Whistlin' Dixie in a Nor'easter

by Lisa Patton

  “Probably not ’fore noon. Lots more folks signed up ’fore you did. You’re at the end of the list,” she said, and hung up.

  Shovel around the car? I never thought about it before now. Guess what, no one ever once mentioned that to me, either.

  Even the schools were closed that day. After feeding the girls oatmeal for breakfast, minus the milk, I put The Jungle Book into the VCR. Keeping them occupied while I shoveled the “three foot of clearance” was crucial. I was guessing it might take me the full ninety minutes of the movie.

  All dressed up in my ski suit, I set out to rescue my poor car. But I never made it that far. Think about it. When there’s four new feet of snow on the ground, you can’t just skip out the door. It’s like wading through Jell-O. You have to lift your legs as high as they can go and stretch them out as far as they can reach to make any progress at all. After ten minutes of walking like that, trust me, you want to scream—especially when you look up and realize your car is still forty feet away. Once I even tried diving across the snow but all that did was add more ice pebbles to my hat.

  During the last nor’easter, Jeb, Baker, and Pierre had stayed outside all day shoveling and snowblowing. I was inside making hot chocolate having no idea of the goings-on outside. Bitter truth was this: The only way over to my car was via a huge, red, rectangular-shaped shovel. Jeb always kept one propped up against each door. Looking back on it now, I guess it was a miracle that I’d made it four months without even touching a snow shovel.

  So my luck had officially run out. I had no choice but to go for it. This isn’t so bad, I thought—prematurely—when I shoved my first dent into the snow and lifted a huge load. It took both arms for me to dump a big pile off to the side. I had no idea snow was so heavy. Even so I was bound and determined and I began creating a maze with white walls on either side. Every few minutes I would stop to admire my handiwork.

  But there was one big ole problem. It was approaching eleven forty-five, the snowplow was due to arrive in fifteen minutes, and when I looked behind I had only cleared a four-foot trail to my car, which was still over thirty feet away. Never mind the three-foot clearance that I had to shovel once I got to my car.

  Totally frustrated, I returned to the house. Unfortunately my presence distracted the girls from their movie and they started begging to come out and play with me in the snow.

  “I want to make a snow girl,” Sarah began with a twinkle in her eye.

  “Me too,” said Isabella, jumping up and down.

  I covered my hand over the receiver. “Just a second, girls, Mommy’s on the phone. Hi, this is Leelee Satterfield again, I was wondering if Bud could push my appointment back an hour or so, I’m still shoveling!”

  “He’s so far behind, he probably won’t be to your house ’fore four o’clock anyway.”

  “Oh. Well, hmmm, I have no bread or milk in the house, but I guess it can wait until then. I’ll just see him around four. Thanks.”

  “Be sure and have that car shoveled out, he’s on a tight schedule,” the woman said.

  “I will,” I said, with a touch of irritation.

  When I hung up the phone, Baloo the Bear was singing “The Bare Necessities” to an empty room and Sarah and Issie were by the back door tugging on their snowsuits. Every time the girls played outside I had them so bundled up they could hardly move. Their little arms stuck straight out due to all the extra layers.

  “Mommy, will you make a snow girl with us?” Isabella pleaded, as she waddled outside along my path.

  “No, first I want to go sledding. Then we’ll make a snow girl. Where’s my sled?” Sarah asked, tugging on my sleeve.

  “Hold on a minute, girls, I’ve got to shovel out our car so the snowplow man can get our driveway all clean.”

  “No, I want you to make a snow girl.” While Isabella begged and begged, I noticed her little freckled nose was already red.

  “I know,” Sarah said. “We can make a snow house. Come on, Isabella.”

  The situation went from grave to ghastly. The snow was way taller than Isabella and, in some spots, taller than Sarah’s head. But my strong-minded daughters were determined, at first, to frolic in the snow. Glaring problem number two: The only place they could actually play was in the path I’d already cleared and it was getting filled up again from their attempts to build a snow house. Every time I’d get back to my shoveling, someone would start crying from getting stuck in the snow.

