The Blizzard

“Happy New Year, Pennsylvania! That was Gordon Lightfoot and the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. And speaking of storms. Hoo-wee, we’ve got a doozy incoming folks. Better get those front stoops cleared off from last night squall because this next one is going to make that one look like an October dusting.”

Gloria sighed and stared down at the metal snow shovel propped against the coat rack beside the front door. A room away, the empty blank page of her current piece beckoned. She was two weeks late with the first chapter and so far, the first page remained as stark white as the yard in front of her house.

She had hoped that staying in Pennsylvania for the winter would provide amble time to start and finish the novel. Instead, she’d spent most of the last two months shoveling snow, keeping the generator working, and stocking the house for the big Nor’easter that should have hit mid-December.

Christmas had come and gone without preamble or so much as an opening line save the one from the traveling carolers who’d attempted to bring Christmas cheer to her doorstep. She’d quickly learned to turn off the lights and close all the drapes before sitting down for dinner so they would pass on by, leaving her to stare at that bright white computer screen until her mind was as blank as the page.

“I should go out and shovel again,” she murmured to Mike, the radio DJ who had started playing CCR’s Bad Moon Rising. She rolled her eyes and glanced over at Edgar lounging on the couch across the room. “I’m rather tired of shoveling snow though.”

Edgar’s deep brown eyes opened, and he cocked his head to one side, one long piebald ear raising in hopes of hearing the word dinner or any of the other words he’d learned meant food. When none of the expected words followed, he put his head back down on his wide paws and huffed his disappointment.

“All right, fine. Maybe a good snow shoveling will help me think.” As if that had worked thus far. Still, she turned to the door, grabbed the shovel with her left hand, and the doorknob with her right and swung it open with as much panache as she could muster. Then she stood there like a lunatic with one bright red rubber boot poised at the threshold while the cold, arctic air the door had moments before held at bay slammed into her with the excitement of a mob of shoppers entering a store on Black Friday.

It seeped immediately through the boots, through the thick goose-down parka, through the thermal underwear, through her very bones and came out the other side just as cold. Edgar whimpered and dove under a blanket, grabbing one corner with his teeth and rolling himself in it like a burrito. “Oh, God,” she heard herself gasp and then stared as the warm breath immediately froze into fine snowflakes before her face.

She followed them down to where last night’s snow had formed a perfect impression of the bottom foot and a half of her door. Mike’s words rang through her mind, and she pictured herself opening the door later to find the white counterimage had grown to half the height of the door. This should have given her the impetus to go out and shovel as Mike had warned.

Instead.

She shrugged, slammed the door closed, stuck the shovel back against the coat rack, and stomped into the kitchen to start a hot pot of tea. The moment she put the filled teapot on the burner there was a soft scratching at the front door.

Ernest sat bolt upright on the couch, stared wide-eyed at the door, whimpered, then turned to her and whimpered again. Which was quite odd and very unlike her vocal dachshund who barked at nothing and everything in equal measure.

“What is it, boy?” She inched towards the window and peeked towards the front stoop.

Nothing there.

“Must have been just an icicle fell off the roof.”

As she turned back to the teapot, the scratch came again, louder.

Edgar whined, giving her the side-eye and refusing to take his wide eyes off the door.

“Uh, it’s a stick or the wind or something.”

Edgar grumbled.

“Don’t you talk to me in that tone. I don’t see you going to open it.”

Meanwhile, DJ Mike, not to be outdone, decided to start playing Dio’s Don’t Talk to Strangers.

She crossed the room and snapped the radio off. “Okay, Gloria. Get a grip. There’s nothing there we need to be scared of. Watch.” And she opened the door.

A flurry of fresh snowflakes spiraled in on an icy wind gust as she stood in the doorway armed with the snow shovel in a stance her body must have remembered from high school softball.

“See, Edgar,” she blinked at the empty doorway and straightened, slowly lowering the shovel until it was more sword than bat. “Nothing…”

A soft growl from between her legs brought her gaze downward to a small, shivering brown creature standing or rather half-buried in the snow built up on the front stoop. Its little front paws were clenched in front of its chest as if pleading with Gloria to let it inside. Its deep brown eyes were wide and locked with Edgar’s as he slowly leaned towards the creature to take a sniff.

