The snowplow, which early in darkness passed over their street, had pushed mountains against parked cars. Old footprints, from the paperboy perhaps or some other wanderer, were disappearing from the sidewalk. A squirrel had hopped from a bare maple to the cover of fir, leaving behind a follow-the-dots. Otherwise the yards were clean again, covered with a seamless white quilt. Like a pioneer, she carved a trail through the virgin snow. When she reached the back fence, she looked back at the pattern her feet had made. In the distance a mother called her son, “Eddie, Eddie, you forgot your hat,” and then the door slammed shut, a pause, then shut again. The woman's voice seemed to come from miles away to pierce the prayerful silence like a cough in a cathedral. Norah moved farther from home and into the woods. Nothing stirred save the falling snow, and nothing sounded save its falling. A bough complained with an arthritic creak, and then the nothing returned, insinuated itself into her soul, and emptied her into itself. Swallowed by stillness, Norah felt the dread of her own existence in creation, and she craved reassurance of separateness from the storm and felt the need to go, to move somewhere, anywhere, to resist the eddy and flow around her. Like an aviator from some silent film, she wiped her spectacles, threw her scarf over her shoulder, and set her course. Beyond the bicycle trail, she turned right on the road to school. Each cross street she passed lay deserted, blank of all signs of life except for a few wisps of chimney smoke, imagined families around imagined fires. She came at last to Friendship Elementary. Encircled by a black iron fence, the enormous yard flowed as a white sea surrounding the island of the building. On a normal day, buses would be idling in the parking lot, coughing smoke and sulfur, and children would be clotting the doorways as teachers waved them in, already thinking of day's end. But devoid of people in motion, the school lost its energy, became just another place, yellow bricks darkening with moisture, windows fogged opaque. Norah curved away from the front door and headed to the playground. Ringed by trees, the broad fields lay empty, and she walked to a fence surrounding a slab of concrete that, when uncovered, had fading lines for hopscotch and foursquare, a wooden seesaw warped and gray, a rusty swingset with half the seats missing. Children dared to sneak in on weekends or on dusky summer evenings, though trespass was forbidden by a chained gate. Norah tested the lock, held her breath, squeezed between the bars, and stepped into the smooth clean yard.
Snow spilled like excelsior when she grabbed the monkeybars. Climbing to the top, like a crow in the nest she scanned in all directions, wishing that Sean were with her, enjoying the soft day, the light wind, and the loneliness of so much nothing. The horizon vanished as the low clouds hemmed in the view. She felt trapped inside a swirling snowglobe, particles in the sky fine as ash settling on everything, the fallout of the ruptured clouds. Treading softly, she investigated the four corners of the enclosure, slipped down the sliding board into a drift piled high as autumn leaves. She plopped on a swing, snorting when its dampness leached through the cloth of her pants. Cold and wet, she stomped angrily across the pavement. Her movements obliterated the false surface, and everywhere she stepped she left proof of her presence. Her feet ached in the boots and her legs stiffened. Tired of the playground, she circled round to the other side of the school, encountering no other soul, and climbed the bottom rail of the iron fence and held onto the bars. A patina of black paint and red rust clung to her woolen mittens. Nothing stirred but the squalls of snow, which now seemed an ordinary part of the everyday air.
Norah closed her eyes, lifted her face to the sky, and let the drops dapple her skin and tighten her lips. She felt a shadow pass nearby like an image from a dream. In the quiet, footsteps approached, and she snapped open her eyes to frighten him, only to discover the world white and blank as paper. Muttering at her own folly, she removed her glasses and wiped the moisture with the end of her scarf. Flakes lit upon her lashes. She blinked and beheld the figure on the other side of the fence.
He was elegance. From the leather gloves holding the iron finials to the camel hair coat snug against his frame. At the collar, out peeked a silk scarf, and on his hat, the snow clung to the brim and sharp crease like butter on a knife.
“You startled me,” she said. “Sneaking up on a person with her eyes closed.”
Leaning over the rail, he bent down to face her at eye level and chuckled when he saw the pink slash of her mouth. “You startled me. On such a day and at this early hour. What are you doing out here all by yourself?”
“I came to school, but there's no one here.”
“There is no school today. Didn't you get the good news? Too much snow.” His face softened. Patches of snow rested on his shoulders like epaulets, and his hair was salted where it stuck out from beneath the brown fedora. “You look cold, very cold.”
“I like being cold.”
“But not too cold. Wouldn't you like to get warm?”
She took one step back and considered his smiling eyes. “You aren't going to take me back with you, are you? I don't want to leave her.”
“Margaret? I know all about Mrs. Quinn too.” The man straightened his spine and looked toward the school building, blinking his eyes, either from the blowing snow or some private embarrassment. He seemed larger, as if a radiant energy grew inside his chest.
“Never talk to strangers,” she said. “Don't cross the street in the middle of the block. Just Say No.”
“Since there is no school, maybe you might want to come with me and get warm.”
“What are you doing out in this freezing snow?”
“I'm a snow man myself, of sorts, lost in it every chance I get.”
Norah's nose began to run, and she wiped it with her sleeve. She hacked out a cough, mucus rattling in her chest.
The man twisted his features into a half frown. “And just who are you, little friend?” He bent closer to the bars, close enough for her to see into his eyes. Where her reflection should have appeared on his pupils, nothing but misery, and she knew at once what sort of creature he was. The depth of his emptiness scared her, and she looked away. In the sound of his very breath blew a cold wind over the icy tundra. She could sense the glacial river pulsing in his veins, the utter silence of the transparent frozen heart. In the wink of an atom, the clap of his hands, her time would cease to be. “Tell me who you are.”
“I am an angel,” she stammered. “A messenger. A nothing become something so that they may see and understand. The time is at hand.”
“I have been following you and know where you have been. What time is at hand? The end? Whose end?”
“I am not sure.”
“Does anyone know that an angel has come?” Around them the snow undulated and sank to the ground. He reached between the spaces of the gate and grabbed her thin arms, pulling her toward him fiercely. Her body slammed into the bars and her face pressed hard against the cold metal. A rabbity cry escaped from the back of her throat. “Have you told anyone you are an angel?”
“Sean, a boy, suspects. But he doesn't believe. No one else yet.”