The Fifth Snowman in the Front Yard

The first one

I put my parka on over my pajamas. I put on my Sorels and my work gloves, the leather ones with the lining worn thin, and a stocking cap of Jace’s that was too small for me. I turned on the porch light, because I couldn’t see a thing without it.

I started on the side yard, where nobody would be walking. I’d learned that as a kid on my grandpa’s place: if you roll a snowball across the front yard, it picks up the dead grass and the leaves underneath, and your snowman ends up with a brown stripe around his middle.

So I rolled all the bottoms on the side yard, where the snow was deepest under the spruce, and then I pushed them around the corner of the house into a row along the front walk.

The first bottom took me twenty minutes. I had to stop twice and lean on it with my whole weight. By the time I got it into place, my back was soaked under the parka, and it was thirty-one degrees out.

I made Jace’s first. I made it tallest. When I stacked the middle onto the bottom, I had to roll it up a board I’d leaned against the base, like a ramp, because I couldn’t lift it. My grandpa used to do that with hay bales onto the flatbed.

The head I could lift. I set it on and stood back, and it was taller than me by a couple of inches.

Jace is ten. He’s going to be taller than me someday soon. I wanted him to see that coming.

The warm water trick

The second one leaned. I’d set the middle a little off, and the whole thing started to tip toward the street like it was trying to leave.

I went inside, very quietly, and filled the mop bucket with warm water from the kitchen tap. Then I came back out and poured some along the seams between the balls, and packed fresh snow into the wet spots with my hands.

Warm water on snow at thirty-one degrees turns to ice in about ten minutes. It glues a snowman together like mortar. My grandma taught me that, the winter I was seven, when my snow fort kept caving in.

So Kenzie’s snowman stood up straight. It was a little shorter than Jace’s. It had a slight tilt in the head that I left there, because Kenzie always tilts her head when she’s listening.

I looked at the clock through the window when I went in for more warm water. It was ten after four.

That was when I noticed Earl’s kitchen light was on.