I guess it was the day of the big snow. Picture Milwaukee, winter, closed schools all across the city. Every school aged boy in the city wakes up to good news and bad. Yes, there is no school, and yes, get your shovel. There was promise of hot chocolate when it was all over. The Moon Boots would be peeled from your sweaty feet and you would get a blanket.
From your front door to the sidewalk. All of the sidewalk in front of your house, and the small access walks in the median between the sidewalk and the street. Around the side of the house to the back yard. Up the back steps, from the back steps to the alley in front of the garage.
We never had a house nice enough to have a garage with a car in it, but everything else was accurate. Time is wonky. No telling how long it’s going to take you to do this. All of that is dependent on the size of the storm. Maybe as little as two inches, but come on, Milwaukee is not going to close the schools down for a couple of inches. This day the snow was at least two feet. But that was not the kicker. That was not the main problem. The biggest problem was that this time, it was cold. This time, with the windchill, it was 37 below.
They say that cold like that freezes your nostrils. True. They say it hurts your face. Also true. Who here has seen the meme on social media that shows up every time cold comes, and it shows a person in snow bundled up and miserable and the caption says, “The air hurts my face. Why do I live where the air hurts my face?” The hurting of the face part never bothered me. This kind of cold hits your throat. Instantly, when you walk out the door, it strikes your nostrils. You open your mouth to breathe and the cold freezes the inside of your throat just for a little while.
Now if you get started right away, it’s not that bad, to be honest. If you can get past the exhaustion, the action heats you up pretty quick. Soon the heat trapped in your coat seeps up through the neck of that coat, and soon your chin and face are warm. Your hat traps the heat real good and you will definitely have sweat slick hair when all is done, and you’re good.
Except Mumble bought the worst shovel that ever existed. Well, we had two. One was the classic shovel. It is meant for coal. It has a deep belly and sides, and a handle grip on the end of the shaft. Fine, but you will be there all day. Mumble’s monstrosity was the stuff of nightmares.
It was sky blue. About a foot and a half tall, curved like a plow and incredibly heavy. He said I used it wrong. Said it was a plow shovel. I was just supposed to set it down and shove, and it would push the snow wherever you want it.
Have you ever had a bad idea that was so bad it was embarrassingly bad? I mean really terrible, and you know people are going to fuck with you about it for a long time, so you double down on your shit idea. The shovel itself weighed over four pounds. And when you tried to use it as Mumble instructed, the fluff would just roll over the foot and a half top.
No.
You had to lift this thing—and all the snow it held—and throw it just like every other shovel. But the kicker is that this shovel blade is nearly three and a half feet across.
On the day of “Darling Nikki,” I hit snow at about seven in the morning. Moon Boots. If you don’t know what Moon Boots are, get your life together. Anyway Moon Boots, Paul Bunyan’s shovel, and the job from hell.
But you have to think about Guardian. If he doesn’t work fast, then Less will get mad at him and say something hateful. So he tells her to just sit and he will do it all, and he goes. She makes snowballs and throws them at him. He takes the hit and shovels the snowballs, too. When the house was finished, she went inside.
Guardian had just taken insult after insult for nearly an hour, and he knew Less would be complaining about how hard she worked and can she have extra marshmallows in her hot chocolate. And on this particular day, he could not handle that. Would never explode on her, so he kept shoveling.
By nine he had shoveled the sidewalk in front of three houses. By noon he had made it all the way down the street. Every foot of the sidewalk of the block he lived on had been shoveled. Neighbors called him up to their door and dropped a few bucks or a fist full of change in his hand. For the most part, the street he lived on in Benders territory was clean.
Rose did not know what to say.
She always rewarded hard work, but she had never heard of anything like what I had done. She stared at me for a long time when I got back in.
“How far did you go?” she whispered in awe.
“All the way up the street.”
“To the corner?”
“To the corner.”
“Okay,” she said. “Okay, that is fine, except there is a little bit, just a little bit of a problem.” She looked for Less, but Less was in her room blaring “We’re Not Gonna Take It” by Twisted Sister. “Uncle Ball is really sick today.”
