Three laps in Callie’s cruising to the sounds of her thoughts since the bosses don’t allow earbuds while working. On Wednesday her therapist said, “Write your thoughts down, Callie. Write them down and reread them each week to see if you’re really dizzy bonkers, as you say.” And then she said, “But you’re not, by the way, dizzy bonkers. We all have thoughts we think are weird, when in fact they’re quite common. But write them down. Write them down in a private place and revisit them.” Derek Updegraff
But Callie thinks, I will not write down my thoughts. Callie thinks, I will think my thoughts, thank you very much, Dr. Dillhouser.
So she’s thinking, That chunker over there looks like a micro version of Hot Dylon, sans the hotness, same nose kind of, hence the comparison, minus the chubs et al.
She’s so smooth on her skates, the blades like parts of her body and the ice the best floor ever. And how much better the world would be with ice streets and no cars and endless hills but flat stretches too and just the right amount of sun so you could skate in short sleeves but never have the ice melt. And do people in those upper states really skate on frozen ponds in winter? Now that’s bonkers. Just so much potential in this dreary but fabulous world. And—
“Excuse me, Skate Guard? That boy keeps going the wrong way.” A finger points yonder. Callie’s eyes take in a different chunker. She thinks, Woah fellas, youz boyz need to tell yo mammas to get you off the couch. But a chorus of chunky boys sings in her head in a Scottish accent, Our dear mutters deed git us off the couch and onto thees mighty fine skate rink you have but we’re not uh-use to mahnoovering on such slippery stuff in such fenny shoes.
Callie says, “Thank you. I’ll redirect him.”
And she one, two, three step-glides to the side through the center, catches up with the portly lad in the unfortunate tweed sweater—or is that wool? (either way it’s a lovely look if you’re into brown and stripes and looking eighty)—and says, “You there, skate that way. Counter-clockwise.”
The boy blushes, but he turns around the right way and skates off clumsily. No one’s hurt. At least not physically. But we all have emotional scars, sweet cherub. So please suck it up and learn to follow the rules.
Supervisor Jerod would be proud. When Callie was newly hired and did not have the bright red jacket with SKATE GUARD on the back but instead had the plain white vest with In Training in the teeniest letters, she handled a similar situation by saying kindly to a stick girl, “Hey, hon, make sure you skate the other way so you don’t get hit,” and after Callie skated over to SJ expecting him to say, Well done, Callie, super good job, what he actually said was, “Too soft, Cals. Say it quick and straight.”
And she said, “Don’t call me Cals.”
And he said, “Good. You’re learning. Next shift you’ve got the red jacket and I’m watching from up there instead of down here.”
But now she’s gliding gliding gliding in the magnificent oval with the perfect amount of not-quite-cold air on her face, and all the people partaking in skating on this Saturday night are currently going the correct way and it is not too crowded for what SJ calls the primary awkward-teenage-handholding shift—Friday night being the secondary awkward-teenage-handholding shift since even the non-jocky-jock types take in the Friday night football games in these here parts—but still this Saturday evening shift is young—a mere toddler in terms of shift minutes—and you never really know who will venture out on the ice and attempt to turn handholding into a kind of side fondling, but oh Callie loves watching the schmucks who think skating will be a fun date night activity but, surprise, you’re no good at it right away, suckers, because your dad might not have been an alcoholic in previous crucial child-rearing moments like mine, thinks Callie, but at least mine took me skating every week while making amends and bought me these dope hockey skates instead of those prissy white ones you’re sporting.
And the other SKATE GUARD on duty in the first session of this young Saturday night is Silent Ross, who is circling around the rink in his own bright red jacket keeping his own eyes on rulebreakers and flailers, and he and Callie are staying across from each other as per Supervisor Jared’s instructions so that they are not getting bunched up but are indeed watching their half of the ever-moving oval. Oh SJ! Ever-moving oval! So poetic! But you are nowhere near Hot Dylon status, you loveable goofball!
