Illustration by Daniel Craig for Heartland Bank Chistmas card The Skaters by Stephen C. Peters ©1993 The Gobbler: Winter Crystal   Around the corners of Christine's eyes were lines that James had heard described by the nickname "crow's feet." They were not deep wrinkles of age, but light impressions, and James liked them on Christine's face. He knew that her young life (she was thirty-four) had been sometimes troubled and destructive. But crow's feet at the corners of eyes were caused by smiles, spontaneous and true, over time. And so, on Christine, the lines were evidence that happiness existed in her nature, and endured, despite the sadness that was there, too. Once, sitting with Christine and observing this aspect of her beauty, James was reminded of a memory from Christine's childhood. James often asked his friends to describe their memories, even insignificant ones, in detail. He wanted his friends to give life to their pasts -- out loud. This was because James had discovered that memories though infinite and complex, were fragile forms lost forever with the end of the mind. Unless a universal mind existed that preserved them all. ***** The day that Christine recalled for James took place when she was fourteen years old and lived on a farm in northern Ontario with her parents and five sisters. It was a Sunday in January, cold and bright and quiet. No wind blew across the snow covered fields behind the house. When Christine got up, her sisters were still in bed. Her father was reading the Toronto newspaper in front of a fireplace and her mother stood in the kitchen staring out a window. When Christine came into the kitchen, her mother smiled and blinked from the glare of the sun on the snow. After a late breakfast, Christine put on long underwear, blue jeans, a turtleneck and a heavy red wool ski sweater. She pulled a white stocking cap over her head, but let her blonde hair hang to her shoulders. At the front door she found her snow boots and ice skates, and dangled the skates around her neck by the tied-together laces. Her father came into the hall before Christine went out the door. "It's cold now, but with this sun it's going to warm up by afternoon. Watch the ice, okay?" "Okay." Outside, Christine walked to the provincial highway, about a half mile on the unpaved road that led to the farm. Before crossing, she looked back at the house, an old, three-story Victorian house, all white. Smoke rose from the chimney straight up and lingered over the roof. Her father stepped out into the front porch, then went around to the side, heading for the barn and tool sheds. After waiting for a car to pass, Christine ran across the two-lane highway down into a slight ditch and up on the other side. There was no road here, only snow and the beginnings of rolling hills and woods. Christine saw pawprints where the trees began and followed them for a moment before veering off farther into the woods. She walked downhill for twenty minutes, sometimes stepping in drifts up to her knees, until the frozen surface of Two Maples Lake appeared. The lake was a small circle about a mile in diameter with a tiny island in the center - a brown hump with rocks and a pine tree. In the summer Christine and her sisters and friends liked to swim or row canoes out to the island for picnics. Now, one could skate there twice as fast. Christine leaned against a big maple tree near the shore and tugged on her skates. She wondered again why the lake was named Two Maples--maple trees were all around it. Their fallen leaves stuck out of the snow and could be seen trapped under the ice above the shallows. And there were pines and spruces which gave the lake a green background even in the winter. No one was on the lake. Christine looked at her watch and then skated away from the shoreline. Out of the shade of the woods her face felt warm in the sun, though short bursts of her breath were visible in the cold air. She skated directly to the island, circled it, and stopped fast, creating a spray with the edges of the blades. She skated backwards for several yards, then twirled and kept going--close to the trees and away again. Her skates made sharp, clean sounds. She was a good skater, graceful and quick. An hour went by and finally Christine stopped to rest on the island. She tip-toed off the ice on the points of her blades to a gray boulder and sat down. Looking west, partly into the sun, she thought she saw someone else on the opposite side of the lake. That suprised her because there were only two other farms within ten miles of her parents' -- and the kids were all grown and away at school. Christine and her sisters were the only people she thought ever skated on Two Maples Lake. Someone was out there. It was a boy and he was approaching the island. He wasn't skating in a straight line, but swerving back and forth like a hockey player. His strides were short and smooth. When he got close, Christine saw that he was wearing hockey skates and blue jeans and an old brown leather jacket. He stopped within a few feet of the boulder. Christine sat up and startled him. "Oh," he said. "Didn't you see me here?" Christine asked. "Nope. I thought I was alone." "Me, Too." "Do you live around here?" he asked. "Yes," Christine said, and told him who she was, where her family's farm