The Road I Plowed for My Brother in Law

Part of me wanted to take that door off its hinges. But I had a baby in the cold behind me, and anything I did there that wasn’t getting him warm was for me, not for him.

Kirsten had turned away already. She was walking back to the truck with her head down and her arms wrapped over Hank, and I went after her and opened her door and got her in.

“He didn’t mean it,” she said, staring straight ahead at the dashboard. “He didn’t. Something’s wrong with him.” She said it like she was trying to talk herself into it, and her voice broke on the last word.

People have asked me since why I didn’t call the sheriff. I understand the question. But you don’t call the sheriff on your wife’s brother for closing his own front door.

It’s his door. There’s no law against being cold-hearted at one in the morning. And the sheriff couldn’t have done anything I needed. I needed my son warm.

So I called Lonnie Fiske. Lonnie was 58 and had been the volunteer fire chief in town for as long as I’d lived in the county.

He picked up on the second ring. I told him the furnace was out and we had the baby and we couldn’t stay where we were. I didn’t tell him about Darrell.

I didn’t have to explain why I was calling at one in the morning instead of knocking on a relative’s door. Lonnie had been around too long to ask a question like that.

“Station’s open,” he said. “We’ve had the cots up since suppertime. Where are you?” I told him. “Stay put a minute,” he said.

“Get yourself out to the blacktop and I’ll meet you at the corner. You follow me in. Don’t you try that highway alone.”

Lonnie was waiting at the corner in the department’s pickup with his flashers going.

He flashed his headlights once when he saw us and pulled out, and I stayed close enough behind him to see his taillights and no closer.

We did the six miles into town at twenty miles an hour, and I don’t think I took a full breath until I saw the water tower.

The station sat on the main street across from the grain elevator. Lonnie took us into the meeting room on the side, where they hold the pancake breakfasts, and it smelled like diesel and burnt coffee.

There was a row of army cots along the wall and a card table with a coffee maker on it. Lonnie kept the radio room next door with the door half open.

An old couple was already there, asleep on two of the cots. Lonnie told me later they were Vern and Marlys Olson from north of town.

Their power line had gone down at suppertime, and their son had driven them in before the worst of it.

Lonnie set two cots side by side for us at the warm end of the room, near the heater. He brought three wool blankets from a cabinet that said “Disaster Supply” on it in marker.

Then he stood there with his hands on his hips and looked at Hank, who was still tucked against Kirsten’s chest, and his whole face went soft.

“Well,” he said quietly. “Look at you, mister. You picked a night for it.”

We lay down with Hank between us. Kirsten on one cot and me on the other, our arms over him like a little roof. He was warm now.