The Pickup List and the Blizzard
The evening
I had put the chili on before I left, the way my mother taught me to do any time weather was coming.
There was a pan of cornbread, too, and a gallon of milk, and the box of saltines Norm is always telling me we will never finish.
We got them out of their snow pants and lined up five pairs of boots on the rug by the furnace register to dry. I called Mrs. Kemp first, like I promised.
Then I called Mark Berg on his cell phone, and he was so relieved he could hardly talk, and I called Tyler’s mother at the nursing home desk and asked the girl to give her the message.
Then I tried Brittany. Her phone went straight to voicemail.
I stood in the hallway a long minute trying to think of what to say. In the end, I kept it short. “Brittany, it’s Sherry.
“Hunter and Ava are at the farm with me and they’re warm and fed and fine. Dustin said yes. Don’t drive until the road is open. We’ll be right here.”
After supper Norm got out the old Uno deck that has been in the drawer since Dustin was a boy and is missing the green seven. They played for two hours. Hunter cheated, and everybody knew it, and nobody minded.
Tyler finally talked. He wanted to know if we had cows, and Norm told him we had a hundred and forty head, and Tyler wanted to know if they were cold.
Norm got his coat and boots and took Tyler out on the porch for exactly one minute so he could hear the cows bawling down in the windbreak.
“They’re all right,” Norm told him when they came back in, both of them white with snow. “They’ve got their backs to the wind and plenty to eat. Cows are smarter than people think. They’ll stand together all night and keep each other warm.”
Tyler thought about that for a while. Then he went and sat next to Hunter on the floor, closer than he had been sitting before.
Ava’s hand
Around nine I got out every quilt in the house.
My mother’s double wedding ring quilt. The Lone Star my aunt Ruth pieced the winter she was seventy-four.
The flannel rag quilt I made for Dustin when he went to college, which he left behind because he said it was too nice to take to a dorm. Two afghans. All the pillows from the beds.
I made them a nest on the living room floor in front of the television, and they lay down in a row like pencils in a box. Mason fell asleep in about four minutes.
Kaylee read a library book with a flashlight until it fell on her face. Hunter lay on his back and told Tyler everything he knew about trucks, which is a great deal, because his father drives one.
Ava did not go to sleep. She lay on her side at the end of the row with her eyes wide open, watching the windows shake.
“Grandma,” she whispered. “Is Mama scared?”
I got down on the floor next to her. It is not as easy as it used to be for me to get down on a floor. My knees told me about it.
“Your mama is at work taking care of old people who need her,” I said. “She’s warm and she’s safe, and she knows exactly where you are. And when the plows open the road, she’s going to come get you.”
“Are you scared?”
“No,” I said. “Not one bit.”
She looked at me a long time, the way little kids do when they are deciding whether to believe you. Then she pulled her hand out from under the quilt and put it in mine.
“Stay till I’m asleep,” she said.
“I’ll stay as long as you want.”
So I sat on the floor with my back against the couch and my knees aching and her little hand in mine. Her fingers were warm, and they still had a little cornbread in the creases.
The wind went around the house looking for a way in. The furnace kicked on and off. Norm turned off the television and sat in his chair in the dark, not saying anything, just keeping watch.
Ava fell asleep about nine forty. She did not let go of my hand. I did not take it back.
I thought, sitting there, about the line through my name. I thought about how easy it would have been, back in October, to pick up the phone and say a lot of things I could never unsay.
I thought about my mother, who used to say that you do not have to win a thing to be right about it. Then I stopped thinking and just held on.