Let It Snow

“You’re such a clown,” she said. “And such a genius.”

I fell behind them again but trudged along, not much of a clown and not much of a genius. It was always a pleasure to watch JP show off his wit and see the Duke rise to the occasion. It took us fifteen minutes to circle back to Carla using a route that avoided Sunrise (and, hopefully, the twins). I climbed in through the trunk and grabbed the Twister, and we took off over a chain-link fence and through someone’s backyard so as to head straight west, toward the highway. We figured the twins would take the route we had initially taken. That route was quicker, but we all agreed that we hadn’t seen a game of Twister in the hands of either Timmy or Tommy, so we didn’t think it mattered if they beat us.

We walked in silence for a long time past dark wood-frame houses, and I held the Twister over my head to keep some of the snow out of my face. The snow had accumulated in drifts up to the doorknobs on one side of the street, and I thought about how much snow can change a place. I’d never lived anywhere but here. I’d walked or driven on this block a thousand times. I could remember when all the trees died in the blight, and when they planted new ones in all these yards. And over the fences I could see a block over to Main Street, which I knew even better: I knew each gallery selling folk art to tourists, each outdoor shop selling the kind of hiking boots I wished I was wearing.

But it was new now, all of it—cloaked in a white so pure as to be vaguely menacing. No street or sidewalk beneath me, no fire hydrants. Nothing but the white everywhere, like the place itself was gift-wrapped in snow. And it didn’t just look different, either; it smelled different, the air now sharp with cold and the wet acidity of snow. And the eerie silence, just the steady rhythm of our shoes crunching underfoot. I couldn’t even hear what JP and the Duke were talking about a few feet in front of me as I got lost in the whited-out world.

And I might have convinced myself that we were the only people left awake in all of western North Carolina had we not seen the bright lights of the Duke and Duchess convenience store when we turned off Third Street and onto Maple.

The reason we call the Duke “the Duke” is because when we were in eighth grade, we went one time to the Duke and Duchess. And the thing about the Duke and Duchess convenience store is that instead of calling you “sir” or “ma’am” or “you there” or whatever, the employees of the D and D convenience store are supposed to call you either “Duke” or “Duchess.”

Now, the Duke arrived a little late to the puberty party, and on top of that, she also always wore jeans and baseball caps, particularly in middle school. So the predictable thing happened: one day we went into the Duke and Duchess to buy Big League Chew or Mountain Dew Code Red or whatever we were using to rot our teeth on that particular week, and after the Duke had made her purchase, the guy behind the counter said, “Thank you, Duke.”

It stuck. At one point, I think in ninth grade, we were all at lunch and JP and Keun and I all offered to start calling her Angie, but she said she hated being called Angie, anyway. So we kept with the Duke. It suited her. She had excellent posture, and she was kind of a born leader and everything, and even though she certainly no longer looked even vaguely boyish, she still mostly acted like one of us.

As we walked up Maple, I noticed JP slowing to walk next to me.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Listen, are you okay?” he asked. He reached up and took the Twister from me and tucked it under his arm.

“Um, yeah?”

“Because you’re walking, like, I don’t know. Like you don’t have ankles or knees?” I looked down and saw that I was indeed walking very strangely, my legs far apart and swiveling, my knees barely bending. I looked a bit like a cowboy after a long ride. “Huh,” I said, watching my weird gait. “Hmm. I think my feet are just really cold.”

“VERY FAST EMERGENCY STOP!” JP yelled. “We’ve got some potential frostbite back here!”

I shook my head; I was fine, really, but the Duke turned around and saw me walking and said, “To the D and D!”

So they jogged and I waddled. They beat me into the D and D by a long shot, and by the time I got inside, the Duke was already at the counter, purchasing a four-pack of white cotton socks.

We weren’t the only customers. As I sat down in a booth at the D and D’s miniature “café,” I glanced down to the far booth: there, with a steaming cup in front of him, sat the Tinfoil Guy.

Chapter Ten

“What’s up?” JP said to the Tinfoil Guy as I pulled off my soaked shoes. It’s sort of hard to describe Tinfoil Guy, because he looks like a somewhat grizzled but generally normal older guy except for the fact that he never, under any circumstances, leaves the house unless his entire body from neck to toes is wrapped in tinfoil. I peeled off my nearly frozen socks. My feet were a pale blue. JP offered me a napkin to wipe them off as Tinfoil Guy spoke.

“How are you three, on this night?” The Tinfoil Guy always talked like that, like life was a horror movie and he was the knife-wielding maniac. But he was generally agreed to be harmless. He’d asked all three of us the question, but he was looking only at me.

“Let’s see,” I answered. “Our car lost a wheel and I can’t feel my feet.”

“You looked very lonesome out there,” he said. “An epic hero against the elements.”

“Yeah. Okay. How are you?” I asked, to be polite. Why did you ask him a question! I chastised myself. Stupid Southern ma

“I’m enjoying a most filling cup of noodles,” he said. “I do love a good cup. And then I believe I’ll go for another walk.”

“You don’t get cold, with the foil?” I couldn’t stop asking questions!

“What foil?” he asked.

“Uh,” I said, “right.” The Duke brought me the socks. I put on one pair, and then another, and then a third. I saved the fourth in case I needed dry ones later. I could barely squeeze into my Pumas, but nonetheless, I felt like a new man as I stood up to leave.

“Always a pleasure,” Tinfoil Guy said to me.

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Merry Christmas.”

“May the pigs of fate fly you safely home,” he responded. Right. I felt awful for the lady behind the counter, being stuck with him. As I was on my way out, the woman behind the counter said to me, “Duke?”

I turned. “Yes?”

“I couldn’t help but overhear,” she said. “About your car.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Sucks.”

“Listen,” she said. “We can tow it. We got a truck.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Yeah, here, give me something I can write down the number on.” I fished around in my coat pocket and found a receipt. She wrote down her number and name, Rachel, in loop-heavy script. “Wow, thanks, Rachel.”

“Yeah. A hundred fifty bucks plus five bucks a mile, being a holiday and the weather and everything.”

I grimaced but nodded. An expensive tow was a hell of a lot better than no tow at all.

We were barely back out on the road—me walking with a newfound awareness of, and appreciation for, my toes—when JP sidled up to me and said, “Honestly, the fact that Tinfoil Guy is, like, forty and still alive gives me hope that I can have a reasonably successful adulthood.”

“Yeah.” The Duke was walking ahead of us, munching on Cheetos. “Dude,” JP said. “Are you looking at the Duke’s butt?”

“What? No.” And only in telling the lie did I realize that actually I had been looking at her back, although not specifically her butt.

The Duke turned around. “What are you talking about?”

“Your butt!” JP shouted into the wind.

She laughed. “I know it’s what you dream about when you’re alone at night, JP.”