At the kitchen table, Frick fidgeted with a bag of pork rinds. Mom scrubbed dishes while the oiled pan on the stove got hot enough for her to lay down spoonfuls of batter in it. The sideboard was caked white. The house smelled like the empty sweet-corn can that sat upright next to the sink.

“Back west, when the Minnechaduza Creek froze over,” Frick said, sitting perpendicular to the table, “we used to go and wait for the white kids to try and cross. Once they made it halfway”—he raised his arms and looked down the barrel of an imaginary rifle—“pop!—and we’d shoot. I guess our battles were for a different time.” He reached into the bag and pulled out a pork rind.

I got up from the table.

“Don’t come home blind,” Mom said, examining a glass cup and then placing it to dry. “And bring the mail in before you go, gwus. Your father said he finally sent some money up.”

Sure he did. The last money we’d seen from him was on my last birthday, when I turned fourteen.

Frick chewed a pork rind and then paused. “That’s how I lost most of my vision in my right eye. Rock wars, we called them.” He dug in the pork-rinds bag again, feeling for something other than rind dustings and crumbs.

“Well,” I said. “If I lose my vision I won’t come home.”

Frick wiped his hands on his jeans, and Mom slammed a plate down in the sink. “Stop that!”

Frick and I looked at her.

“Wipe your hands on them one more time,” she said, pointing at him with a soapy finger. “I gave you a napkin. Use it.”

Since Paige had gone to rehab six weeks back, Mom didn’t have anyone to snap at, so that left Frick and me. I went for the door.

“Don’t forget the mail, David.”

I turned the cold doorknob and the November air nipped my fingers. Everywhere, bare tree branches reached at a gray sky. With the ground covered in leaves, it was harder to find good sticks for a battle. I walked down the road past all the same long rectangular homes, the only difference being color. I smelled ash and chalk—somewhere a fire burned. Crows cawed in the distance and the road came to an end. Through the high grass and into the woods, I set off along the riverbank. The river was moving fast, but the cold moved faster. Soon, all would be frozen again.

I trekked along the riverbank until I came to the fallen tree where JP and Tyson said they’d meet me. In rapid bursts a woodpecker drilled on a tree in the distance and the river carried the sound. I unzipped my jacket and reached in my hidden pocket and pulled out a Winston 100 and a red Bic. The cigarette sizzled in the flame.