  Let me stop right here and give all Southerners some headline news. Snow and little children do not mix. It’s not a winning combination. There is nothing fun or the least bit enjoyable about it at all.

  By this time my blood had reached the boiling point and I ended up raising my voice and demanding that Sarah and Isabella go back to their movie. Amid tears and drippy noses, they stomped back inside. “I’ll be in soon, just finish your movie.”

  For the next two hours I shoveled my way to the car, amid various interruptions from my cranky little girls. They were hungry, they were bored, and they wanted me to read them a story. The longer I shoveled, the crankier they became. At one point I looked up to see Isabella in the window with big tears rolling down her cheeks and a wide-open mouth. “MOMMY” was all I could make out in between the long breaths she held in as she rapped on the window.

  There was no telling what kind of mischief Sarah was up to, as I hadn’t heard a peep out of her. Nanny Princess was keeping watch, I’m sure, safely inside where it was warm. She never even considered a stroll outdoors. That’s another reason I have to get to the store, I thought. More newspapers.

  Actually, it was a good thing I was working as hard as I was or I would have never made it through the frigid temperature. It never got above five degrees that day. My toes were completely numb (I was out of toe heaters), and my fingers felt like they were hiding somewhere in my gloves. With all the oomph I had left in my body, I heaved and hoed, pushed and pulled, trying my best to shovel an alleyway around my car—with three feet of clearance.

  As I firmly gripped the shovel handle, my mind drifted to that familiar place. I started obsessing, for the one thousandth time, about him. Why is this my job? I never asked for this. I had no desire to ever move up here. I DID IT FOR YOU, my mind shrieked. Alice has been right about you all these years. You do love people with money, and the fatter the wallet the better.

  There was no way around it. Husband or not, my life had to go on. Shoveling snow was only the beginning. I was going to have to operate a business, manage my money, buy my own cars, and raise my little girls all on my own.

  “She’s amazing, huh?” I finally screamed out to the frosty air. “I’ll show you amazing. And she loves the outdoors! Oh, really? And does she still love the outdoors when the silicone in her huge, fake boobs starts freezing?”

  I pushed my glove back to look at my watch. Four o’clock. At best, I could squeeze around the car with a half foot of room, if I was lucky. But, at least I had done it! Actually, when I leaned back and looked at it I was kind of proud of my handiwork. I wanted to pull up a chair and sit back and stare at it, to tell you the truth. But the more I stared at it, the more obvious it became that something wasn’t right. On the hood, the trunk, and the top of my car, four feet of snow was still heaped up. That snow had to come off. And the only place it could go was straight down into my two-hours’-worth-of-labor alley!

  I snapped. This wild woman took over my body. She started running around the car and cussing at the snow, waving the shovel above her head. “Get the hell away from my car,” the wild woman screamed. “I want to go home. Do you hear me? Home. Somebody get me out of this godforsaken winter wasteland and back to civilization! Who’s ever heard of snow falling in the dead of spring anyway?” Frantically, this crazy person started pushing the snow off the car, paying no mind to the fact that my alley was filling back up at a rate of speed ninety times faster than I had cleared it away!

  Then the wild woman hurled the snow shovel as far as her strength
could manage and stormed back down the narrow, barely passable, crooked path and into the house, kicking her snow boots off. One hit the sitting room ceiling and fell back down and clobbered her on the head. That made her even madder and she ripped off her snowsuit and flung her hat and gloves around the room. Without hesitation, she punched in the seven numbers to Duke Excavating and had the nerve to use my name.

  “Mrs. Duke?” she said, when a woman answered.

  “Yes.”

  “Leelee Satterfield calling.”

  “He’s still backed up, Ms. Satterfield. I suspect now he won’t get to your place b’fore five—”

  “Here’s the deal, Mrs. Duke. I presume you are Mrs. Duke, is that right?”

  “I am.”

