LEONNARD MENIFEE
The Long, Long Ice Picks at the Old Frostee Freeze
Roberta said: “Kimbrell’d save up all week long, quarters a-jangling in them tight jeans, chipmunk-cheek legs. All for Wednesday Rook at the Frostee Freeze. Half what he brung he took off kids ain’t a day over 14, kids don’t know no better’n to flip quarters with the likes of Kimbrell outside the Wolfpack, flip till they don’t have no more to spend at the arcade parlor next door. Kimbrell’d come back in the Wolfpack, buy one Falls City, bolt it down looking rageful one minute and bored the next, then leave out.
“Peculiar feller, but the good Lord sure did give him looks. He knew it too. Me and my girls always swore he was catweet, and some said he wore mascara all the time and lipstick in private. Ain’t no telling; but for a man lived up Igo Mountain between Devil’s Notch and nowhere, he sure dolled up good for Wednesday Rook.”
She looked up from polishing the Wolfpack bar, and started pouring me another beer. “Reckon you’re glad you missed last week’s game,” I said.
She slammed the beer tap handle back, and scraped the foam off the rim with a wooden head cutter, just missing her hand with the excess. “Why, Lord yes.”
I was at the table last Wednesday sat right across from Quentin, plumb achy to get cards in my hands; seen him watch Kimbrell come up in the fuzzy yellow lights outside, hands tucked in his lined denim jacket, long legs stuffed into ropers, snow swirling all around him, and his breath made clouds. Behind the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Frostee Freeze, in the warmth, Quentin’s pretty hazel eyes went soft.
I looked away. An old Link Wray tune, “I’m Branded,” came on the jukebox, and I had to think of my new woman, Tornado, how she plays Link’s 7-inches every chance she gets, dancing around her apartment. Matter of fact, it’s the same little Pherryville apartment house Quentin lives in. I park my truck in the lot behind, where there’s a fire escape we use as a balcony. More than once, in those odd, dark hours only lovers see, I’ve spied Kimbrell slipping out the back door through the lot and walking toward the Wolfpack, where his truck’s always parked.
Kimbrell sat down and Quentin reached for the cards. Rules were, you played at a big table near the counter, with its line of stools like podiums anchored in the ground. Burt always stood behind the bar, glancing up from whatever he was cooking or cleaning to see who was up in the game, never letting his eyes linger too long. Manners or disinterest, I always figured. He’d bring out beers if you ordered them and sometimes cooked up chili cheese fries or smothered tater tots on the house. Kids did the dealing, kids old enough to understand gambling but too young to be out raising hell yet.
Quentin was 17 in 1998, had been dealing the cards on and off since he was 13. Didn’t make sense he was still doing it, he should’ve been out cavorting and hollering with the rest of the kids his age; folks wondered.
**
Deacon said: “I heard them in the reeds when the rain turned to sun. They were fishing, said the lazy poles, and I was the breeze among the white birch branches, and for a second I thought they divined me there, my pushy breath. Perhaps one did, but, bless him, was too forbearing in his nature to risk spoiling their tryst.
“They were like the olive oil wrestlers I saw when the city museum brought the Greek statues to the mountains, the young one’s hazel eyes and summer-blonde hair, easy as a helicopter seed, and the other, wearing a cruel mustache thin as a coat of spray paint, rangy and tall, a pure-born taker; the kind that won’t budge at the wind unless they’re the ones blowing it.”
The waitress at Imogene’s approached our table, and Deacon’s voice trailed off. After she refilled his iced tea, he picked up two packets of sugar and shook them between his fingers, holding them like a dog with its muzzle locked on some poor animal’s neck, and poured the contents into his tea. “I watched them after, falling into the river oats and broomsedge, holding tight what they left on the shore, making just enough commotion that they might take me, too.”
“They were like the olive oil wrestlers I saw when the city museum brought the Greek statues to the mountains, the young one’s hazel eyes and summer-blonde hair, easy as a helicopter seed, and the other, wearing a cruel mustache thin as a coat of spray paint, rangy and tall, a pure-born taker; the kind that won’t budge at the wind unless they’re the ones blowing it.”
The waitress at Imogene’s approached our table, and Deacon’s voice trailed off. After she refilled his iced tea, he picked up two packets of sugar and shook them between his fingers, holding them like a dog with its muzzle locked on some poor animal’s neck, and poured the contents into his tea. “I watched them after, falling into the river oats and broomsedge, holding tight what they left on the shore, making just enough commotion that they might take me, too.”
**
Quentin got flushed after Kimbrell sat down; thin sweat beaded up on his forehead, and he’d wipe it off when the players looked at their hands.
Yance Trigger said: “I’ll grant you it was a serious game by then, but, shit, we used to not even play for money. Rook’s supposed to be a Christian game. Could’ve switched to normal cards when the gambling started I reckon, but there sure was something that tingled your rattler about putting up money on a game that’s supposed to be so durn innocent. Good money, too, at least for us customers.”
Bart Southern said: “We was just a few hands in when Kimbrell looked up from his cards, said, ‘Why in hell’d you deal me that?’
“Quentin was a-laughing, carrying on with Supp Henderson and Yance Trigger, but his head shot up like a snapping turtle. I seen his eyes fixed on Kimbrell, one hand supporting the deck and the other holding the card he was about to deal me, a red 11, for all to see.
“That’s when Kimbrell stood up.”
Burt Yadzek married into the old Frostee Freeze five years after he moved to Vaunce County from somewhere up north. He always kept three-foot long ice picks tucked under the bar to get down into the deep freezers, something he said he picked up from an ice cream shop he worked at in Brattleboro, Vermont, but on that night, after business hours, one was leaning against the counter beside the Rook table. The duct tape handle reminded me of a broken saddle, splintered with cracks.
Quentin’s supple neck popped like a geyser. He clutched that 11 as his body spasmed, Kimbrell holding it by the ice pick like a doll on a stand, eyes shaking wild.
Yance Trigger said: “I’ll grant you it was a serious game by then, but, shit, we used to not even play for money. Rook’s supposed to be a Christian game. Could’ve switched to normal cards when the gambling started I reckon, but there sure was something that tingled your rattler about putting up money on a game that’s supposed to be so durn innocent. Good money, too, at least for us customers.”
Bart Southern said: “We was just a few hands in when Kimbrell looked up from his cards, said, ‘Why in hell’d you deal me that?’
“Quentin was a-laughing, carrying on with Supp Henderson and Yance Trigger, but his head shot up like a snapping turtle. I seen his eyes fixed on Kimbrell, one hand supporting the deck and the other holding the card he was about to deal me, a red 11, for all to see.
“That’s when Kimbrell stood up.”
Burt Yadzek married into the old Frostee Freeze five years after he moved to Vaunce County from somewhere up north. He always kept three-foot long ice picks tucked under the bar to get down into the deep freezers, something he said he picked up from an ice cream shop he worked at in Brattleboro, Vermont, but on that night, after business hours, one was leaning against the counter beside the Rook table. The duct tape handle reminded me of a broken saddle, splintered with cracks.
Quentin’s supple neck popped like a geyser. He clutched that 11 as his body spasmed, Kimbrell holding it by the ice pick like a doll on a stand, eyes shaking wild.
Copyright © February 2025 Leonnard Menifee
Leonnard Menifee is a writer and a fishing guide, who resides in Vaunce County, Kentucky. You can find more information about him at leonnardmenifee.com.
