Club Icarus

Tuggin’

5 Tuggin’ Whenever a nor’easter dumped snow all night on top of town there’d be no one in the streets except slow groaning plows and us, in pick ups, low-gearing over uncleared roads and lots, low-lifed cases of beer sliding in the bed between our boots, as we watched whosever turn it was get dragged through drifts from fifty feet of rope tied around the trailer hitch. Chancing speed bumps and pot holes, you’d hold on as the truck sped and turned, as your body rolled and skipped along streets no longer nameable. Legs flailed cold and soggy. Teeth gritted a breath above asphalt while your buddies hooted in the back of the truck, icy cans in their gloved hands, lips swollen with road rash and Skoal. The driver, always next to go, would open it up to buck you. He’d hard cut the wheel, swinging you from one buried curb to another. Or he’d just crush down on the brakes. You’d slide toward slack and the shine of tail lights and fender, skidding almost under the black rusted axles and manifolds, rolling away in time from a skull pop of tires all because boys in winter won’t suffer death. Then the steel hearted tug as the truck started up 6 again, as your shoulders yanked to just short of snapping. And if you held on your time was up as the driver fishtailed and cast you across the covered concrete to bury you in a six foot bank of snow, everyone cackling, blood electric, all the pieces of your face inches away from the hydrant you wouldn’t see till spring. ...