The Pickup List and the Blizzard

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The drive back was easier, because the wind was behind us and because I was not alone. Hunter appointed himself chief pole counter.

He sat up in the second row and called out every pole as it came out of the white, and when he lost count, Mason helped him.

Kaylee Berg sang to Ava. I do not know what the song was. Something from the radio, I think, something about a girl on a Saturday night, with all the words changed to be about a blizzard.

Ava laughed until she got the hiccups. Tyler did not sing, but somewhere around pole sixty I looked in the mirror and saw that he was smiling.

It was getting toward dusk when I turned in at our place. The wind was still pushing the snow sideways across the yard.

But Norm had bladed the whole driveway twice and the yard light was on, and it lit up that swirling snow like the inside of a snow globe.

I pulled up as close to the porch as I could. I got out and came around and opened the back door, and the wind tried to take it out of my hand.

One by one they climbed down, Mason first, then Kaylee, then Hunter, then Tyler, each of them squinting into the snow and holding on to their backpacks.

Ava came last. She did not jump down. She held out her mitten, the pink one, and I took her hand, and we walked to the porch together with the others in a line in front of us like ducklings.

Norm was standing in the open door with the kitchen light behind him. “Well,” he said, looking at them. “I hope somebody here likes chili.”

Five hands went up.