Alice Munros Best

got up early in the morning to do knee bends and read Bible verses.
    She thought she should quit, but they needed the money. The small-engines shop where Warren used to work had closed down, and he was retraining so that he could sell computers. They had been married a year.
    IN THE MORNING , the weather was clear, and they set off on the snowmobile shortly before noon. Monday was Liza’s day off. The plows were working on the highway, but the back roads were still buried in snow. Snowmobiles had been roaring through the town streets since before dawn and had left their tracks across the inland fields and on the frozen river.
    Liza told Warren to follow the river track as far as Highway 86, then head northeast across the fields so as to half-circle the swamp. All over the river there were animal tracks in straight lines and loops and circles. The only ones that Warren knew for sure were dog tracks. The river with its three feet of ice and level covering of snow made a wonderful road. The storm had come from the west, as storms usually did in that country, and the trees along the eastern bank were all plastered with snow, clotted with it, their branches spread out like wicker snow baskets. On the western bank, drifts curled like waves stopped, like huge lappings of cream. It was exciting to be out in this, with all the other snowmobiles carving the trails and assaulting the day with such roars and swirls of noise.
    The swamp was black from a distance, a long smudge on the northern horizon. But close up, it too was choked with snow. Black trunks against the snow flashed by in a repetition that was faintly sickening. Liza directed Warren with light blows of her hand on his leg to a back road full as a bed, and finally hit him hard to stop him. The change of noise for silence and speed for stillness made it seem as if they had dropped out of streaming clouds into something solid. They were stuck in the solid middle of the winter day.
    On one side of the road was a broken-down barn with old gray hay bulging out of it. “Where we used to live,” said Liza. “No, I’m kidding. Actually, there was a house. It’s gone now.”
    On the other side of the road was a sign, “Lesser Dismal,” with trees behind it, and an extended A-frame house painted a light gray. Liza saidthat there was a swamp somewhere in the United States called Great Dismal Swamp, and that was what the name referred to. A joke.
    “I never heard of it,” said Warren.
    Other signs said “No Trespassing,” “No Hunting,” “No Snowmobiling,” “Keep Out.”
    The key to the back door was in an odd place. It was in a plastic bag inside a hole in a tree. There were several old bent trees – fruit trees, probably – close to the back steps. The hole in the tree had tar around it – Liza said that was to keep out squirrels. There was tar around other holes in other trees, so the hole for the key didn’t in any way stand out. “How did you find it, then?” Liza pointed out a profile – easy to see, when you looked closely – emphasized by a knife following cracks in the bark. A long nose, a down-slanting eye and mouth, and a big drop – that was the tarred hole – right at the end of the nose.
    “Pretty funny?” said Liza, stuffing the plastic bag in her pocket and turning the key in the back door. “Don’t stand there,” she said. “Come on in. Jeepers, it’s cold as the grave in here.” She was always very conscientious about changing the exclamation “Jesus” to “Jeepers” and “Hell” to “help,” as they were supposed to do in the Fellowship.
    She went around twirling thermostats to get the baseboard heating going.
    Warren said, “We aren’t going to hang around here, are we?”
    “Hang around till we get warmed up,” said Liza.
    Warren was trying the kitchen taps. Nothing came out. “Water’s off,” he said. “It’s okay.”
    Liza had gone into the front room. “What?” she called. “What’s okay?”
    “The water. It’s turned off.”
    “Oh, is it? Good.”
    Warren stopped in the front-room doorway. “Shouldn’t we ought to take our boots off?” he said. “Like, if we’re going to walk around?”
    “Why?” said Liza, stomping on the rug. “What’s the matter with good clean snow?”
    Warren was not a person who noticed much about a room and what was in it, but he did see that this room had some things that were usual and some that were not. It had rugs and chairs and a television and asofa and