Storytime: Snowfall.

December 21st, 2011

In the first hour, Tammy and Benjamin did put on their snow outfits, and were made to shovel the driveway by the MOM. And the MOM’s word was obeyed, albeit grudgingly, and the driveway was snowed in no more, although it was still snowed upon.
In the second hour, Tammy and Benjamin did think of their fresh snow, and they did consider it beautiful, or at least really pretty, and so they did love it, or at least feel great affection and warmth towards it, and they began to fashion it into small spheres, the shape of worlds and eyes. Which they did hurl at each other.
In the third hour, Tammy and Benjamin did tire from their exertions, and they began to think of other things to do. And they took the spheres and rolled them across the snow, and it was snow no more but part of the sphere, and this was good. So they did it a lot more, and before long they had two greater spheres. And with much effort and struggle the lesser of the greater spheres was rolled upon the top of the greater of the greater spheres, and it was a body, and this was good.
And in the fourth hour Tammy and Benjamin did craft a smaller sphere of hardest-packed snow and ice, and a stick was jammed in it, and pebbles of varying sizes, so that a face was made. And this head was placed upon the peak of the body, and the body was fitted with arms of greater sticks, and this was also good.

Tammy and Benjamin looked at their snowman. The snowman looked back, but without any real enthusiasm.
Tammy frowned and tweaked the angle of his smile, which seemed to fix this.
“He needs a friend,” said Benjamin.
“A cat then,” said Tammy.
“A dog,” said Benjamin.
“Dogs are boring. He’ll have a cat.”
“No he won’t.”
They wandered off, arguing.

And in the fifth hour, Tammy and Benjamin departed to fashion a companion for their human of snow, who was left alone in the world. And it was a bit lost and very surprised, because it had no name, but this was all right, because there were many other things around him that also had no names. So it picked up one of them, which had a handle and a broad blade, and its arm did come off, shocking it so greatly that it almost froze to the spot.

“His arm came off,” said Tammy.
“Your fault,” said Benjamin. “You put it in.” He dumped the armful of fresh branches and sticks at the snowman’s feet.
“It’s your fault,” said Tammy. “This is the side of him that you were pushing, and it’s all soft and unpacked. Because you have skinny little chicken legs for arms.”
“Do not,” said Benjamin, selecting some of the smaller twigs.
“Do so,” said Tammy, briskly rolling up a crude cylinder of snow, preventing it from fragmentation with firm yet brutal love.
“Nu-uhhhh,” enunciated Benjamin, sculpting a skull and jabbing twig-whiskers into it at scientifically determined angles.
“Nope,” rebutted Tammy, fashioning some stubby little snow-legs.
“Whatever,” decided Benjamin.
“Duh,” said Tammy.
They admired their handiwork: a deliberately species-ambiguous probably-domesticated companion for their snowman.
“She needs a name,” said Tammy.
“I think he should name it,” said Benjamin. “It’s HIS dog.”
“It’s a cat,” said Tammy. “And I mean the snowman. She needs a name.”
“It says snowman right in the name, he’s a man,” said Benjamin. “And it can’t be a girl because it doesn’t have long hair.”
“I don’t have long hair.”
“You don’t count.”
A chase was undertaken.

And so in the sixth hour, the snowman learned from the wise and noble creators that it was a girl unless it was a boy. It wasn’t sure, but it loved its creators unconditionally so that was okay. And it looked upon its Companion and was also not sure, because it didn’t seem particularly impressed by the snowman.
It also looked lonely, and the snowman was troubled by this.
And so the snowman did labour, and labour with speed and strength, for it knew much of the ways of cold things. And its labour was undertaken with skill learned from watching those that made it, and so it was done with grace, and care, and finesse, and a love most firm yet subtly brutal. The labour was completed, and it was another Companion, similar in most every way, and they did regard each other with fondness. And the snowman felt a strange stirring in its hard-packed and stout innermost layers, and it knew that this feeling meant that it was good.
The snowman watched as its Companions regarded each other fondly, and it did look upon its creation fondly as well, and the creation of its creators also. It bid them farewell and wished them happiness, and then it knew not what to do and waited there as the first day ended.

On the dawning of the second day, just after breakfast, Tammy and Benjamin did war with snowballs against Rob and Susan. A mighty fortress was erected on either side of the front yard of Benjamin’s house, with Susan and Rob crafting walls from blocks pressed from a garbage-can, unwieldy and foul-smelling. Tammy and Benjamin did laugh at this display, and they did craft their walls from rolled snow as time dictated, and although their victory seemed assured because of Rob being a wimp, they found themselves hard pressed in time, as their own walls crumbled under the stone-cored slushballs of their foes. And in time they did fall to ruin, and were pelted under the open sky with not a scrap of cover to defend themselves.

“This sucks,” said Tammy, spitting out grey snow. “Let’s go have hot chocolate.”

