After the school bus dropped him off at his stop on the highway, Corey walked the mile of rough gravel back to his home on Sisters Lake. He was a thin boy with lank sandy hair, huddled in a threadbare wool jacket, its elbows rubbed to holes. He wore a heavy sweater underneath it, a new one, mailed to him for Christmas from Aunt Jenny back home, whom they never heard from the rest of the year. He was mighty thankful for that sweater, and the green stocking cap his teacher had given him out of the school's lost-and-found box, but he still felt cold. The air sparkled with frost at 20 below zero. The snow squeaked under his boots and he squirmed his toes against the hole in the tip of the left one, which let in the cold. He would have been happy for a ride. Other kids' parents came to meet them at their bus stops, waiting with idling engines, and heaters running inside their vehicles, but not Corey's dad, even on a January day as frigid as this one.

The road wound through the frost-rimed forest of spruce and birch and cottonwood, with four other houses spaced along its length. Corey walked slowly, slumping under his backpack of books. But he looked up as he passed the houses. He liked seeing through the windows of those houses as he walked by, catching glimpses inside other people's homes, and he wondered about the lives his neighbors lived in them. Were those neighbors as happy as they seemed in their glowing, picture-framed rooms? Or were their lives like his? Most days he nursed a quiet ember of resentment about other people's happy lives, but today would be different. It was Thursday, and Dad had promised they would go to the movies at the theater in Kenai tonight. They would have to take his little brother Eddie, which was a drawback; Eddie giggled and babbled and blew bubbles in his Pepsi all the way through a good movie. But it was better than not going at all. They hadn't gone into town to see a movie since last year, though Dad kept saying they would. But this week Dad had promised. They would go see "Jurassic Park." All the other kids at school had seen it already, and now, finally, Corey would, too. He was always the last kid to see all the good movies. Dad even said they could get popcorn. He could almost taste the salt and butter on it. He walked a little faster.

After the fourth house, the road climbed the side of a ridge. Sisters Lake spread out directly below, a white, frozen blanket cross-stitched with the linear tracks of snow machines. A little hollow curled around a cove on the nearest shore, where his house stood. A wisp of wood smoke rose straight up into the clear cold air from its column of chimney pipe. From here, it looked a beautiful place, as welcoming a sight as any of those other houses along the road.

Corey followed the road down a steep slope toward his driveway. The house came into view, on a gentle snowy slope beside the lake, a haphazard structure of plywood sheathed in tarpaper, with a high peaked roof covered in a patchwork of brown, gray and red aggregate felt. Dad had built the house with his own two hands, and some help from one of the neighbor men. He had framed its walls and raised them, built trusses and put a roof over them, with the professional efficiency he had learned working on so many construction jobs Outside, before Corey's mother died. The house had only two rooms downstairs and a sleeping loft up under the A-frame roof, but to Corey it seemed like a castle. Before Dad finished building it, the three of them had lived in the camp trailer they towed behind their old pickup, all the way to Alaska from the suburbs of Chicago. It was a journey into a new life, to a place Dad had always dreamed of going. He told them glorious stories of pioneer life in the wilderness as they drove up the Alcan; it would be fun, good times, like their fishing and hunting trips in Wisconsin and Minnesota, but even better. Corey loved fishing and hunting with his Dad, and his impressionable ten-year-old mind conjured up visions of frontier adventure while all around them, beyond the confines of the pickup's cab, the panorama of the vast wild landscape unfolded, bigger and grander than he could ever have dreamed of.

