Iceboat

You needed certain specific conditions, which meant very cold for weeks but zero snow as snow obscured the ice, which, especially on Barton Pond, had a habit of developing ridgy spots which if you hit at just the wrong angle jarred your bones or sent you careening off course, worst scenario of all being to slip, skittering into the path of someone else’s blades. She had been at it for years, and the number of truly perfect days could be counted on two hands, including one brilliant February morning that lived as a bright-blue circle in her mind, the round of sky above the lake and the shining ice below, a steady friendly wind from the west at forty miles an hour that swept her up and down the lake like a sharp and dangerous bird, the white sail fluffing and plumping and the freezing chill on her cheeks. How that day had stayed with her! How it returned to her, unbidden! Well, it was one good thing about Michigan. There were some. Bob had his motorcycle, and she had her iceboat, a piece of information she liked to lend out to her most loyal and interesting customers, because one did not expect her to own such a marvel, stowed in its boathouse near Chelsea, and neither did they expect her to own a third of this, frankly, ugly barber shop, which had survived thirty years thanks to its prime location, one block from campus, where they got all kinds who over the decades came and went, and neither did they expect her to be a pilot, a stunt pilot no less, who for awhile had co-owned with a guy named Paul a sweet old Cessna Germaine with a charming maroon stripe. Stunt pilot was maybe overstating it, but she could do the acrobatics, and really, if you weren’t going anywhere, the point of being in the air was to use it all, all three dimensions of it, to stall and fall until the air pillowed you up again, to shift the yoke gently into an easy barrel roll, the horizon spinning in the windshield like a towel in a washing machine. She wasn’t going anywhere, there had been a time for that but no longer. She knew where all the morels were, the feral cats had found her, and she had earned their trust. The tomatoes she grew were the descendants of some ancient perfect crop she’d once lucked into, and, no, there were no children, had never been, once a sorrow but not for long, all these things were what she did instead, and when her customers mentioned theirs, she allowed a little space to gather, a polite interest was expressed in the mirror, scissors or clippers suspended, it was fine, and there was something like the iceboat, up and down that excellent little lake, nearly frictionless, nearly perfect, a sun, a sky, a whistle in the wires, do not judge her, do not think you know her, you do not.