So now she’s circling around these lovely folk participating in this time-honored American pastime of slipping around clumsily in nasty rental skates that hundreds of other people’s gross feet with their gross socks have worn in prior family nights/date nights/coworkers-bonding-and-being-silly nights. But what is this? There! and there! are some micro preteens looking fabulous in their own personally owned personal skates expressing their personhood with flowers on the toes of that one and flames on the side of that one, and they are boy and girl, probably brother and sister (amazing if actual twinsies!), and they are going backwards, then shifting forwards like little champs. And Callie speeds up to them, switches backwards super-fast and passes them, saying, “You guys are good. Keep it up.” And then she darts darts darts still backward with her thighs and calves and probably some sinews really working it and does a jump to turn around midair and then slows to cruising speed while she imagines just about everyone in the rink thinking, Wow, Skate Guard Girl is money on those hockey skates. I bet she has a sweet hockey stick at home. . . . But, alas, she does not have a sweet hockey stick at home because her lovely now-sober daddy dearest did not provide hockey lessons in their many father-daughter-skate-and-get-right-with-each-other-hangout moments. But no matter, she is not that butchie and isn’t even on the field hockey team right now, but perhaps next year when she’s a senior enjoying those senior-year vibes and showing no signs of senioritis, she will be a star on the field hockey team and maybe some club ice hockey team before continuing her dominance in the realm of soccer and then perhaps be the queen of that thing known as prom—but now you’re thinking foolishness, Callie—and I know, I know—but wouldn’t Dr. Dillhouser and sober daddy and momma with stepdad Chaz be so proud of you in that crown—or is it a tiara?—and no matter, thinks Callie, because I would stand up those suckers anyway and be miles away on a soft blanket spread out under a massive oak tree beneath the massive sky with those massive stars pricking the darkness while I was making out with Hot Dylon, who could go some ways but not all the ways, but—“Excuse me . . .”
“Yes,” says Callie, gliding beside a sturdy woman holding up a thin, wee lad.
“Could you tell me where I can get one of those skate assist things?”
“Of course. They have them where you rented your skates. Tell them you’d like a walker.”
“Thank you,” says the sturdy woman with the serious bob and serious lips.
“No problem,” says Callie. And the wee lad is lifted away by his non-wee momma, and perhaps she will get her frail boy a cheeseburger en route to the neon blue plastic walker that is really only acceptable for toddler micros and not—what is that boy, eleven perhaps?—older micros who are micro only on account of their mother’s excessive coddling and lack of feeding.
But now she is feeling guilty because her dear brother Easton has popped into her head, and the Easton in her head is saying, Sister, dear, I too am a micro at twelve years of age and do not possess the muscles of seventeen-year-old Hot Dylon or even the muscles of Hot Dylon when he was—say—ten, eleven, or twelve.
And Callie answers her little brother in her head by thinking, Fear not, sweet cherub, you are the exception and are the most wonderful boy.
But Easton responds to her thoughts with her thinking that he’s saying, But why, sweet sister, did you not mention me in your thoughts when you were thinking about Dr. Dillhouser and Dad and Mom and stepdad Chaz being so proud of your possible future achievement as prom queen?
That is a good question, thinks Callie. But you are my sweet cherub.
But Mom calls us sweet cherubs?
But you are mine, sweet cherub Easton, and I will always care for you when she is dead and your future wife has left you, and I will build you an apartment above the garage beside the palace where future hottie and I are raising our excellent children the right way. But don’t worry, Easton angel brother my brother, I will drive you to your theater rehearsals and buy you extravagant bouquets at every performance and spoon feed you peas and strawberry Jello until you long no more for your momma’s teat. And oh, silly Dr. Picklehouse, you want me to write this stuff down for prying eyes to judge and say, Whoa, Bessie, get that heffer to the padded room. And at least I didn’t think Dr. Dildohouse, which is super hard not to think, I’ll have you know, but oh, thinks Callie, in regards to heffers, really, Dad? Really, you took us to a cow pasture for our camping adventure? Oy vey.
But there! a woman falls down and is struggling to get up, and Callie skates over and helps her to her feet, and the woman says, “Thanks. This is tricky.”
And Callie says, “It takes a little time. You okay?”
And the woman says, “Yes,” so the Skate Guard Girl on duty doing her duty so dutifully glides away and keeps her eyes peeled both for the rulebreakers and the wobblers in distress. And over the next sixty minutes her thoughts range from wondering why Spam is so popular in Hawaii but not South Carolina to wondering when will Taylor Swift please break up with that football player because it’s fine dating a football player, dearest Taylor, but girl, you don’t want that guy to do it first. And in those sixty minutes she tells people to keep skating counter-clockwise and to only be in the center if you’re practicing turns and know what you’re doing, and she helps boys and girls and women get back on their feet, and she watches men fall hard on their knees, their backs, their asses, and then pop up fast as lemurs at the zoo because oh the embarrassment. And then quick as always the first ninety-minute evening skate session is over, and she stays on the ice circling and circling until all the ice-goers giving it a go are off the rink, and then when it is just her and Silent Ross—your SKATE GUARD duo extraordinaire on this loveliest of Saturdays, ladies and gents—she heads over to the employee lounge to sit on her butt, take off her skates, and rest her tootsies until the next session in about twenty-five minutes.