But living on Sisters Lake had been the worst decision that Dad ever made for them. That first winter in the camper, on the five acres of land Dad bought, was just lonely and dark and cold, not grand or glorious. They lived in squalor in the cramped quarters of the camper, with only its inadequate little propane heater to warm them, eating packages of macaroni and cheese and Top Ramen and whatever Dad could shoot in the surrounding woods. Dad worked a few temporary jobs, earning enough to get by. He refused to take charity in the form of welfare or food stamps. Whatever extra money came into his hands he spent on building materials, and after that, on cigarettes and cases of cheap canned beer. He drank every night, often alone, but just as often with other men he met at work, or at the lodge out on the highway, where there was a bar and a liquor store. On those dark cold nights, Dad would talk about the new life he was going to make for them. He would tell them about the house he planned to build when the snow melted, from the lumber and plywood and rolls of roofing he had accumulated, and the boxes of well-used carpenter's tools, so carefully packed and carried with them from Chicago. Or he would talk of the hunting that had lured him to this piece of the Great White North, the moose and caribou and grizzly bear whose mounted heads and tanned hides would someday grace the walls of the house he would build. But Dad did not talk about Mom, or the terrible disease that had taken her out of their lives, or the way the two of them had begun to fight and say hurtful things to each other before she got sick, or how quickly the cancer killed her once it got her in its deadly grip. If Corey or Eddie tried to talk about any of that, Dad got angry and drank even more than he usually did. Finally, the boys didn't talk about Mom anymore, at least not where Dad could hear them.

As he walked down the driveway, Corey saw that they had company tonight. There was Dad's colorful old F-150 pickup, veteran of the Alcan, white hood and blue doors, and army green bed, and behind it the battered red Toyota Corolla belonging to Jimmy Moe. Corey frowned and his shoulders drooped a bit. Was Jimmny Moe going to go with them? That would be worse than Eddie's ceaseless chatter. Jimmy Moe would probably fall asleep in his seat and snore. But maybe he would leave soon. Surely Dad had told him they had plans. He stepped up onto the snow-covered freight pallet which served as a front porch, and pushed open the door. The interior of the house rushed into his face in a strong draft of warmth and odors - stale beer and cigarette smoke, rancid grease, dirty socks. He set down his backpack of school books and papers, and Eddie came running to meet him.

Eddie had only just turned 5, too young to go to school yet. The top of his fuzzy blond head reached to Corey's chest. He wore a ragged old canvas jacket, which he refused to take off, even at night, and his cheeks held grubby smears of dried peanut butter left over from lunch. His bright blue eyes held a pleading expression.

"Corey! Please take me to the potty!"

"You're such a baby, Eddie," said Corey. "You can go by yourself. What do you do with it while I'm at school?"

"It's getting dark. I'm scared."

Corey looked beyond his little brother to the scene of Dad and Jimmy Moe at the table, lit by the bare 60-watt bulb, which hung above them on a wire. They lounged there in sock-footed luxury, near the warmth of the barrel stove. They smoked cigarettes and drank beer, the empty cans piling up on the table around their elbows. Dad looked up, dark eyes flashing under heavy brows.

"Back just in time, son. The stove needs more wood." He said no more, but went back to showing Jimmy Moe the new cartridges he had reloaded for his rifle.

"Perfect for moose," he said. "Knock down a thousand-pound bull with one shot."

"Depend on where you hit him," Jimmy Moe commented sagely. Corey looked down at Eddie, who was tugging at his shirt.

"All right," he said. "Come with me while I get the wood." Together they left the warmth and strong smells of the house, and went back out into the cold clean air of the outdoors. The sky was turning red with sunset over the dark spruce on the far side of the lake, the snow beneath it a vivid blue. They walked the packed trail to the outhouse. It squatted beneath an enormous Sitka spruce, built of scrap wood and Visqueen, and roofed with flattened beer cans. Corey handed Eddie the flashlight he had brought from the house.

"Do your thing," he said. "I'll be back after I take some wood in."

"Please stay, Corey." The flashlight's beam quivered in Eddie's hand.

"I gotta take the wood in, or Dad's gonna get mad. But remember, we're going to the movie tonight. Dad promised." Eddie just pouted.

"I wish Mom was still here."

"If Mom was here, this wouldn't be happening." Corey turned and walked back to the house.

