I was five years old when my Grandfather told me about the woman who lives in the river. We were up to camp for Christmas. The neighbor across the way was having a huge bonfire, and my family had donned layers of wool, and boots to walk across the frozen lake to check out their new snowmobiles, which screamed in the night like chainsaws. Grampy and I ended up falling behind, because we were the slowest. We were both wearing sets of double mittens, knit by my Gram, and we walked hand in hand, our palms stuck together with snow. It was bitter cold that night and the sky was awash in stars, more than I had ever seen. Grampy breathed like a wheezy old bellows, and he surprised me when he asked, “Do you know about the woman who lives in the river?”

         I shook my head no, the sound scratchy within my hood.

         “You don’t! Well I guess it’s about time that you heard about her. You know the Kennebec? River that runs right through town?”

         I nodded; I knew it well.

         “Well, there is woman that lives in that very river, and her name is Trina. She sleeps, down deep in the mud most of the time. But, when the river freezes solid, like this here lake,” and he stomped his boot on the ice, “she wakes up. She can swim very fast. Faster than any sturgeon. Fast and straight like a bullet.” He held up a mittened paw and demonstrated. “She don’t like people much, but once in a great while she comes up. She comes up into an ice shack. You ever been ice fishing?”

         I shook my head no.

         “Well, get your Father to take you. Trina, though, she might come up into your shack out to the camps, the smelt camps, if you’re very, very lucky. The shacks, they have a hole, right in the floor and through the ice that goes down into the water, so you can fish all night in a nice warm little room. One time, when I was just a boy, bit older than you, I seen Trina.”

         I looked up at him, wide eyed with disbelief. This was big news.

         “It’s true, I swear to God! She come right up into our shack. Just a little bit of a lass, wearing a black dress like, and dark hair, pale skin, and she smokes.”

         I gasped.

         “Yuh, she does like to smoke. Don’t let me catch you doing that know,” he squeezed my hand.

         We had come to the opposite shore. I could hear the roar of the bonfire and the loud laughter of people, and see sparks shooting up into the sky. The bank was steep and snowy. My Father appeared suddenly and scooped me up. Over by the fire the heat baked into my face. My Mom gave me sips of hot cocoa from a metal cup, and soon two frenetic green and yellow snowmobiles screamed into the clearing. I went for a ride on one, tucked in front of my Uncle, and it was the loudest, coldest, fastest thing I’d known, just woods and stars smearing by. And some point I was carried back to camp and tucked into a warm bed up in the eaves. We packed up and left early the next morning. I had a lot of questions about Trina. Is she a mermaid? How does she breathe under water? What kind of a black dress, exactly? But I never got to ask my Grammy about her. He had worked at the mill for 50 years, starting when he was 17 and retiring at 67. He died less than a year after retiring. That night out on the ice, under the million stars, it was the only real conversation we had, and I never spoke about to anyone. Until now.

         More than 40 years later, I find myself sitting in a very crowded bar, late at night. The room is hot and everyone’s wet boots and beards are melting and dripping. I lean back and sink into the dense soundscape, and my drunken mind does a beautiful thing, as the up top lights of my mind start to blink out; I travel in time and space. I could be sitting in a tavern, or pub, or joint in any place in the world, in any time in the history of people, the talk could be in German, or French, or Japanese. There are no words, only sounds, layered together with explosions of laughter, thick glasses hitting the oak bar, wet boots thumping on the slick, filthy wooden floorboards, women shrieking. It is endlessly deep, and though I sink down and down through the sounds, I can’t find the bottom. The layers are infinite and ever shifting. My skin is hot, my body loose, and I float above it.

         Next to me sits a drinking buddy. He is talking to me, has been for some time. Louder and louder he gets, and I watch his face. His glasses are smudged and his lips are red and wet. I can’t understand a word among the beer-soaked cacophony coming out of his never tiring mouth. But I am fine with that. I am fine with everything. Because, and this is the trick, I have given up.