was, and that she rode a bus twenty miles to school everyday in St. Ignatius, Ontario. He told her that his name was Bobby, that he was sixteen and that he and his parents were on a weekend visit from Detroit to one of his father's old firends, Roger Kinder. "Do you know Mr. Kinder?" "Yes," Christine answered. The Kinders owned one of the two farms in the area. "Mr. Kinder told me abvout this lake. It's great. In Detroit, we have to make rinks in our backyards. That's about a hundred feet both ways." Bobby had blue eyes and long black hair, combed back. It was hard for Christine to look away from him. He might have been someone she imagined - a farm girl's Sunday dream - who appeared to her alone in a woods on a quiet lake. They talked for a while about high school and things which later Christine couldn't remember. Then Bobby asked if she wanted to skate some more and they went off side by side all over Two Maples Lake. Twice they raced from one point to another and she won once, when he fell and slid - laughing - to her feet. When he got up, she took off her stocking hat and stuffed it in the pocket of the ski sweater so that her hair shook loose, shiny in the light. After that, they held hands and skated slowly, not talking, watching each other and the clear sky. Sometimes their hands let go and they glided apart around the island - then back together again. Christine liked these moments especially. She liked the lines left by their skates in the ice, and the way the lines divided - until farther on they connected once more. By afternoon the sun and the rising temperatures had formed puddles on the lake. Christine could feel soft spots under her blades near the shoreline. After one more long arc into the center of the lake, she stopped Bobby near the island. A strand of blonde hair was in her mouth and he pulled it out. She started to say something, but he spoke first. "I was here yesterday - all morning. I'm sorry you weren't here. I'm going back to Detroit tonight." Christine looked up at him. She thought of what she had done yesterday morning - nothing important. She could have been skating. "You better go now," she said. "I don't want you to go, but the ice is getting wet." He insisted on skating her to where she'd left her boots, though it was in the opposite direction from where he'd parked his parents' car - far on the other side of the lake. When they were in sight of the big maple tree and her boots, Bobby slowed her with his arm, sliding slowly backwards. She let herself go into his arms and they kissed. Coming to a stop, they embraced for a moment. Underneath them the ice creaked. Their weight, centered on one spot, was becoming too great for the weakening ice. Christine stepped away from him. "See. I know this lake better than you do." "I'll go then." "How are you going to walk back in your skates?" "I'm going to skate back." "It's too dangerous now. If you wait here, I'll go home and get you some shoes, and then you can come to my house and my father will drive you to your parents' car." "I gotta get back before that. Don't worry, Christine. I'll skate real fast. Ice won't break under you when you're going really fast." Christine frowned, "But I will be worrying about you." Bobby grinned. "My Dad says I'm reckless. That's his favorite word. But I'm not that reckless." He reached into a pocket of his leather jacket and removed a small air horn. "This is just in case I get in trouble. If I fell through, somebody would probably hear this and come and get me. So--I tell you what. When I get to the other side, I'll blow one long blast and you'll know I'm okay." "What if you go in the water?" "Short blasts." They stood quietly for another minute. Neither of them had a pencil or a paper, but he promised to remember her phone number and to call her long distance when he got to Detroit. Then he leaned over the ice, and she leaned towards him - careful not to stand too close together - and they kissed a last time. He waved and skated slowly backwards, watching her. Christine yelled, "Faster!" and he turned and hurried away with his short, darting strides. Christine skated to the shore and her foot broke through the ice. The water was only a few inches deep, but it went over her skate and soaked into her sock. She sighed and got her boots on quickly, trying to see where Bobby had gone - but he was already out of sight. She stood under the maple tree - waiting. Her wet foot was getting cold. Ten minutes passed. She thought of how it had felt when he'd kissed her. There was a sound, like a Canandian goose, echoing across the lake. It was the air horn, a long, loud call. Finally it stopped. Christine stayed on the edge of Two Maples Lake for a long time, watching the tops of the trees far away and clouds which arrived suddenly. It started to snow - heavy, wet flakes. She kept staring at the little island, and tears came. Then she smiled. ***** Remembering how Christine had described this moment, James wished he had been there that day when she was fourteen - to brush the tears from her red cheeks and to see the way her youthful smile had formed wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, lines that went immediately away, not like now, when she was older, and they remained - like lines on thin, delicate ice. Story Index