Yellow light from the window shone on the woodpile beside the door. Dad was constantly buying or trading for firewood, and he worked at sawing up logs or splitting rounds nearly every day. When he split, he drove down hard and forcefully with his maul, working up a sweat in the cold air, expressions of anger crossing his face. Corey often thought he enjoyed splitting the chunks of spruce and birch so much because it let out that anger, but he wondered sometimes where so much of it came from.

He pushed aside the crusted snow on the blue plastic tarp which covered the pile of split wood, and lifted its edge. He loaded his skinny arms with as many splits as he could carry - three - and staggered toward the door to kick it open, then across the room to drop his load next to the stove. It went THUD THUD THUD on the plywood floor like an overturned box of rocks.

"Hey, have a care, would you?" Dad chided him.

"You gonna make a hole in the floor, boy," said Jimmy Moe.

"Put a piece of that on the fire while you're at it," said Dad. Corey grabbed the blackened oven mitt from its nail on the wall behind the stove, pulled it over his hand, and wrestled the hot iron door open. Thick gray smoke came billowing out from within.

"Open the damper first!" Dad admonished him. Corey complied, hurriedly twisting the handle on the stovepipe, the smoke subsided and spread lazily out across the ceiling. He picked up a chunk of spruce in both arms and shoved it endwise into the glowing inferno of coals. The inside of the stove seemed to him a red-hot vision of Hell, bent on consuming the souls of the trees that had made the wood. He slammed the door shut and latched it, then went back out. They would need more to keep the stove burning all night.

After carrying in another load, he remembered Eddie. He could hear the little boy's shrill squalling as soon as he came out the door, and ran back to the outhouse. Eddie was standing with his pants down and his knees pressed together, crying like a scalded cat.

"There's no toilet paper, Corey!" He took in the wet sheen on Eddie's legs and fallen drawers, and the smell of urine, sharp and distinct even at 25 below zero.

"Just pull your pants up," he said. "We'll go back in and I'll help you wash up. Come on, it's cold." He held the flashlight while Eddie, sniffling out uneven white puffs of breath, struggled with his soggy pants. It was getting darker, the red glow fading from the skv, and stars beginning to shine overhead in the velvety blackness. They walked very quickly, back to the house.

It took all that was left in the five-gallon plastic bucket of water to clean the pee off Eddie's legs, and rinse out his pants. Corey carefully hung the small jeans and underwear on the length of bailing wire nailed to the rafters above the stove. Eddie climbed up the narrow, steep stairs to the sleeping loft to find dry pants.

"Why'd you leave him out there so long?" Dad asked Corey. "Now look what you did, you used up all our water." At the table, Dad and Jimmy Moe had proceeded from drinking beer to skinning the brace of snowshoe hare Dad had shot that day. Corey watched Dad's knife slice open the belly of one white hare, scraping the shiny red guts out into a bucket at his feet. Next he peeled the soft furry skin off the body, and cut off the feet and head with practiced swipes

Corey was glad he hadn't had to watch them get shot. He felt sorry for the hares, crouching so still like they did against the snowdrifts when they heard danger coming, trusting to their seasonal camouflage to conceal them. But Dad would have already spotted them when they moved, and sighted in on the black tips of their ears and the liquid brown orbs of their eyes. A pull of the trigger would send the .22 cartridge blasting out of the barrel to hit the fuzzy little bunny head between those two dark spots, directly in the brain. An animal didn't suffer when Dad killed it; it usually just quivered and dropped on the first shot. His idea of gun control was always being able to hit his target, dead center.

Corey was glad, too, that Dad never made him clean the hares or grouse that he shot. He didn't like the blood, or the pungent, almost-still-living smell of an animal carcass freshly cut open. But he looked forward to eating the dark, stringy meat that clung to the hare's small bones, and his stomach grumbled at the thought. Dad looked up at him. The gutted hare hung limp in his left hand, and its head rolled around so that its eye, like a glass marble, stared sightlessly at him, too.

