Oh God, it snowed, thought Will Tomlinson, as he looked out from his apartment's frost-encrusted window. How he hated snow in the city. In the sticks, where he had grown up, snow was different: it always looked like something out of a Currier & Ives print, like a white bedspread that belonged there, covering the sleeping fields and hibernating trees. But snow in the city was an alien presence, he knew, having already survived …showed first 75 words of 937 total…

…showed last 75 words of 937 total…of tire chains. A city truck with a huge plow on the front was chugging up the street, pushing another wave of snow off to the side. Will watched in horror as his car was buried again. He saw the driver's face in a flash as the truck passed under a streetlight, and he knew the image would stay with him for a long time: it was the old man, grinning like the devil himself.