The Lead Throws First

Priya moved to Kenora in September and by November she understood that winter was not a season there but a place, and that the people who lived in the place had built rooms to survive it. One of the rooms was the curling club. Her neighbour, Doug, who plowed her driveway without being asked and refused to be paid, came to her door on a Tuesday and said their lead had a hip and did she want to fill in Wednesday, no pressure, and she said she'd never curled, and he said, "Nobody's ever curled till they've curled," which she thought about for a while after he'd gone. The club was a low building by the lake with a bar upstairs and four sheets of ice downstairs and a smell of coffee and rubber. Doug's team were called the Has-Beens. There was Doug, who was the skip and called the shots. There was his wife, Linda, who threw second and talked the whole time. There was a retired conservation officer called Frank, the vice, who did not talk at all. And there was Priya, in borrowed shoes, with one slippery sole and one grippy one, trying to understand why. "You're the lead," Linda said. "You throw first. Two rocks. Then you sweep for the rest of us." "What am I trying to do?" "Get it in the house. Or in front of it. Doug'll tell you." Doug stood at the far end, a hundred and forty feet away, and held his broom out to one side, and she was supposed to aim at that. Not at the target. At the broom. The rock would curl. That was the whole name of the thing. You pushed it off straight and it bent. Her first rock she pushed too hard, forgot to let go, and slid down the sheet on her stomach behind it for a distance she'd rather not think about. Frank, at the far end, looked at her without expression and swept it out of the way. "Happens," said Linda. Her second rock she let go of. It went, slowly, straight, and then, halfway down, it began to lean. It bent the way Doug had said it would, toward the broom and past it, and drifted into the rings and stopped there, quiet, like it had meant to.

Nobody cheered. Doug nodded. Frank made a small mark with his glove on the ice that she later learned meant "fine." Sweeping, it turned out, was the actual sport. You ran alongside a forty-pound stone on ice, bent double, scrubbing the surface in front of it while somebody screamed at you, and the screaming meant the rock was short and you had to make it go further by sheer friction. Her arms were shaking by the fourth end. Linda said this was normal and that by January she'd have shoulders. They lost by two. Upstairs afterwards the other team bought the first round, which was the rule, and Doug explained why they'd lost in a way that did not involve her, which she understood was a kindness. Frank spoke, once, near the end. He set his glass down and looked at her and said, "Second rock." Then he picked the glass up again. Priya drove home along the lake. Fourteen below. Her shoulders hurt. Wednesday, she thought. Wednesday was now a thing.