  “Good. I don’t care what time he gets here. All I know is I’m not shoveling any more snow today. I’ve spent hours creating an alley around my car. And it took me four hours before that to even reach my car. And, when I finished, I realized that there was as much snow on top of my car as there was around it! Would you like to know what happened to all that snow on top of my car, Mrs. Duke?” The lunatic didn’t even give Mrs. Duke a chance to get a word in edgewise. “I’ll tell you. It landed in my alley! Now, I don’t care what you have to do to get my car out of this driveway. You can bring in a backhoe if you like or you can send out an eighteen-wheeler tow truck. BUT I AM NOT SHOVELING ANY MORE SNOW TODAY, THE NEXT DAY, OR THE DAY AFTER THAT! Please, just get this snow out of my life. Don’t y’all realize that it’s April, for God’s sake?”

  “We don’t normally get out of the truck to shovel,” the woman said in a monotone.

  “Every job has a price tag. That’s one thing I’ve learned for sure up here.”

  “Well, I’ll see what we can do and get back with you.”

  “Thank you very much,” the wild woman said. “You can call this your good deed for life!”

  When Bud Duke finally arrived at 7:00 P.M., dusk had fallen over the Vermont Haus Inn. It was quiet as can be outside when his truck lights lit up my little car to free her at last. Another guy was in the truck with him and within twenty short minutes the two men had cleared a new three-foot alley around my car. His snowplow pushed the snow in my driveway to new heights, creating a snowy fort that made it impossible to see the road.

  Much to my surprise, the man took pity on me. When he handed me a bill for his labor, it wasn’t the two hundred dollars I had expected. He only charged me fifty.

  “Gosh, if I had known it would only be fifty bucks, I would have had you here a long time ago, Bud,” I said.

  “Well, we don’t normally do this, Mrs. Satterfield, but I could tell by your path and the way you slung your snow shovel you hadn’t done much shovelin’ b’fore today.”

  “You are extremely perceptive. I’ve never shoveled snow in my entire life. And I don’t plan to ever do it again.”

  The look on his face told the story. He didn’t say anything but I knew what he was thinking: Yeah right, sister. Not if you’re goin’ to live around here.

  But I’m not, Bud Duke, I said to myself. I’ll never live through, nor will I ever visit, another Vermont winter again.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Mud Season, as it is affectionately called, begins somewhere around mid-April or the first of May. The Thaw is another term the Vermonters use to portray this dreadful time of year. When the sun finally decides to shine, and the temperatures rise above freezing, the remainder of the snow starts melting and it seeps back into the ground. It creates one big slosh of a mess. Mud is absolutely everywhere and it covers everything—the yard, the car, the floors, the walls, your clothes. It’s worse than kudzu.

  To get from your house to your car, you have to walk tightrope style—across wooden boards stretched across the walkways—because of course, even the walkways are covered in mud. I broke down and ordered a pair of L.L.Bean duck boots and they never left my feet the months of April, May, and the better part of June. Every time I performed my circus act from the car to the house, and the boards wiggled and jiggled under my feet from the pressure of my weight in the mud, I was glad I had the boots.

  The winter never seemed to want to disappear. The mounds of snow, piled up under the eaves of the roof, had the stubbornness of an old stain. They took forever to go away. And by this time of year the snow is filthy. What’s left on the side of the road is black from the car exhaust and road grime. The Currier and Ives image of Vermont is replaced with dingy, dark, and depressing yuck. I decided to go on and unpack my shorts and sundresses anyway. I don’t know, just looking at them in my closet gave me the hope that warm weather was on the way.

  An even scarier thought than the treacherous winter weighed heavy on my mind. The idea of breaking the news about Baker to my mortgage holders was enough to make me sick. After all, they had handpicked the Satterfields themselves. They had chosen Baker and me to carry on their legacy. There was only one courageous way to handle the situation. I’d let Ed Baldwin do it. You owe me that much . . . you asshole.

  I asked Ed to meet me for coffee at the only place in town to get a cheeseburger, JoJo’s. Biggest problem with JoJo’s was it was the hot spot, with George Clark and every local in town eating there almost every day. The booths and tables were close together, making it very difficult to carry on a confidential conversation. It was the kind of place where the people eating are so bored with one another that people-watching was the pastime of choice. Any time I walked into JoJo’s everyone stopped and looked up at the same time. Blank stares from forty pairs of eyes, then all at once they’d drop back down to their meals.

