SNOWSTORM

It’s snowing heavy, burying everything. Maybe that makes me think of her. She stayed at the boarding house in Eagle Mills, worked at the factory there. Fingertips always red and tender. Did she run a lathe? That doesn’t sound right. This is in the twenties. You could have a meal at the boarding house and they served drink. I would stop on the run back from North Adams. Oh, nothing I couldn’t ever have walked away from. Older than me, didn’t ask a thing. I didn’t give her up for nine years. She gave me up.

Radio says we’ll get two feet. Travelers’ warnings.

I put my galoshes on, tuck the cuffs into the tops, buckle them. I eat out, can’t be bothered with the hotplate and there’s no refrigerator. But the room suits me. Since Grace went into the hospital what do I need a house for?

The truck, was it the Maxwell? Ran out of gas on the flats this side of Eagle Mills. Me and my helper, Tom, pushed her all the way in to Troy. Dirt road in those days, we kept the gas headlamps lit - they were for being seen, not seeing. That was a long push but it was Spring and we had something along to drink, and Tom - Irish, good voice - sang about love and losing your true love. There was no one but us on the road, a sickle moon, mist on the harrowed fields. The hills run down to Troy, that’s how we did it - jumping on the running boards downhill, jumping off and pushing up the next crest. Peepers were calling in the ditches. I kept thinking how she and I had been together in the last hour.

Snow and more snow. You could almost step out the window and walk on the air.

I look at the side of the next building. The bricks are worn, like red sponges stuck in a wall. It used to be the warehouse for the Mount Ida Paper Company. I drove for them forty-odd years, delivered thousand-pound rolls of paper to North Adams, Pittsfield, Great Barrington; hauled back barrels of pigments and acids, bundles of rags. The city now uses part of the building to store snow-plow equipment. They’re coming and going over there this morning.

I lock my door and walk down the hall. A dog whines. The old woman says no pets. When my foot hits the first floor, her door opens. Her red face sticks out like a turkey in a shooting gallery. I don’t give her the time of day. I’ve paid my hundred and twenty dollars on the first of the month for two and a half years. She has nothing to complain of.

Nearly a foot down but the walking is easy, the snow light and dry.

I bought an Indian on poker winnings and kept it in a shed behind the boarding house. We flew the country roads at night. We didn’t stop at gin mills or drive into Troy for fear of being seen. The places we stopped weren’t on the state map. Then our luck ran out. The ambulance came from Troy and it got in the paper. We hit ice, the back wheel kicked under - she got thrown and the bike rode my leg fifty feet. I was skinned hip to ankle. Her back broke. I would visit her in Saint Mike’s - damned if I would quit on her because the fun was over. Grace didn’t ever say one word, but she could poison. The back healed but she couldn’t hardly bend. She left after a year of recovering - somewhere up in Michigan.

Cars are crawling. It’s not hard seeing them as horse-drawn sleighs. I’d almost get the Caddy out. She’s made for snow with that weight. I would do it except for this damn vision. If something happened they would have my license, and where would I be?

I never lost a day’s driving to snow.

Mooney’s. I take my stool at the counter. The short order cook is new and I have to order the breakfast special. The eggs aren’t hard-cooked. I won’t eat them loose, same as I won’t eat a fish with the head on.

“Where’s Ralph?” I ask him.

“Who is Ralph?”

“The regular guy.”

“I don’t know. I’m new on the job.”

He goes down to the end of the counter to the cigarette he left burning.

I left Cherry Street because I had to. Grace’s stay in the hospital wiped out our savings and took the house. Grace can’t appreciate it. Her brain’s gone. I visit her about every other day, nothing better to do. But I won’t take the car out today. It’s safe in the garage on River.

“Hey, pal, didn’t you forget something?”

I would sooner put my fist in his face as tip him.

I make a loop along the base of Prospect Hill, through the new mall downtown, and back River to the boardinghouse. The Russian hat Buddy gave me makes me sweat and I stuff it in my coat pocket. I never was a hat man.

Buddy had a job last winter at the State office buildings in Albany. I went out a couple of times and watched him take care of the snow. He had a Ford pickup with a plow and bags of sand in back. For the walks he used a big walk-behind blower. He quit that job. I don’t understand him. It was good work.

A station wagon is stuck. Dumb cluck sits there spinning the wheels. I knock on the steamed-up glass - it’s a girl. “Rock it,” I say, “back and forth.” I get behind and push. All she knows is Drive. Spinning and spitting packed snow, she gets clear and beeps.

It is deepening, the plows can’t keep up. What if it never stopped?

She took the train from Albany. I saw her off - maybe should have gone with her. Things would be different, that’s for sure. Because nothing was different after. Job, Grace, house, cars . . . Michigan was the end of the earth. She didn’t write. One vacation, the kids weren’t grown, we drove through Michigan. We were going to California but we went by way of Michigan. I was restless on the way through, thought I might see her. But she was a cripple and older than me, said she was going to an aunt out there. Go to New York, I said. But she was leaving me.

