beyond Jimmy-town

I ventured outside. It was gloomy. The sky the color of ashes. The light stifled like windows caked with soot.

“Don’t know if there will be a breakthrough today, so keep your wits about you and your mittens too”, mother chided just as I closed the door.

“I will, Mum,” I called back half up the walk, “I will!”

It was cold but I’d felt worse in my first decade, feeling so worldly and tempered by age. This was after all, my tenth winter, and those included two bad blizzards to boot. I knew what I was in for, I reckoned.

Buckroot waited down by the ferry dock. With the river now froze over, there’d be no ferry running though we could easily walk across to Jamison, but don’t tell, because Mum would never accept the notion. She was always 'fraid the ice would break and the cold river swallow us up like so many before. It was true, poor lads, but I had Buck and he could read the snap and crackle of the ice bed. I’m sorry those that perished did not.

Buck greeted me with a thump on the chest, which caused me to wheeze slightly, and him to laugh. “You ready for this journey?” he said in the deep tremolo of his native tongue.

“Have you ever known me not to be ready, Bucko?” I mocked him, and shot an elbow to his thigh, which might as well have been a birch for the hurt it inflicted me skinny arm.

“How’s the arm, then? Want to go back in, to Mum?”

I stopped rubbing, and locked at him cross. “The arm is fine, I just struck a bone.”

“Yeah, the funny bone…”

“That’s right. How’d you know?”

“Cause it made me laugh. Maybe you should arm wrestle.

Wazzat?

Men play it…boys too.”
“Men play a boys’ game?”

“Perhaps it’s the boys playing the men’s…”

“Men don’t play games. Men go on adventure and wars.”

“Men play a myriad of games, Nico. Some deadly, like war.”

“Why do you try to frighten me?”

“Simple truth. Fair warning. If the thought of that frightens you, Mum has a nice toasty fire a burnin’ and some warm shortbread, I’d wager.”

“Get on with it. We don’t got all day.”

“Who says? I say we got a lifetime of adventure ahead. Want to step out on the ice?”

“I thought you were leading this expedition!”

“Not  into oblivion, I ain’t. Too many boys gone under. I’ll stand here and watch you trek over to yonder shore.”

“Well, why not join Mum, in that case, and watch from yonder window, near the fireplace, while eatin’ me shortbread? Serve ya’ right, if I fall through.  You can tell Mum all about your big plans for adventure then. I bet she’ll be pleased.”

“You’d have me do that to yer Mum?”

“What kind of guide, sits back and watches?”

“An alive guide. Conversely, What sort of fool would wander where a guide would not?”

“A brave one!”

“The brave fool. You are right. Do you hear the sense in that title?”
“I do.”

“Fine. The bridge is only a short trudge up the creek, then it’s a safe walk over to Jimmy-town and what lies beyond.”

“You really thinking we’ll keep going?”

“We might.”

“Beyond Jimmy-town?!”

“We might. But not if we stand here discussing…be careful the banks are slick. Go slow…steady…do not rush the a journey, but partake in it instead. Step-by step. One wrong step the journey ends...”