And they did this, and so ended the first hour of the second day. And lo, the snowman did awaken once more, stirred by the sounds of battle and tumult, and it inspected the ruins of the war. Anger stirred within its chilly heart at the sight of the undaunted, blighted walls of the enemies of its creators, and it fell upon the garbage-can, and the slushball-stockpile, and the battlements, and tore them asunder in their names, but it could not destroy the foul-smelling-walls, for they were made of near-ice and of strength beyond all.
Its job half-done and the second hour of the second day gone behind it, the snowman did turn itself upon the fortress of the creators, and it did see where imperfection had been allowed to lair within it. And the wrath faded from its heart and was replaced with industry, and so it did pile up all the snow that was to be found within the front yard and mounded it high about the shattered walls of the fortress of the creators, packed it firmly, and it did this, which it knew was good, until the fourth hour had elapsed, at which point it staggered away to its rest, filled with exhaustion.

“A teenager did it,” suggested Tammy.
“Then who built yours up?” asked Susan.
“Dunno,” said Tammy. “A teenager did it?”
“They don’t fix things,” said Susan. “You did it.”
“We were inside.”
“You asked someone else to do it.”
“Who?”
“Someone!”
“I’ve got an idea for a game,” said Benjamin.

And so the fifth hour was spent in demolition of the new fortress, with much entertainment had by all, and the ramparts were thrown down, and the pack-battlements used as projectiles, and much strife and sport was taken betwixt and between the two enemies, until they all had to go home for dinner.

On the dawning of the third day, in the first hour, the snowman came back to the front yard and beheld the ruin of its labours, and it knew a new thing: that this was not good. A great wrath waxed in its heart for the wickedness of the persons who had made its frame and yet so carelessly and callously thrown asunder its gifts, and it was filled with the desire for vengeance and just punishment. And so it did seize the frost from the air and scrawled symbols of rebuke and regret upon every window in the person’s home, without regard for pity or mercy. Mercy would blunt the necessary force of the message, the weight of its import.

“It got REALLY cold last night,” said Susan.
“Yeah,” said Tammy. She was poking her sheet of math problems to see if it would do anything. It hadn’t the last ninety-eight times, but she had learned earlier that day that Thomas Edison had believed in innovation being ninety-nine percent perspiration, and was testing the hypothesis.
“Really cold,” agreed Rob, in a transparent effort not to be forgotten.
“I got frost all over my windows,” said Benjamin, ignoring this.
“What’d you draw?”
“Dinosaurs. And butts.”
“Dinosaur butts?”
“Yeah, those too.”
“Gross.”
Emily poked her math sheet again. “Bullshit,” she said a little too loudly, and then had to explain herself to the teacher.

And the snowmen did spend the second through sixth hours of the third day in a swoon, paralyzed by the effrontery of those that it had once counted as family, the filth that had undoubtedly malformed its pure essence into the depraved and fumbling thing that it inhabited, for none as foul as they could have created it as it was. It grieved most thoroughly that it had witnessed such defilement, and on the seventh hour it did pray for guidance and move much snow. If blame would not turn the heads of the senseless, perhaps guilt would bind their hearts. And then it saw the way to enlightenment, and it laboured all through the eighth hour of the third day.

On the morn of the final day, the person Benjamin was ordered outside to Clean Up That Mess You Made, and he did see that the Companion that he had crafted for the snowman out back had been relocated to the front stoop of his house, along with another of its kind. He waxed irritated, and did shovel them.
And Benjamin did blame it upon Rob’s older brother Jake, and a resolve filled him to pretend to be nicer to Rob at school lest Jake take his pranking farther, and Rob did enjoy the increased niceness of Benjamin with a bit of surprise but figured it was okay.

“How’s your brother?” asked Benjamin, as innocently as possible. He had shared a small bag of sour cream and onion chips with Rob, to keep the conversation as friendly and inoffensive as possible.
“A little weird,” said Rob.
“Yeah?”
“Um. More than usual, yeah. He stayed out too late last night again, and he wouldn’t say why. Mom got mad.”
“Uh,” said Benjamin, and he thought about Jake’s absolutely terrifying and startlingly realistic werewolf mask. Then he bought Rob a chocolate bar and gave him two thirds of it.

And on the stoop of Benjamin’s home the snowman regarded the rubble of its Companions with anguish, and it wept bitterly or would’ve if its eyes weren’t pebbles and the ambient air temperature were not sufficient to keep the vast majority of its body frozen in a solid state. So be it, as rebuke failed it. so too did guilt fail it. How could you shame that which knew no shame? How could it still attempt to make the blind see? It only lowered itself in the effort – the grey slush of their boot-treads had dirtied the snowman up to its near midsection. Their flaws were truly irredeemable, and their mere existence sullied it beyond hope of salvation, and yet it had to try. It had to try.
And so the snowman did, on the final hour of the eighth day, with its heart filled with pity overflowing, melt itself for the sins of its creators. And it was good, and also surprisingly nice-feeling.

“Your brother is really weird,” said Benjamin.
Rob nodded. Tammy and Susan agreed similarly silently. The ex-snowman had been propped up against the laundry exhaust pipe, where it had been slowly liquified from the cranium down.
“Yeah,” said Rob. “So. Uh. So.”
“Let’s make a bigger one.”

And lo, as there were four of them, they were able to make a bigger one. And in the end, as they came in, the MOM told them that the driveway needed shovelling again. And so it was, and so it would be.

“Snowfall,” copyright Jamie Proctor 2011.

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