The Ice Don't Lie
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The Ice Don't Lie
Tip this act
The city stapled up a notice to the boards down at the rink: "CLOSED — THE ICE WON'T FREEZE UP LEVEL." Now there's a bitter drink. No ceremony, no apology, just a staple and a fold. You can't appeal the weather to a council chamber cold.
Forty years I graded ground for every slab this old town knows. I know what frost can do to flat, I know the way the water goes. That ice ain't failed that rink — that rink failed that ice. Somebody skimped the gradin', and the water walked away.
I showed at dawn on Tuesday, uninvited, thermos in hand. Black espresso and my level, standin' flat, honest, and grand. Poured a cup for nobody, watched it climb away in steam. Then I lectured nobody in particular, like a foreman with a beam: "Water finds its own level, if you respect the base. But skimp the grade, and she'll hold court right to your face."
The ice don't lie, boys. It testifies about the base to anybody passin' by. You can fool an inspector, fool a wife, fool a bartender at last call. But a bubble in a level never held its tongue at all.
Now a rink ain't made in one big pour — she's built up coat by coat. That's the gospel, that's the sermon. Three thin floods on still evenings, then you let the frost take hold. She lays herself down honest, and she turns to beaten gold. They coulda had her level if they'd have asked around. You can retire the man, boys, but the standards won't come down.
Come Christmas, them kids'll skate the indoor palace — machine-made, flat as a tax form, cold as a receipt — and nothin' underneath. No mittens froze to the garden hose, no porch lights on the snow. No last flood at nine o'clock, no voices off the boards below. You can staple up a notice, you can shut her down today. But you can't close out the frost, boys — not in Thunder Bay.
Me and the frost line go way back. The ledger says he owes me one. Forty winters, footer-deep, patient under the January sun. Next December, if the city allows, I'll flood her thin and slow. 'Cause water finds her own level, boys — and the ice don't lie, I know.
And a bubble in a level never held its tongue for anybody... Neither have I, boys. Neither have I.