“Um,” was all Gloria got out at first.

The little creature shivered and looked up at her, then…

Chittered?

That was the only word that came to mind for the sound. Something akin to a squirrel and a giant mouse.

Edgar, for some reason, was immediately taken with the creature and started thumping his tail against the sides of Gloria’s rubber boots in a rapid percussion.

She instinctively stepped to the side and gestured towards the house before she could think what she was doing. Or saying. “Please, come on in.”

To which the creature hopped out of the snow and into the house, where it immediately shook its amble body and sent drops of snowmelt all across the living room furnishings.

Edgar inched past it and jumped back onto the couch where he nosed his blanket out flat as if to invite his new friend to join him. Which of course it did.

“Make yourself at…home?” Gloria murmured and closed the door slowly.

She stood there and stared at the creature. Stared at Edgar, so casually letting this wild rodent thing curl up next to him on the blanket. The creature made an odd churring sound, halfway between its earlier chitter and the purr of a cat, as it snuggled in against Edgar and warmed itself. Both seemed to sigh.

Then the teapot whistled and pulled her out of the trance.

“Groundhog,” she muttered as she went to finish the tea. “It’s got to be. It can’t be. It’d be hibernating. Wouldn’t it?”

A deep chitter sounded from the couch and she peeked over to find two sets of eyes watching her. The creature shivered.

“Um. It’s too cold to hibernate?”

It chittered again, higher pitched.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

High pitched chitter, with a nose twitch.

“Yeah,” she nodded and gave a high pitched chitter of her own. “I can’t say I blame you. Mike, the DJ, said this is probably going to be the worst Nor’easter we’ve seen in fifty years. I wouldn’t want to be underground out in this either.”

She poured the tea and then went to the cupboard for some biscuits. Picking up the box of biscuits and the teacup, she started towards the office but stopped in her tracks as the two animals on the couch stared at her in what could only be an accusatory fashion.

“Right!” She turned and marched back to the kitchen. “Of course, you both want some biscuits too. What do groundhogs even eat?” She grabbed the box of dog biscuits. “All we’ve got are the apple ones left,” and she shook a couple out into her palm, to which both critters wagged their tales.”

Edgar, as dachshunds do, pretty much swallowed the biscuit whole.

The groundhog though, sat up and took the biscuit in its paws and ate it with more decorum.

Gloria raised an eyebrow. “Huh. Well Edgar, looks like you could learn a thing or two from your new friend. Speaking of which, what do we call you? Hmm?” They stared at each other for a moment, the groundhog looking back expectantly as it finished the biscuit. “Phil?”

The groundhog gave a low grunt, clearly insulted. Then it lay down and rolled onto its back, showing off its belly.

“Ohh,” Gloria nodded in understanding, “you’re a GIRL groundhog. No wonder Edgar invited you in. Okay, so Phil-is? No, no Virginia. Edgar and Virginia!”

Both creatures wagged tails again, so that was decided. Edgar Allan would be proud. Or he would be if she could get her story written.

Then as she stood there watching a wild groundhog snuggle up with her dachshund in January, completely out of sync with the snowy drifts of the blizzard starting to blur the view through the living room window, it came to her. The words and images drifted and mingled in her mind like the snow and wind beyond the windowpane. The story grew like the snowbanks, layer upon layer, and she nearly tripped on her way to the typewriter.

Her fingers flew through the hours as the words danced across the pages. She stopped only to eat and to feed the animals.

By the time the blizzard took out the electricity, the book was finished.

Not just the chapter she had promised.

The whole, entire thing.

It had finished sending to the publisher right before the lights had given the first warning flicker.

She wasn’t sure how long she’d been in that strange fever while she wrote, it felt like days, and maybe it had been. A deep exhaustion drew her to her bed, where Edgar and Virginia joined her beneath her grandma’s old quilt.

Together they dreamed of Spring and warm meadows where they chased butterflies and nibbled on fresh fruit.

When Gloria’s publisher came to check on her some days later, it was to find Gloria and her dachshund in a strange state of hibernation from which they could not be awakened.