"Rabbit and dumplings tonight, son," said Dad, then his eyes, dark as the hare's, shot over to the empty bucket. "We're gonna need more water to cook it. And since you're the one who left Eddie out there to wet his pants, you can go get more."

"There was no toilet paper," Corey said.

"Don't argue with me, son." Dad cast him an ominous look. "You use more toilet paper than anyone else in this house." Corey bit his lip and picked up the bucket and the flashlight.

"Watch this," he heard Jimmy Moe saying as he left. "I show you how to squeeze guts out of a rabbit, no gotta cut him open. Much easier."

Someday, Dad promised, they would have a bathroom, and running water, like they had had back at home in Chicago, but for now, water had to come from the lake. Corey walked down the path worn in the snow to the frozen shore, resenting the time and effort it would take to get the water. He thought it a great injustice that the bucket was empty and light going downhill, but had to be so full and heavy going back up. Dad hadn't even said anything about going to town.

Dad had chainsawed a hole in the ice, about 15 feet from the shore of Sisters Lake, and they kept it open with an ice chopper, whose long wooden handle stuck up as a marker in the dull bluish whiteness of twilight snow ahead of him. There was still a sliver of blue left in the sky above the western shore of the lake now, just enough to see by, reflecting off the snow.

The hole had frozen over. Corey grabbed the ice-chopper and pounded its heavy metal blade against the sheen of ice covering the water. It smashed into glassy shards which the lake water surged in to claim. The black depths of the lake below the ice reflected the light of stars and moon above it like an eye. Like the eye of the hare, of his Dad, dark and cold. Corey wondered how the rainbow trout in the lake survived down there, trapped under the ice all winter.

As he brought the chopper down one last time, it slipped through his gloved fingers and plunged down into the dark hole. He grabbed for it and his feet slipped, but he felt his fingers grip the handle as it slid beneath the surface. He landed hard on the edge of the hole and the heavy chopper pulled his arm into the water. He jerked it back out, still holding the chopper. He sat for a few moments, gasping, and feeling the lake water begin to stiffen and freeze where it clung to his sleeve and his glove. Finally he sighed in relief. For sure, Dad would have killed him if he lost the ice-chopper. He stuck it back into the snow behind him, handle up, for safe keeping, and dipped a bucket of water out of the hole. Then he set off uphill, with the heavy bucket sloshing splashes of cold wetness out onto this boots as he walked. Some of it seeped into the hole in the tip of the left one to torment his toes. "How'd you get your coat wet?" Dad snapped, as Corey set the bucket down on the floor. He turned to Jimmy Moe with a mocking laugh.

"Darn kid can't fetch a bucket of water without spilling it all over himself."

Corey went to sit on the couch with Eddie, who had put on his clean pants and was watching TV. He wasn't much accomplished with zippers yet; his fly was still open. Corey reached over and pulled it shut. Wasn't Jimmy Moe ever going to leave? Maybe after they ate. Eddie stuck his thumb in his mouth and sucked on it as he stared at the TV. He didn't seem to care, one way or another.

Different smells filled the house now, the sharp odor of burning propane from the cook stove, the enticing food smell of the hares, cut up and boiling with the dumplings in a big blue enamel pot. It was the finest achievement of Dad's culinary skills, which were otherwise severely challenged by following the directions on a package. Jimmy Moe had brought out a pint bottle of vodka from the deep pockets of his down parka, and raised it to his mouth for a sip.

The voices of the two men grew louder as the pot of dinner simmered on the stove over the bright ring of blue flames. They were talking about work and money now. Jimmy Moe was saying he could get Dad a job picking fish this summer at his family's commercial set net site.

"Be a good season this year, so they say," he slurred through the gap of his missing teeth. "We make thirty thousand dollars last year. Them Japanese pay good price for salmon now."

"Thirty thousand? Now that's real money, my friend," said Dad. "I used to make that kind of bucks on construction jobs, back in the Lower 48. Houses, apartments, offices, big shopping malls, I've worked on them all, framed and roofed and floored and finished 'em all. I was hoping to get on a crew up here, but there ain't enough building going on right now."

