Page 34 of Home Ice

“You are, and remember, the plane already wants to cut, and you don’t need to force it. You’re steering it and keeping it honest.”

“Steering it and keeping it honest,” he repeated.

“Weight on your front hand at the beginning of the stroke, and then you transfer it to the back hand through the middle, until it’s completely there at the finish. If you press the front all the way, you dig at the far end. If you press the back the whole way, it skips at the start.”

Rafe frowned at the board. “Like a stride.”

“You’d know that. Go ahead.”

His first stroke stalled a foot in with a chirp like a startled bird. The second one chattered, three little skips, and lifted off the wood entirely at the end, planing four inches of air.

“That last part of the stroke,” I said, “where the plane left the board, you planed the air. That’s a very advanced skill.”

“The air is smoother now.”

I reset the board in the vise a half-turn. “You stopped moving your weight. You got to the middle and thought about it, and the second you thought about it, your hands quit and your arms took over. Arms are stupid. Weight is smart. Try it again.”

His third stroke was better. On the fourth, the chatter moved down the board and got quieter, a stutter instead of a skip.

“You’re strangling the tote a bit,” I said.

“It’s heavier than it looks.”

“Loosen the last two fingers. The plane doesn’t need you to be strong; it just needs to know you’re there.” He almost smiled again. “You’re a professional athlete. If your coach told you that you were leaning in too much with your strength, you’d know what he meant.”

“Coach Markel says if you’re muscling it, you’re late.”

“Coach Markel could run a wood shop. Do it again.”

The fifth stroke went the full length. It wasn’t clean. There was a whisper of chatter at the very end, but the shaving came up in one piece and broke at the last second into two. He stopped and looked at the pieces.

“Almost,” he said. Rafe reset his feet before I said anything else, slightly wider.

“Don’t aim for the end of the board,” I said. “The stroke doesn’t end at the end. Plane through it. Six inches past the wood, like the board’s longer than it is.”

“Follow through.”

On the sixth stroke, he rolled through the middle without a hitch, carried out past the end, and the plane sang the whole way. It was the skate sound he’d heard when I used it. The shaving curled over his hand and kept coming, one unbroken ribbon the full length of the cherry, thin enough to read through.

Rafe straightened up with the shaving draped over his hand. He held it up to a light held at the end of the bench in a vise, and turned it, and the light shone through it pink.

“Feel the board,” I said.

He laid his palm flat on the cherry and drew it along. For the first time, I heard him laugh.

“That was you,” I said. “Not the plane. The plane did the cutting. You did the getting out of its way.”

“Can I—would it be all right if I did it again?”

I smiled. “The board’s a scrap, and you’re entertaining me. Go.”

He did stroke after stroke, resetting his feet each time, collecting the shavings on the bench in a pale pile. He checked each one against the light.

Somewhere around the twentieth stroke, Rafe’s stomach rumbled like the sound of a truck downshifting on a grade.

He looked down at himself. “Sorry. That was—“

“Loud,” I said. “That was loud.”