Marcie Ratliff/Winonan

Beneath the cell phone tower’s wonky antennae, Saint Cloud spread out in a mottled carpet of snowy roofs and white parking-lot lights piercing the low snow clouds. The building next to the tower had graffiti on its yellowish paint: “to live is to be close to death.” A crude painting of a skull and crossbones completed the adage’s potency.

“That’s drugs,” said my little brother, and he set off down the hill on his sled, the red one that had blown into our lives, had tangled itself around our peonies one winter day.

Shady characters frequented the hill at night, and my parents took walks there during the day. You could see fireworks and sunsets from that hill, and it was a spot for first dates and first kisses and, I morbidly imagined, last words. Descending the hill was descending back into reality, and I could imagine sea changes happening in the shadow of that tower, on the burned-out grass in the summertime, or on the wind-scarred snow in the winter.

“Here goes John Ratliff, a.k.a. Chris Pine, down the hill, famous actor and baseball player!” Chris Pine was John’s favorite actor, whom he had seen in two whole movies and imagined with all the fervor an eighth grader can. John’s face was hard, his eyes focused on the snow in front of him, as he wound the sled through the bushes on the hill.

I sailed down the hill on my stomach on the Goodwill snow saucer, bailing ship at the last minute when I was about to hit a little Christmas tree. “Neck!” I shouted. “Snow down my neck!”

And so, with snow down our necks, in our sleeves, in our boots, our eyes bright above stiff, reddened cheeks, our teeth cold from too much smiling, my little brother and I did not care at all that the entire neighborhood could hear us yelling like little kids. Sledding down that hill for the last time before hiking home, I felt rich with memory, with premature wistfulness, looking ahead at the next four years, or forty, and how short that time was, how short it always was, and how wrinkled with difficulty.

John pulled me out of introspection, as always.

“Marcie. Race ya.”

Of course he had the red sled, which had a rope so he could drag it on the icy road. Of course I had the saucer again, and carried it on my head like a sombrero.

Of course he won.

Contact Marcie at  [email protected]