Praying in the Snow

James Iredell
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The snow sifted down Halloween night. The cars in the lot below became frosted cakes. We had booted around a hacky-sack all summer and into the fall. But now Karen and Nicole slipped and slid, their hands and cheeks tinged like ripe strawberries. My baseball cap’s G—for Gangsta, so I thought of myself then—disappeared under the white. The trees hung and leaned like those in a Dr. Seuss book. The river’s gurgles interrupted our shrieks. The trick-or-treating ghosts wore ghostly powder on their ghostly sheets. Back inside the lights buzzed a constant whir of industry. The pipes clamored and panged with Morse code. Our strawberry cheeks blossomed into cherries. Nicole and I kneeled up to the window. I had been sliding her way for centuries and swam in a nebulous cloud of Marlboro Lights and Chanel Number 5. The casinos painted Peavine Mountain neon pink. We inched closer together like Catholics. Like Catholics all we ever did was pray.

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James Iredell lives in Atlanta and is production editor of New South. His fiction, poetry, and nonfiction appear or are forthcoming in Descant, The Chattahoochee Review, The Literary Review, Zone 3, and Elysian Fields Quarterly.