Snowstorm

Built off a writing exercise in my fiction class, possibly to be submitted in this revised form as my first piece of the semester for workshop!  I feel a little Stephen King-ish with this one, ha.  Enjoy the snow!

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Snowstorm

It had been snowing for weeks.  Night and day were distinguished only by the shifting shades of gray in the sky, the timed on and off of the orange streetlights overhead.  Schools were closed indefinitely and children celebrated in the streets for the first three days of the onslaught.  On the fourth day, the skies grew darker and the storm dumped an extra two feet of snow on top of the solid four-foot base.  That was when the parents started keeping the kids inside.

 At the beginning of the second week of the storm, the roads were impassable and the governor declared a state of emergency.  Not that many people heard this news – the power had been out since the fourth night and even the best-prepared had not planned on being locked in their homes for this long.  Water froze in the pipes of the inexperienced and burst in shards of ice and metal.  Oil burners were dangerously close to empty in too many homes, after a long winter of battling tundra-like temperatures, trying to keep the wind from exploiting every window pane, every vent, every crack under the door.  Old sweatshirts and beach towels were stuffed around each entrance and exit to keep the same from happening again. 

Bonfires were common in living rooms and on back decks, resulting in at least one destroyed home on Greene Street.  The snow disappeared around the property for a good six hours, only to be replaced by fresh flurries on the bones of the mother, father, and three sons that had tried to burn the eldest boy’s lacrosse equipment with too much accelerant and no regard for fire safety.  No one left their homes to fight the flames or bury the dead.  The snow took care of both duties for the shivering residents, locked in their icy prisons.

Icicles began to form in attics, the result of wet snow dripping through roofs in desperate need of a replacing, a task that would have, otherwise, waited until spring.  Walls collapsed and entire roofs vanished.  Left camping out under an unforgiving sky, entire families woke up buried alive, or with fingers and toes so blue, they would never work again.  Holes appeared in the growing snow drifts in every backyard, a place to keep the milk cold and the coldcuts ready for whenever school would begin again.  Everyone started to pray for school to start again.

By the first full month of snow, even the bravest of the families stopped trying to fight the assault and retreated inside, for good.  No man or woman set foot aside, their shovels forgotten in the ruined garages and rising banks, their gas-powered snowblowers empty and idle.  The children cried for hot meals, for cartoons, for the chance to run around with their neighborhood friends and build snowmen to tempt the gods.  Every time, their parents said no.

But the children, as the parents of the community had so often been warned, were ingenious.  They found ways to slip out of their homes, sometimes after their bedtimes and sometimes in the middle of a white-washed day, hardly leaving a disturbed dishrag to guard the door or little footprints to be spotted by the adults who peeked from behind their heavy curtains.  Seemingly impervious to cold, the children would engage in snowball fights and make snow angels until they were sure they’d get caught.  And then, not long after their parents stopped going out, the kids stopped coming in – not when they were told to do so, anyway.  Canned goods for dinner and sleep in their own beds could only happen at home, but the rest of the day was dedicated to defeating the cold in the only way they knew how: play.

Without much more than a few whispered plans, all the kids on Greene Street clambered out of their homes in town at dawn.  They made the trek out into the forest that their parents were far too cowardly to undertake, climbing mountains of snow at least a dozen feet high, passing tree branches that had once been far out of reach to even the best climbers on the block.  A few of the kids sneezed and stumbled on their way, suffering from the colds that plagued the newly snow-bound area.  Little hands helped friends back to their feet and rescued the fallen from the soft snow drifts that tried to swallow them whole.  The kids moved farther from town and deeper into the woods.

At the head of the pack strode ten-year-old Juggler, nicknamed thus because of his penchant for keeping almost anything flying expertly through the air in a perfect arc, the oldest of the children who gathered in the forest clearing.  He wasn’t teased for his talent, per se, but there were always going to be whispers about kids with even the most useless adult abilities.  It didn’t help that Juggler was also the new kid in school – his family had only just settled down that fall, at the beginning of his fifth grade year.  Before coming to town, they had traveled the country with a small circus.  His father was an acrobat.  No one knew what his mother could do.