"Ah, we make fisherman out of you then," laughed Jimmy Moe. Dad laughed back.

"Give me a shot of that rot-gut, would you?" Jimmy Moe passed him the bottle. He slurped at it, then retched and coughed, and chased it quickly with a slug of beer.

"Ugh, how can you drink that stuff?" he gasped. Jimmy Moe took a long swig, like it was just water, smacked his lips, and set down the bottle.

"It give you more bang for the buck," he said, nodding wisely. Dad shuddered, but he reached for the bottle and took another sip anyway. Dad ladled out bowls of rabbit and dumplings, and they all sat around the table, under the illumination of the bulb on its wire. Without prayer or preamble, they dug into their food, all slurping tongues and smacking lips, picking meat off the delicate bones with their teeth. No conversation interrupted the sounds of feasting. Eddie got done first, and asked for more, and Dad gave it to him.

"If you don't eat, you die," Eddie pronounced in a serious voice, as he shoved a spoonful of broth into his mouth.

"Kid eats like a pig," Dad laughed, jabbing a thumb toward him. "There's not enough food in the world to keep Eddie full. But Corey, now, he eats like a bird. Just barely pecks at food."

When the meal was finished, the pot completely emptied, Corey gathered up the dishes, and began heating a pot of water on the stove to wash them. He stoppered the sink, and slowly tipped the pot to spill half the water into its basin, then added cold water from the bucket until it felt comfortably warm. He scrubbed the plates and forks in the pot with a few squirts of liquid soap, and rinsed them in the sink, then stacked them neatly on a towel spread over the counter. He worked faster than usual, glancing up occasionally at the clock on the wall over the table. It was getting late. Wasn't Dad going to say anything? They wouldn't get a good seat, or have time to buy the popcorn, if they didn't leave soon.

But Dad and Jimmy Moe just went on drinking beer and smoking cigarettes, laughing and belching and telling crude stories and dirty jokes. The vodka bottle came out again, and they passed it back and forth between them. Dad no longer retched when he swallowed the vodka, trying his utmost to put it down nice and smooth like Jimmy Moe did. Corey held his hands in the warm dishwater and clenched the ragged dishcloth tight enough to choke the life out of it.

Jimmy Moe leaned back in his chair, tipping it onto its two hind legs, one foot balancing himself against the table. Corey, turning to look at the clock again, saw his foot slip. The chair teetered awkwardly on two legs for a few seconds, then plunged backwards with Jimmy Moe still on board, crashing against the counter a moment later. Jimmy Moe rolled out, catching himself on the empty chair and pulling it down on top of him. For a while he struggled with it, then disentangled himself and staggered to his feet.

"Shorry," he said thickly. "Think it'sh time for me to go, then."

"Hey now, don't go out there and drive like that,' said Dad. "You can't even stand up, for Chrissakes. You can stay here. Go on upstairs and crash out, ya sorry bum."

"Thanksh," said Jimmy Moe. He staggered away from the table, supporting himself on whatever came to hand - walls, counter, furniture. "You're a real friend. 'Preciate it." Swaying and reeling, he made his way to the stairs, and crawled up them on his hands and knees. When he had disappeared into the loft, Corey heard a dull thud on the ceiling above his head Jimmy Moe's drunken body hitting the sleeping bags spread on mattresses on the floor.

Corey scrubbed hard on the pot which had held their dinner, flung its load of soapy, soiled water into the sink, and pulled the drain-plug. The water rushed into the drain, spiraling down into its stainless steel throat with a sucking noise, ending with a loud splash from beneath the sink.

Dad promised that someday they would have not only the kitchen sink, but the plumbing to go with it. For now, the drain's tailpiece remained unconnected, and waste water from the basin emptied into a five gallon bucket positioned below it. Nearly full already when Corey started the dishes, the bucket quickly reached its capacity and could hold no more. Water began to flow out from beneath the cabinet door under the sink to make a glistening puddle on the floor.

