Blizzard

                                                  BLIZZARD

         “What happened?  Is anything wrong?” Mom’s voice is dulled from the music that courses through the car. Her cell phone glows against her cheek.  I want to remind her that talking on your cell phone while driving is against the law, but it is way too early to worry about that.
         We are driving on the Mass Pike at 5 am, on our way to pick up Dad from the airport.  It is so early and so dangerous that the roads are unplowed.  Dad considers it a miracle that his flight as not yet been canceled.  The highway that stretches out before us is empty but for the whirling flakes – blinding, beautiful snowflakes that make the windshield wipers go as fast as the car.  A gleam illuminates them shrilly from the other side of the approaching bend, the lights flowing through the trees and sliding over and under the softened branches.
         “Dad’s plane is canceled,” Mom sighs.
         “Really?” I ask, groaning.  “That’s what I thought would happen.”
         “We’ll turn around at the next exit,” she yawns. She leans forward and peers into the darkness.
         Then the bend comes.  It is sharp, and Mom turns a little too quickly, and then the wheels are spinning crazily and so is the car.  My stomach lurches up and down.  My shriek struggles through the car windows to pierce the frigid air. When I see it – big, dirty, and white, with a huge red word sprawled across it, I shut up.  We smash violently into a great monster of metal, sitting there, parked in the middle of the road.  My head is blaring, my whole body feeling the vibrations as we rebound off of it, screeching to an awkward halt at the side of the road. 
         The night is silent. 
         Then all of a sudden, a door slams; a voice is shouting words I cannot understand.  Mom’s hand scrabbles for the door handle, and I help her push it open.  We stumble out onto chilling snow that shocks our senses.
         “Broke it, damn it!  You broke it!” The man’s words are now crystal clear.  Of course, he also lets out a string of four-letter words.
         Mom and I just stand there.  A soft glow begins to show above the bleached trees.  An intricate pattern is visible in the snow.  It takes me a few seconds before I realize that we created it.
         The man’s beard is scruffy.  His hat is stained, the original color indeterminable.  His tattered shirt must once have been a somewhat attractive red.  The brown shoes are scuffed and the laces do not match. 
         He spins and sees us, comes over and spits his gum out at our feet.  “I’m gonna have to pay for that.  You know that, right?” his voice is loathsome.  “I’m gonna be the one that has to!  Not the company, oh no, they won’t pay for this.  It’s gonna be me.”
         Mom stares at the man.  Then she says, her voice ragged, “We are… so sorry, sir. Maybe… maybe we can pay the bill.”
         “No,” the man says shortly, and turns his back on us.  The sight of our car is really much worse than his. The whole front is crumpled, and smoke pores out of every crevice it can find.
         “Sir,” Mom ventures, “It really was both of our faults.  May I ask why your truck was sitting in the middle of the road?”  Her manner is delicate when she speaks, and her words are sympathetic. 
         “I was takin’ a break,” he growls.  “What else would I be doing?”
         “Oh,” Mom says, tentatively.
         The man circles his truck, muttering and huffing.  When he reaches the place we hit, he kicks it angrily.  I cower.  The man’s violent stature is disconcerting. 
         “Mom-“ I begin, but I am cut off by a string of swears aimed in our direction.  I stop speaking and stare at him, my mouth slightly open, my eyes round. 
         He is gone in less than twenty seconds, spraying snow into our faces.  “Horrid,” Mom says, and pulls out her cell phone.  With a shaking hand she punches in three digits and raises the phone to her ear.  “Yes, this is an emergency.  Car crash.  The mass pike.  Where?  Oh, um, near exit 15. No fatalities, no.  Thank you so much,” she snaps it shut.  She turns around and stares at our car. It is no longer white as the snow.  Right now, my mother’s car is a sooty black color.
         “Mom?” My voice quavers, the whispered word louder than ever before.
         “Are you ok?” she whispers back at me.
         “Me? Yeah, I’m fine.  What about you?”