Snow - A short story

Snow

The snow was amazing.  It swirled about the train as I tried in vain to make out any possible landmark.  I had made this trip from Halifax to Network many times before but now, coated in frigid white, the land was completely different.  It wasn’t there.  The land, the farmhouses, the trees, the sky were all the same fluorescent white.  I knew, although it hadn’t been announced yet, that the train would stop in Network.  I wasn’t getting home to Moncton tonight.

The heavy set man to my right, dressed in overalls to match his unshaven throat, agreed with my assessment.  “The storm will probably delay us,” I began, trying to use conversation to ease my tension.

“Ayah,” came his reply.  I sighed an inward sigh at the uselessness of it all and returned my gaze to the white nothingness.  I was reminded of that childhood joke where the blank piece of paper is actually a picture of a polar bear in a snow storm.  I chuckled, mostly out of nervousness.

“Looks like a bad one,” the man came around.  “We haven’t been gettin’ them bad for the past couple of winters, so I guess we had it comin’.”  He rubbed the scruff on his face and throat and turned his big face to me, as if awaiting a reply.

I started to say something dumb about the weather, when I noticed his eyes.  There was something different (no something wrong) about them.  They were a colder blue than the snow that blew around us.  The real awkwardness took me a moment longer to put my finger on.  They both didn’t point in the same direction, each sliding off to one side giving him the appearance of a human fish.  “Too bad it had to be tonight,” spilled out of my mouth like water from a gargoyle.

“Where ya from?”  His friendliness was helping me get over my surprise.  I don’t even really know why I was surprised; people everywhere have eye troubles.

“Moncton,” I said with new confidence.  “I live there, but I go to school in Halifax.”

“Well, nice to meet you,” he held out a hand with grim ground in so deep by years of hard work that no detergent has a hope.  I took it.  “I’m Nigel Foss,” he said.

“I’m David.  David Bowie,” oh why did I do that?  I’m always doing stuff like that.  But judging by the look on his face it slipped by him.  I was lucky I didn’t say, “Hi, I’m Randy Travis, nice to meet you.”

Nigel slipped his hand back into his overalls and closed his eyes, thank God.  The train clacked on, and people murmured.  Nigel snored and I sat.

About half an hour outside of Network the announcement that everyone expected finally came.  The train would be staying in Network overnight until the storm subsided.  This brought Nigel back to life, “Who cares? I live in Network,” he said.  The he reconsidered, “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.  It’s not your fault,” I said.

“Where you gonna stay?” he asked.

“I’ll get a place,” I said.

“Come on out to the farm,” his eyes rolled and almost both pointed at me at the same time.  I felt uneasy again (come into my parlour said the spider to the fly…)

“Oh, uh, I couldn’t impose.”  I tried my best not to get tangled up in his sticky offer, and to avoid his seemingly eight-eyed stare.

“No imposition.  It’s settled.  I have lots of room since the wife passed on.  It would be nice to have some company during the storm.”  I started thinking of the well know country hospitality of the area and my uneasiness passed again.

The snow subsided enough to allow me to see that his farm was huge.  Being a city boy I couldn’t tell you how many acres, but it went on for a fair bit in every direction.  The farmhouse was nice enough but it needed a coat of paint and a new porch.

We sat in front of the window in the kitchen and ate tough steak that Nigel fried with pepper, talked, and watched both the snow and the night fall.  Nigel kept looking at me with his awkward stare and then back to his potatoes.  At times, he stared at both me and them.  The potatoes hopefully had more reason to be nervous than I, but they didn’t show it.

Nigel said his wife had died of consumption.  I started to think that might have meant she consumed rat poison that he peppered her steak with.  I took a large drink of milk in an attempt to wash that thought away.  He missed her but has gotten by the past five years without her.  And he had apparently fallen in love again.  The whole time, I chewed and chewed and chewed the same piece of suet that would not go away.  Finally I spit it into my napkin and balled it up.  His new love was Cindy, too young for him he said, but he felt drawn to her, powerless to resist.  I waited for a pause in his talk and said I was tired.  He showed me upstairs to my room.

The room was the attic atop a narrow flight of stairs.  It had only one small window that looked out over the farm.  The bed was a cot, covered in quilts that looked like they had been there at least five years.  I was happy to see them, the room was freezing.  I didn’t look out the window again.  The last thing I wanted to see was Cathy come home from a trip on the moors.

