and onlookers came out at night to marvel at the miraculous cones of yellow light that pooled down onto the ice and blazed over its surface. Kenan was one of those who’d marvelled. He had raced in and out of the cones of light, never allowing fatigue—not until the last skaters were shooed off the rink at ten o’clock at night. Only then did his feet turn to unfeeling stumps; only then did his ankles give out. He was still able to call up the sensation of unstrapping the skates from his boots and dragging himself, his feet in pain, back to his uncle’s house and to bed.
Closer to the onset of war, when he was older, Kenan had skated with Tress, whirling around to the same waltzes they’d listened to when they were children. In January 1914, they had dressed for the carnival, too, for the masquerade, held every year on open ice. They had been a gypsy couple—Tress wearing a long skirt and curtain hoops for earrings. They’d been surrounded by the usual inventive array of costumes, the result of people rummaging in closets, piecing together relics andprops, some of which were hauled out for use year after year.
Now, an entire war later, the makings of the rink itself appeared to be unchanged. Boards for the shack were stacked in readiness a short distance from Kenan’s veranda—boards he was able to recognize by their size and shape. Was it possible that something familiar had not been altered by war?
He imagined the inside of the skaters’ shack, soon to assume its own shape. Workmen would nail boards together to make a floor that would be blade-scarred soon enough. There would be a hammering together of three rough timber benches, where the skaters would sit to lace up and unlace; a stovepipe would reach up and out of the pot-belly stove and through an opening in the roof. A sizzle and spit would be heard as hardened pellets of ice and snow were plucked from the folds of mittens and brittle socks, and tossed onto the hot surface of the stove.
Skating came to a halt every year at the time of breakup, usually in early March but sometimes as late as April. Depending on the severity of winter, breakup occurred within a predictable range of a few weeks. Some of the town men laid bets about the exact day this would happen, but it was Tress’s uncle Am who was most accurate in his predictions. He swore by a formula he’d created from records he’d been keeping for decades, scratching
ice out
dates into one of the corner beams of the clock tower up over the post office. Kenan had been taken up there several times by Tress and her sister when they were schoolmates. Maggie and Am were childless, but had always welcomed young people to their tower apartment.
Kenan stood now, and left his chair. All of those memories were far removed from his present state. He might havebeen imagining the details of the skating shack—which, at the moment, was nothing more than a stack of boards in a heap on the ground—in the same way he had begun to imagine his memories of war.
He had been a child when he’d joined up. Or might as well have been. If anyone had asked, he’d have said that he considered himself a gentle person, not someone who shouldered a rifle and marched off to war. No one had asked, and he had done both. Tress, concerned about his decision, had nonetheless given her support. She wasn’t happy about moving back to her parents’ home while he was away, but both she and her sister, Grania, had done exactly that.
Kenan had been one of the first in town to enlist in 1914. He’d felt the excitement, the urgency to rush to the aid of Mother Britain. Thousands of young men across the country had signed up and were being transported toward the East Coast as they trained and boarded ships to cross the ocean. But in the same way that objects now fell off the visual horizon of Kenan’s left eye and vanished, so had all of those young men fallen from the peripheries of his life.
Chapter Five
S UNDAY MORNING , M AGGIE
Closer to the onset of war, when he was older, Kenan had skated with Tress, whirling around to the same waltzes they’d listened to when they were children. In January 1914, they had dressed for the carnival, too, for the masquerade, held every year on open ice. They had been a gypsy couple—Tress wearing a long skirt and curtain hoops for earrings. They’d been surrounded by the usual inventive array of costumes, the result of people rummaging in closets, piecing together relics andprops, some of which were hauled out for use year after year.
Now, an entire war later, the makings of the rink itself appeared to be unchanged. Boards for the shack were stacked in readiness a short distance from Kenan’s veranda—boards he was able to recognize by their size and shape. Was it possible that something familiar had not been altered by war?
He imagined the inside of the skaters’ shack, soon to assume its own shape. Workmen would nail boards together to make a floor that would be blade-scarred soon enough. There would be a hammering together of three rough timber benches, where the skaters would sit to lace up and unlace; a stovepipe would reach up and out of the pot-belly stove and through an opening in the roof. A sizzle and spit would be heard as hardened pellets of ice and snow were plucked from the folds of mittens and brittle socks, and tossed onto the hot surface of the stove.
Skating came to a halt every year at the time of breakup, usually in early March but sometimes as late as April. Depending on the severity of winter, breakup occurred within a predictable range of a few weeks. Some of the town men laid bets about the exact day this would happen, but it was Tress’s uncle Am who was most accurate in his predictions. He swore by a formula he’d created from records he’d been keeping for decades, scratching
ice out
dates into one of the corner beams of the clock tower up over the post office. Kenan had been taken up there several times by Tress and her sister when they were schoolmates. Maggie and Am were childless, but had always welcomed young people to their tower apartment.
Kenan stood now, and left his chair. All of those memories were far removed from his present state. He might havebeen imagining the details of the skating shack—which, at the moment, was nothing more than a stack of boards in a heap on the ground—in the same way he had begun to imagine his memories of war.
He had been a child when he’d joined up. Or might as well have been. If anyone had asked, he’d have said that he considered himself a gentle person, not someone who shouldered a rifle and marched off to war. No one had asked, and he had done both. Tress, concerned about his decision, had nonetheless given her support. She wasn’t happy about moving back to her parents’ home while he was away, but both she and her sister, Grania, had done exactly that.
Kenan had been one of the first in town to enlist in 1914. He’d felt the excitement, the urgency to rush to the aid of Mother Britain. Thousands of young men across the country had signed up and were being transported toward the East Coast as they trained and boarded ships to cross the ocean. But in the same way that objects now fell off the visual horizon of Kenan’s left eye and vanished, so had all of those young men fallen from the peripheries of his life.
Chapter Five
S UNDAY MORNING , M AGGIE
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