The Storm: A Short Story

The storm started out as heavy rain. It was the kind of rain that blotted out all light, with thunder and theatrics that would have made any man in a more primitive society a believer in God. As the temperature plummeted and the night wore on, the rain turned to ice, and eventually to snow. When the storm broke late the following afternoon, six inches of snow had fallen on top of four inches of solid ice.

My wife said I was crazy to try to contest what had coated our driveway. She said the weatherman had predicted more to come. I was in the garage pulling on my boots, armed with a razor-sharp garden shovel. I told her that the sky was clear as far as I could see and that if there was more to come, it wasn’t coming anytime soon. I also told her it was a matter between man and nature, and that I couldn’t expect her to understand. She rolled her eyes and suggested my five-year-old son should probably join me then. She said it might be some sort of man-initiation thing. She rolled her eyes again. My son, who happened to be standing behind her, of course, couldn’t see she was rolling her eyes, and began pleading to go with me.

I started at the top of the driveway where the ice and snow was the shallowest and swung the shovel down, cutting through the snow and chipping the ice. My son stood several feet from me and swung in similar fashion his red plastic shovel that would have splintered against the ice into a million pieces if he could have swung with a quarter of the strength I did. He looked up at me, smiling and pawed his cheeks awkwardly with his mittened hands.

“We got a big job, huh, dad?”

“Yes, we do.”

We hadn’t been out but a minute yet.

“When we’re done maybe mom will make us hot chocolate.”

“When we’re done I’m sure mom will make us hot chocolate.”

“I sure like hot chocolate.”

“Me too, buddy.”

After an hour of chiseling and hacking, I was exhausted. My son was red cheeked and panting. I asked him if he’d had enough, and he shook his head and tossed the question back to me. Dark clouds had rolled in from nowhere. He looked like a cold, wet puppy dog, but there was fire in his eyes as he wielded his little shovel. I told him we’d finish clearing the path down to the street and then go inside.

“I’ll work over here, dad.” He gestured to a mound by the street.

“That’s good.”

My muscles ached, but as I watched my son hacking away furiously in the yard where the snow didn’t even need to be cleared away, I resolved myself not to be outlasted by a five-year-old. The remaining part of the path that needed to be cleared was at the foot of the driveway where the street plow had piled the snow up well over a foot. My toes felt frostbitten. My hands were blistered and chaffed from the wet gloves. But I managed to carve out a two-foot block of snow from the artic monolith. Then I worked the tip of my shovel underneath the giant hunk of ice and snow and leaned on the shovel with all my weight. I heard the ice cracking and finally felt it give. The wedge of ice rose up and then turned over into the street. My son ran over to me.

“Wow, dad! Let me help you throw it.” He jumped down the driveway to look closer at the dislodged ice chunk.

I took the massive frozen crater of ice in both hands, with my son skipping around trying to get his hands under the thing, and then heaved it over to the side of the drive. It landed with a loud thud, and my son clapped his mittens together noiselessly. I felt the first flakes of new snow.

“Get your shovel, and we’ll go in for some hot chocolate,” I said.

My son scampered up the bank of snow for his shovel. Once in hand, he turned toward our house and slipped on the ice. He went down face first onto the ice, rolled, and slid down the bank. I ran to him and scooped him up in my arms. His lip was bleeding, and he was crying. I carried him inside, and my wife washed the blood off his face and made a warm compress to stop the bleeding. I threw a couple logs on the fire and sifted out some of the ashes. When he finally calmed down, he sat on my lap in the recliner with a cup of hot chocolate. We watched the fire and the snow falling outside.

“Thanks for your help. You did a great job,” I said.

“You’re welcome.”

The snow was falling heavily now. It was falling good enough to have covered our path, and I thought if it didn’t relent in an hour or so our progress would be unnoticeable.

“Daddy?”

“What, buddy?”

“I know God made the snow so pretty and so much fun to play in.” He stopped. He was staring blankly out the window.

“Sure, bud. God made the snow pretty and fun.”

“But who made the snow hurt so much?”

The feeling was slowly returning to my toes. I rubbed my aching hands together, then picked up my mug and took a sip of the hot chocolate. My wife had made it with whole milk; it was rich and creamy.

“Daddy, do you think God made the snow hurt so much?”

The fire had roared back to life with the new logs. Its warmth and light filled the darkening room.