"Uh-oh," said Corey.

"Oh no," said Dad, and slammed his can of beer down on the table with a metallic crunch. "Dammit, why didn't you check that bucket before you drained the water, kid?"

"I just wanted to get done sooner... I didn't think of it," Corey stammered, staring at the water still pouring out onto the plywood around his feet.

"You didn't think!" Dad shouted. "Didn't think! You never think, that's the problem." He stood up, and his feet slipped out from under him on the wet floor. He grabbed at the table to steady himself, one arm sweeping out to spill a clatter of empty beer cans over the edge. He stood there, head tilting on his shoulders like the dead hare's head, eyes glassy like marbles.

"Well, don't just stand there," he slurred. "Get some rags and mop it up, before somebody falls and gets hurt." Corey stared down at the sink, choking the dishrag again.

"Why don't you help?" he asked.

"You're the one did it. You clean it up."

Corey flung the squeezed-out dishrag into the sink, and turned to face his Dad, that strong dominating figure.

"You don't help with anything. You don't do anything. You don't even do anything you say you're gonna do." Something smoldered in Dad's marble eyes, but Corey pushed on.

"You said you'd take us to town tonight, but you're not going to, are you? It's gonna be just like last week, and the week before that."

Dad slammed his fist down on the table, shaking its load of beer cans, rattling the empty vodka bottle and the glass ashtray full of cigarette butts.

"Dammit, I built this house! I work my tail off to buy everything we have here, to make payments on our land. I cut wood to keep us warm, and I put food on the table for you every night. You ain't cold nor hungry, are you? I ask you to do a few chores, to help out around here, nothing complicated, and you can't even do that night. You let your brother wet his pants and you spill water on your coat, and you flood the kitchen, and then you want to whine at me about some damn movie? I don't have to take that from a kid!"

"You should never have brought us here!" Corey found himself glaring right into Dad's eyes, waiting for the explosion that was sure to come. But for the first time in his life, he was not afraid of it.

"I brought you kids here so we could have a better life!" Dad yelled back. "And we will! It ain't gonna happen overnight, but it will get better."

"No," said Corey. "It won't get better."

"Better than staying back there in the old neighborhood," Dad burst out, "with everyone saying how sorry they were for me, while they gave me those dirty looks! They said I was never good enough for her. I was planning to walk out, and that's why it happened. Like some kind of punishment from God. But God let her die, not me." He staggered back against the table, catching himself before he fell. Corey stood silent in the puddle of dishwater, not seeing the brute with the cold marble eyes anymore, but only a tired, worn-out man with a hell of a grief burning inside him.

"I've done everything I can for you kids," Dad slurred, leaning over the table on both arms. "And we'll have everything I promised you someday. Look how far we've come already."

"We won't ever have Mom again," Corey said. Dad looked up at him, eyes narrowed under lowered brows, jaws set in a drunken grimace.

"I promised your mother I'd take good care of you kids," he said. "I owe that much to her."

"You don't keep your promises," Corey said. "You never will." Dad said nothing to that, just turned and walked unsteadily to the door, pushed it open, and went out into the night. Corey let him go without further words. When he had gone, the boy found rags and began sopping up the water on the floor.

Unnoticed in the turmoil, Eddie had left his station in front of the TV and slipped upstairs, planning to curl up in the warmth of his sleeping bag and nod out for the night. Now he came pounding down the stairs, caterwauling in frustration.

"Jimmy Moe's in my bed, Corey!" he wailed. Corey looked up from the work of wiping up water.

"So sleep in my bed," he said wearily.

"I'm sorry we didn't get to go to the movie," Eddie said, and his little face scrunched up as if he wanted to cry. "Is it because I peed my pants?"

"No," said Corey. "It's not your fault." He hugged Eddie, as Mom would have done, to reassure him. Then he dragged the bucket out from under the sink to empty it outside.

