by Daniel Picker
There were three houses on the road I still needed to deliver the paper to, with the news of that winter day; some of the remaining houses waited on the opposite side of the road, and one awaited much further up the hill and further from home. I continued pedaling through the quiet white world, which I had solely to myself; this road was not busy with traffic, and I very rarely heard behind me the muffled tires of an approaching station wagon. I turned right and headed across the road that evening.
After tossing one paper on a broad shadowed porch, I pedaled back down the drive and across the street of the road where homes stood on both sides. The lawns were mostly flat near the curb, but several had long, broad slopes up from the sidewalk and toward the front porch where a sheltered, shadowed alcove blocked the cold air.
I rode back down a sloping driveway and pedaled up the road to the most distant houses, several on this side, and one on the other. This was my least favorite part of my route; Clover Landing Road rose steadily as a long incline. The homes sat far back from the road across broad, sloping lawns. Once I reached the top of the hill, I rode back down the slope after I crossed the street again before I arrived to the next house near the corner of Clover Landing Road, where I rode up a driveway to the sidewalk again, then up the walk and then up a short, steep, snow – covered slope, where I tossed another paper under the porch.
Then I wound down from the porch over the snowy grass and over toward a stone side path of the neighbor’s. The snow mostly covered the stones, which were like coarse, round plates a monster might grovel over, but I pedaled over them toward the back porch and the back door beside where a dull metal milk box stood where I left the bundled newspaper. Then it was down that neighbor’s driveway to the side street since that house was right on the corner.
I had just three houses more to deliver the paper to this early freezing and snowy evening. I rode over the snow – covered grey – white macadam of the street, up driveways and sidewalks before tossing the paper under the porch roofs and onto the coarse, hairy, brown mats. The snow was dry and packed down in places on the street where cars had driven, so I could still get some traction with my knobby tires.
With just one more house to deliver to, I thought I’d try not just tossing the newspaper on the front porch under the roof, but collecting too. The snow filled the street now and covered driveways and sidewalks; my bicycle tires still dug into the snow and gripped the macadam, and sent flakes flying behind me, but it was getting tougher to pedal through the snow. My fingers felt so cold in my mittens. The power of the storm seemed to be increasing; it was more difficult to see ahead through the grey and white snowy sky that seemed indistinguishable from the white shrouded trees and earth.
A stone house stood with its second story lights on in the windows; the grey house sat set back from the street and sidewalk, before the end of the street where it curved toward the last road where I had to pedal uphill toward home over the second-to-last road to cross.
Here, I stopped by the stone steps just below the window lit above and decided to ring the bell after parking my bike. I huddled under the porch roof and watched the evening light dwindle and the flakes dawdle down the dark sky. The winter evening had become just a half hour from winter night. I could hear the music from the opening of The Lawrence Welk Show from the television inside the house.
After a short second ring, I heard a man’s voice call from above me, “What do you want?”
“Collecting for The Evening Bulletin,” I called back.
“Not tonight you’re not!” he gruffly insisted.
Chastened, I dropped the bundled paper on the mat, and hurried two steps back to my bike, swung my leg over as I gripped the handgrips and began the final pedal toward home. Then after crossing another usually busier road and hearing the muffled sound of another station wagon in the distance approaching, I knew I had nearly reached the crest of our hill.
I thought I’d try one more house just a few blocks from my house. This house was long and across Woodrow Road but had a long, broad, deep, and low porch below which I could pedal. I felt so cold now and the winter evening sky turned darker as I pedaled up the driveway, then down the s-curve of the walk. Underneath the long, broad porch, I felt sheltered from the snow and I parked my bike under the porch too; this home was not an old Victorian, but a Mediterranean mansion instead. I rang the front doorbell and soon heard footsteps shuffling inside and then the porch light went on, and a genial middle-aged man answered, “Yes?”
“I’m collecting for The Evening Bulletin,” I said, “Sir” and handed him a cold, folded paper.
“Oh?”
I saw over his shoulder mounted on the wall what looked like the brown, furry, antlered head of an antelope.
Once he opened the door, I asked, “Is that real?”
“Yes it is; I’ve hunted on safari in Africa, would you like to come in? You must be very cold.”
He held open the door for me, and I said, “Thanks,” with a scratchy throat. I didn’t wish to impose, and my question, not intended to gain an invitation, had led to his invitation. I noticed the white and black marble squares of the foyer floor.
“Why don’t you have a seat in the living room to your right as I try to recall where I set my wallet?”
I looked to my right, walked under the alcove and saw before me a large white polar bear rug stretched out across the center of the room. His large head with dark eyes looked right at me. He did not seem frightening, but rather lonely. Since all the big, winged chairs and the long couch sat against the far walls of the deep room, I sat down on the floor beside the bear. Off in the distance I heard voices mumbling, sounding like a young woman’s voice and a man’s voice intermingling.
Soon the man of the house returned with a strikingly beautiful young woman beside him; she appeared in a tight tweed skirt below a cream – colored blouse the color of the tulip poplar blossoms in spring. I could not take my eyes off her.
“You can touch him; he won’t bite,” the man said as he returned to the room.
Then he looked at me curiously and asked, “What’s your name?”
