Every hour, I shovel out both doors and down the driveway, thinking they should be back from the cemetery by now. They must be cold out in that open field, lifting the casket through deep snow, searching for the grave the pastor dug.
So many people I see shoveling their own walks could have set aside old gripes and helped clear roads, carry Doris through the snow, lay her to rest.
I don’t get it, the loathing one neighbor can have for another. The same storm bears down on us all, and for days or weeks we will be trapped with whatever electricity and provisions we have at hand. Certainly, we are capable of understanding each other. It’s as if we refuse our most natural instinct.
We have forgotten what we have in common. We’ve forgotten when we walked to school together, when we picked up trash from the same storm. All of us have worked since we were children, on ranches, at the elevator or grocery store. In summers, the fishermen of our families likely kept jars of worms in the fridge. Go into any of our homes and I bet you’ll find a Charlie Russell painting and a Louis L’Amour novel. Walk outside and we hear the same cattle, feel the same wind. How strange that we find ourselves at odds with people so similar to ourselves that someone from another town could not tell us apart. Don’t we all just want simple things from this life—a use for our talents and passions, a chance at love, an old wound healed, someone to hold after a hard day?
I feel the handle of the shovel in my gloves again. The sky begins to dim until I see only gray and white. But what is that smear of color? I set the shovel against the porch rail and look again. There are Pete’s flashing lights turning from the highway, the wheels grinding through the buried streets. My knees nearly buckle in relief.
His truck stops in front of our house, and Pop struggles out the door and up the walk, wet and exhausted. I hurry to lend him my arm.
“I’ll help you inside,” I say.
His blue lips are too frozen for him to speak.
I fetch towels, a blanket, help remove the outer layers. After I serve him soup and buttered toast, I watch from behind the storm door, as Pete’s truck idles outside of Doris’s house, strobes flashing. Then a silhouette of Robert, blurred by snow, returns to the white Ford carrying, what, something large, and gets back inside. They are moving again. My mind churns in place, like the truck’s wheels, until I understand. He was carrying luggage.
“Pop!”
I open the storm door, snow dotting my face.
“Pete and Robert understood they had to leave tonight or they wouldn’t get out,” he says. “Pete will drive Robert to the airport as soon as it’s open again.”
“Pop,” I whisper. “What did you do?”
It is the slowest leaving, blue and red lighting up the snow, the house, the snow, the house as Pete’s white Ford edges away with Robert in it. I grab for my heart and stand shivering at the open door.
From behind, I feel my father’s hands, one on each shoulder, his grip firm. He’s done this. My father, with Pete’s help. Snow sprays our oriental carpet. The radiator clicks on again, my father’s breath too close, and a fury boils inside, rising through my gut toward my shoulders. I shrug hard.
“Get away from me,” I shout. “Call them back. Call them back right now!”
I run down the snowy steps, run to the end of the walk, shaking, not wanting to let Pete’s truck out of my sight. Blue and red lights up the highway and then any sign of those lights is gone. I look at my house as if I don’t know it. My footprints have already filled with snow. I look again to the barren highway and wonder if I will see Robert again, my world silent except for wind hurling snow. It is as if white sheets drape across the roads, across every structure, the town bedding down for the rest of winter, and all of us trapped underneath.