Ice Country

“Yow!” I yelp. “What the chill?”

As I blink away the wave of dizziness thatspins my vision in blurry swirls, I hear the sharp crack of palmflesh on cheek flesh. For a moment I’m left wondering whether it’san echo from me getting slapped, but then I hear a similar outburstfrom someone close by.

I close my eyes, fighting back the urge tovomit as the spi

“Dazz?”

“Yah.”

“You breathin’?”

“Nay,” I say.

“What the freeze happened?” Buff asks.

Before I can answer, a third voice chimes in.“You two and your icin’ prideful stupidity tore up my pub, is whathappened,” Yo bellows. Yo. The slapper. I’ve never seen a day whenhis hands were clean. I’ll have to wash my face a half-dozentimes…just as soon as I can figure out the difference between upand down.

“Sorry, Yo,” Buff says diplomatically. “Itwon’t happen again.”

“That’s two fights last week and three this’un. Nay, it freezin’ won’t happen again, ’cause you ain’t welcomeback.”

My eyes snap open and I see three Yo’sstanding over me, looking angrier than a ski

“But, Yo, you can’t do that—we’vealways come here.” Buff’s words come out as a plea, which isexactly what it is. I expect if he was physically able to, he’d beon his knees with his hands clasped tight, praying to the Heart ofthe Mountain for Yo to reconsider.

The red hot anger leeches from Yo’s face,leaving him paler than one of the Pasties from the Glass City outin fire country. “You think I don’t know that?” he says, droppinghis voice to a whisper. “Chill, I practically raised you boys.”Wellll, I wouldn’t go that far. I respect Yo and how well he runshis business, but honestly, I’d rather be raised by wolves, and notthe tame, gentle kind who pull our sleds; the sharp-fanged viciousones who are known to drag children into the forest.

But at the same time, there’s a degree oftruth to his words. Most of what we’ve learned about life has comefrom our time spent in Fro-Yo’s. First, when we were just kids,brought by my father after school to “learn how to be men,” andthen, after he caught the Cold and passed on, we kept going back.Yo could’ve turned us away, because we were too young withouthaving a parent there, but he didn’t. Knowing full well from thegossip that my mother would probably never be motherly again, heserved us wafers and goat’s cheese and gumberry juice, nevercharging us a thing. And we learned how to be men, or at least theice-country-tavern version of men, drinking hard and fightingharder.

Look where it’s got us.

I don’t say a thing, because the memories arecaught in my throat.

“C’mon, Yo, we were provoked,” Buff says,less nostalgic than me. Really what he means is that Dazzwas provoked, and even that’s a lie. There’s a chilluva differencebetween saying a few nasty words in someone’s general direction andthrowing a full-force punch between the eyes, although sometimesthe nuances of good behavior and ma

“No ’scuses, boys,” Yo says. “Look, the bestI can do is that I’ll consider lettin’ you back if you can proveyou’ve changed your fightin’ ways.”

“And how are we supposed to do that?” I ask,finally dislodging the memories from my windpipe.

“Get a job. Pay for all the damages. And if Idon’t hear about you startin’”—he cocks his head to the sidethoughtfully—“or endin’ any fights, I’ll let you come back.”

I groan, but not from the pounding headachethat I suddenly feel in the back of my head. From where I’m lying,his requirements seem impossible. Bye, bye girlfriend numbertwo.

“Sure, Yo, whatever you say,” Buff says, butI can hear the dismay in his voice. “We’ll prove it to you.”

“Now you best run home and put some ice onthose heads of yours. My oak stools pack a wallop, all right.”

He helps Buff to his feet, and then me. Westand side by side, two fierce warriors, swaying and unsteady onour feet like we might topple over at any moment. Somewarriors.

Buff flops a heavy arm around my shoulders,nearly knocking me over. I cling to him just as tightly. We staggerfor the door like drunks, open it awkwardly. Before we leave, Ilook back and ask a final question. “Who hit us from behind?”

Yo shakes his head. “You’ll just go and starta fight if I tell you.”

“Naw, Yo, I just wa

Yo closes one eye, as if he’s got a bit ofdirt in it. “One of those stonecutters,” he says. “The third one,who you both thought was out of the picture.”

We close the door, welcoming the cold.

~~~

“Yah, she was pretty icy,” Buff says, “butthere are ple

“Yah,” I say, not really agreeing. It’s justa bit of bad luck, I tell myself, referring to the three broken andmangled “relationships” I’ve left in my wake. If bad luck’s gottwo-mile-long legs, a deadly white smile, and more curves than asnowman, then that’s exactly what I got.

“You’ll bounce back. We both will,” Buffsays, scraping a boot in the snow. We’re sitting in a snowdrift,having never made it home. Neither of us has much to go home toanyway, and there’s ple

“How?” I say, adding another clump of snow tothe snow helmet I’m wearing. “How in the chill are we supposed toget enough silver to pay for everything we broke?”

“There’s always boulders-’n-avalanches,” Buffsays, referring to our favorite card game of the gambling variety,another vice we picked up the moment we turned sixteen and werepermitted into the Chance Holes.

I feel a zing of energy through my bruisedbody. It’s a longshot, but…

“How much silver do you have to put on theline?” I ask.

Buff shrugs, removes the snowball he’sholding against his skull, chucks it at a tree, missing badly.“Twe

I frown, scrape the snow away from my ownhead, doing the math. Combined we have maybe fitty, give or take asickle. Probably a quarter of what we need to pay Yo back. We’dhave to get awfully lucky at b-’n-a to win that kind of silver. Ipack the snow into a tight ball, launch it at the same tree Buffaimed for, missing by twice as much.

I look up at the gray-blanketed sky, stripedwith streaks of red, like bloody claw marks, where the crimson skymanages to peek through the dense cloud cover. When I look downagain, I know:

We have no other choice—we’ve gotta try.

Luckily, cards have nothing to do withthrowing snowballs.

~~~

The bland gray of the daytime is long past,giving way to a heavy night. I end up stopping at home to get mylast bundle of silver coins. When I pry it from behind the bearskininsulation we’ve got pressed against the stacked-tree-trunk walls,it feels lighter than it should. Turns out I’ve got even less thanI thought, only twe

Wouldn’t want to do that.

Not that it matters. If she didn’t find someof my silver, she’d have found another way. She always does. That’sone thing I’ve learned about addicts: they’ll get what they needone way or another. Sell a piece of furniture, steal it, tradesomething. Whatever it takes.

I don’t confront her about it, because itwouldn’t do any good anyway. She barely knows I’m there, sittingblank-eyed and cross-legged in front of the dry, charred fireplacelogs, holding her hands out as if to warm them on the invisibleflames. “Oooh,” she murmurs softly to herself.