Bits of ice were steadily hitting the ground when he finally
parked the car. He sighed and blew air out forcefully from between his lips. It
had been a long drive home through typical rush hour madness made even more
insane by the advent of the storm. He turned off the headlights, wipers and
engine, removed his key from the ignition, and for the very first time since he
left work almost two hours before he could hear the incessant clicking of the
ice as it pelted the car.
"I thought it was just rain," he
thought. "I've got to stop rocking out to Simon and Garfunkel."
At four the next morning the power went
out. His eyes popped open when the air cleaner near his bed was suddenly
silenced. The battery power supplies attached to electronics throughout the
house began to take turns beeping every 30 seconds, with one starting soon
after another had stopped.
"Oh, no," he whispered quietly
from under the warmth of the covers.
He rolled over and pulled the covers
tightly against him, trying to decide if he should get up and deal with the
beeping. He didn't want to. But after a minute he knew he had
to. So he threw the covers off in frustration, hopped out of bed and stomped
over to turn off the beeping demon in the bedroom, knowing that the stupid time
display in the stupid DVD burner would have to be stupidly set again once the
stupid power returned in its own stupid time.
Without being able to make out the words,
he heard his wife and son talking in the other room. His snoring had caused her
to seek refuge on the living room couch again. He opened the bedroom door.
"I think we've had a power
failure," he called out sleepily.
"Yes," his wife replied.
"I need to turn off those power
supplies," he said.
"They just now turned themselves
off," she said.
"They ran out of power and
turned themselves off," his son said.
"OK," he said. "Good. Let's
go back to sleep and deal with this later."
"OK," they said.
Knowing that he had many more hours of
potentially award-winning snoring time ahead of him, he didn't bother asking
his wife about returning to the bedroom. Instead, he closed the bedroom door
quietly behind him and curled back under the covers in a fetal position, trying
to keep warm as the house began to cool. It was 30 degrees and dropping
outside, and the sleet continued to fall through the night and into the next
day.
The dawn seemed to arrive reluctantly, as
if it wanted to be wherever it was warm, and this was not it. His clock radio
was murmuring behind his head as he came awake. Voices talking about the death
of Nelson Mandela. He listened for awhile with his eyes closed and his head
propped against his pillow, feeling sad.
"There seem to be so few truly good
people left in this world," he thought morosely, before he told himself that
that wasn't really true and to snap out of it and get ready for the day.
The power had been out for a few hours
now, and the bedroom was much colder than before. He often thought that the
geniuses who built his house must have taken a certain amount of special pride
in their unmatched ability to design a bedroom that would be unbearably hot
every summer and freezing cold every winter. Now that the power was out, it was
colder than ever. He opened his mouth wide and went "huuuhhh" with
his breath. He thought he could see it. He shivered, despite the warm covers.
Later, after he had washed and dressed in
warm clothes, he put on his beige ball cap because he had heard that most of
your body heat is lost through your head. It seemed silly that a thin ball cap
could help anyone retain that much heat, but it was all he had to work with, other than to
try and strap a couple of his cats to his head, and based upon prior experience
he knew that that might not work out so well.
When he left the bedroom his wife and kids
were already up and opening the blinds to try and brighten up the house. His
wife had brought in some small stacks of wood that they had purchased from a
grocery store about a year before.
"We need to start a fire in the
fireplace," she said. "It's getting cold in here."
"OK," he said. And he did, even
though some of the wood was a bit wet from the storm. Luckily they had a gas
fireplace, and soon the living room became more livable.
And then all of the smoke alarms throughout the house went off as one.
Each of them held their hands to their ears as the smoke alarms screeched like
seven thrashing and disheveled people in strait jackets lined up in a hall of
padded cells in an insane asylum. He had changed the smoke alarm batteries only a
few days before. This had the potential to go on for awhile.
"Did you open the flue?" his
wife yelled.
"Yes!" he replied, although he
rushed over with a flashlight to make sure it was open. It was.
"Do something!" screamed his
wife.
"Get it to stop!" screamed his
daughter.
"I kinda like it," laughed
his son.
So he ran outside and slip-slided on the
ice to the backyard shed where he got his step ladder so he could reach the
smoke alarms and pull the batteries that were giving each of the circular
screaming demons life. And soon the last battery was pulled and the banshees were reluctantly silenced.
Peace reigned. They all breathed a simultaneous
sigh of relief.
A short while later he went outside to the front of the
house to try and uncover his car that was now completely encased in a thick and
unyielding pile of ice.
"I swear there's a car in here,"
he thought uncertainly as he chipped and chopped at the ice. He
hadn't been able to find his regular gloves, so he wore some soiled work gloves
he had found in the shed. They were practically useless for this purpose and
were soon soaked through and cold, just like the rest of him. Although he
had been digging now for 45 minutes, he still couldn't determine if he was any
closer to discovering his car.
The front door flew open and his son stood
there.
"Dad!" he yelled. "The
power came back on and the smoke alarms are going off again! What should
we do?"
"Ask your mother to turn off the
power to them at the circuit box!" he yelled back as he dug at the ice.
"The circuit box is marked, so you can tell which one to shut off!"
As his son ducked back inside the house,
he dug some more and finally broke through to the car below.
"Eureka!" he shouted in triumph.
"I have found it! I laugh at your silly ice storm, Mother Nature! Is this
the worst you can do? Nothing can stop me! I laugh at your
power!"
A sudden gust of wind blew a spray of ice
crystals into his face and down his throat, giving him an uncontrollable coughing fit. When he recovered, he wiped his eyes and decided it might be best to retreat back inside for awhile.
With the power back on, he turned off the
gas at the fireplace, and once the embers had grown cold, he closed up the flue
and hesitantly flipped the switch that powered the smoke alarms. There was a
chorus of chirping, and then blessed silence. He replaced the batteries and
quietly prayed to the gods of nature he had mocked just a short time before that there would be no more power failures.
As the week wore on, the ice reluctantly
retreated, with piles of white giving way to piles of brown.
Eventually, only thin patches of ice hiding in shadows gave testament to the
power of the storm.
He and his daughter were watching a quiet
movie together as his brother-in-law who lived with them went outside to put
something in the trash. As he came back inside, a strong gust of wind blew into
the house, carrying with it faint traces of smoke from a neighbor's fireplace.
The smoke alarms sniffed it, thought
briefly about letting it pass, and then started their incessant ear-splitting
scream.
"Make it stop!" his daughter
cried.
"I'm trying!" he yelled, as he
ran to the shed to get his step ladder.