         When I was 29 I left my whiskey drunk husband. We had been together for ten years, married for two. We lived in an old farmhouse that had belonged to his grandfather, a man who in his 70s had drunk gin and tonics out of 24oz ball jars with half a dirty lime bobbing in the murk. Then one day his kidneys shut down and we got a house. My husband and I had known each other since we were teenagers. Our courting had started in rusted out Subarus parked in fields and moved to The Den, a tiny little bar with a pool table in the back. We drank Jack and Cokes. We smoked Camel Wides. The morning I left I had gotten up early and walked the dog, going way up a rambling old road I’d discovered. At the top was a farm, austere and ancient, with crumbling rock walls, gnarled apple trees, a tidy farmhouse, and a little old couple that would sit out in matching rockers on the porch. I loved it up there. You could see all of the village spread out below. Western Maine might be cruel, but it is astoundingly beautiful. The air was clear that morning and the sun had come out, and for the first time in months, I could feel its warmth upon my skin. It had just a whisper of the spring that was to come. I hadn’t gotten too far into the whiskey the night before, because I was worried that I was dying of it. I could feel the poison in me all the time, and it was stripping my mind and my heart. I was pulling up, slowly, and standing atop Blake Hill Road I realized, clear as can be, that I had to leave that house, that man, that marriage. I walked home and packed my car while he slept in an anesthesia of boozy fumes; took my dog, and left. He called four times. I didn’t pick up. He left one furious voicemail. I didn’t respond. I owed him more. An explanation. An apology. But I didn’t have it to give. Eventually I mailed him divorce papers and he surprised me by signing them and sending them right back. I never saw him again.

         I stopped drinking easily, without a lick of effort. For a while. So I decided I was fine. For a while. My friends told me he was the alcoholic. He was the problem. I ended up living in an apartment with a girl in Lewiston, and got a job at a coffee shop. The coffee shop got sold and turned into a wine shop. I stayed on. I started dating a wine distributor. We would spend weekends at his house in Belfast. We drank bottle after bottle. Bold Italian reds, crisp and sparkling Portuguese whites, paired with a lot of time in bed. Distinguished men came into the wine shop. They loved me, and asked for me by name when they wanted to order cases. I got bigger and bigger commissions. The shop was doing well and I was made manager. I started buying inexpensive cases when my favorites went on sale and soon my place looked like a stock room. The wine distributor disappeared, but I didn’t care, I had plenty of dates. Several of my friends got married, moved away. I would go into work hungover int he morning. Drinking at work is actually part of my job, I would tell myself, as I uncorked a sample bottle or finished off something from the tasting the night before, open in the fridge. I had little appetite for food, and I was drinking alone at night more often than going out. I went to dinner with a professor, a regular at the shop, and he commented that I hadn’t eaten a bit of my food. Then he went to pour himself a glass from the bottle he’d bought, a $48 Valpolicello, and it was empty. I’d had 4 glasses unaware. “Jesus,” he muttered. He didn’t call me again.

         I started missing work. I was drinking every day. Sometimes I’d get scared and be sober for a few days, but mostly I just drank. My boss talked to me about missing work. Then he talked to me about an inventory issue. Then he fired me for stealing wine. I guess he never found out about the money. I left town. Bounced around a bit. Waitressing jobs mostly. I dated a guy for a bit, lived in his trailer. He had a pretty serious drinking problem. And I left one night, in tears and covered in blood from a badly broken nose, after I fell down the back stairs taking out the dog. I was sobbing, shitfaced, half dressed, bleeding in the snow and he locked the door. Never saw him again. Eventually I ended up in Central Maine, in an efficiency apartment, working at a local diner and haunting the local bar. I found a few drinking buddies (we always find each other, the drunks) and occasionally I’d sleep with them, and there’d be drama. You get tired, though, and whether you believe you will or not, you get old. One day my Mother called me from Florida, “I can’t believe I have a 48-year-old daughter,” she laughed. And I realized, with a shock, that she was talking about me.

         “Hey!” My drinking buddy grabbed my arm and I snapped into my body, overheated and bleary. I felt sick. “Go out for a smoke?”

         Outside it was extremely cold. We’d been having a cold snap for weeks now, temps below zero days and plummeting to 30 below at night. Dangerous cold. We stood and smoked, staring at the sky that curved over our heads like a prism.

         “How’s tiny Tim doing?”

         “He’s fine,” I said.

         It was a lie.

         Tim-Tim. A scrappy little Yorkie mix. When he was a puppy he was the size of a chipmunk. He’d traveled with me for all those years, through all those bad romances, and dark nights. And he’d gotten old. Old and creaky, a bit more fragile. But one day I realized he was sick. A trip to the vet revealed a large tumor pressing against his heart. He went down fast. When he could no longer stand I’d had him put to sleep. After so many years of his little heart beating next to mine, I held him as poison was injected into his tiny body and it stopped for good. He went limp. His eyes changed. I felt like I’d been run through with a broad sword. It was excruciating. It had been a week and I hadn’t told anyone.

