Unjustified Changes

Certain individuals possess the ability to spot subtle features, features invisible to most people, in a given environment. Such abilities exist for rural settings, where one so blessed might spot a far-off spring in the woods, or a bounty of wild grapes buried deep in a thicket, as well as for urban domains. The off-the-beaten-track boutiques, cafes, used-book shops, and discount basements that most locals labeled as the real charm of this manageable city were totally invisible, he'd have to meticulously document the name and address of the place to ever find it again.

He got to the car ahead of her and opened the back door. She slid onto the plush leather seat in her jeans and sweater and leather jacket. He closed the door, jogged around to the driver's door, nodded in apology to the trailing car, he couldn't see if it was a man or a woman, jumped in the town-car and zoomed off like a taxi driver out for a big tip.

He didn't really mind walking, despite the cold and snow. After being very sleepy halfway through his shift, he was wide awake now and felt the need to let some of his anger and despair diffuse into the night and the storm. The work at the freight terminal was physically strenuous but not unreasonably so; he'd done many tasks on the farm that were more demanding and exhausting.

They became again what in some ways they'd never stopped being, schoolkids, out on a snow day without a care in the world, only this time the snow day lasted for a week, their playground was the city with all traffic banned, all roads pedestrian walkways, and they had more snow to play in than they'd ever seen, piled to depths they would've never imagined possible.

His heart raced and his hand shook. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, holding it in his lungs. He was glad for the silence and the close and familiar space of the truck, the broad prairie and the infinite sky locked outside. He slowly exhaled into that familiar stillness, felt his heart calm and his hand steady. He opened his eyes. He left the money sealed in its envelope and locked it in the glovebox.

The days had been too cool. He wanted his first repose on his favorite bench for this calendar year to be warm and relaxed. So, as he descended the stairs from the footbridge, he looked out across the brown grass and the blue water with both hope and expectation. The hope he felt was innate, the bred into his blood hope of a farmer at the first breath of spring, the irrepressible and reckless assumption that thawed earth and warming temperatures guaranteed germination, growth, and new life. The expectation he harbored was both new to him and more complicated, reliant as it was on the resilience of his spirit and the resourcefulness of his imagination.

The game played out in its normal order and the bleacher fans meandered about and acted out their requisite sideshow of boos and cheers. It was late in the game, when some guy with a crewcut and a tan uniform made what he would later claim was a compliment regarding the shapely breasts encased in the scanty halter top of a woman seated amidst a group of long-haired, scraggly bearded, bare-shouldered men in black leather vests.

In fact, she was secretly grateful that he had granted her as much freedom as he had, whether from innate munificence or due to the distraction of his own heavy challenges. But in the powerful performance she felt affirmed in her choice and desire. She'd not cave in to the artificial demands or expectations of an early marriage that may have freed her from one set of limitations, only to mire her in another. She was not a deep thinker, but the concert worked on her deeply.

Manipulation and scheming were not a natural part of her thinking. But then she realized, in a moment of maturity, that she'd unconsciously played him at least as much as he'd played her. In the end, she didn't feel guilty. She didn't feel heart-broken or used. She just felt relieved that that experiment in independence and self-fulfillment was over and he had never found out.

They opened the door to the mail foyer and discovered over a foot of snow covering the tile of that small space. The outer door, which didn't always latch properly, had been pushed open by the wind or the snow. It was all just white, flat white with gentle mounds interspersed. And above and around all that fixed white was a blur of moving white, blown this way and that by violent winds still pushing at their door, blowing more snow into the foyer, cutting at the skin of their faces even inside the protected space.