Tenth of December

Robin, a young boy, prepares to go outside in winter with his pellet gun to look at a beaver dam. As he walks, he imagines a fictional species, the Nethers, which live in a rock wall. He uses his pellet gun to threaten them and occasionally shoots one in the butt. He imagines a complicated scenario where they tie him up, he escapes, then helps the injured ones. In other instances of imaginary play, they torture him, and Robin suspects they might soon kidnap his new classmate Suzanne Bledsoe. As he walks along a path in the woods, he imagines he is on his way to rescue her and that when he does, she will remember his name and invite him to come swimming in the summer. Robin laments about the imagined scenario that “The twerpy thing was, you never really got to save anyone” (219).

At the pond, still imagining he is tracking a Nether, Robin finds a coat recently left behind on a bench. At a distance, he sees a skinny man in pajamas; though Robin is worried the man might be dangerous, he decides the man needs rescuing and grabs the coat.

The point of view shifts to 10 minutes earlier as Don Eber pauses at the pond having internal monologues with his absentee father, his wife, and his children. He has a growing brain tumor, and he struggles to catch his breath. He thinks of his stepfather, Allen, who was a kind man and an excellent father who was transformed entirely by illness. As the illness progressed, Allen became cruel; Don began to think of Allen not as his stepfather but as “THAT,” and Allen realized it. Don has decided that dying by suicide would spare his family what he experienced. He waited for his wife Molly to leave for the pharmacy, then snuck onto the path, intending to die of exposure.

Robin follows Don, pretending he’s a Nether and talking to an imagined Suzanne and NASA mission control. He thinks the man he’s following is a fool. Suzanne urges him onward, but the man is walking fast, and Robin realizes the only opportunity to catch him is to cut across the frozen pond. He reaches a thin spot and considers turning back; as he hesitates, the ice gives and he falls into the freezing water.

Don Eber keeps walking, though he is afraid of his death. His brain tumor has caused difficulty with language, so he thinks of himself as “fleeing father and father. Farther from father. Stepfarther” (229). He falls, and while he’s down, he considers the cruelty of the end of life. He sits up and leans against a tree, determined to stay there and freeze to prevent “future debasement” and his family’s suffering, but he sees Robin fall through the ice.

He stands and struggles toward the boy, falling and rising again and wounding himself. While he does so, Robin is able to thrash his way partially onto the ice. Eber pulls him fully out of the pond, though he’s weak. Seeing that Robin is in danger of freezing, Eber crawls on his belly out onto the ice to retrieve his dry coat. Robin’s clothes are frozen, so Eber undresses and puts his own clothes on the boy. Robin is in shock, but Eber is able to get him to start moving by punching his shoulder, first for encouragement, then as a threat. Eber drives Robin ahead of him, then Robin runs to the trailhead and into the woods, leaving Eber alone to sit down on an overturned boat.

Robin doesn’t know what’s happened or how he got into Eber’s pajamas. He sits down on a stump, thinking he won’t die because nothing hurts, then considers closing his eyes, thinking “sometimes in life one felt a feeling of wanting to quit” (239) and comparing his situation to his lack of friends at school. Thinking of his mom and her belief in his goodness gets him up and moving again. He makes it home, then remembers Eber. He knows that he should go back, but his body tells him “It’s too far, you’re just a kid, get Mom” (243).

On the boat, Eber imagines a warm day amid a crowd. He knows if he closes his eyes, he will die. He thinks his children are there in the pond, so he has to stay, then remembers that his children are grown. He thinks of them as they are now. He could have lived long enough to see his daughter Jodi give birth; he sees missing the birth of his grandchild as a necessary sacrifice that he cannot explain to her, because his life insurance won’t pay out if he leaves a note.

As he continues to hallucinate and veer between thinking dying by suicide is necessary and wanting to live, Robin’s mother approaches with a great deal of clothing that she puts on him. She gets him up and leads him back to her home, telling him that he has to hurry so she can take care of Robin. He thinks of how to tell his family about his suicide attempt, whether he should keep it a secret from his children or not. When Robin’s mother gets him inside in front of a wood stove, he decides that he wants to live, that it is worth being deplorable and a burden to his family as “fellowship [was] not—had never been—his to withheld. Withhold” (246).

Robin comes in to apologize for being in shock, and Eber tells him that he saved his life. He realizes that consoling others is a reason to live, and he recalls a time when Allen, deep in his illness, took interest in one of his school projects and made Eber feel seen. He resolves to be like Allen. His wife Molly arrives, embarrassed because “she hadn’t sufficiently noticed him needing her” (252), but mostly showing concern.