by Kathy Fish
The snow started late Friday afternoon and everyone struggled driving home. Cars moved funereally up the cul-de-sac, turning into driveways, into garage doors opening like mouths. It snowed through the night while the people slept and they woke to ten inches and it was still coming down, drifting and swirling now, up against the north sides of the houses and the fences and you could only see the smoke coming from the chimneys and the muffled, jaundiced light from the windows. Nobody emerged, no garage doors opened, even the children stayed inside and oh the novelty of it, everyone had prepared and bought treats and snacks and brought home stacks of DVDs from the video store and stayed in their pajamas and played board games and the parents said isn't this great, we're spending time together as a family. Patio tables resembled huge, frosted layer cakes and second story windows were blocked from the snow on the roof. Finally on Sunday just before dusk, the snow stopped and the sun shone a weary, sputtery light on the horizon and the people started to come out of their houses, thickly bundled, with their shovels and their snow blowers. They waved to each other from across the cul-de-sac and called, isn't this something? But it's good exercise! And the driveways and the sidewalks were cleared and in the morning the snowplow cleared the roads and every cul-de-sac then had its own private mountain and the children climbed it and tunneled through it and slid down it and they made forts and pummeled each other with snowballs and the brilliant sun shone strong and the people marveled at the pristine beauty of it all, of white snow against a blue china plate sky and then come Friday the clouds rolled in the forecasters broadly smiling said more was on the way and by Friday afternoon it was coming down hard, again, and the people shook their heads in line at the grocery store and at the liquor store and said things like, here we go again! And laughed as they walked away with bottles of wine and expensive liqueurs to warm the blood. Must stock up on essentials, they said. And by ten o'clock the Patterson's front door was completely blocked. Jenny Patterson phoned her neighbor across the cul-de-sac. Look out your window, she said. Can you believe this? They laughed and talked about what they were going to eat and drink that night, trading recipes. Saturday it was still snowing and the children who had siblings were fighting and the children without siblings were crabby from having no one to play with, so the parents bundled their children and told them to go outside, but stay close to the house. All the snowmen now had large, erect penises and rictus smiles on their faces. The snow was drifting as high as ten feet in some places and those who emerged to shovel only nodded to each other grimly through their balaclavas. Margaret Grayson was standing at her kitchen sink when she heard a muffled noise and looked out the window and saw her son Josh up to his neck in snow and screaming. She could not get the window open to yell out to him but sent her older son out to rescue Josh. The older son dragged a toboggan up the snowdrift, the snow coming to above his knees, lifting a leg and plunking it down, lifting plunking doggedly as Josh continued to scream and cry. The older brother stopped and buried his hands into the snow and under Josh's armpits and pulled him straight up and out of the snowdrift. One of Josh's boots came off in the snow, the brother couldn't retrieve it. He put Josh on the toboggan and pulled him by its rope down the snowdrift and back around to the front of the house.The weather repeated itself the next weekend and the weekend after that. The parents laughed and poured amber liqueur into their snifters. Let's invite the neighbors, let's feast against the winter and so they put twelve year old Annelise in charge of all the kids. The neighbors came over on snowshoes with poles in their hands and their children strapped to their backs. Inside, they shed their gear and sent all the children to the basement with Annelise, who had never been in charge of anyone besides her little brother, Cal, before. All twelve children sent to the basement and the music was turned up loud and the adults did shots and cursed the snow and Bill Watley pissed out the back door, watching to see if his yellow stream would harden into ice in mid-air.
It did not.
The snow covered the windows and blocked the front door and the adults laughed and danced and paired off while Annelise corralled the children and the babies and the toddlers in the basement. She made them all watch ``Oceans Eleven'', even the baby, propped up with pillows, and crept upstairs and stole a bottle of spiced rum and took it back down and sat in the flickering light of the big screen and took little sips every time one of the children whined and little Logan crawled on top of her when she passed out and stuck her finger in Annelise's nose and the snow continued to fall for days and they all stayed in the same house. The couples paired and re-paired and the children came up and raided the cupboards and the fridge and ate standing up, at a loss, and after awhile the snowplows didn't bother to come and the newspapers stopped the presses and the mail ceased and the cold moon rose over the wide expanse of frozen, crusted snow every night until seven months later when it had finally melted off, and the light-up Christmas deer and the light-up Christmas angels emerged whole and undamaged and Josh Grayson's boot lay on the cool, frightened grass but nobody looked for it and nobody cared.
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This story originally appeared in New South and was featured as part of the Monday Chat series with Susan Tepper on the Fictionaut blog here: http://blog.fictionaut.com/2010/11/15/monday-chat-with-kathy-fish/
It is included in my collection, TOGETHER WE CAN BURY IT (The Lit Pub, 2012)
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There's a lovely timlessness about this piece – almost fable-like. I also enjoyed how the detail in the people and in their interactions keep you believing. Very nicely done.
Balanced perfectly between almost nostalgic Americana and the end-of-world horror story, everything here is beautifully rendered, entirely credible, daring. Daring? The piece darts into Jenny Patterson and Margaret Grayson's lives, as if it had settled finally on a focus character, then moves on. The last images will stick in my mind forever. Finally, the story accurately depicts a North Dakota winter for me. The mood is festive with the first awesome blizzards, then frightened as the sky keeps falling and finally,there is no mood only claustrophobia.You're buried. You no longer believe in Spring. Kathy, you are the gold standard for story writing.
Beautifully written as always, Kathy, but I love in particular how you build the narrative up while having the characters adapt to the changes. Very well done.
Thank you Paul, James, and Susan. You make me feel really good.
Oh how beautifully realized and rendered. It was pure enjoyment reading this one. I could see it all every bit of it. Cool!