“Your son is up there,” the old lady stretches her neck out. “I let him in.”

Country music spills into the hall. Buddy is standing in his pea coat staring out the window at the bricks. Mary Grace is reading a book in the chair, feet pulled up under her, glasses on. The only one of our family in line when God passed out brains.

“Hey, Pop,” says Buddy. “C’mon in and joint the party.”

I squeeze Mary Grace’s neck and she pulls away with a face. She doesn’t stop reading.

“Some snow, huh?” grins Buddy.

“What are you doing here?”

“They cancelled school,” says Mary Grace.

“For a little dust like this? In my day we’d tie pot lids on our feet and walk to school.”

She just gives me that look.

I take my coat off and shake it.

“It’s a day to goof off,” says Buddy. “We don’t get snow like this but once a winter - once every five.”

There’s a puddle under his feet like the snowman came inside.

“I guess they closed the restaurant and gave you the day off with pay?”

“Naw, I called in sick.”

“Daddy made us walk all the way here from the house,” says Mary Grace. “He said we had to rescue you.”

“What’s so great in the book?” I ask.

“It’s ‘Heidi’.”

“Hi-dee hi hi ho!” Buddy imitates Cab Calloway. “Thought we’d see if you needed anything, Pop. Saint Bernards charging through the blizzard.”

Buddy’s ten-year old is more adult than him. Sits there like an old lady - ain’t even bled yet. ‘Granny Grace’. How did Buddy get that one? She’s all right, though, knows her own mind. She’ll have nothing to do with him when she has a say.

Buddy takes a box off the windowsill: “We didn’t bring a barrel of schnapps, but Stephie sent along a little present.”

“It’s candy momma didn’t want,” says Mary Grace.

Buddy sets the box on top of the tv. He tips back and forth like he did when he was a kid wanting to go outside.

I go down the hall to the bathroom. It has an old-fashioned tub with iron claws set onto balls for feet. Glass balls. I sit on the can.

I don’t remember her last name.

Old man Kroeder bangs on the bathroom door.

“Occupied!”

She never forgot my birthday, December twenty-second. She felt sorry for me being born so near Christmas. ‘Bet you never had much of a birthday when you were a kid,’ she’d say. I didn’t, either. She was Irish - McGarrety, maybe. They would let her use the boardinghouse stove to bake the cake. My birthday only fell once on the North Adams run but I always had a cake. She didn’t want to stop and lay together. ‘Take us to the moon, Eddie,’ she said. ‘What if we threw the clutch up there?’ I kidded. ‘Then we’d have to stay, wouldn’t we,’ she said. “Be moon people.”

Buddy is sitting on the bed with the box opened, eating candy. “Trudy called last week,” he says.

“Aunt Trudy is living with a man,” Mary Grace snaps her book shut, interested for once.

“Married?”

Buddy shakes his head. “Na, they don’t get married these days. I told her, to watch out. There’s sons of bitches in New York City. I told her, if she had any trouble, give baby brother a call. I’ll straighten him out.”

“You and who else?”

“Me and you.”

I have to laugh at that.

“Trudy sounded good, Pop. Things are starting to look up for her.”

“When’s she been up here?” I say.

“You didn’t exactly make things pleasant for her when she was up Christmas. She wanted you to move outa this dump.”

“Oh, yeah? Maybe in with her and her boyfriend? I could wash their dirty underwear.”

“Anyway, she says hello—”

“Hello!” I shout, “HELLO!”

Mary Grace looks at me.

Buddy moves a dust bunny with the toe of his boot.

“I saw your mother yesterday,” I say, “I had to tell her it was her husband. ‘I don’t got a husband,’ she says. She thinks she can get away with that. Seventy-two years she has a husband, I’ll tell you. Those pussycat doctors play right up to her--”

“She can’t help it, Pop,” says Buddy.

I go to the window. The snow has melted, staining the bricks. I get my retirement from the mill. Social Security. We weren’t millionaires but we lived okay. Grace could cook a pot roast - and after that we’d go in the parlor and watch tv. Where am I now? What is this - dump? Like I stepped out for a beer and everything changed. Not a trace of the boardinghouse anymore, or the factory. It’s just inside this head. She’s long gone, and I’ll be too, and those nights I stopped for warm dinner and then upstairs. That little room so damn cold and the patchwork quilt she never let us lay under but had to fold and set on the chair. What did she tell me, what things? She wasn’t a talker for a mick. Who was I to her? ‘Eddie’? I was the only one.

“How’s about taking a drive, Sunday?” asks Buddy. “The snow’ll be cleared. We could take the Caddy up the Thruway to Saratoga.”

“What’s in Saratoga?” Mary Grace wants to know.

“I don’t know,” says Buddy. “Something. How about it, Pop?”

