The Road I Plowed for My Brother in Law

She’d said, “He’s busy, it’s calving prep, it’s whatever,” and let it go. She let a lot go for her brother.

Around five, Lonnie came out of the radio room with two cups of coffee and sat down on the empty cot across from me.

He handed me one. He looked over at Kirsten and Hank sleeping, and then he looked at me for a long time.

“Your truck came in from the east,” he said. “From the Moe place.” He didn’t say it like a question. I didn’t answer. He nodded slowly and blew on his coffee.

“Well,” he said. “I’ve known Darrell since he was in diapers. That’s not like him. I’m not telling you it’s all right. I’m just telling you that’s not like him.”

“It was like him tonight,” I said.

“It was,” Lonnie said. “Tonight it was.” He drank his coffee.

“Wade, I’ve been on this department thirty-one years. People do the worst thing they ever did on the worst night they ever had. Most of the time, the worst night was already going on before you knocked.”

We spent two nights at the station. Friday was nothing but white. You couldn’t see the elevator across the street.

Lonnie and two of his firemen took turns sleeping on the couch in the radio room, and Arlene sent over a roaster of chili at noon and a pan of bars at supper.

Vern Olson, the old man on the other cot, turned out to have farmed north of town for fifty years.

He held Hank for an hour on Friday afternoon while Kirsten slept, sitting in a folding chair with the baby along his forearm the way you’d carry a bum calf.

He sang to him in Norwegian, an old table prayer his mother used to say.

Friday evening Kirsten sat on the edge of her cot with the phone in her lap. “I don’t understand it,” she said. “Wade, I don’t. He taught me to ride a bike. He drove me to every basketball game my senior year because Dad’s back was out. He’s not like this.”

She looked up at me. “Don’t do anything to him. Please. Whatever you’re thinking.”

Friday night the wind started to ease, a little at a time. By midnight you could see the streetlight on the corner. By three you could see the elevator.

Lonnie came out of the radio room at four and said the county had called.

The highway department was sending the big trucks out on the state roads at daylight, and the county wanted every grader running by six.

I kissed Kirsten and put my hand on Hank’s head for a second. He had Arlene’s blanket tucked under his chin.

Then I put on my tan insulated coat and my stocking cap and walked the four blocks to the county shop through snow up past my knees.

My grader was a big old yellow county machine with a heavy plow blade on the front for the deep stuff.

My route that winter was 38 miles of township and county gravel west and north of town. Nobody tells you what order to take it in. You know your roads.

The way the road runs, the first two miles west of the blacktop run to Darrell’s approach and then go on another two miles to our place.

If you’re coming from town, Darrell’s stretch is the first thing you hit. You can’t plow to my house without plowing past his.