  Roberta came over to watch Issie while I stole away to JoJo’s. Ed was already seated when I arrived. He stood up, offered me a phony hug, and then scooted back into a conspicuous middle booth. A cola drink was waiting for me on my side of the table. (Let me stop right here and say that everyone in Vermont refers to Cokes as sodas. It is only for clarification that I refer to my Coke as a cola drink.) My first sip let me know that Ed Baldwin still hadn’t gotten my order right. Not only was it a Pepsi, this one was a diet. I hadn’t seen ole Ed in nearly five months so when he opened his mouth to speak, I was taken aback all over again by his extra-thick veneers.

  “You’re looking well, Leelee. Vermont life must be agreeing with you,” he said.

  I wanted to say: Is that so? I’m as pale as a ghost. It’s May, you know, and May is still winter up here. And, my husband has left me for another woman. But as usual I didn’t confront him. “That’s kind of you to say,” I lied.

  I made sure to keep my voice down, sometimes even whispering. After we ordered, I exposed the turmoil in my life, even though I was sure he already knew.

  He seemed genuinely concerned. “I’m sorry to hear this. I thought Baker was gung ho about the restaurant business.” Ed had to keep wiping his fingers on the napkin next to his plate due to slathering his french fries in ketchup.

  “So did I.” I sat glumly in the booth and stared down at my cheeseburger.

  Obviously he didn’t know how to handle my grief because his tone changed from disturbed to upbeat. “So you say he’s the OM at Powder Mountain now, huh? How’s it working out for him?”

  “I . . . sshhh,” I whispered, and pressed my hand up and down to let him know that I would appreciate him keeping his voice down. “I don’t know and I don’t really want to know.” Oh yes I do. “How much do you know about Barb Thurmond?” I whispered, even lower.

  “I only know what I’ve heard on the streets.” He leaned in and whispered back. “She’s divorced from a super-wealthy guy, a Wall Street mogul. They were real jet-setters from what I hear. Her ex still lives in New York and—I should pay her a visit sometime.” He sounded like he had just come up with an idea of how to strike gold.

  Talking about outrageous. Here I was in the middle of a disaster and this ne’er-do-well was planning his next commission check. Looking back on it now, I should have gotten up and walked out on the spot. But all I could th
ink about was getting the place sold right away, and I thought surely Ed could find another sucker.

  Ed, the slick wheeler-dealer, suggested a list price of $450,000. That was $65,000 more than we paid in the first place, a chance to recoup some of our expenses. Ed, of course, had a blank contract in his briefcase and filled out the listing agreement right there on the spot. I signed a contract giving him an exclusive on the property for one year. He reassured me it would never take that long to sell and that it was just a formality.

  “May I ask you a favor?” I had just signed my name to the contract, so I felt like this was the time to get what I wanted.

  “Of course, you may ask me a favor. What else can I do for you?”

  “Would you mind breaking the news to Rolf and Helga for me, about the sale of the inn? I’m sure they’ll hear about Baker as soon as they fill up their car, if they haven’t already received a cross-Atlantic phone call by now. But I would so appreciate it if you told them that I’m gonna be selling the inn. Rolf is nice enough to me, but Helga’s another story. She can’t stand me for some reason.”

  “Huh,” Ed said, seemingly confused. “I’m surprised to hear that. I’ve never heard of anyone else having problems with Helga. But, be that as it may, I’ll go over to their home personally when they return from Germany. How’s that?”

  “That’s perfect. Thank you. That’s one mountain I don’t want to climb.”

  “My pleasure.” I knew it was his pleasure all right. He was going to make a fat commission on the same property twice in the same year. “I’ll be contacting you soon with potential buyers. Keep the place in shipshape condition. You never know when I’ll call with only a moment’s notice.”

  I wanted to say: Don’t forget to brag about the superb owners’ quarters in your ad, but I knew I didn’t have to.

  The last thing I wanted was for it to appear to be a distress sale, even though everyone involved knew it absolutely, positively was a distress sale.