“Take me over there,” Guardian said.
“Well it’s just that Grandma can’t do it and, well Grandpa had his heart attacks, and there is no way he can do it.”
“It’s fine. I can do it. Just take me over there.”
I did not pause for hot chocolate or to warm my feet. I kept my Moon Boots on and we drove across town to Grandma and Grandpa’s house, where a terribly sick Uncle Ball was out of sight, up in his room, unable to shovel them out.
Their shovel was shit, too. It was the kind with the blade that is square and flat. You have seen them. They are pretty popular, but the edge bends up after a few uses, and it is impossible to really scrape the sidewalk.
I wasn’t getting much done, and what I was getting done was unsafe to walk on. For some reason I still don’t understand, Grandpa’s house had an inch of ice under the two feet of snow, and as I worked, the temperature was dropping. They had the front, from the door down to a landing in the front yard, then stairs to the sidewalk. Then that landing had to be cleared, then a walkway that went all the way around the house to the back fence. Everyone parked back there, and the snow had covered the tires and the driveway. It was all buried.
Grandpa Stone came out and gave me a beautiful tool that amazes me to this day. It is a hard red piece of metal about the size of a plate but square. The edge is sharp and it immediately slices through any amount of ice. I was back in business.
Every now and then, Grandma would come and ask Guardian if he wanted to take a break. Did he want to warm up. Did he want to stop for the night, spend the night, and finish in the morning.
But Guardian is one of those guys. Duty to the point of martyrdom. The more of a big deal you make about the suffering he is bearing, the more he can take. He’s like the Hulk that way.
He finished at seven o’clock that night. He ate dinner in silence and went upstairs. Grandma and Grandpa had decided I would get ten dollars—so basically all the money in the world—and, “Dammit, if Rose yells about it, the boy can stay until he wants to go home.” One of the Sons had spoken. “Look at this!” Grandpa Stone pointed at the evening news. “It’s 45 below out there. Give that boy five more dollars.”
“Can I go see Uncle Ball?” I asked.
“Well, he is really sick,” Grandma said.
“Let the kid go see Ball. And he better be curled up and dying after what he just made my grandson do.”
When I got to Uncle Ball’s room, I walked in, and he was working on his skin again. More cotton balls, more alcohol. “Did you get it done?” he chirped.
“Yeah, it’s 45 below.”
“Wow, that’s fucking cold. Damn Jesse, you okay?”
“Oh yeah, Uncle Ball, I’m fine.”
“Well sit down, I have to tell you about Nikki.” I knew this was going to be another sex story. I wanted to beg him to let me go back downstairs. Watch a show with Grandpa Stone. Maybe listen to one of Grandma’s stories, or just walk home, but he needed to tell this one.
I titled this chapter Darling Nikki. It is the name of a Prince song that is incredibly graphic sexually. After hearing the song you feel as though you have just got done having sex. And I named the girl he savaged the night before this conversation he was about to have with me Nikki because he put the song on and dropped in the floor.
“Now this is important. You have to learn all of this stuff so you know what you are doing.” He nodded and dropped his hand on my right shoulder. “The number, Jesse, is all that matters.”
I refuse to use his words. I should. I should tell it the way he did as I sat near tears and eating his sin. I ought to let you see the true horror of what Uncle Ball told me that night, but I won’t. Too many of you would be scarred by it. If I have to tell you the way he smiled or the way he motioned when he was describing what he did to her, you would be scarred by it. And you are not his sin eater, I am, so I will give you the tragic story behind Nikki in my own words.
Nikki was sexually molested by her father. When she got older and developed into a full formed young girl, she was handed over to her two brothers. They savaged her for years. Then they bit her. They left scars on her breasts and left her unable to feed her children if she ever had any.
Uncle Ball smiled a darkened smile when he told me how well trained she was. And just what she would do. And just what she could withstand.
I was nine years old.
And I was eating sin.
Jesse Teller 
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