         We went back in the bar, for one more drink. The place is quieter now, and that soundscape has changed. Bits of sentences catch in my ear, like jagged debris.

         “She’s a feking cunt, is what it is, Guy!”

         “Biiiillllllleeeeeee! You twat!”

         “I told him, I told him, I said you can’t do that. And you know…”

         “You fucking queer, why don’t you get a real drink, brother?!”

         “Oh that’s gross. She’s just gross, ain’t she?”

         Mean rising laughter.

         “We was at Worthing’s Shacks last night. Smelt was running pretty good, actually, we got a fair amount.”

         As my buddy slides into the booth with our drinks I lock eyes with the man talking about smelt fishing. Dark hair, pale blue eyes, wearing a dirty pair of Carhartts and a torn up old fishing sweater. Down on his luck. Just my type. And he notices me, his eyes sparkle. But it’s too late. And I feel the sorrow of it, things like love, or lust, or affection, are lost to me. Past tense. My drinking buddy is talking at me again. Hammering away at the same story he’s been telling his whole damn life. Some girl done him wrong, cause he’s just too much of a nice guy, and she, well she’s a nasty bitch. It was the only story he ever told. I’ve almost finished the fresh beer already. The bar will be closing soon. I feel dread. I cannot stop.

         I sit my empty glass down and realize someone is at my shoulder, standing. It’s the dark-haired guy and he has two fresh beers in hand, which he sits in front of me.

         “Couple of beers for ya.”

         My drinking buddy leans back, eyebrows up, “Thanks, man!”

         Blue eyes looks at me and says, “Trina is looking for you,” and he winks, then turns and just walks away.

         “Dude, he got us Harpoons,” drinking buddy says with foam on his mustache, “What a Minch, you know that guy?”

         But I’m staring at the door that just closed behind him. He left. Trina? Did he say Trina? Too many thoughts attempt to fire off in the sodden mess that is my head. Is Trina a thing? I had never heard that story anywhere else and assumed my Grampy made it up. I even googled it once. Nothing. There are plenty of creepy mermaids, some vicious and terrifying, but I’d found nothing specific to Maine, the Kennebec river, or smelt shacks. None that wear cocktail dresses, and smoke cigarettes, and sleep in the mud.  No Trina. Trina is looking for me? What the fuck does that mean? You misheard him, I think. But then, in response, I know the truth. I heard him right. Trina is looking for me.

         I decide, as a drain my beer, to go and find her.

         I’m down at the abandoned waterfront park. It is bitter, bitter cold, and the night sky is fiercely strewn with stars. I told drinking buddy I was headed home. That was a lie. There is a clarity to the air that should set off some alarm bells, it’s almost sterile. But those wires have been cut. The big bridge is off to my left, and beyond it, just upriver, is Worthing’s Smelt Shacks. The Kennebec is frozen, and due to the winds, blown almost clear of snow. There is just a compressed layer, gritty enough to offer my sneakers purchase but not deep enough to sink into. Good. I step out onto the river and head north.

         It feels more like a corridor than a body of water. Dark pines line both sides, black walls, and it is silent, removed from the little towns on either shore that I move away from as I head towards the bridge. I watch a pair of headlights cross the bridge, stop at the red light, and then turn. Now the roads are empty, the city empty. Silent. Nearly at the bridge now I’m surprised how high up the roadway is. Less bridge than fortress in the sky. I move between two massive concrete pilings, into the darkness beneath. When I come out the other side the wind is whistling. I can see the smelt camp now, but it is further away than I had hoped. My feet are very cold. And I’m shivering. I am, of course, not dressed for this. I look back at the boat landing, where I started, and it seems very far away too. Could I have walked all that way already. Time has come unspooled.

         I begin the walk to the ice shacks. My feet ache, my thighs burn inside my jeans, my face is numb. I’m sobering up, and starting to question things. This is a bad idea, dangerous even, and what exactly am I planning to do when I reach the shacks? I can see them now, about 20 and only a few lit up. It’s after midnight and the wind is howling. I don’t know anyone over there. Men. Those shacks are full of men. More danger. My car is back at the bar, I won’t make it, I have to keep going forward, need to get warm. To make matters worse I have to pee. Badly.