Oh yes - Great piece. Wonderful sense of the moment, Kathy. Really like your approach to phrasing in this piece.
"The snow covered the windows and blocked the front door and the adults laughed and danced and paired off while Annelise corralled the children and the babies and the toddlers in the basement."
The imagery is very direct and clear. Tangible. Good work.
Thanks, Darryl and Sam, I really appreciate it!
I love the intro...it's so very familiar and classic - the snow, waking up to it...great description.
I get a kick out of the parents in this. Great, great.
This story is lovely...descriptions (I could see it all) and the impact of the ending.
Kathy, you are a master storyteller. Not to sound all egg-heady here, but I was just rereading Faulkner's Nobel speech yesterday and within every story of yours lie 'the old verities and truths of the heart' Faulkner calls for. I thought too of Joyce's "The Dead" and not just because of all the snow. *****
Oh man, thank you Julie and Jules. I really appreciate the kind words for this odd story.
Loved this, Kathy. Reminded me of blizzards in Colorado and snow days that went on and on. And yes, people did stock up at the liquor store. It was more important than getting food. You've captured the festiveness of it...and also that payment must come due. Wonderfully wrought.
Thank you, D'Arcy!
This was totally chilling in every respect, and incredibly GOOD!!!
The way the voice rolled on with the everlasting snows...
I couldn't stop reading, was mesmerized
*
Thanks so much Susan!
Wow. "All the snowmen now had large, erect penises and rictus smiles on their faces." So much to love here, and I can't keep laughing as it is all so true! That you've taken this all the way through, the inevitability of the absurdity, makes it priceless.
Thanks so much, Rae!
What a well-written, atmospheric, and visual story. I really enjoyed this one! Well done. *
Thanks so much, Paula!
Haha! I loved this story. It was especially transcendent for me because I live in San Antonio, where it snows every other year. A tuly enjoyable read, and I agree, the story itself is remarkable.
Great to get another read of this story. Thanks, Jen!
This is a treat. The pacing is fantastic. *
Gosh, I love this story. I so enjoyed reading about the impetus for the story in your interview.
Wow. Beautiful, beautiful writing. What skill this piece shows.
amazing. so glad fnaut blog picked up on this.
Thanks Myfanwy, Katarina and Marcus. It's really great to get more reads for this so thanks to Susan as well!
Katrina, I mean. ;-)
Just found this, thanks to the interview. Truly delightful. It reminds me of the storm we had here last February... ;)
Thanks,
Bill
Thank you, Bill!
Wow. This has a tremendous rhythm and power. I could feel something moving and rolling over underneath all of this as if this was the first movement of a large, dark orchestral piece. Extremely effective. I can hardly put my finger on it, but you have done real wonders, here, with this. -- * Q
Quenby, I love this comment. Thank you.
I don't know how I missed this. I love it, right down to the lone abandoned boot.
fave
James, thanks. I'm so glad you like this story!
Kathy, like James, I don't know how I missed this one. Truly beautiful and haunting. Such mastery from sentence to sentence. Love that final image, too. And I'm a big fan of one paragraph stories, so that's how I read it.
Thanks for the kind words about this story, Andrew! I love one paragraph stories. It's possible I write too many of them, ha.
Oh I'm so glad your wonderful interview steered me to this. Amazing and terrifying in an A.M. Homes sort of way -- I love how the rhythm of the prose has a snowball effect -- and how your perfect one-word title sets this avalanche in motion.
Aw, thanks so much Sara! I'm happy to hear your thoughts on this story.
Great interview! Rushed to read the story. Love the conversational breathlessness of the story telling. Like tumbling down a seemingly bottomless steep hill on a bobsled that abruptly tosses you off.
Judith, thanks, I love this:" Like tumbling down a seemingly bottomless steep hill on a bobsled that abruptly tosses you off." Appreciate you taking the time to read my story!
Kathy, excellent pacing--with jarring images and sentences ("It did not.") which startle us like a pistol shot cracking in frigid night air. And that humdinger at the end--the fact that the grass was "frightened"--wow!
Thanks so much for the nice comments, David!
Loved this, Kathy. Great stuff!
Chris, thank you! I'm very glad you liked it!
This is really brilliant work, Kathy. Talk about the feeling of rolling (tumbling) at sonic speed toward some serious disaster, thrust from the tarp, clinging to nature somehow if you dare. How deftly you weave these wintery details into surprising places, keeping me riveted until the final words. Loved this! Definitely a fave.
Also, thanks to you and Susan for the interview!
Robert, that was exactly what I was trying to do with this story. I'm so glad it worked for you and thank you for these great comments!
Just read the interview with Susan and made my way over here. So glad because this is wonderful. I got cabin fever reading it! Great combo of humor and horror in the children scurrying up from the basement like mice to raid the cupboards while the adults pair and re-pair.
Oh, thanks very kindly, Jane!
You write this like a fairy-tale, which, of course, it is, but until now "nobody cared." This is gorgeous.
Beate, thank you so much!
The magic of the beginning cannot last. Amazing story, Kathy. *
Kim, thank you!
Terrific story, Kathy - just came to this thanks to your recent blog entry about short story month. Glad you send your readers here. This has a tense, dense feel to it, like a blanket pushing down and covering everything, with people and lives moving under it. I really like that there's actually very little about the people amongst all the descriptive parts -- but they are at the heart. Wonderful storytelling.
Big * yes!
Aw, thanks so much, Michelle, for the close read and lovely comments. I appreciate it!
magic writing.
So three years later I roll up in here and find this glorious story fresh as a snow-angel. Zounds! This is a great one!
Sally! I am just now seeing this. Thanks so much!