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19 American Flyer Prone with stiff children, the sleds jitter downhill like little bone-boxes on a greased run to hell, if hell at last had frozen over, impossibilities of the proverb proven true. I’m hunched among the cold fathers warming their hands at a barrel of broken slats, the wood-flames a weak rebuttal to the snow. Once we all felt that first frightened lift when we launched ourselves from the summit, steel blades obedient to the way we leaned or pushed against the pilot bar, headlong to the end in a windburnt scream. Now we take on the slow trek upwards, knees creaking, backs bent to the strain, each step a test of the blood’s ascension through the heart, dragging behind us sleds heavy with children, their gloves sweeping soft reversals on the slope, their boots brought fast astern, braking our awkward rise. ...

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