Page 106

Started walking.

Post.

Wire.

Post.

At the gate corner, I climbed around the drift rather than over the gate. Snow went above my knees. It packed into the tops of my boots and melted against my socks.

I kept moving.

The wind came from the north and hit my right side, pushing me into the fence. My glove caught twice on wire knots. I learned to slide my palm over the posts and keep my fingers curled away between them.

The world became four feet wide.

My boots.

The fence.

The dark suggestion of the next post.

The wind erased the Ford behind me before I had gone fifty yards.

That frightened me more than I expected.

Not because I wanted to return to it.

Because evidence of distance had vanished. I could walk for an hour and still feel fixed in the same white place.

So I counted posts.

One.

Two.

Three.

At twelve, I stopped counting because I forgot whether the last was eleven or thirteen.

I began again.

My legs tired first.

The snow made every step an extraction. Lift high. Plant. Sink. Pull the other boot free. Sometimes crust held my weight for half a beat, then broke and dropped me sideways.

I fell at a shallow drainage.

One moment I was upright. The next, my left leg vanished to the thigh and I went down on both hands.

Cold punched through the gloves.

Snow entered my sleeves.

I stayed there too long.

Five seconds.

Maybe ten.