“Billy,” I said.
“Where do you live?”
“Two blocks down the street on Buttonwood.”
“Oh, I used to work with your father at RCA,” he added.
“Really?”
“You look a lot like him.”
The young woman chimed in, “I went to high school with your older sister; we graduated last year; I’m home from school in Michigan. I’m Alison; is your sister home yet?”
“No, she is studying abroad in Russia this winter.”
I did feel heartened and indebted to her father for his remark. I felt at home in his living room and time seemed to stand still; then I remembered that one of my older sisters was friends with one of his daughters.
“How much do we owe?” he asked.
“Five dollars for two weeks.”
He handed me a ten-dollar bill, and then said, “Keep the change.”
“You’re my last house; thanks. It feels nice and warm in here.”
I reluctantly zipped up my jacket after stuffing the big bill in my bag and turned toward the door, which he opened for me.
“Take care; goodnight.”
“Bye,” Alison called.
I walked out onto the big open porch, pulled on my mittens, grabbed the handlebars, wheeled my bike off the porch back to the curving walk, swung my leg over and set out toward home.
I approached the top of our hill and reached the cross street, Tulip Poplar Avenue.
Closer to home, on Tulip Poplar Avenue, the snow filled the street and trees and continued to fill the deep, grey, cold night winter sky with flakes.
All kids enjoyed omnipotent winter; this, our first blizzard, was the great equalizer that put boys on an equal plane with adults.
I pedaled passed the same stop sign on my left where we had hitched rides on the back bumpers of cars and where my schoolmates had snowballed the passing vehicles. I slowed and wondered how slippery our gently curving and sloping hill would be. My white canvas bag seemed light, all but empty of newspapers. The white canopy of trees with all their limbs and thinner branches and twigs lined with several inches of white snow arching over our avenue rested above. The scene was intricate with the myriad snow – lined limbs, more remarkable than any cut out snowflake the girls made in school. The pale limbs of the four giant sycamores piled and lined with white snow; “buttonwoods” Mom called them, crossed over from the right side toward one lone, towering buttonwood on the left, and white-lined maples and oaks too stood as grey yet graceful sentinels still and cold, forming an intricate white tunnel of silence.
I recalled standing under that one sycamore halfway down the hill on my left, the stately tree we often overlooked since it was below a snow-covered, steep slope that only older boys climbed in other seasons to cut through the neighbor’s back driveway to play basketball behind their large white clapboard corner house that took up the whole block. The previous winter, one Saturday, I stood there, below that steep side slope by my father as we walked back up the hill with sleds, under bright morning blue winter sky, a tableau or tapestry of father and son.
This night too, no cars’ tire tracks were marred by grey – black marked the snow, marking grey dashes up the curving hill. This night, no sledders enjoyed the hill. The hitchhikers back on the street above had long run home. I was alone. However, that winter morning a year back, my father smiled to me with both of us together under the winter sky, both pale grey and bright, light blue as sunlight shone on patches of snow above us on the pale, tan sycamore trunks and limbs before us on the snow-laden, white earth.
This night, I could hear only silence as I remembered then. The sky grew a deep, pewter grey-black, past dusk and the wind blew cold, just stirring the limbs. I stood over my bike and remembered.
This night, our scrawny, tall Christmas tree from the local firehouse already leaned beside the front door; I saw the green, shadowed cone-shaped conifer leaning near the windows beside the front door and saw the warm light of the living room and dining room windows, so I knew Mom must be home inside preparing dinner. Later, Mom and I would bring the tree in and we would all decorate it, usually over-decorate it, so that it nearly tottered and swayed from side-to-side in its red and green metal stand. We also lit Hanukah candles in memory of Dad and that story he told us of the ancient miracle when the oil burned for eight nights.
As I stood over my bike and the miraculous snow fell even harder, filling the winter sky, and transforming the earth to this peaceful scene, I reached to my left with my mittened hand and scooped snow from the overhanging bough of a tall pine, then opened my mouth and bit the handful of snow, just as our dog sometimes did. The cold, soft snow soothed my burnt tongue. Then I began a slow descent of our curving hill, first hugging the side where Dad and I once walked up together after we had sledded down together. Then, I turned at an angle and coasted freely down the center of my street. The pale arms of the trees stood above me and before me; the snow laced the limbs of the sheltering trees here and further down the slope, above our old, grey clapboard house halfway down my home street.
As I rode slowly down our curving hill, I recalled when we had sledded that last winter. I smiled to myself as I remembered my younger brother and I overly bundled up under layers of clothes, so much so that we nearly could not move our arms freely when we first went out to sled, and we rushed back in to remove one sweater each underneath our jackets. Then we dashed outside again as we were soon overheated; then we rushed out into the new fallen snow.
I remembered when I began to sled down my hill the winter before. I sledded joyfully freely through low wind down the center of the street and relished the cold wind and snow in my face. Then, that last winter, I walked back up the hill and joined my father, and we walked back up the hill with our sleds. But after that last winter, my father would leave the house, and my life and our family would never be the same. But I relished this reverie of winter as I glided down the wintry hill on my bike below the snow-laden, sheltering cathedral of the trees.
