Angels in the Snow

A frigid wind stung Bobby’s face as he pushed open the door of the package store. Sleet beat a staccato rhythm on the window of the store as he handed the man cash for a bottle of respite. Out the door, back into the yellow-jacket wind. Bobby clutched the bottle right against his body as if to somehow transfer the liquid fuel through the jug. His worn winter coat was no defense against the biting cold.

The temperature had plummeted into the sub-zero zone as the day went on. The sky darkened and the city became a neon freezer. Bobby took a long pull from the jug. He walked down the boulevard as the storm came in. The powdery snow fell with vengeance but the wild inside him eased as the wine pushed it out to the flush of his skin.

Bobby trekked the boulevard. He saw Anna moving slowing toward him, laboriously pushed her heavy shopping cart through the freshly falling snow, and he greeted her with a nod and a toothless grin. She stared blankly ahead and moved her lips silently. A few days past — or was it weeks, now? it was hard for her to remember — she had been aroused from her chemical stupor by the feeling of weight and wetness. Her long time lover and partner, Jake, was lying across her body. The urine smell was overpowering. She rolled him over. His face was frozen into a horrifying grimace, the rictus of death.

That was when the screaming started in her head. Her time sense changed. She remembered being taken away by a wagon that screamed while someone kept sticking her with needles. The straps webbed her skin in a room with no windows, and the screaming pierced her head, spilled out of her ears and her tongue was swollen with the Haldol. She choked and they rushed in and gave her Cogentin to alleviate the side effects. The screaming shook the ward and echoed back in a sad song of many voices.

One day her vocal cords wore out. Her screaming stopped. Soon after she became quiet and the hospital gave her some pills and sent her home to the streets.

She walked past Bobby. In her eyes he was like an apparition moving through the falling snow. She felt the snowflakes, like the cold tears of an unyielding God, winter-wasps-stinging as they struck her face. Her lips moved yet no sound came out. The scream still echoed in the stripped corners of her mind. She hoped that Jake would come to her soon.

Bobby walked past her and shook his head and his tears turned to crystal in the corners of his eyes. The snow was deep. Soft, powdery fluff. Suddenly his childhood came back to him and he remembered that this was his favorite kind of snow. The smell of it brought him back to the times, the simple times, when he could just lay down and make angels in the snow.

Slowly he moved down the boulevard, now and then taking a tug from the bottle and he wondered where his childhood friends were now. Inside his chest the ache came,. The mystery of himself was sweet sorrow.

His feet were gone. He seemed to be walking on wooden blocks and he effected a marching step as if he were a soldier coming home. Then he stopped and looked at the reflection of his face in a store window that was flashing red and green with Rudolph the reindeer waiting by a sleigh filled with gifts. In his reflection he saw his long gray beard and white hair spilled from his winter cap. There were large white blotches on the visible parts of his cheeks. He rubbed his face with hands that he could hardly feel. He tipped the bottle again to warm his throat and he watched the bulb of the reindeer’s nose flash. Something moved inside the store and Bobby backed away from the window suddenly, almost falling into the street.

The wind picked up and Bobby ducked into an alley for cover. The thought of a shelter crossed his mind. He dismissed the thought. He wanted to be home, back home where the lights sparkled and the smell of cookies filled the house. A shelter is not a home.

A great weariness filled him up and he sat down in the deep snow that had drifted into the dark alley. He held the jug between his palms, tipped it and drank deeply. The cold did not burn his fingers anymore. They were wood, like the hands and feet of a toy soldier.

The snow piled up around Bobby and the wind sang to him as the temperature dropped. The bottle was empty.

He lay back in the snow. He began to move his arms and legs back and forth and up and down, like he did as a child to make angels in the snow.

Bobby slipped back in time as the snow covered him up. He was a child, laughing, calling out to friends. There were other voices calling him. In this dream Bobby was still moving. He was making angels in the snow. The city was quiet except for the wind and the sound of children waiting.