Herman was stooped. His hands hooked like claws – ugly claws, claws from a half-eaten chicken, not the stout, strong nails you’d find on something like a wolverine or a hawk or anything. His back was a bunch of frightened vertebrae huddling together for shelter and warmth in the shadow of his destroyed spinal column. His arms shook like a dead tree in a high wind, and when he coughed there was real venom and spittle behind it, the kind you find in a plague ward. Each lungful warned the body that there might not be another getting in for a few minutes.
But hey. The driveway was clear.
“A pox upon shovelling!” shouted Herman. And then he bent over, wheezing.
“Fie upon shovelling!” he yelled upon getting his breath back, and so immediately lost it again.
“If I had my ‘druthers, I’d never shovel another flake of snow in my entire life, and if there was a way – any way! – to do so, I’d make a pact with the devil himself and gladly shake his hand!”
“Hi,” said the passerby who’d stopped to hear all of this out of polite interest. “Want to see a trick?”
Herman’s death-rattle indicated acquiescence.
The passerby bent over to the roughly-scraped asphalt, picked up a few odds and ends of loose snow, and rolled them around a little, muttering in something that didn’t sound French.
“Here you go.”
Herman looked at what was being offered. It was a snowball.
“Get thee hence, snow,” he said.
“This one’s special. It doesn’t melt.”
Herman screamed.
“No, listen. Shut up. There, your lungs are empty again. Listen while they fill up, okay? Okay. Whatever temperature this thing’s at? That’s the temperature of your driveway. Presto. No more shovelling. I’m leaving before you start up again. You’re welcome.”
The passerby left. Herman still screamed a little once he’d gotten his breath back, just on principle.
He looked at the snowball, unmelting, sat squat on the ground. It filled him with horror. It filled him with fear. He knew it shouldn’t be, shouldn’t even be dreamed of.
But what if.
So Herman brought the snowball inside, put it in a little dish on his counter, and went to sleep with the roar of the storm coming in outside his window. He ground his teeth a lot that night, and when he woke, he was halfway dressed and out the door, shovel in hand, before he’d even opened his eyes.
The driveway was half-empty. The snow that remained had a sullen, sulky, half-melted look to it. It collapsed into slush at a nudge of his boot.
“Wow,” said Herman. “Yikes. Yippee!” He took off his toque and threw it in the air, and then took off his boots and threw them in the air, and then he ran in circles three times around his driveway laughing and drove to work after spending thirty seconds shoving slush out of the way while whistling.
“Boy!” he said to his co-workers and also everyone else he met all day, without pausing for their input, “I sure do love shovelling now! Never been better! Never been easier! Yes, now I can ignore it! It’s great! I love that a bunch! Yay!”
Then he went home, shoveled the driveway for thirty seconds again, and went to bed.
But he stayed up a little. Half out of excitement, half out of worry.
“What if,” he said to himself, “what if this keeps up? Thirty seconds in the morning, thirty seconds in the evening. That adds up. That’s a minute a day. That’s an hour every two months! That’s a lot of wasted time, oh no no no.”
He frowned, and pursed his lips, and whined a little, and fidgeted.
Then he had an idea and went into the kitchen, put the snowball in the oven on a little baking sheet, turned it on, and went to bed again (a major fire hazard by the way; don’t do this).
The driveway steamed wetly in the feeble grey mist that passed for light on a winter morning. Herman danced the dance of those who care nothing for dignity, the glee-jig, the cackle-flip, the hoky-gloaty.
“THIS is what it’s all about!” he yelled, “THIS! THIS RIGHT HERE! THIS!”
Then he went to work, sang loudly the whole day, and came home.
And it was still clear. His neighbours were toiling, their shoulders were hunched, their minds bent around bent plastic, metal, wood. And HE, HERMAN, was going indoors for hot chocolate and smugness.
In the kitchen, he put on the water to boil and paused for a moment.
It was awful warm in there. And hey, what was that smell?
“Ugh,” he said, and opened the oven. Something crusted to the baking sheet had been burning away by degrees for the past fourteen hours. “Gross.”
He cleaned it off, went to bed, and stayed up late.
Thinking.
Well. Twenty four hours a day, with the gas on. Singeing anything that ever got into the oven. Good lord, the gas bills. They’d take his money, they’d take his life! He’d be crippled and hunched again, this time by fearsome debt.
What could he do? What would be warm enough, what would be consistent enough, what could.
“AHA!”
So Herman walked into the kitchen, turned off his (groaning) oven, removed the snowball, and gently, carefully, patiently tossed it into his furnace.
Then he went to bed happy for the last time in a decade.
When Herman woke up again, he was very surprised. Someone had come in while he was asleep and painted his room white, taken away all his belongings, changed him into a sort of backless gown, strapped him into an IV machine, and then put his bedroom inside a hospital.
Then a doctor came into his house, quite uninvited, and asked him how he was feeling.
“Annoyed,” said Herman. “Is it snowing? Will I need to shovel? Oh god, please tell me I won’t need to shovel.”
“Herman,” said the doctor, “your house burned down. This is your fourth day in the hospital.”
“Yes, yes, yes. Do I need to shovel?”
“See this graph? It looks like your car had its tires melt when your driveway became superheated. The rubber spilled onto your lawn, which then also became superheated, which ignited your house. It kept the firefighters busy for forty hours.”
“Oh NO!” said Herman. “Forty hours! Does this mean it snowed again? I bet it has. The forecast was pretty bad, you know. Brr. Shoveling.”
The snowball was never found again, even when Herman moved back in – not that he could remember it, then or ever. He was more or less in one piece, but a part of him was always a little boiled after that.
Never got cold shovelling again, mind you.