Silent Ross follows her into the break room, and Supervisor Jerod is in there, and two ticket-selling, ice-skate-deodorizing girls named Mary Beth and Chloe are in there, and Callie doesn’t like that the name Chloe is close-sounding to Callie, but other than that both those girls are nice.
The five of them sit around a table sipping from water bottles and eating salted peanuts. Silent Ross has kept his skates on, thank goodness, but Callie squeezes her toes while they listen to Supervisor Jerod tell them all about his crazy night yesterday after locking up.
His words: “So I’m walking to the parking lot, and there are a few cars left, and in one of them there’s this guy with the window down smoking a cigarette.”
“So scary,” says Mary Beth, “smoking a real cigarette instead of vaping.”
She’s trying to be funny but it doesn’t land. But no one cares because she’s gorgeous: long hair like a real Southerner, wavy and bouncy and full down to her butt—oh, and it’s light brown like a baby chipmunk in the sun—and of course the shapely breasts and the perfect amount of freckles on her nose and cheeks, like maybe ten to twenty freckles total, just a sprinkling. But no, she’s not funny like me, thinks Callie, and I’m doing pretty good in the I-think-I’m-okay-looking department.
So SJ smirks and says, “No, that’s not it.” And then he carries on with more words: “I’m just ignoring the guy. I’m just walking to my car. But he says, ‘Hey, son, come here.’ And I don’t look over and keep heading to my car. But the guy gets out, and he’s old, maybe in his forties.”
“Ancient,” says Callie. It gets the laughs from the other three.
Then more of his words: “I mean old compared to us. So I’m unlocking my door, and the guy is right there behind me. And he says, ‘How old are you?’ And I say, ‘Eighteen, sir. Just driving home from work.’ And then get this. He asks me if I want to buy his half-drunken bottle of Crown Royal.”
“Gross,” says Silent Ross. And Callie is glad Silent Ross is contributing.
“So what did you do?” asks Chloe.
“I bought it,” says SJ.
And they all look at him like, You whaaat?
And then more of SJ: “The dude was big and smelled and looked crazy. I gave him thirty-seven dollars for it. I’m glad I didn’t have any more cash than that because I would have given him more. I was lucky he didn’t take my wallet because I have a credit card my parents gave me for emergencies. So I bought it from him, and I said, ‘Thank you, sir.’ And then I drove two blocks down the road and pulled over and tossed it in the bushes because I was paranoid I’d get pulled over.”
“But you didn’t drink any of it?” says Silent Ross. And, again, way to speak up Silent Ross.
“No way,” says SJ. “I mean, I thought about it. I smelled it. But couldn’t I get hepatitis or something? But I hear Crown Royal is supposed to be good stuff. I’ve only had beer and that cheap tequila Dylon got that one time.”
Thusly he speaks the name of Hot Dylon, thinks Callie, and what is that one time when I obviously wasn’t invited to partake in the festivities?
“That is pretty wild,” says Mary Beth.
“Yeah,” echo the others.
But that is not at all pretty wild. And Callie wants to tell them about the time she came downstairs in her bunny-footed PJs and looked through the sliding glass door to see her dad in the backyard passed out on the picnic table with a wild rabbit! sleeping on his chest, a floppy-eared little fuzzball gently rising and dropping to the rhythm of his breath, staying warm on his body after, perhaps, having eaten some morning berries. And they would protest, like sweet Easton did when she’d told him, saying that a wild rabbit would never approach a human, let alone sleep on top of one after he was three sheets to the wind. But she’d just say, I saw what I saw, and, anyway, it further proves that animals can sense certain kindnesses in people.
She really, really wants to tell that bunny-footed PJs/wild-rabbit story, but she definitely does not want to be seen as a recovering alcoholic’s daughter. So she refrains.
