much as the arctic air that envelops me.

Bouncing through one intersection I went deep and groaned back aloud at a particularly mournful sounding creak and scrape of iron nails across a cold steel washboard.

When the squeak of hell’s balloon-poodle fell silent, a question propped itself in the passenger seat and wouldn’t let go its gaze through me.

That sound, that sorrowful rasp, is it the one He hears?

Is that the same sound my heart lets loose when it starts to ice over?

::