The Blizzard

The Blizzard


The blizzard was coming. The storm’s approach was on the news, on the radio, featured in the newspapers and on web-sites. Schools preemptively canceled their classes and daycares were closed and church dinners and confirmation classes were postponed. On the morning before the storm everyone went to the grocery store on the edge of town and bought their provisions and a sinister east wind blew across the icy parking lot and twisted plumes of snow off the big mounds that had been plowed into the lot’s far corners. An east wind meant calamity, that someone was going to die. At least, that’s what some people said.

The sky remained clear and blue for several hours after the blizzard was supposed to have commenced. The storm was cranky, irritable and took its time arriving, wandering out of the west like a big and powerful old man with Alzheimer’s disease. As the afternoon advanced into evening, the wind swiveled around, a gale blowing out of the northwest Then, suddenly, sleet fell like a rain of bombs, projectiles falling from the clouds on plumb lines straight to the ground, ice that was too heavy to be dislodged by the strong wind so that it dropped vertically through the storm and covered the snow already heaped on the ground with grey, mucousy slush. The temperature plunged and the sleet became feathery and light and, then, the snow was blown horizontally across the white fields, swirling in curlicues and vortices between the houses.

George took his dog for a walk. It was fine and exciting thing to walk the streets of his neighborhood in the blizzard. He was dressed warmly and the bitter winds didn’t penetrate through his Carhart coat or his mittens and scarf and his dog, a handsome Labrador bitch, enjoyed the storm. She pranced through the drifts and nipped at the wind that lacquered her back and flanks with a white crust of snow.

The sidewalks were clogged with snow slumped between the dirty glacial ridges made by a season’s accumlation of snow-blowing and so George led his dog down the middle of the street, between the homes lining the lane and their garages in their peaked white caps. At the end of the avenue, a turbulent cloud of blowing snow rose into the sky, a cyclone whirling through an intersection where sometimes the headlights of a car shone briefly, tentatively, as if the vehicle were a man bearing a faint and guttering torch through a tunnel where the wind was moving like a piston. Drifts crisscrossed the street and crept along the right-of-way like flocks of sheep. The ice underfoot was irregular and unpredictable, hidden under tufts and sheets of snow. In some places, the tires of cautiously passing cars crushed the snow into a marble glaze and it was slippery there and the snow leaped and danced across those white floors like ballerinas on a dimly lit stage. The piles of snow standing sentinel at the intersections flared like white bonfires, blazing in the wind, and when George hiked across those cross-roads, the dog shuddered under the impact of the wind and whirled in circles to keep her nose and eyes away from the piercing blast from the northwest. Walking in the storm was like mountaineering: although the streets were level, they were wild with snowdrifts and each step seemed an ascent toward some kind of summit where the wind roared perilously and the danger was great and exhilarating.

There was no traffic on the residential streets. A few cars parked next to the snowdrifts towering over the curbs were motionless and corraled by heaps of plow-snow, buried to their hubcaps. Something sputtered behind George and he looked over his shoulder to see a lone car, low-slung, surfing through the deep snow. George yanked his dog to the side of the road, standing knee-deep in snow and waiting for the vehicle to slowly churn past him. But the car stopped beside George and stood half-buried in the snow, trembling a little. The roof of the vehicle was thatched with snow and the wipers cut a half-circle in the snow clinging to the windshield so that the driver peered out into the white chaos as if from inside a warm, dark cave. The passenger window creaked a little and descended and a girl inside leaned forward to speak to George. The dog lunged and tugged to attract George’s attention back to her walk and away from the car that was sputtering there in the drifts.

“We’re lost,” the girl said. She seemed to be Mexican with black hair twisted around her face and there were red inflamed pimples on her cheeks. The man behind the driver’s wheel glanced over toward George with a look of dull incomprehension. Neither of the people in the car were dressed for the storm – they seemed to be wearing work-clothes and were without hats or stocking caps.

The girl named an address. “Could you tell us how to get there?” George was puzzled. The address didn’t seem familiar to him – it wasn’t a street number or an avenue, but rather a “place”. George thought for a moment and tried to recall where he had noticed an address of that kind, but, for a moment, the wind and the blowing snow and the dog tugging at her leash disoriented him and his mind was blank.

“I think I can help you,” George said. “Are you from around here?” the girl asked. “I’ve lived here all my life,” George said. “I know where everything is.” “Oh, thank you, thank you,” the girl said. The man beside her, flexed his hands on the steering wheel as if he were in a hurry.

“That’s an odd address,” George said. He bent forward toward the car all shaggy with snow. For a moment, he thought of the east wind that had come out of the sunrise and, then, pivoted and he considered the four cardinal directions and the quadrants of the town that governed the numbering of streets. “Did you say ‘southwest’?” George asked. The girl produced a sliver of paper and read the address from it. “Yes,” she said, repeating the house number and the name of the place that was neither a street nor an avenue.