And she does not want to tell them about the time her dad peed in her fishtank when he thought it was a sink—so explained Mom later—and she was lucky that she did not see the peeing take place in the midst of sleep, but she was unlucky to wake up to four dead fish floating at the surface and three struggling fish swimming like, What’s up with this polluted water? We thought you were our caregiver. And that was just a couple years ago, and one of the last straws for Mom—but really, Dad? You thought the fishtank was a sink? And younger Callie to Mom: “Do boys pee in sinks?” And Mom: “No, they don’t. But it was probably his back pain.” And Callie: “So do boys bend over when they pee in the toilet?” And Mom: “No, they don’t. But maybe he couldn’t bend down to lift the toilet seat up, so he wanted to find something taller.” And younger Callie thought, But my fishtank is nowhere near a toilet and if he was near a toilet and unable to lift its seat, wouldn’t he just use the sink next to the toilet and not my fishtank in a yonder room? But her mom was tired and frustrated, so Callie said, “Ok. But can you or Dad clean the tank instead of me to keep these fish alive?” And Mom: “Of course, sweet cherub. Of course, sweet cherub.” And the coincidental thing is those fish and the fishtank and the rainbow gravel and the three neon green and purple and orange plants were all purchased from the pet store Hot Dylan’s parents own back when Hot Dylan was an unknown entity.
But these coworker people only know that Callie’s parents are divorced now. They do not know that her dad is no longer an X-ray technician because he was fired and instead works in a Coca Cola factory. They do not know that he was in a gutter or a halfway house or on the moon before he came marching back into their lives with his new directives of: staying busy with AA meetings and working as many hours as possible on non-kid days and hanging around his coffee shop or his doughnut shop and always being clean-shaven and looking presentable and understanding a higher power as he is able to understand a higher power, or something like that, and, most importantly, being a good dad now and begging forgiveness but really showing it by trying to hold his daughter’s hand when he skates with her even when she pulls away and to make sure that every opportunity he gets with his daughter and his gentle son is spent living to the fullest and/or appreciating the quiet moments.
But last night was not a quiet moment. So Callie is able to one-up this jokester SJ by pulling from her dad’s awesomeness without even revealing to these unworthy ones that he’s an alcoholic doing a magnificent job recovering himself and wasn’t that bad a dad in his drinking days other than being kind of wonky.
So Callie says, “That’s nothing, Supervisor Jerod.”
And he says like he does so often, “Just Jerod, please.”
And she says, “Get this. Last night my dad wanted to take me and Easton camping, so he picked us up from school, took us out to dinner, and then brought us to Academy to buy all this camping gear.”
“And,” says SJ.
“And is that he didn’t reserve a campsite, so we were denied access at Paris Mountain, and then it got dark and he drove into the middle of nowhere and found a spot to set up the tent and haul in the boardgames and the air mattresses and the flashlights and the food, and we had an awesome night, but then in the morning we found out we’d slept in the middle of a cow pasture—”
“Oh my God,” says Chloe.
“Just wait for it,” says Callie. “So we step out to see we’re in this cow pasture, and we have a good laugh, and we’re like, Silly Dad, you drove us into a cow pasture. And then we go back into the tent to pack our things because my brother has this D&D thing to get back to at my mom’s house, and while we’re in the tent, we hear someone in the field yell, ‘Hey!’ And then my dad goes out of the tent and my brother and I stay inside, and some guy out there is arguing with my dad, and then we hear a gun shot, and we’re terrified that our dad’s been killed or needs help, so we want to go out and see, but also we’re scared to go out, but then we hear our dad yell, ‘What the fuck!’ So we know he’s alive, and we peek our heads out and long story short, the um, the cow guy—”
“Cattle rancher.”
Callie looks at Silent Ross like, Not the right time, dude. You’re not living up to your name. And then Callie says, “The cow guy was all mad that we slept in his field and maybe he thought we were there to steal his cows or poison them or something, but I tell you, when he fired his shotgun in the air, I really thought he killed my dad.”
“You’re making this up,” says SJ.
“Hand to God. Some say you don’t really know adventure until you have a divorced dad trying to rectify past failures.” And with that Callie grabs her skates and laces them up, and she’s proud of her restraint, for fighting the temptation to share the bit about Easton crapping his pants at the sound of the gunshot and Dad having to rinse him off with a garden hose before taking them home to Mom, because some details are meant to stay within the family.
