Northern Lights

and another ten minutes to deal with Carrie Hawbaker when she blew in with her digital camera. Unlike her husband, she seemed sharp and brisk, merely waving at him to go on about what he was doing so she could get candids.
    He let her snap her pictures and talked to Peach about the inprogress snow emergency plans. He didn't have time to worry about it or to think about how his interview with Max had gone.
    "Did you contact everyone outside of town?" he asked Peach.
    "Twelve more to go."
    "Anyone heading in?"
    "Not so far." She ticked off her list. "People live out, Nate, because they like it out."
    He nodded. "Contact them anyway. Then I want you to go on home and call me when you get there."
    Her pudgy cheeks popped out with her smile. "Aren't you the mother hen."
    "Public safety is my life."
    "And chirpier than you've been." She took the pencil out of her bun, wagged it at him. "It's good to see."
    "I guess a blizzard brings out my inner songbird."
    He glanced toward the door, amazed when it opened again. Didn't anyone in Lunacy stay home in a snowstorm?
    Hopp fluffed at her hair. "Pouring in now," she announced. "Heard you're clearing cars off the street, chief."
    "Snow plow'll be doing the first sweep of the mains shortly."
    "It's going to take a lot of sweeps."
    "I guess it will."
    She nodded. "You got a minute?"
    "Just about." He gestured toward his office. "You should be home, mayor. If we get that four feet, you'll be wading in it up to your armpits."
    "I'm short, but I'm hardy, and if I don't get out and about a bit during a storm, I get cabin fever. It's January, Ignatious. We expect to get hammered."
    "Regardless, it's five above, dark as the inside of a dead dog, and we're already heading toward the first foot, with winds gusting at thirty-five."
    "Keeping your finger on the pulse."
    "Lunacy Radio." He gestured toward the portable on his counter. "They promise to broadcast twenty-four hours a day while it blows."
    "Always do. Speaking about media—"
    "I gave the interview. Carrie took the pictures."
    "And you're still pissed off." She bobbed her head at him. "Town gets its first official police department and brings in a chief from the Outside. It's news, Ignatious."
    "No argument there."
    "You were tap-dancing around Max."
    "It was actually more of a two-step. I just learned how."
    "Whatever the choreography, I stopped the dancing. And my method of doing so crossed a line. I apologize for it."
    "Accepted."
    When she held out her hand to shake on it, he surprised her by giving it a friendly squeeze. "Go home, Hopp."
    "I'll say the same."
    "Can't do it. First I get to live out a childhood dream. I'm going riding on a snowplow."
     
     
    EVERY BREATH WAS LIKE inhaling splinters of ice. Those same splinters managed to spear around his goggles and into his eyes. Every inch of his body was double or triple wrapped, and he was still breathlessly cold.
    It didn't seem real, any of it. The outrageous wind, the ear-pounding engine of the snowplow, the white wall the headlights could barely penetrate. Now and then he could see the glow of a lamp against a window, but most of the world had fined down to the half a foot of light jittering in front of the canary-yellow blade.
    He didn't attempt conversation. He didn't think Bing wanted to talk to him anyway, but the noise made the subject moot.
    He had to admit, Bing handled the machine with the precision and delicacy of a surgeon. It wasn't the swipe and dump Nate had expected. There were routes and disposal sites, curbside excavations, driveway detours, all executed in near whiteout conditions and at a speed that had Nate, continually, swallowing a protesting yelp.
    He had no doubt Bing would love to hear him shriek like a girl, and so he gritted his teeth against any sound that could be mistaken as such.
    After dumping another load, Bing took the brown bottle he'd wedged under the seat, unscrewed the cap and took a long pull. The smell that blew into Nate's face was potent enough to make his eyes water.
    Since they were sitting, contemplating the growing mountain of snow, Nate decided to risk a comment. "I heard alcohol lowers body temperature," he shouted.
    "Fucking propaganda." To prove it, Bing took another pull from the bottle.
    Considering they were alone in the dark, in a blizzard, and that Bing outweighed him by around seventy pounds and would, Nate was sure, like nothing better than to bury him in the mountain of removed snow until his cold, dead body was