When he opened the door, and felt the cold air hit his face, he remembered that Dad had gone out, too, and hadn't come back yet. How long ago? It must have been nearly an hour. Darkness had completely fallen now, the only light emanating from the cold stars and the newly risen silvery moon. The thermometer hanging on a nail beside the door read 32 degrees below zero.

He dumped the dishwater behind the woodpile, then looked around, wondering where Dad might have gone. He went back in and got the flashlight, and walked to the outhouse.

"Dad?" He shone the beam of light into the outhouse, but it was empty. He walked back, past the house, and toward the lake. But Dad wasn't there, either. Next he walked out the driveway, past Dad's pickup and Jimmy Moe's Toyota, cold, silent, hulking shapes in the dark night. Beyond them, another cold, silent shape slumped in the snow at the end of the driveway.

"Dad?" he called again. There was no answer. He ran across the crunching snow toward the dark form lying like a shadow upon its frosty whiteness. His dad's body sprawled on the snow where it had fallen when his inebriated brain let go the reins of control over its muscles. The eyes were closed, the mouth open and slack-jawed, the hands spread out on the rough frost. Terrified that Dad might be dead, he knelt down and groped inside his coat, under the layers of quilted flannel and T-shirt, to the warm hairy skin, where he felt the heart still beating against his searching fingers. He heaved a sigh of relief.

Crouching there beside Dad's inert form, Corey gradually became aware of the bitter, penetrating cold pressing against the barrier of his coat, like a persistent, hostile entity determined to snuff out every ember of living warmth it touched. If Dad was left out here at its mercy, it would suck all the warmth out of his unconscious body before he sobered up and awakened. Corey rose and ran back to the house.

"Get up, Eddie!" He shook his little brother awake, yanking the sleeping bag off of his small curled body. Jimmy Moe could no more be roused than Dad, Eddie was the only one who could help. He whined in protest.

"It's Dad. He's lying out there in the driveway, and he can't get up. He's drunk, Eddie, he won't move, he'll freeze to death if we leave him out there. Come on, Eddie, get up!"

Together they went out to the end of the driveway, and pushed and pulled the limp form across the snow. Dad grunted and moaned, but did not awaken; the beer and vodka still lay too heavily on his brain. They panted out great frosty clouds of breath into the moonlight, looking at the long expanse of driveway still left between them and the house.

"Get your sled," he told Eddie. "We'll put him on that and pull him back to the house. It'll be easier." Eddie ran off into the darkness, the flashlight beam bouncing off the snow in front of him. He returned a few minutes later, dragging the plastic toboggan on its rope. With much effort they rolled Dad's inert body onto the sled. Corey grabbed the rope.

"I'll pull, and you push," he directed Eddie. The sled slid over the crusted snow, much more smoothly than Dad's limp body had on its own. Together they struggled along the driveway, past the parked vehicles, and finally back to the door. They pulled the sled into the house, and rolled Dad onto the floor in front of the couch. He lay there, snoring. Corey untied the laces of his boots and pulled them off.

"What do we do now?" Eddie asked.

"Go upstairs and get his sleeping bag," he told Eddie. "And a pillow." They spread the bag evenly over Dad's still-inert body, tucking its edges in around his feet, lifting his head to shove the pillow under his flaccid cheeks. Corey put more wood in the barrel stove to warm the room, remembering this time to open the damper first.

"Let's go to bed," he told Eddie.

"What about Jimmy Moe?"

"We'll push him on the floor," said Corey. Eddie giggled and ran off upstairs.

In the silent room, closed in by the black cold night pressing up against the windows, Corey moved to turn off the bulb hanging over the table. In the darkness his eyes slowly adjusted, caught sight of his backpack by the door, remembering his homework, still inside it, unfinished. The teacher would be mad at him tomorrow when he got to school, but he would face that when he came to it, like a man did. The moonlight came in the window and made a silver rectangle on the floor, and he paused for a moment before he went upstairs, to look at Dad's face, sleeping, as much at peace as he could ever be.

"I promised Mom I would take care of you, too," he whispered.