Eric Dimbleby: White Out

Her physical being struggled for a moment longer, trying to pry her eyelids open by sheer will power. When she gave up that struggle, she felt much better, from frozen toe to frozen eyes.

Night night, piggy. Night night.

Her grandfather still smelled like crushed mint leaves when he gave her the warmest hug she’d felt in a long time.

“Daddah?” Paulie asked, looking up at his father with glassy eyes, looking like he might burst into tears at any moment. “When’s Mama coming home?” he asked.

Christian forced a smile. “Mommy will be home soon, I promise. She’s still stuck at work.”

Still stuck at work. Now isn’t that amusing, thought Christian. The word “convenient” also drifted through his thoughts, but he tamped it down, wishing he could crush that nasty word into a fine powder and flush it down the toilet.

She stayed late on the night that the storm started, claiming car problems. By midnight, she declared herself trapped until the morning came. By the next afternoon, the tone in her voice had shifted, and Christian could detect it immediately. A worm had turned inside of her, and it had nothing to do with the weather.

And on the second day, it got worse, and on the third, even worse still. Inch by inch, her excuses piled up like crystal snowflakes, burying the woman he once loved. He could picture her, nuzzling with Tony in the mailroom, or sitting on the Big Boss Man’s desk, hand delivering each other naughty memos.

It was all in Christian’s head, of course. She wouldn’t dare do that to their family, no matter how much they bickered about how they defined their family now. She wouldn’t ever harm her son, even if harming her husband came very easily to her when the opportunity arose. They’d “stay together for the kids,” no matter what happened between them. It was an unspoken mandate, something that could not be broken, not even by Tony, with his smooth jaw and six-figure salary.

The heating vents ticked their warming sound, something Christian had grown incredibly attuned to since the storm began . That tick-tick-tick continued to keep Paulie and him alive for one more day. There was two more weeks’ worth of oil by Christian’s estimate, judging by the position of the little red indicator on the tank. They’d just received a delivery of heating fuel right before the storm. The oil was delivered on Annie’s day off from work, when she’d taken Paulie to his yearly checkup. They usually topped off the tank, so it was actually a bit odd that there wasn’t more in the tank. They weren’t penny-pinching these days, so it never hurt to have a full tank of heating oil.

“Daddah, I’s cold,” said Paulie, rubbing his tiny hands together.

For a four year old, he was a tough cookie. This was the first time the kid had complained about the plummeting temperatures. The typically curious boy couldn’t see out any of the windows, blocked by piles of compacted white, and he hadn’t seen his mother in several weeks… but he just kept on keeping on, tough as nails. Christian remembered a flashback from his childhood, of being denied an icy pop by the ice cream truck man, because he’d been short a nickel. He could remember, in his vivid mind’s eye, rolling around on the sidewalk, thumping his fist against the cement, begging for the icy pop, as the tinkling bells of the truck drifted deep into his neighborhood.

Paulie was cut from an altogether different cloth. If anybody could survive the storm of the century, it was he. “We’ll warm up and bundle together in a little bit, right after lunch. I’ve got some nice black beans for you.”

His son made a face, expressing his concern with eating black beans for the tenth lunch in a row, but it was the only staple that they had an overabundance of. Still, Paulie didn’t complain. He wanted to, but he understood the shit show that his father was dealing with. Paulie was perceptive, and that instinct would serve him well in adulthood.

Christian promised himself that the first thing he’d do when the snow let up, was to buy Paulie a Happy Meal. And they’d probably never eat black beans again. They’d eaten so many that they would probably never even go down the aisle in the grocery store that had black beans again, not unless they really needed something.

Leaning over close to his father, Paulie kicked his legs off the edge of the couch, staring down at his feet. “My toes,” he said.

“They’re feeling sorta funny?”

Paulie nodded.

“Like numb?”

Paulie looked up at his father, unsure of what the word numb meant.

“Let me turn the heat up a notch,” Christian said, walking across the living room, adjusting the thermostat a single degree, from fifty five to fifty six. He kept the thermostat at seventy usually, but once they entered the second week of limited electricity, he turned it way down. He could hear the vents kicking into high gear, blowing that lovely warm air into their home. As long as the tank stayed full, and as long as the electricity stayed on, they’d be just fine. “That oughta do it.”

The vents kicked louder now, sputtered, and died. Silence filled the house.

“Dammit,” said Christian, looking over at Paulie. He hoped he hadn’t heard the cuss.

Now that Christian thought hard about it, he didn’t remember seeing any new bills from the oil company. They typically received a bill within a week or so, although that was around the time that the storm first started. The mail deliveries were admittedly becoming more and more sporadic, but thanks to Skipper (their faithful mailman for more than three years), it was still coming. No way could he have missed it.

He told Paulie to hold tight while he went downstairs and checked on the tank.

Upon arrival, he found that the red indicator was still in the same position, hovering around the half tank ticker. Unscrewing the plastic covering, he leaned in closer to look at the bobber. He twisted it with his fingers and then it bobbed up and down again. A bit of rusty dust came off the neck of the bobber when he did this.

It settled at the bottom of the gauge. The bastard thing had been rusted in position.

Annie hadn’t called in the delivery. Annie had screwed them.

“Remember when you went to the doctor a few weeks back?” he asked his son once he was back upstairs. Paulie nodded, smiling. For some reason, the kid loved going to the doctor. The only child Christian had ever known like that. “And do you remember if the big oil truck came that day? The silver and red one with the big hose that they hook up to the house?”

“No, Daddah.”

“You sure?”

“I love the big trucks!” his son replied, not quite perceiving what he was asking of him. It was true, the boy reveled in cars, trucks, diggers, and bulldozers. If there had been an oil delivery, he would have surely recollected it. He caught a glinting smile from Paulie. The kid’s brain was all caught up in trucks now. Christian couldn’t help but smile back at the boy, but behind that smile, he couldn’t help but think about how royally fucked they were.

“Dan’s on the fritz. He’s wigging out, just admit it.”

“There isn’t a damn thing wrong with Dan. He’s just as accurate as ever. This has nothing to do with Dan. Just give me some time to figure it out, see what’s ailing him.”

“Protective, are we? Like it’s your kid or something.”

“This station pays good money for Doppler Dan. He saw the Hurricane of Oh-Seven way before Channel 8. Channel 6 didn’t even pick up on the storm patterns even when we were in the middle of it. Doppler Dan is the best in the business. You hear that, Tammy? The best. ”