The Thirty One Driveways on Haskins Road

The town truck

At nine-forty, I heard the town truck coming.

You hear a town plow on the Tug Hill before you see it, the big diesel and the chains and the scrape of the steel on the road.

It came over the rise from the north, the big orange ten-wheeler, front plow up, the wing down on the right side, pushing the banks back.

Winging back. Once the storm is over, in broad daylight. That is the right time to do it.

Gordie was driving. I could see him in the cab.

He came down to the first drive, Alton’s, and I watched him see Alton standing at the end of it with his shovel.

Alton did not wave. Alton did not move. He just stood there, seventy-four years old, and looked up at the cab.

The wing came up. Gordie lifted it clean over Alton’s drive mouth, the way you are supposed to, and dropped it again on the far side.

The next drive, the mother and son. Mother and son with their shovels, not moving. The wing came up. Then down again past the drive.

Lavern. The wing came up.

It went that way down the whole road. Every drive.

Every person standing there with a shovel in the sun, not saying a word, not shaking a fist, not doing anything but standing. And every time, Gordie lifted the wing.

He did not miss a single one. He is a good driver. I said that before and I meant it.

Fern’s drive

When he came to Fern’s drive, with the empty kitchen chair at the mouth and the shovel leaning on it, the truck slowed down. Then it stopped.

It sat there in the road with the diesel idling. I could see Gordie in the cab, looking at that chair. He sat there a long time. A minute, maybe more.

Then the door opened, and Gordie climbed down out of the cab.

He walked over to the end of Fern’s drive. Everyone up and down that road was watching him. He stood beside the kitchen chair.

There was a little ridge of snow across the mouth of her drive, maybe eight inches, the leftover from his front plow on the regular pass.

Gordie picked up the shovel that was leaning on the chair. And he shoveled that ridge. By hand.

Every bit of it, down to the gravel, while thirty-some people stood at the ends of their driveways and watched him do it.

It took him maybe five minutes. When he was done, he leaned the shovel back against the chair, exactly where it had been. He did not look around. He climbed back up in the cab.

And he drove on down the Haskins Road and lifted the wing at every drive, all the way to the turnaround, and back again.