pocket, and as he is hand-ing it to Daniel the lights cut offand then come back on—it seems as if someone were shaking the room—and then they go offagain and that’s it.They are not in total darkness but in a deep opaque grayness, as ifthey have been woven into the fabric ofa sweater.
“Hurry, Ferguson,”says Susan.“Run.She needs you.”
“I need
Daniel feels like a servant in front ofwhom the lord and lady ofthe house think nothing ofundressing.Clutching Richmond’s handkerchief, he backs out ofthe kitchen, but before he is out, the door swings open and the two men who delivered theTibetan flags and fireworks come in.
“Everything’s put away,”says the older ofthe two.He uses his beret to dry his forehead.
“Before the snow gets worse,”says the younger.“I never seen anything like this.”
“Thank you, Ramon,”Susan says pleasantly.“You’re an angel.”
“I’m working on it,”Ramon says, smiling.“May I ask you?Who is the young man with the crow on his shoulder?”
“He’s our friend from Slovenia,”says Ferguson.“He lives inAlbany.
He came down fromTroy in July to work on the roofofthe piggery, and for some reason he hasn’t left yet.He found that crow near the river and he’s made something ofa pet ofit.”
“I’m going to see to this,”Daniel says, backing out ofthe kitchen.He is seized by anxiety, thinking that ifhe doesn’t leave in the next minute, then he could be facing impassable roads and a long entrapment in Eight Chimneys.As he makes his way down the hall, he notices a door to the outside is open.It is not the door he came in through, but finding this way out is irresistible to him, and rather than deliver Ferguson’s hand-kerchiefto Marie, he stuffs it in his pocket and heads out ofthe house.
He finds himself on a semicircular stone porch, a repository for busted-up furniture.He can’t tell what direction he’s facing;the world is chaos.He looks up at the sky, at the deluge ofsnow floating down.He opens his arms wide.He wants to shout out her name.Her name is her body, her scent, the shadow she casts upon the world.The violence and unexpectedness ofthis weather leads him not to the actual beliefthat the world is in a state ofemergency and that everything now is suddenly per-mitted, but to something close to it, something that suggests what that would feel like.He walks carefully down the stairs, snow seeping through his shoes.Then he walks around the house until he finds his car, which in the halfhour he has been here has accumulated a five-inch coat-ing ofwet, heavy snow.
He must dig around in his trunk to find the scraper and brush to clear his windshield, and once that is done he has no idea where the road is.
He looks for the tracks left by the men who delivered the flags and rock-ets, but the tracks have already been filled.He drives the mile and a half slowly, slipping in the wet snow, having no idea ifhe is driving on pave-ment or grass.
He calls his office from the car.The answering machine comes on, but with a new outgoing message left by SheilaAlvarez.“This is the of-fice ofDaniel Emerson.We have closed early because ofthe snow.And Mr.Emerson, Kate called to say that the day care center has closed and Ruby went home with Iris Davenport, and ifyou can make it over there would you please pick her up.Everyone else, leave a message after the beep.”
[5]
t was snowing and it was snowing and it was going to snow some more.
IA truck bearing the signwide loadand carrying behind it a tanand-brown modular home that was being delivered to a hillside already filled with similar ready-made houses lost traction on the main road about a quarter mile south ofLeyden, jackknifing into the northbound lane and colliding with an oncoming U-Haul truck, which was being driven up from the city by a young couple who had just bought a little weekend house and were bringing up their sofa, chairs, tables, lamps, bed, pots, pans, silverware, mystery novels, cross-country skis, aquar-ium, and paintings.Firemen, police, and paramedics struggled to the scene—many had difficulty driving there—and once the wreckage was cleared away and the victims transported—the truck driver to Leyden Hospital, the couple from the city to the morgue at the south end ofthe county—they were called to another highway disaster, and then another.
Six miles north, on the same road, a trucker on his way down from theAdirondacks, carrying twelve tons offreshly harvested hemlock, slammed on his brakes to avoid a collision with a Chevrolet driven by an old man who was moving no more than ten miles per hour.The trucker avoided rear-ending the old man, but the suddenness ofthe stop created a lurching backward and then forward motion in the logs, and, though they had been secured by braids ofheavy chains, two ofthe smaller trees broke entirely loose and shot out over the back ofthe truck as ifout of a catapult.One ofthem flew over the roofoftheToyota behind the truck, hit the pavement, and bounced offthe road, entering the woods end over end.The other log, however, went straight through theToyota’s windshield, like a giant leg stomping through a thin sheet ofice, crush-ing the driver and sending the car killingly out ofcontrol, directly into anotherToyota, a blue one, in the northbound lane.
An old silver van, with a high rounded roofand oddly diminutive tires, flipped over on a sharp, slushy curve on Frankenberg Road.The van was carrying two chestnut-and-white racehorses down from Canada to a horse farm in Leyden.The horses, a gelding and a mare, were both in can-vas harnesses, which were strapped to the sides ofthe van to keep the horses in place during their three-hundred-mile journey.When the van overturned, the canvas did not tear and both horses dangled upside down, whinnying in terror, their pink, powerful tongues wagging back and forth, their chin whiskers soaked in thick white foam.The woman who owned the horses and the man who was their trainer staggered around on the side ofthe road, banged and bleeding, feeling lucky to be alive.But then, as the van began to smoke, and then to burn, they realized that the miracle oftheir survival would be forever compromised by hav-ing to spend the rest oftheir lives remembering the crescendo ofcries and then the even more terrible silence as their horses were immolated.
At the Bridgeview Convalescent Home the loss ofelectricity would have normally switched on the auxiliary generator, but last winter’s power failures had used up all ofthe generator’s fuel and no one had thought to gas it up—winter was still a couple ofmonths away.The lights went dull, then dark, like dying eyes.Clocks stopped.Those nurses who were generally irritable became more irritable.Those patients who were generally confused became more confused.The bedridden propped themselves up on bony elbows and looked around for some explanation.
The patients who were chronically complaining shook their fists, spit on the floor, told the staffoff.The fearful became terrified—the booming death ofall those trees, theTVs with their gray blank screens standing in their corners like uncarved gravestones.
In aVictorian house out on Ploughman’s Lane was a facility for teenage boys who had tangled with the law and been ordered there by juvenile courts ranging from the Bronx to Buffalo.It was now called Star ofBeth-lehem and it was run by Catholic Charities.In deference to the people of Leyden, there were never fewer than four guards on duty, hulking, quiet men who patrolled the halls and the grounds in lace-up paratrooper boots and black turtleneck shirts, carrying black rubber batons.The doors were always locked and the windows were locked, too;the fence that sur-rounded its ten rolling acres was electrified.Shortly after the power failed, the staffherded the boys into their rooms.The staffat Star ofBethlehem were, for the most part, men who themselves had had tough dealings with the law in their youth, who seemed to operate under the principle that if they could put their lives on track, then these boys could learn to live right, too.They were usually rough, and with the power out they pushed and prodded the boys into their rooms, as ifsome gross breach ofdisci-pline had already been committed.It was a total lockdown.