I was almost asleep when I heard it.  The click of something snapping into place, like a sparkplug, or a screen window, or a … LOCK.  Nigel turned the lock on my door from the other side.  I sneaked down to the bottom of the stairs to the door and slowly tired the nob.  It slowly moved, then stopped cold.  I was locked in.

My mind raced for an explanation.  Was he scared of me?  Did he have plans for me?  Was his wife locked in another of the rooms in the house?  I became silently frantic at the bottom of the stairs.  If I banged on the door, it might provoke him.  I couldn’t fight him; one of his hands was as big as my head.  I decided there was nothing to do but wait for morning.

The sun came up and shot through the small dirty window with such intensity that I knew the sky must have cleared overnight.  Had the door unlocked itself?  It had.  I walked into the kitchen where Nigel had cooked breakfast of ham and eggs.  He had more luck with that than he had with the steak.

I sat.  I ate.  I didn’t feel threatened anymore.  Nigel made more small talk about spring coming soon and that shovelling would be gone for another year.  “We should get that snow out of the way though, before your mother comes home.”  I was legitimately confused.  “Peter,” he said.  Why was he calling me Peter?  My name was David Bowie.

“Yeah?” I half said and half asked.

“Good,” was all he said.

I walked to the front door with him and caught glimpses of the pictures in the hallway.  One I assumed was his wife, a frail blond woman.  The other was a boy of about fourteen.  Nigel walked behind me his mere presence hurrying me along.  In the porch were two shovels.  I took one and him the other.  He opened the door for me and I ran.  He was on me, but I was faster.  I chucked my shovel to lighten my load, but as I did, his came down on the back of my head.  The white snow that held my face slipped to gray and then black.

When I came to, my head was paining and my right ear was ringing.  I put my hand to my head to see if I was bleeding.  I wasn’t.  Looking around, I found myself back in the attic, probably with the door locked.  I fell asleep again. 

I awoke to find Nigel standing over my bed.  I was positive he was planning to climb in on top of me.  He was smiling, but neither of his eyes could be seeing me.  “How are you?” he asked.  “You took a nasty fall.  You really should walk more carefully when the stairs are icy.  You’re going to get me in trouble with your mother.”  I flashed an odd look, but thought better of it and erased it before he could focus on it.  Before I could say anything, he pulled a Polaroid camera from behind his back, took my picture and then left.  Oddly, all I could think about was who had a Polaroid anymore?

He seemed so convinced that I had fallen on my own that I started to have doubts that he actually hit me.  Could I have slipped?  No way.  He called me Peter.  He’s lost it.  I gotta go mister.  Thanks for the bed, but I gotta go before I’m dead.

Click.  The door opened again.  “Come to supper Peter.  You must be starving, having missed lunch and all.”  I got up, but the pain in my head made me swoon.  Nigel helped me to the table, dear sweet guy that he was.

“Pass the salt Peter.”

“The name’s David.”

“Peter, the salt.”

“David.”

“Salt.”

Pause.

His stare was focussed and his blue eyes seemed to turn to gray as I watched.  He picked up the steak knife and began poking the steak.  I passed the salt.  “Thanks Peter.”  I noticed that he’d only given me a corrugated butter knife to cut my steak with.

“When is Mother coming,” I asked.  He only looked up at me for a second and then returned to his steak.  I got up and walked out to the living room.

“Where are you going?”

“Just walking around to try and clear my head.”  In the porch, the door was locked by a deadbolt that only opens to a key.  No wonder he hadn’t bothered to follow me.  I turned back to head to the kitchen when I saw that he had taped my Polaroid face over that of the fourteen year old.  My heart began to race, there was no way I was staying here forever.

“Let me go!” I shouted into the kitchen.

“Peter, stop yelling.”

“My name is David,” I insisted, even though it was not.  “Let me go!”

He came out of the kitchen, smiling his passive smile and carrying the steak knife.  He backed me into the porch where I stood with my hands on the door.  “I understand,” he said, and he used a key from his pocket and opened the door for me.  I can still make Cindy love me, she doesn’t care how I look.”  I wasn’t curious enough to ask.  I left and walked in the cold to town, got on the train to Moncton and my ordeal was over.  If it had ever been an ordeal.  It was probably more like a weekend with a delusional, lonely man.

At least it was over until one morning over breakfast with my actual father.  I poured my milk over my Rice Crispies and read:

“Missing:  Cindy Baker.  15 years old.  Blind girl from Network, NS.  Last seen leaving Network High wearing a plaid skirt and a blue sweater.  Please call the RCMP if you have any information.”

I spilt the milk.

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