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Icy Miracles
- Wayne State University Press
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I C Y M I R A C L E S Martha shifts the car lights from bright to lose some of the snow swirls. Squirrel Road is slick with ice. In her headlights the tree trunks are black patent leather. This December morning Martha feels a kinship with her daughter, Janice, who like herself is keeping an eye on ice. While Martha drives through the early morning hours, Janice, two thousand miles away, is up in a plane tracking icebergs in Baffin Bay. Janice joined the navy and went to weather school. Now she flies all over spotting icebergs in Antarctica. Martha decided she wanted her own adventure. When she saw an ad in the Beacon for someone to deliver the newspaper to homes in her rural county, she applied for the job. Her husband Donald had been against it. “You must be out of your head. You have to get up at four in the morning.” “I don’t sleep half the time anyhow.” Each year there were more nagging ghosts freighting her dreams, pushing her into the asylum of wakefulness. “I don’t want you to do it; it’s too dangerous. You know what the winters are like.” “You didn’t tell Janice she couldn’t go up in a plane and fly over icebergs.” “I would have told her if I had thought she would have listened to me.” 1 5 4 “Well, I’m not going to listen to you either.” At fifty-six Martha was hired for the first job she had held since she had clerked in the local feed store right out of high school. Delivering papers doesn’t pay much, but there is a feeling of closeness to Janice, a sharing of her danger. In her last letter Janice described an iceberg that had calved off of a huge glacier. She called the icebergs by their numbers. This disappoints Martha, who thinks they should have names like hurricanes do—cold glacial names like Serna and Isolda. There is no need to worry about her other child, Jerry, who works at the gas station in town. Martha loves to take the car in to have the oil changed or the tires rotated. She sits there in the shelter of the service station, smelling the oil and rubber smells, studying the showcase with its dusty display of wiper blades and candy bars in faded wrappers. The old calendars on the wall give her back time. She likes to listen to her son talk with the other men about hunting or the high school football team, making jokes and winking at her to be sure she’s in on the laugh. There is still no hint of dawn as Martha passes sparse houses shut into themselves, their windows darkened, the dogs still asleep, the yawning mailboxes waiting for the morning paper. She doesn’t know what’s in the paper she’s delivering. She doesn’t know what kind of news she’s bringing to the people on her route, people for whom she feels a responsibility. A man might read of the death of an old girlfriend or the election to county office of a man whom he knew for a cheat. Lives will be changed, hopes raised or diminished . Her day begins in a world not yet created; she’s on her own. She 1 5 5 [44.222.92.134] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 08:14 GMT) eases down the brake to see if the car will skid. It fishtails and straightens. Ahead is the cedar swamp, where a small herd of deer winter. Twice now she has seen a doe and a yearling standing at the edge of the road, tentative visitors from some more benign world. Her headlights reveal a blue pickup parked at the edge of the swamp, its motor running, the white exhaust billowing out. She slows, ready to help if someone is having trouble and doesn’t have a cell. She knows everyone for miles around and has no fear. As she draws closer, Martha sees the sides of the truck’s bed are decorated with dancing flames. The truck belongs to Rich Stemple. She has seen it often enough. Rich used to work at the gas station with her son, Jerry. Rich was always bragging about his hunting prowess. You couldn’t sit in the station five minutes before he was telling you about the buck he shot that scored two hundred points...