John Hansen is an older man living alone in a secluded cabin near the shores of Lake Michigan. He goes into town sparingly to visit his sister and her children. To his surprise, an indigenous teenager passes by his cabin to inform him that he will be trapping beavers in the nearby wilderness areas. The boy reminds John of Henderson, an indigenous man who was the cook on a boat he worked on decades ago. Henderson was not a particularly remarkable man, but John recalls clearly the way his food tasted faintly of the coal and soot their boat transported. Now past his prime years, John feels that his time is more and more limited. He reminisces about the hard decades he spent working on freighters and sailing. A few days after the Native American boy first visits, he leaves a short note about the traps and signs his name as Frank Andrews. When John goes to visit his sister, she informs him that he is Paula Andrews’s son, a waitress that John used to visit often at the bar. The next time Frank comes to visit, he brings a girl who has injured her hand while working with the traps. Her clothes are soaked from the snow, and John lets her into the cabin to change into some warmer clothes. While he and Frank wait outside, he mentions that he used to know his mother. Frank takes offense at the comment and starts hurling insults at John, who quickly forces both him and the injured girl out of his cabin. When Johns goes to visit his sister after Christmas, she informs him that Frank died after falling under the ice of a lake. He goes to visit Paula at the bar, and she breaks down into tears while talking about Frank. After the visit, John feels that he was not able to say what he wanted to say with Paula. He thinks of Henderson one last time. After John physical fought with a rude passenger on board, he saw a strange look of madness in Henderson’s eyes. After the fight, he witnessed Henderson throwing a large duffel bag into the stormy waters with that same look in his eyes. They said nothing to each other about the affair, even after the passenger was pronounced missing.  Back in the wilderness, John visits the lake that Frank drowned in and stands over the ice, knowing that the boy is somewhere underneath.