Snowplows
The night was so silent, to speak felt like tossing a stone down a deep well.
“How’s your wife?” I asked, and then winced at the echoes.
“Tired,” said Edson. “Teddy’s not a good sleeper. You know how it is.”
“They start going the whole night when they’re eleven months or so,” I told him. “At least, Skipper did. Until then Megan was up feeding her all the time.”
Edson smiled. “So we got ten months to go.”
A rabbit stopped in the snow in front of the plows. It turned its shocked eyes on us, flicked its ears.
“It looks like an alien,” I said.
“Everything does, in this snow.”
He was right. In the moonlight our skins were silver.
“I haven’t seen you in a long time,” I told him. “Not since September.”
He took a step towards me and put his hand on the back of my neck. The leather pad of his glove was cold. Then we both got in our snowplows and drove away.