Snow Day: a Novella (2 page)

Clang, clang... Clang, clang...

It was different. It was continuous. It wasn’t the rattling trash can anymore. The sound came from a distance but it was there, and it was distinctive. I knew exactly who was standing impatiently, hip cocked and jaw set, banging on the lip of a dinner bell with her soup ladle.

Clang, clang... Clang, clang...

Tommy looked at me. He heard it too and knew what it meant.

“Your Ma’s calling, Billy.”

“Who, Tommy?”

“I... I... didn’t d-do nothing wr-wrong, Billy,” Tommy whined. “I just w-wanted to play.”

“Tommy...”

“It was ol’ George,” he finally said. “He did it. Stay away from ol’ George.” And then he started to cry again, whimpering. “I just wanted to play,” he mumbled through the tears. “...just wanted to play...”

Clang, clang... Clang, clang... Clang, clang...

I
T’S SNOWING.

The wind is picking up and the scattered flakes are swirling. Tonight’s storm is just beginning. It’s not much now, but CNN is forecasting a nor’easter. They say it should reach full strength by midnight, maybe one o’clock.

Sally dreads the snow. She’s not looking forward to an ugly morning commute, or worse, the thought of working from home; not when she’s trying to close a deal and needs face time with her client. But our boys have a different perspective. Stephen, nine, and Peter, eight, are giddy with anticipation. Not even Christmas morning holds this much excitement for them. They’re hoping for the kind of deep snow that rolls over the neighborhood in soft waves and makes everything seem clean and new and ripe for rediscovery. Above all, they look forward to a day free from the routine of school; from classes, tests and handing in homework; a day free from responsibility and accountability. Before they go to bed tonight, they will pray for a snow day.

I used to share their enthusiasm, but not anymore; not since that day when I was ten. Dr. Jeffreys keeps probing for more details, but I’ve been reluctant to share until now.

My iPhone just chimed.

The weather app has sent me a notification. It says: “Winter Warning in Effect...”

I don’t need to read the rest of the text, nor do I have to watch CNN or WNBC for storm coverage. I have my own internal barometer. You see, every time the snow falls late in the evening before a school day, the dreams begin again.

They are always the same – there’s a dark tunnel, and there’s blood, lots of blood, and someone is screaming.

God, I hate snow days.

T
OMMY SMILED AND GIGGLED
as he made snow angels with the little kids.

Bobby thought it was weird; so did I. Most kids thought Tommy was a little weird, and on that day Bobby had no patience for it.

“Tommy, what are you doing? You’re supposed to be helping us make snowballs.”

But Tommy didn’t pay Bobby any mind, or he pretended not to hear. More likely, he was lost in his own head, something I noticed Tommy did from time to time. He just lay on his back in a patch of virgin snow and continued to wave his arms, and open and close his legs, pushing aside the snow to form the impression of an angel. He had company. On either side of him were my little brother Rudy and his best buddy, Freddy Carlson, doing the same thing and giggling as well. We thought it was baby stuff. Rudy and Freddy were only six, so the snow angel thing was understandable. But Tommy was ten, like us, so we thought it was a bit strange. But then, Tommy always seemed to play better with the little kids.

Tommy was a slight boy with red hair and a freckled complexion. His close-cropped hair set off his ears and one of them, his right, seemed oddly shrunken. It made me think about my cousin with the extra toe and I remembered my mother’s admonition about such things: Never stare.

My buddy Bobby always had a bit of a short fuse, and now Tommy was about to light it.

“Hey, Tommy b–”

“Tommy, you shouldn’t do that,” Lucy said, cutting Bobby short. “You’re getting wet. You’re going to get sick. Why don’t you come help us?” Lucy always knew how to defuse Bobby’s frustrations and yet still appear to take his side. She had a way with people.

“Yeah, man,” Bobby said. “You don’t even have a coat on. That’s stupid. Quit with the baby stuff.”

“Hey, Tommy?” Lucy said. “You don’t want me to ask my Mom if we have an extra coat, do you?” She was sincere, if a little reluctant to get too entangled with the kid my brother Frank used to call “the mental case.”

Tommy said nothing, still in his own head, but Bobby snorted. “Yeah, I think pink’s his color,” and then he laughed. “That would suit him just fine. What a dork. Such a Potsie.”

Lucy gave him a shove and Bobby took the hint.

“S-sit on it and rotate, B-bobby,” Tommy said in a girlish voice, and then giggled a girlish giggle.

“Th- th- that’s all, folks,” Bobby mocked, and then tossed a handful of snow at Tommy, who simply brushed it away.

Nobody thought Tommy was really retarded or anything, despite his stutter. He went to the same public school as Jimmy Barnes, and Jimmy said he was in the same grade as me and my friends, even if he was in some of the slower classes. We just thought he was odd. Like, here it was, January, over a foot of snow on the ground, and we were all bundled head to toe in coats, scarves, snow pants, hats, hoods, gloves, earmuffs, and boots. You name it, we wore it. Our bodies were thick with it, but not Tommy. He came out to play in the snow with just his father’s oversized boots, the same threadbare jeans he wore most of the year, a red long-sleeved sweatshirt, and pulled over on top of that, a free Police Athletic League t-shirt he got at the Blackwater Founder’s Day Fair. It was his favorite, I guess. He always wore it, and typically wiped his running nose with the shirt tail or a sleeve. It was white, or used to be, with big black letters that read BLACKWATER P.A.L.

Tommy would come up to me, point to the filthy shirt and say, “Hey, look, Billy. I’m your
pal
,” and then he would laugh, always alone.