There were about two dozen children puttering around in the untouched snow in the forest, tumbling around as they weren’t allowed to on Greene Street, and they fell into a loose assembly before Juggler.  Keeping five packed snowballs passing from hands to sky, Juggler merely gave a nod, and the children went to work.  It had been snowing for weeks, and the only logical activity was to build an igloo.

It took a good amount of debate before construction could begin.  Some kids began crafting perfect cubes for the base, while others called for rectangles.  As the day wore on, still others simply disappeared into the snow drifts, ten feet down and drowning.  The work pressed on, after Juggler had pointed to the rectangular blocks and gestured for the construction of the base.  The igloo, it was clear, was meant to be something special – an icy home, about twenty feet in diameter, crafted of a hodge-podge of shapes and snow and snapped tree branches from the evergreens all around.  None of the kids knew, exactly, why they kept building, climbing higher and higher as they approached the summit, careful to lay each snow brick where it would hold their weight this high in the air.  But they kept at it, as dawn became time for cartoons, then the clouds began to darken towards lunch time, then snack time.  No one missed the cans of soup, all nasty adult flavors with names like sirloin burger and chicken dumping.  Not one of the parents had thought to stock up on mac and cheese or chicken with stars.  The children kept building, if only to escape the Vick’s and rough tissues awaiting their colds at home.

The hero of the day was Juggler, which became clear from the very first moment he retreated into the trees and returned with his favorite sled full of expertly sculpted and leveled snow blocks.  Balanced on half-complete rows of bricks, he would juggle his handiwork high into the air, laughing when the others gasped at his might.  Already, it seemed, his skill was legend, even in a culture with such a short history with snow.  Armed with his father’s prized croquet mallet, Juggler thwacked ice and snow into place, filling holes and reprimanding the others for gaps in the construction.  The igloo rose higher, cresting the tops of the trees.

As the skies grew dimmer, streaks of night creeping into the shadows, a few of the braver parents began to congregate at the edge of the wood.  One mother held her breath at the snowy monster looming above the backlit trees; a father cursed under his breath.  “What are they doing?”  “What’s going on?”  “What in hell is that thing?”

At a loss, the parents froze amongst the thin trees near the start of the forest.  They could still see the top of the igloo, some of their children scurrying busily to and fro.  “Dinner!” they called out, trying to keep the panic out of their raised voices.  “Dinnertime, kids!  Come on back now!”  There was nothing else to do but try and lure them back home with promises of Spaghetti-O’s and cookies for dessert.  Juggler didn’t even have to shake his head.  The children kept working, intent on defeating the snowy winter world they were now forced to inhabit.

The igloo mocked the rising snow drifts as the steady flurry of precipitation grew thicker, more constant, once again on the offensive.  The sky darkened, deep purple, black, and the children met in the very middle of the igloo’s dome, staring at each other for a moment before grinning at their ingenuity.  The snow had not yet risen above the solid base.  Maybe they could win yet.  Maybe that was the music of an angelic harp on the breeze.  They climbed so high, they thought themselves very near Heaven, and they knew that what they had done was good.  There could be no time-out for this craft project, no reprimand for staying out too long or too late.

Juggler climbed to the top and hopped up and down on the roof twice, to test the hold.  Seemingly satisfied, he glanced over the curved edge of the igloo, then glanced up at the sky.  Snow collected in his eyelashes and eyebrows.  He looked both very wise and very frightening when, as he looked back at the other children, he pronounced, “We’re not high enough.”

Who knew when the snows would end?  Who knew if spring would ever come again?  Juggler’s desire for triumph led the children towards the night sky.  They would touch the clouds.  They would see the stars again.  Tomorrow morning, maybe, they could play in the sun.  What better place had they to live, but the igloo to Heaven in a world of eternal winter?