         I approach from the side. None of the shacks are lit up over here, and it’s mostly sheltered from the wind. I can hear muffled laughter, a tinny radio, from deeper in the rows. I had been scared of dealing with some random men, but now I feel relief. There are people here, and I need help. They will likely think me lunatic, but it suddenly doesn’t matter, I need to get warm. I drop trousers. The flesh of my thighs feels like raw chicken. Someone else’s meat. I squat and piss. The relief is profound. I am still drunk. I need to get into a warm shack. Whatever it takes. I button up with numb fingers and step into “the city.” The narrow lane running between the rows is Dickensian, a dirty mess, slippery and soiled. It smells of fish, and smoke, and gasoline. I spot a glowing shack and move towards it, but outside the little door I stop. What am I going to say? Fuck. It seems reckless to knock on the door.

         That’s when the door opens.

         Standing before me is a man, on the small side, wearing a union suit the color of pale honey, which is unzipped down to his waist. Underneath a grey t-shirt. Silver hair pulled into a ponytail. Narrow face, thin knobby neck, silver mustache dropping down below his soft jawline to either side. His eyebrows are silver too, bushy, and arched up in surprise. I hadn’t knocked of course, so I’m just standing there.

         “I’m sorry,” I say quickly.

         He steps aside and motions for me to come in.

         There is another man inside, sitting on an upturned bucket. Dark blue union suit, wild dark hair and beard. He has a bottle of Old Grandad Whiskey in his hand. He laughs, heartily, takes a swig, and holds the bottle out to me. I move into the baking hot tiny space, towards the bottle. The little guy closes the door behind me.

         The heat is a miracle. My feet begin to ache with a renewed fierceness. The bottle is right in front of me and a I take it. The whiskey slides into me and blossoms hot in my stomach. It tastes like kerosene. My face is suddenly red and boiling hot. I hand the bottle back to the wild haired man and he points to a small low bench I hadn’t noticed. I pivot and sit down hard. I take a sneakered foot into my hands and begin to knead. It hurts. No one says anything.

         They’re going to ask who you are, why you’re here.

         But no one speaks. The little guy darts out the door. He’d probably been headed out to piss when he encountered me. The big guy drinks again and stares into a rectangular trough in the floor that is in fact a hole in the ice. Lines hang above the trough and disappear into dark water. The little guy is back and stomping his feet. He sidles up to a tiny Jotul stove just to my right which is throwing heat like a motherfucker. The big guy hands him the bottle and now he drinks and hands it back. He rubs his hands together and it sounds like sandpaper. The bottle is passed to me again, and for some reason I take two big mouthfuls before handing it back. Still no one speaks.

         I miss a few beats and realize I might pass out. I’m going to pass out. I take off my coat, my shoes, and my hat, focusing on the tasks, clinging to them. I’m overheated and florid with it, sweating down my back and sides, my face infected with the heat, pulsing. I take my foot, now encased in a damp sock and rub it. They’re still cold and they hurt and I focus on the pain as I rub life into them. No one seems to notice me, despite the spectacle of all this. No one has asked me anything. This is clearly not normal, but I feel wary of mentioning it, like some fragile alchemy is at play. But to what end? Am I even here?

         I suddenly become aware that the little guy is talking. The sound washes over me, and when I look up from the foot in my hands I see that he is looking at me, waiting. He is by the stove, which now seems further away. There is a dark corona around him, like a spray of charcoal dust. The question hangs in the air, but I don’t know what he said, heard not one word of it. My heart, which had stopped when I looked up at him, begins to beat out of control, and a tidal wave of fear slams into me. I can’t pull enough air into my chest. Flop sweat is pouring off of me. It’s too fucking hot. Can’t breathe. He is staring at me with his head cocked, like a dog.

         “I’m sorry, “ I stammer, and look down at my foot, my vision darkening around the edges. I purse my lips and blow out as long and slow as I can, then sip in a bit of the air, then purse my lips and blow out long and slow again. A trick I learned from a boyfriend who had PTSD from Afghanistan. Panic attacks. Focus on the exhale, he told me, don’t keep trying to suck more air in. My heart slows a bit and I look up and see the little guy shoving more wood into the stove. For the love of God, I think, please don’t make it hotter in here. The big guy is up too, also fussing with the stove. They seem impossibly far from me, across a big expanse. There is an aura around them, greens and deep blues, radiating out. I should leave. I need some water. I’m sick. I’m too hot. I look at my shoes and coat on the floor. It’s impossible. I can’t move. I look up and the room is empty, and small again, the proportions tight, normal, the edges square. I am alone.