The last Saturday skate session starts in five minutes, and Callie and Silent Ross are on the ice, opposite each other, slowly circling like paired-up vultures or sharks, but there’s no prey in the middle of their oval. Callie is now aware that she always uses the word circling when she’s thinking about the repetitive motion that is this job, but really she is ovaling, so now she’s thinking, Silent Ross and I are ovaling like paired-up vultures or sharks, and she imagines the wild rabbit that felt safe on her father magically transported to the oval’s center, but, then she thinks, Stop thinking that, because, honestly, Dr. Dillhouser, do you really think it’s quite common for a sixteen-year-old girlie to imagine tearing into the flesh of such a tender creature with her temporary vulture beak or kick-ass shark teeth? Really, quite common indeed. Well here’s my response, Callie thinks, in my best Southern accent of the marvelous Blanche Devereaux: Well I just don’t believe you—because certainly you watched the GGs live in your childhood unlike me who savored them on Mom’s DVDs whenever thunderstorms took out the magical signal known as Wi-Fi.
But she hopes her mom has a snack for her when she parks at 10:00 p.m. on the dot even though Callie has told her that the earliest she will be in the parking lot is 10:15 and that she will most likely clock out a hair before 10:30 since even an extra sliver of compensation makes a difference when one is saving for a clunker to call her own since neither Mom nor Dad nor stepdad Chaz is fond of letting her drive their vehicles under the cloak of darkness that is the glorious evening.
And now the evening’s final skaters have traversed their way to the rink and begin spilling onto the ice like overconfident idiots—except those folks over there (they’re pretty good, actually)—but most of them are spilling out like doofuses exiting the DOOFUS CONVENTION. See, Easton my boy—thinks Callie—SpongeBob reference, I do think of you all the time, sweet cherub my cherub.
And Callie and Silent Ross are ovaling opposite each other, and, as expected, there are fewer families and more love birds handholding and side snuggling, but still there are a few families keeping their micros up late for Family Skate Night! and the next thirty minutes or so pass in relative typicality—typicalness—routine, she thinks, routine. And there is, in fact, a young gal in fancy white skates—personally owned by her person—in the center of the oval where experienced skaters are allowed to have experiences, and she’s practicing her routine by doing spins that might have names like pirouettes, but perhaps that is only in dance, but she is doing her fancy spins and is a skilled young lass of preteen or new teen status, and then there! right there! is Hot Dylan in rental skates! for the first time in Callie’s months of working this her first big-girl job, and she thinks, What girl is he with? What girl is he with?
So Hot Dylan is over there clinging to the wall like newbies do, but—come on, everyone—it’s cute the way he’s doing it. But who is with him? Just a bunch of dudes. There’s Aiden and Jayden and Jackson and then that that guy who looks like a sheep dog and that other guy who likes like a—what’s that animal?—a tapir?—Mr. Saggy Nose. But there don’t seem to be any young ladies. And whoa there, boys, what’s up with the puffy jackets? It ain’t that cold in this here ice rink. But, thinks Callie, this is perfect, just perfect. So the plan is to not notice them while zipping by like a pro, and definitely do the thing where I have my hands in my pockets, she thinks, or my hands behind my back, like this—just like this—hands behind her back, long smooth strides, so so smooth, so balanced. And she sees them up there to the right, and she passes them while looking to the left at ballerina skate girl in the center, and she slides her hands from behind her back into her pockets, so cool, so so smooth, and she picks up her speed a little, which is so fun on the turns like here, and she steps steps steps and is zipping now and straightens out, and she can just feel them looking at her, thinking, Hey now, is that Callie in the SKATE GUARD jacket looking fly, and who knew she could skate like that?
So she makes sure to stay opposite Silent Ross, but she looks for little chances here and there to dart ahead or cruise backwards or turn real sharp, then stop, then start up again, and all the while she’s got her hands in her pockets or at the small of her back or at her sides, and she never makes eye contact with any of them, but she knows where that cluster of amateur boys is at all times, but then some of them get brave and push out further from the wall, and after a few more laps all six boys are spread out, having lost each other in the crowds of families and loverboys and lovergirls from their high school, and Callie’s thinking, Way to go, guys. You couldn’t even stay together for your bro-time skate night, but then bam! bam! bam! brown paper bags, the size of lunch sacks, are falling from the sky to the ice, except there is no sky in here, but the bags are falling all the same. Six of them, seven of them, then more, and more, she can’t keep count. And Hot Dylon et al. keep taking paper bags from their jackets and chucking them into the air. There! in the center and there! at this side, then that one. And there! and there! and there! and there!
