Cold Snap

By Autumn Bettinger

“Whaddya reckon, seven inches there, Bob?” Henry called over his shoulder as he leaned his shovel against the front porch. 

       Next door, Bob stood outside his garage, surveying the drifts. Thin January light nestled in the curves and crevasses of his newly-buried driveway. 

      “Yeah, I’d say about seven. You headed in, Senator?” Bob asked. 

Henry reached for his lapel to adjust his flag pin; a subconscious gesture when hearing his title. He paused. The place where his pin should be lay barren, a stretch of wool without political spangle. Henry’s fingers fumbled a moment, and a frown tucked the corners of chapped lips.

“Everything ok?” Bob asked, watching Henry scan the ground.

“Oh, sure, sure. Just seemed to have misplaced my pin.”

“Well, okay then. I’ll be blowing snow all morning. If I see it, I’ll make sure I get it back to ya.”

Henry tipped a nod to his neighbor and headed towards his car—already running and damp with defrost. 

“Appreciate that Bob, tell Helen I say hello.”

***

       Bob flipped the ignition key and grabbed the starter handle; a few short tugs and the snowblower coughed its way to a steady purr. His hands trembled. He let the blower idle while he pulled off his winter gloves. His wedding ring glinted in the frail sunlight. He imagined his finger without it—just a pale, shiny band of skin. All he and Helen had gone through—two unspeakable miscarriages, the loss of Helen’s parents, and the impending death of his own mother—he couldn’t reconcile the possible dissolution of an eighteen-year marriage. Betrayal stirred under his skin, prickling along his spine, and Bob snapped his full attention to Henry’s house. He kicked the blower into high gear.

Seven heavy inches of powder and slush, in a rapid-fire onslaught, buried Henry’s porch. Bob threw a handful of change in front of the auger and watched as a shimmer of pennies and dimes whipped holes through Henry’s windows, obliterated ceramic pots, and machine-gunned chunks out of the siding.

He took a deep breath in, smelling the cold Minnesota air, feeling the chill as it cleared his head and reinvigorated his sense of purpose. He’d been in Phoenix all week, tending to his mother. Her paper-dry hands had clung to his as she called him by his father’s name and wheezed. He hated desert air. It smelled like salt and rodent bones. Here, a man could breathe.

***

    Bob sat by the window, whiskey in one hand, Henry’s pin turning slowly in the other. He’d unearthed it that morning after Helen had left to catch her carpool. He’d gone hunting for his thermals, finding them tangled up in the laundry hamper with a week’s worth of sheets and one American flag pin.

Bob drained the whiskey and quietly set his glass down as Henry’s car pulled into view. He glanced at the clock. Helen would be home soon. 

            He rubbed at the place where his wedding band used to be.