         That is when I hear the sound. It is delicate, like tinkling crystal. I look at the hole, the dark trough. The fishing lines are gone, all of them. The dark water is not still.

         “Where are the lines?” My own voice startles me.

         And that is when the hand appears, coming up out of the black water, very white and very small, clearly a woman’s hand. It moves off to the edge of the rectangular hole through slushy ice and there is a tinkling sound, like a crystal chandelier shuddering. When her wrist hits the edge the hand slaps down onto the floor and another hand slaps down next to it. Smack! All at once a woman comes up out of the hole, black water sliding off her in all directions. In one fast, smooth motion she pops up and sits on the floor, her legs below the shin still in the water. Just the way a kid would hoist themselves out of a pool.

         She is now sitting about three feet from me. I could reach out and touch her. Coldness is emanating from her, like she’s made of ice. Her skin is pale, silvery, perfectly smooth, and taut. Her short black hair is slicked back, wet, as if styled as such. She is wearing a little black dress, sleeveless, short. She is petite, but not childlike. Her eyes are black. She is looking right at me, right into my face. Her eyes are completely black, no pupil, no white, and narrow like a cat. She runs a hand through her perfectly slicked back hair; her fingers are just slightly webbed. She doesn’t have any ears. She is looking at me.

         Coldness has come up with her and my skin explodes into goose bumps, every inch, and it’s painful. I feel self-conscious. How I must look, sweaty but now shivering, wet socks, slouched on this bench, chaos writ all upon my bloated flesh. This woman is compact, precise dangerous, perfect. What would she see when she looks at me? Something contemptible. She does not blink. She crosses her legs.

         I rummage in my coat, a confusing pile of fabric, now wet, at my feet. I’m shaking, or shivering, and it’s a struggle but I get my pack of Camels out of an inner pocket. With difficulty I pull one cigarette out and offer it to her, hand trembling. She smiles then, just a tiny tip of her lips, but it touches her eyes too. She takes the cigarette, puts it in her mouth and leans forward. I pull out my lighter and with shaking hands I light her smoke. I notice her dress. I thought it might be silk but upon closer inspection it looks thick and almost furry, like seal skin. She leans back and smokes slowly and with great pleasure, still looking at me. She squints and waves her small hand in front of her face.

         “You have your grandfather’s eyes.”

         Her voice is legion.

         I can see him then, my Grampy looking down on me that night on the ice, above him more stars than I’d ever seen. His eyes were pale, pale blue, and though he was smiling there was a something sad about them. I start to cry. It is easy, and sort of wonderful. She is still looking at me and that feels good too. No one has looked at me in a long time.

         There is a noise behind me and I turn. There is a splash. The men come through the door. She is gone.  The room is suddenly hot again, very, and there is a smell. Fish. Powerful. It catches in the back of my throat as if it is inside of me. Nausea grips me all at once and I bolt for the door. I am throwing up in the narrow alley between the shacks. Liquid. Booze. A lot of it. My throat burns and my stomach boils. I crawl behind the shack. I look up at the stars and they swirl and spin. Endless heaving. My body is beaten by it. Just sip the air, I think, as I lay out in the snow. Just sip the air and try to sleep. I don’t remember being cold.

         I watch the light, which is strong and bright, on the peach wall. This is my apartment, I realize, and that is a good thing. I sit up. I’m on the floor of the kitchen, wrapped in a blanket. Next to me is my coat and sitting atop it are my shoes, wallet, and keys. The apartment is silent and sunny. I wander its rooms. Empty. Safe. I look out the back window. My parking spot is empty. The frozen Kennebec River runs right behind my apartment building. The river is dusted in fresh snow and in the sun it sparkles with a thousand points of light. It is incredibly beautiful.  I am incredibly grateful to be alive. The feeling nearly lifts me off my feet. The snow is glittering like a thousand jewels, and some are the light clear blue of my grandfather’s eyes. Below the snow and ice the river flows, under smelt city, and all the way out to the ocean beyond.