“Come on,” Bobby said. “The big kids are going to be back soon. We need to get ready. The big battle’s coming.”

This was our first major snowfall of the year and it wiped everything else away. Our parents worried about things like OPEC pushing oil prices ever higher; President Ford investigating the CIA; and guilty verdicts in the Watergate scandal. But we were oblivious to all of it.

We woke in the morning to discover deep, rolling mounds of snow covering the little town of Blackwater, New Jersey. The sky was a hazy white-gray, and as it reached down to meet the horizon line, heaven and earth were covered by the same cold blanket, broken only by the occasional barren gable, or smoking chimney, or the rare car that slowly made its way down the road in the distance.

WWDJ Radio, the inspirational station that my mother listened to, confirmed it for us. St. Mary’s Catholic Elementary School was closed and we had a snow day. We were kids; this was Nirvana.

We spent the day in drifts that nearly came to our knees; first building a teetering fortress of ice, then waging mortal combat with hard packed balls of snow until our wool gloves were soaked through and the cold needled into our fingers. There were eight of us plus Tommy when the day started.

The big kids – my brother Frank and his friends – didn’t mind competing in the icy melee with Bobby, Lucy and me. They were fourteen and we were just ten, but Frank figured it was fair enough. They didn’t even mind letting the little kids in on the fun. Rudy and Freddy were only six, but Frank confessed that the little kids always made the best targets when the snowballs began to fly.

Luckily, my friends and I were spared that
little kids
label, but it stayed with Rudy and Freddy for years. Rudy carries it still. I guess some shit just sticks with you forever.

And then, of course, there was Tommy.

“Why do we always get stuck with the little kids, and him?” Bobby said.

Tommy and the little kids ignored him. They gingerly sat up and stepped out of their snow angels, taking care not to spoil their work.

“Don’t worry about them,” Lucy said. Some strands of her blonde hair had escaped her toboggan cap and framed her face. She was pretty even then. “Just keep making snowballs.”

There was a lull in the action when Frank and his friends ran around to the other side of the block. They hoped to draw us out, to get us to follow them, but we were too smart for that. We knew that if we stayed in my backyard where we had built our snow fort, we’d be safe. As bad as it got for us in these snowball fights, there was always my mother, occasionally peeking out the kitchen window to make sure things didn’t get out of hand. On the other side of the block, out of sight from any parental gaze, the big kids could kick our asses by throwing sharp chunks of ice, or by sticking our faces in the ground and making us eat yellow snow. No thanks, we weren’t going to give up our air cover so easily. Instead, we used the opportunity to stockpile ammunition for the coming battle.

“Hey, maybe we can use the little kids for cannon fodder,” I said. “You know, put them up front like shields and stuff.”

“Quit it,” Lucy said, and tossed some snow at me.

She was one of the few who stood up for the little kids. When we were younger, Lucy would play school with them on her front porch. She pretended to be a teacher, reviewing their ABCs with them and putting them down for a nap during their pretend recess. But that was in the past. She wasn’t their playmate anymore, though she remained their defender when the price wasn’t too high. Tommy was a different story. She didn’t know how to deal with him and he made her a little uncomfortable.

“They aren’t much use to us otherwise,” Bobby said. “Jeez, their throws can’t even reach the fence.” He was talking about the fence that lined our yard along the sidewalk on Persimmons Avenue and typically gave the big kids cover.

Just then, a loose ball of snow splashed against Bobby’s navy parka, catching him by surprise. “What the hell?”

Rudy laughed. “Gotcha, you’re dead,” he said, shining his buck-toothed grin.

“Jerk-wad.” Bobby threw his snowball hard at Rudy’s head, but missed when my little brother ducked.

Lucy stepped between them. “Leave them alone, Bobby.”

“Come on,” I said. “We need to keep making more snowballs.”

“Come here.” Lucy pulled Rudy and Freddy aside. Tommy stood apart, making his own snowballs, pretending not to listen to Lucy and the little kids.

She bent over, hands on knees, to look them in the eye when she spoke to them. Even at ten, Bobby would steal looks at Lucy’s ass and that moment was no exception. I made a note to bust his chops about it later. Bobby and Lucy sittin’ in a tree...

“We need you guys for an important job,” Lucy said. She pulled Freddy’s coat closed and zipped it while she spoke, then used the corner of his scarf to wipe his running nose. “We need your help to make more snowballs before the big kids come back and murder us. Think you guys can do that?”

Lucy wasn’t kidding about getting murdered. Frank and Lucy’s older brother Carl were pretty big, even for fourteen. Together, with their buddy Jimmy Barnes from down the street, they led some nasty attacks against our fortified position between the three-foot wall of snow we built in an L shape – our fort – and the side of my garage.

Bobby and I packed snowballs and kept watch in the direction of Persimmons, while Lucy helped the little kids make more snowballs.

Then I heard it; the snake-like hiss of an irregularly shaped snowball, wet and packed hard, as it cut through the air like a missile. Bobby took one square in the back.

Carl had maneuvered around behind us and was attacking from the yard next door – the yard belonging to Tommy’s parents. We were exposed back there. Lucy, Bobby and I turned our attention to Carl and returned fire.

“Ouch!” A snowball exploded on top of Lucy’s head. It didn’t come from Carl. We looked around; another struck me on the top of my shoulder, a glancing blow. I looked up and saw him. It was crazy Jimmy Barnes. He stood right above us, on the sloped and snowy roof of our garage, firing snowballs from the armful he cradled against his chest. He must have climbed up the tree in the Carlsons’ backyard, which had branches that leaned over our garage. From there he could step onto the roof and attack from above.