WE CALLED THEM ICE FIGHTS. They made things weird for a little while.

I had moved to Coalfield earlier that summer, after I lost my job as a checkout girl at the Bates supermarket in Mount Juliet. It wasn't a huge deal. I was stealing small amounts of money every once in a while and then I got caught and they didn't have any choice but to let me go. If they could have kept me, they would have. It happens.

I was living in a room above my sister and her husband's garage, just my computer, three fans, and a futon we found at a garage sale. For a few weeks, I just sat in that room, nothing but the hum of the fans, no friends, no money, not a thing to do, wishing I was drunk. It was not, truth be told, an uncommon situation for me.

At dinner one night, my sister asked if I'd explored the town and I shook my head. "There's a museum that's not too bad," she said, "and a roller rink that plays good music," and I smiled and felt like I might cry because, although my sister seemed completely oblivious to the kind of person that I was, she wanted me to be happy. I felt like, if I killed someone in front of her, she wouldn't turn me in, even though the guilt would cause her to commit suicide. "Can you drink beer at the roller rink?" I asked, and my sister got excited. "I believe so," she said, and though I never went, it was nice to pretend that I would.

My sister and her husband had a group of close friends, and, in an effort to get me out of the house, they invited me to come along for a barbecue at Danny and Erica's. After nearly a month of not settling in, I was beginning to think that talking to some capable and attractive and financially secure people might not be such a bad thing. I had devised a theory that if I had some friends I might not be so quick to want everyone around me to be miserable.

Danny and Erica had a huge, sprawling yard with a picnic table and a Frisbee that no one even touched and condiments attracting flies while the smoke from the grill got in my hair. These people were nice enough, but they were a little older than me; they talked about TV shows I'd never heard of and drank beer over ice with some lime juice mixed in, which was something that seemed strange and pointless. One of the guys, Eddie, told me when we were alone that my sister had said I was the wild sister and that he had been a little wild in college. "But not anymore?" I asked. He smiled and his face got red and he shook his head. "Not so much," he said, "no."

And then my sister found a fly frozen in an ice cube and plucked it out of her glass. "Gross," she said, holding it between her thumb and middle finger. Everyone was hooting and checking their glass like it was a party game. "Eat it," I said, and everyone stopped laughing. "Gross," my sister said again and frowned at me. Eddie, trying to be wild, said, "Hell, I'll eat it," but my sister shook her head and threw the ice cube in the grass. Wage, whose wife worked with my sister at the high school, said, "I bet you couldn't hit that tree with a piece of ice," pointing towards a dogwood about ten yards away. So far, Wage was the most interesting person in the group. He was cute but he also seemed, at times, to be mildly retarded. For instance, he had talked about a particular comic book character as if he was real. Another time during the party, he had mentioned that he could probably run a marathon this weekend without training, but his wife, Julie, kept saying that he'd never run a day in his life. He just shrugged and looked at me as if to say, "She has no idea what she's talking about." I thought out of everyone there, Wage seemed like the most interesting.

Eddie stood up from the picnic table and picked up a piece of ice. "Hell," he said, "I'll do it." He wound up and tossed the ice, missing the tree by a good distance. My sister's husband grabbed another chunk of ice and calmly tossed it at the tree, the ice shattering as it hit the trunk. "Game over," he said and sat back down. But everyone was getting a little drunk at this point and so the game was most certainly not over. We started winding our arms in big circles, testing our muscles, and then tossing ice into the air, waiting for impact. Wage had hit the tree seven times in a row, each time stepping back a little further. "I could probably play professional baseball if I wanted," he said, and then he hit the tree for the eighth time. "My hands are cold," Erica said, but no one stopped playing. Wage hit nine, then ten, then eleven. Everyone else stopped throwing, content to watch Wage continue his streak, twelve, thirteen, fourteen. My sister's husband had his hand on my sister's ass, rubbing it like a good luck charm. It seemed like it might be a good night after all.

On his nineteenth throw, it was like watching someone put correct change in a Coke machine, and I was getting bored. I fished a piece of half-melted ice from my glass and shook the excess moisture off. Then, as Wage began his windup, I tossed my piece of ice and hit him on the back of his neck. Without stopping his throwing motion, Wage spun around and winged the ice directly at my head. Julie gasped and then yelled, "Wage? Jesus Christ." I ducked and the ice sailed over my head and then Danny, who was spectacularly drunk by this time, shouted, "Ice fight!" After a few moments of hesitation, people looking around to gauge interest, everyone ran to the cooler, dumped their cups into the ice, and then scattered. Ice was flying from all directions, skittering across the grass as it landed. I could hear the sound of my heart beating in my chest, and I hurled ice at moving targets, rarely hitting anything, but I put every ounce of strength into the throws, as if I was trying to put a hole in someone.

When we finally stopped, the cooler emptied of ice, we were breathing so hard it was like we'd all been fucking for hours. There was the same kind of awkwardness that comes after an orgy, people sheepishly remembering what they'd done and who they'd done it to. Our hands were cold and clammy, wrinkled and pale. But it had been fun for those few minutes. "We should do it again," Wage said, and everyone laughed nervously. "We should," I agreed.

On the ride back home, I sat in the backseat while my sister and her husband sat in front. I had red, puffy welts on my arms that would be bruises by the next day and my throwing arm was already so sore I couldn't lift it above my head. "Eddie really likes you," my sister said, "I can tell." She was trying to be discreet about it, but I could tell she was giving her husband a hand job. "I don't know," I said. "Maybe. What do you think, Sammy?" He caught my eye in the rear view mirror, annoyed, and shrugged his shoulders. "How the fuck should I know?" My sister finished him off and he moaned a little under his breath and my sister said, "Well, I can tell with these kinds of things."

to top | next
Comment on it |