Old man Kroeder in his blue pajamas stops in the open door. Then he shuffles on, down the hall with a sound like sandpapering.

“Let’s get out now,” I say.

Buddy looks at me.

“Oh, let’s go to the Latham Shopping Mall,” cries Mary Grace.

“There’s a hell of a lot of snow down, Pop,” says Buddy. “And it ain’t quitting.”

I get my coat on, it’s wet from earlier.

“Please, daddy, can we?” Mary Grace is pulling at Buddy’s coat.

“I don’t know. You’re mother--”

“She said we don’t have to be back for lunch. We can eat at Rolly’s in the mall!”

Buddy pushes on the bottom of the garage door and pivots it down shut, gets into the passenger seat. Mary Grace has the whole back to herself. The engine’s warmed up so I kick the pedal and she idles down. Wish we still had the manual choke. I back out using the rearview.

Snow is hitting the long polished hood like it’s a surface of water - frozen water. This car is practically new. Aunt Margarite sold it to me when she went into the home. She and Uncle Arthur always owned Cadillacs. She’d put twenty-eight thousand miles on in eleven years, and the car never slept a night outside its heated stall. Treated better than my old man’s horses.

“You’re going the wrong way, grandpa,” calls Mary Grace, “Turn left--”

I swing right, up the hill, East.

“Where are we going? She whines. “On some boring ride to nowhere?”

“Mind if I turn on the radio?” asks Buddy.

I send the electric aerial up.

He gets the country station he had in my room.

I catch Mary Grace looking at me in the rearview.

“Where are we going, grandpa?”

I grin: “The moon.”

She won’t be kidded. She puts her feet up on the seat, sits back against the door, and opens her book.

“Could be July,” says Buddy, “way this baby sticks to the hill. You can’t beat a Caddy.”

We pass the old Farnum Steamer and Stewarts Ice Cream. No one’s out, not even kids specking. We go up the hill past the cemetery, past where Margarite used to live, and pretty soon we’re in country.

Buddy sings along with some woman who is leaving her husband for a disk jockey.

It’s like being on the water, cutting along. As white in the air as it is on the ground. No need for wipers, the snow is dry. I could let go of the wheel and the car would drive itself over this road.

“This the road to Uncle Zak’s?” asks Buddy.

“Does it look like it?”

“It’s out this way, ain’t it?”

“Poestenkill,” I say. “This ain’t the road to Poestenkill.”

Quiet, not even a purr of snow up against the bottom. We could be a horse-drawn sled. Three hundred and fifty horses.

Mary Grace has fallen asleep with her mouth open like her grandmother.

“HOLY HELL!!! Buddy yells.

The snowplow is almost on us, turret light going and snow whipping around the cab - taking his half out of the middle. I cut the wheel, taking us onto the shoulder, not even breaking traction - catch the plowman’s passing grin. Probably a thermos of coffee up there beside him and a sandwich. Those fellas plow around the clock. I wouldn’t mind that long steady hours peeling snow, keeping the steel just off the berm, watching for culvert poles.

“Jesus . . .” swears Buddy, “That was a close one.”

A miss is as good as a mile.

“Hadn’t you better slow down, Pop?”

Mary Grace woke up with Bud’s yell and now wants to get in front with us. Buddy helps her over the seat.

We’re running with one set of tires on the cleared surface, one in the snow. I can feel that deep side holding us on the curves. The old dirt road is still under the macadam.

“We ought to turn around when we find a spot,” says Buddy. “We’re getting out pretty far.”

“You gonna miss a wedding or something?” I ask. “We got a full tank of gas and the car’s going swell.”

“I don’t care if we ever stop.” Mary Grace switches the channel to rock and roll.

“The car needs some highway miles,” I say. “Smooth out the valves. It don’t get out much since Ma went in the hospital.”

Buddy twists in his seat trying to make out a sign.

“We’re going to North Adams,” I say.

“North Adams? That’s over the mountains.”

“What’s in North Adams?” asks Mary Grace.

“MacDonald’s.” I grin at Buddy.

A second plow goes by, chains ringing. He is further over, plowing in tandem with the first. They ought to be closer together.

It’s all the same and all changed. This old road, the same one. Something stopped back then. I can just think about it over and over - moon on the new fields, the peepers, the headlamps flickering . . . I turned to Tom - Jesus, that skull-like face lost in its singing--

“Eagle Mills!” announces Buddy.

But I have already felt the car drop, beginning the long curve down into the hollow, the factory set back by the pond and the boardinghouse beside the road.

Richard Ploetz has published poems and short stories in The Quarterly, Outerbridge, Crazy Quilt, Timbuktu, American Literary Review, Hayden’s Ferry, Passages North, Nonbinary Review, Literary Oracle, RavensPerch, Front Range Review, Lowestoft Chronicle, Roifaineant Press. His children’s book, THE KOOKEN was published by Henry Holt.