1. Snowbank

A parking lot high up on the mountain top. Crumpled cans of Monster lay round Jonny’s feet in the cab of his tractor as he listened to the radio on his ear protectors. His aviators sat low on his nose as he tried to look down and see where he was driving. The large snow fan on the front of his tractor blocked much of view, and he could only guess that he was someone near the verge of the parking lot.

Jonny was scared to drive too fast. He had run over sleds, trash bags, tires – he even nicked a Volvo’s fender once, violently thrusting the whole car up onto the snow bank in front of it like an empty shoe box.

Jonny didn’t see anything in front of him, so he turned on the fan. There had been a storm the day before, and the lot had a cover of powder snow. Snow blasted out of the funnel above the fan and shot out over the two lane highway beside him.

“Shit”, He said, seeing the snow cascade over the open highway. A deep and thick cloud of snow covered the road now. He couldn’t even see the other side of the road now. He shrugged and kept driving, figuring that his colleague would just plow the powder off the road when he got there in a few minutes. Just then a blue car crested the hill in front of him. The font of the car squatted down as the driver braked in front of the snow cloud and managed to stop just at the edge of the cloud. Jonny kept driving and blew more snow onto the road and the car.

When the cloud finally cleared, Jonny looked into his mirrors and saw that the front wheels of the blue car were up on the snow bank on the wrong side of the road. He drove over onto the highway and looked down at the stranded car. It was rocking gently as the front wheels spun on the crusty snow and ice of the bank at the edge of the road. He saw the driver gesture and look for buttons to push on his console as it became clear the driver couldn’t just back out of the mess he was in. The driver bent down to look up at Jonny through the passenger door window.

“Shit, fuck, that was scary” Said John as he held onto the wheel with both hands. When the cloud covered his car, the fog was so thick that he couldn’t see his side mirrors, let alone the road or its boundaries.

“Hey!” Shouted John’s wife, Claire, from the seat back seat. “You need to get off of the road, now. No one can see us!” She started humming as she bent down to look out of all the windows, desperate to get any idea of what was happening outside of the car.

“We can’t, we are on the road, we can’t get off of it,” Said John. He pushed on the brake pedal with both feet and held onto the wheel with both hands.

Claire shook her head and kept bobbing up and down desperately to get a better angle. She grabbed John’s headrest and looked over his shoulder. “Where are you on the road? What side are we on? Was there a car coming? Can they see us? I can’t see anything!’

John shook his head. He thought he had been driving in the center of the road, maybe on the right hand of the road. He had been trying to drive on the road where the conditions were best. Needing to do something, he turned the wheel to the right, trying to get out of the road. That didn’t seem to do anything though, so he then turned the wheel to the left, and now he didn’t want to get stuck in the snow bank on the right. He brought his senses back into the car and felt disoriented. Suddenly he wasn’t sure which direction the wheel was turned or if the car was even moving.

As he sat there in the cloud he realized how physical death was. He was sitting a car, comfortable enough, but if a car came and hit him there was nothing to it – they would be creamed. The car would be shattered into particulate and their innards would be smashed in a demonstration of fluid dynamics that people never realized belonged to the human experience unless they were paid to work with the dead and dying. Water, blood, guts - they too can be shattered like brittle bone.

John and his wife sat there quietly, waiting to see what would happen. The cloud cleared, and when it dissipated they saw that they were up on the snow embankment on the wrong side of the road, with Johns door jammed up into the snow along with both of the front wheels.

“Goddammit” Said John. They had only been driving a half hour, and they were stuck. How much was this going to cost?

“We could have been hit” said his wife.

“What was he doing with the snow, why was he blowing it into the road?” asked John.

“I can’t believe it,” Said his wife.

John put the car into reverse and felt it rock as he applied the gas pedal. At first he had traction, then the wheels quickly spun out.

“Are we stuck?” Claire asked.

“Fuck” said John. He looked down and out the passenger side window over his daughters head leaned back into the booster seat. A golden yellow tractor with a large snow fan bolted onto its front pulled up slowly beside them. A man in a flourescent jump suit with green ear guards on looked down at them over his aviator sunglasses. The machine trundled slowly past them. John looked at it grow smaller as it drove away. John opened his door and stepped out into the icy snow of the mountain pass. He looked up at the overcast sky and squinted in the bright light. He heard another engine growing nearer and looked back down the road that they had come up from. A large red machine with a gigantic plow on its front end was shoveling towards them, kicking up a broad wave of snow before it. John walked around the back of the car and waved at the plowman.

When the plow got up to John the driver stopped and opened the door. He hopped down from his cabin and came over to look at John’s car levered up onto the snow bank. He saw a young girl begin to stir in the front seat.

John threw his arms up in the air, speechless. “It’s unbeliveable! That guy just blows a bunch of snow up onto the road right in front of us and then just drives off.”

The plowman looked up at John and nodded his head gently. “Oh sure, I understand, the wind was blowing the snow back into the road, it happens.”

Johns lips compressed into a tight line. “Yeah, he has just driven off. Unbelievable.”

The plowman looked up the road at his colleague. As he watched, the yellow machine turned into a pocket on the side of the road to make a broad loop to turn around and drive back towards the blue car in the snow.

The plowman walked over to the car. “Why don’t you get in and I will push.”

Tom nodded and got back into the car. He put the car into reverse and stepped on the accelerator while the man pushed on the hood of his car. The car didn’t move. The man stood up and walked back to his tractor.

John took the car manual out of the glove box and looked for something. Claire asked him what is was, and he mumbled something about the traction control.

Johnny pulled up to the conference in his snow fan and climbed down. John saw the colleagues conference out on the road. The plowman went over to the passenger side window. John rolled it down.

“Put the hand brake on,” Said the plowman. John stomped hard onto the emergency brake. Johnny walked over with a tow strap, and the two men wound it through John’s front right wheel. They hitched it to the back of the yellow snow fan tractor. With John and the girls still inside, Jonny peeled the blue car off of the snow berm.

John got out of the car and poked at his fender to see if everything was still in place.

Jonny came over, and John looked up. “Is everything alright?” Asked Jonny.

John nodded.

“You know,” Said Jonny, “We were pretty nice to you right now, you were supposed to call a tow truck.”

John looked at him. “Yeah, alright thanks.”

“Yes, next time you should drive according to the conditions. Quite dangerous over there.”

“Yeah, alright, thanks.”

If this story was worth your time, please share it with 1 other person you think would find value in it too. I would really appreciate it!