Summary

Part One of "North/South" opens as a woman finds her husband unconcious in the snow. His body is freezing, but he is still alive. She prepares his body so she can drag it home, thinking that "this time she would not sit with him, would not rock him back to warmth" (69). She then begins to drag his body home.

Part Two starts with a brother and sister minding the counter at Taffa's Grocery & Messenger Service. The boy is lying on his back on the counter, and looks sick, "as if he might throw up any minute" (70). When the store phone rings, he rips the skin off his back as he gets up off the counter, wondering if it could be his father. The phone call is for a lady who lives nearby called the Beauty Queen, so the boy runs to...