And people are tripped up by the paper bags, and people are crashing to the ice to avoid hitting the paper bags. But what is in them? Something black. And people are screaming. Wait. Many black things are in them. Many black things are squirming out. But then they stop squirming. Immediately. Baby snakes. So many paper bags are split open, dozens of them, the brown paper splayed wide on the ice. And the baby snakes wriggle on the paper, panicked and excited for freedom, so they glide off paper and onto ice, but then they can’t move. For some reason, they just can’t move on the ice, so there’s all these frenzied little bodies moving like lightning out of the paper bags, and then they’re stone still when they touch the frozen ground. And people are screaming. And their blades split the snakes in half while they scramble to the exit.
Callie and Ross help everyone get out. They hold arms and elbows, keeping folks upright as they direct them to the walk-in area, or lobby, or whatever it’s called. Even the pirouetting girl needs help because she is stunned and crying, and when Callie wraps her arm around her waist and glides alongside her, the girls cries, “My hair, there was one caught in my hair.”
And now everyone is off the ice except Callie and Ross, and the sit-down area is crowded with everyone trying to remove their skates at once. And it’s a big commotion over there. And Callie can’t see Dylon or his friends among the packed bodies, and she wonders if other people know they did it, and obviously people saw them, and obviously people know who they are, and if they are smart, they would have bought their tickets with cash and exchanged old shoes for the rentals so they could yank off the skates and sprint to the parking lot in their socks, high-fiving each other as they drive away.
But maybe they’re in handcuffs. Or maybe they’ll just get a hand slap. Or maybe no one cares and no one will ask who did this, and does this place even have cameras?—Callie’s wondering, and she supposes she should find out as an employee and all. What she does know is that look Jerod gives her as she skates over to him, the I’m-sorry look, the look of: I know we like to joke around normally but really there is nothing I can say here to lighten the mood for what you need to do now. So he extends a bucket and a chisel. And at least he has one of each for Ross too. And she knows what to do because two things marginally similar have happened on previous shifts. Once, a boy smuggled in a lemon fruit pie, and of course he dropped it and of course someone ran over it, so Callie was given the chisel to scrape away the frozen yellow gunk. Another time, a boy—again a boy, of course—dropped his bag of skittles, and they scattered and were kicked to each end, so Callie was given a bucket to collect them as she did her laps. Jerod had said, “It’s up to you if you want to eat them. But in seriousness make sure you still keep your eyes on the parishioners.” And she was newer then and not so quick-tongued with her newish supervisor, so she said, “Okay,” but she wondered, Was that last bit a joke, or did he not know what parishioners were? Did he mean to say participants? Is he super clever, but I’m not getting it? Is going around and around something holy? Or are parishioners mindless? Or is Jerod dumb? Maybe he’s just dumb? And she thought those things while cruising around and picking up one, then two, then so many skittles losing their color, leaving their reds, yellows, and greens on the ice so that when she was done her bucket held what looked like a collection of dull marbles or, better yet, unpolished pearls.
But now she takes the chisel and bucket from Jared, and there is no joking or cleverness or verbal blunder, just silence between them, and she skates to the far side so that she can work her way back to the rink’s opening, and there are dozens of baby snakes spread across the ice, probably hundreds, and many of them are sliced in half or worse, and their blood is red, which makes sense to Callie, but she had never thought about snakes having red blood. And would them being coldblooded help them or hurt them on the ice? This is something she’s embarrassed not to know, but, it seems, the ice has not been kind to them.
She kneels at her first one. This one is whole, but it doesn’t move, like all the others. It is the length and width of a pencil, but it’s curved here and there. She doesn’t know what kind of snake it is. She taps its head with the chisel, but it still doesn’t move. Then she begins to scrape beneath the body, and it moves a little. I can save some of these, she thinks. She pushes the chisel the length of the body until it is loose, and then she scoops it up and sets it in the bucket, but the snake’s belly skin has stuck to the ice, so she chisels the stuck skin and dumps it in the bucket. And in the bucket the snake squirms but it’s bleeding now, missing a chunk of its underside. And she doesn’t know if it can survive or if she should strike its head with the chisel and put it out of its misery. She doesn’t know what amount of pain it’s able to feel. She doesn’t know what thoughts are able to bounce around inside its little head. So she leaves it squirming and bleeding in the bucket while she scoots over to scrape free the next one. Derek Updegraff
Derek Updegraff
I love your writing Derek, how do I purchase
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