Nick heads downstairs. It’s midmorning, and his grandmother, father, and mother huddle around the kitchen table where the pecan rolls flow and the dominoes are already getting worn down to little Chiclets. Outside, the cold dips well below bitter. To counter the polar north winds pouring through the cedar-sided walls, Eric Hoel has cranked up the old propane space heater. There’s a fire blazing in the fireplace, food enough to feed the five thousand, and a new TV as big as Wyoming tuned to a football game no one cares about.
Nicholas says, “Who’s up for Omaha?” There’s an American Landscapes exhibit at the Joslyn Museum, only an hour away. When he pitched the idea the night before, the old folks seemed interested. Now they look away.
His mother smiles, embarrassed for him. “I’m feeling a little fluish, honey.”
Hs father adds, “We’re all pretty cozy, Nick.” His grandmother nods in woozy agreement.
“’Kay,” Nicholas says. “Heck with you all! I’ll be back for dinner.”
Snow blows across the interstate, while more is falling. But he’s a midwesterner, and his father wouldn’t be his father without putting virgin snow tires on the car. The American Landscapes show is spectacular. The Sheelers alone send Nick into fits of jealous gratitude. He stays until the museum kicks him out. When he leaves, it’s dark and the drifts swirl up above his boots.
He finds his way back onto the interstate and creeps east. The road is whited out. All the drivers foolish enough to attempt travel cling to one another’s taillights in slow procession through the white. The rut Nick plows has only the most abstract relation to the lane beneath. The shoulder’s rumble strip is so muffled by snow he can’t hear it.
Under a viaduct, he hits a sheet of frictionless ice. The car slaloms sideways. He surrenders to the freestyle slide, coaxing the car like a kite until it straightens. He flips his high beams on and off, trying to decide which is less blinding against the snowy curtain. After an hour, he has gone almost twenty miles.
A scene unfolds in the snow-black tunnel like a night-vision clip from a cop documentary. An oncoming eighteen-wheeler jackknifes into the median and swings around like a wounded animal, popping up on Nick’s side a hundred yards in front of him. He swerves past the wreck and slides off onto the right shoulder. The right rear of the car bounces off the guardrail. His front left bumper kisses the truck’s rear tire. He skids to a stop and starts shaking, so hard he can’t steer. The car edges itself into a rest area crawling with stranded motorists.
There’s a pay phone in front of the toilets. He calls the house, but the call won’t go through. Night before Christmas Eve, and phone lines are down all over the state. He’s sure his parents must be worried sick. But the only sane thing to do is curl up in the car and sleep for a couple of hours until everything blows over and the plows catch up with God’s shit fit.
He’s back on the road a little before dawn. The snow has mostly stopped, and cars creep by in both directions. He crawls home. The hardest part of the drive is climbing the little rise at the end of the interstate exit. He fishtails up the ramp and turns onto the road back to the farm. The way is drifted over. The Hoel Chestnut appears from a long way off, piled up in white, the only spire all the way to the horizon. Two small lights shine from the house’s upstairs windows. He can’t imagine what anyone is doing up so early. Someone has waited up all night for word of him.
The road to the house is piled high in snow. His grandfather’s old truck-plow is still in the shed. His father should have run it down and back at least a couple of times by now. Nick fights the drifts, but they’re too much. He leaves the car halfway up the drive and walks the last stretch to the house. Pushing through the front door, he bursts out singing. “Oh, the weather outside is frightful!” But there’s no one downstairs to laugh.
Later, he’ll wonder whether he knew already, there in the front doorway. But no: He must walk around to the foot of the stairs where his father is lying, head downward and arms bent at impossible angles, praising the floor. Nick shouts and drops to help