The wind made a taunting sound and flung some handfuls of snow between George and the girl and he thought he smelled a faint odor of alcohol in the car, something floral and sweet in the air oozing through the half-open window. “Okay,” George said. “I think I know where it is.” He imagined the streets crisscrossing under the dome of the blizzard, the landmarks entangled in pennants of blowing snow, the drifts rising like barricades in the middle of highways, semi-trucks crashed into ditches and the police cars and ambulances forging their way through the storm. “Here it is,” George said. “You’re in the wrong side of town. You have to go around the block and, then, drive four or five more blocks to the main road, the one-way and, then, take the one-way a mile, maybe, more past the stoplights to the lake and the dam. Look at the street numbers there. That will guide you to the address.” George thought of the stoplights flashing in the white torch of the wind and the frozen lake buried under ice and snow slit open here and there by the tracks of snowmobiles and the concrete wall of the dam covered with a glaze of ice. It seemed a long and improbable journey, more than a mile, almost two miles, perhaps, with the storm shoving and pulling to nudge you off track. The girl looked puzzled and so George repeated his instructions. “You need to be in the southwest part of town,” George said. “This is not the southwest.” The girl said something in Spanish to the driver. “Thank you so very much,” she told George and, then, the window ascended in its groove and some snow caked on the glass detached itself and slid down the side of the car and, then, the vehicle rocked forward, dividing the drifts under its front fender. Following his instructions, the car signaled and turned to go around the block.

George walked another block. Blown snow sprayed into his eyes and a siren sounded somewhere, the wailing tone kicked up and down by the gale. Something was bothering him. At the next intersection, he stood where the wind was blowing the snow in rising columns and looked at the street sign: it was marked “SW.” His face flushed. – Why did I tell them they were in the wrong quadrant of town? George thought. He looked down the street to where the wall of blowing snow closed the road. It occurred to him that the address that they had been seeking was only a couple blocks away, not across town on the slick, snow-clogged avenues, nowhere near the frozen lake and the dam armored in ice. – What have I done? George thought. He walked another block and the green street sign over his shoulder marking the next intersection seemed to mock him. The leash dropped through his fingers and fell into the snow at his feet and the dog dashed in tight circles around him, rejoicing in the storm. George kicked at the dog, but she pranced out of range. – What have I done? he thought again. It was astonishing to him that he had misled the people in the car. The blizzard howled and seemed to have turned the town inside-out and, perhaps, all directions were somehow reversed but the street signs confounded this theory – they marked the places where roads crossed distinctly and imperturbably: there was no doubt – he was in the southwest and had lived in the southwest neighborhood in the small city for twenty-five years and, then, with a sickening sensation, he could see in his mind’s eye the exact address that the people had been seeking -- there it was, the little lane diagonal to the avenues and streets because running parallel to the course of a river and he imagined the trees shuddering in the storm and the white trench of the frozen stream and the several houses on that road showing windows lit the color of amber and honey. – What have I done? George thought.

He turned around to make his way back to his home. How will I be punished? Surely, this kind of failing, this fundamental error will have to recompensed in some way, some sort of compensation will have to be paid or some kind suffering endured on my part – that is how George thought about the situation and his mind darkened with a sense of guilt and the storm was shut-out of his thoughts now, continuing like a brute, clockwork automaton far outside the range of his thoughts. He plodded through the drifts dragging the dog behind him. Then, his house loomed overhead.

Later that night, George was watching TV. His dog was stretched out at his feet. George’s wife was looking at Facebook on her smart-phone, sitting at the kitchen table in the other room. George had not mentioned the episode with the lost Mexicans in the car to his wife. The storm howled outside and battered the windows.

George’s wife said that more snow was predicted for the weekend. “It will be bitterly cold,” she said. “And there is supposed be another storm coming. They are predicting another eight inches of snow.”

“That’s four days from now,” George said. “That’s what they are saying. I’m getting a weather-alert on my phone,” his wife said. “This winter will never end,” George said sadly. “Another blizzard...” George’s wife repeated.

“That’s bullshit,” George said suddenly. “No one can know that,” he added. “You don’t need to get mad at me,” George’s wife replied. George interrupted her speaking loudly – “it’s all bullshit,” he said, “no one can predict the weather. No one can successfully predict anything. We just don’t know about things like that.”

“I think they can predict a storm,” George’s wife replied. “You’re naive,” George said. “You just believe whatever you’re told. You’re gullible.” “I don’t think I’m gullible,” George’s wife said angrily. “You do what people tell you to do,” George said. “You are always being misled.” “Who’s misleading me?” George’s wife asked him. “The assholes who post that shit on your phone,” George said. “Listen to me,” he repeated, “no one can know anything about anything.”

“You’re crazy,” George’s wife said.

George reached down to pet his dog. “I’m so goddamn sick of this winter,” George said. Tears glistened in his eyes.