The Sledding Hill the Town Built

He looked up the hill, and he looked at his brother, and then he turned around and looked at the road.

At me, because I’d stopped.

He had snow on his eyelashes and a runny nose, and he looked at me like a child who has been told a rule he doesn’t understand and is waiting for the grownup to explain it. Like I had taken something from him.

I put the truck in drive and I went home, and I did not cry until I was inside the garage with the door closed. Then I did, for about a minute and a half.

Then I got out, wiped my face on my sleeve, and went in to start supper, and I knew what I was going to do.

It was not a clever plan. I want you to understand that.

I did not wake up with a stroke of genius. I had been in the school office for fourteen years, and what I knew how to do was this: find the person who has the key, call them before they get busy, and be so specific about what you need that they cannot say they didn’t understand.

So Thursday at 7:10 in the morning, before the first bus, I called Lowell Pfeiffer.

Lowell is seventy-one and has been chairman of the Brockton village board since before I was married. He’s a retired grain buyer with a voice like a gravel road and a hearing aid he turns up for exactly the people he wants to hear.

He picks up on the first ring because, he says, a village chairman who lets the phone ring is a village chairman who’s about to hear a complaint.

“Lowell, it’s Shelby Rademacher.”

“Shelby. I was just thinking about you.”

“The hill.”

“The hill,” he said. “I’ve been sitting here working out whether it’s my business.”

“It’s the town’s business. It’s a hundred kids’ business. Lowell, the town needs a hill.”

“Where?” he said. Just that. No speech. “The park. By the ball diamonds. The plow’s been piling snow behind the village shop since the storm. How much is back there?”

He was quiet for maybe five seconds, which on the telephone with Lowell is long enough to cook an egg.

“About forty truckloads,” he said. “More, if you count what the school lot’s got. You want to build a hill out of street snow.”

“I want to build a hill out of street snow.”

“It’d have to be big. A hill that size, it’d need a loader at least. Three loaders. Four.”

“Gus says he can find three.”

“Gus can find six,” Lowell said. “That man knows every skid steer in the county.” Then, more slowly, “It’ll need to be packed or it won’t hold a sled. It’ll need to be wet down. You’d have to freeze it.”

“Does the village have a tanker?”

“The fire department does.”

“Lowell, can you call Craig?”

“I’ll call Craig,” he said. “You get your people.”

“I don’t have any people.”

“Shelby,” he said, “you have the whole town.” I hung up. My hands were trembling. I was holding the phone against my chest like a Bible.

By ten o’clock that morning Craig Eberhart had called me back. Craig Eberhart is our volunteer fire chief. He sells feed for a living and carries a pager in his pocket at church.