The Snowplough at Midnight

When the town has gone still and the shops have gone dark, and the snow has come down on the school and the park, there’s a man in a shed with a flask and a plough, and the man’s name is Ray, and he’s starting up now.

There’s a rumble, a cough, and a shudder, and then there’s a light on the snow, and it’s yellow, and when it goes slow down the lane past the church and the mill, all the town is asleep and the whole town is still.

And the blade pushes snow to the left and the right, and it curls and it heaps and it shines in the light, and the grit follows after in showers of grey, and behind him the road is a road for the day.

Ray goes past the old pub with its curtains all drawn, past the house where the doctor gets up before dawn, past the bakery, dark, though it won’t be for long, and the hum of the engine’s a kind of a song.

There’s a cat on a wall and it watches him go. There’s a fox by the bins, and it’s leaving a row of small prints in the white, like a stitch in a hem, and Ray lifts up a hand and says, “Evening,” to them.

Then the hill, and the plough takes it steady and slow, and the drifts at the top are as deep as they go, and the blade meets the drift with a sigh and a push, and the snow tumbles off in a long, quiet hush.

At the top, Ray pulls in, and he switches it off, and he pours from the flask, and he gives a small cough, and he sits with the tea and the window wound down, and he looks at the snow coming down on the town.

And it’s quiet the way that it’s quiet in snow, when the sound is all gone and the lights are all low, and the flakes on the windscreen go soft, and go wet, and he thinks he might sit for a little while yet.

Then the engine again, and the lights, and the blade, and he goes down the hill by the way that he made, and the road that he’s made is a ribbon of black, and the snow’s coming down, so he’ll do it all back.

Past the church and the mill and the pub and the school, past the pond, which is frozen and silver and cool, past the doctor’s, still dark, past the baker’s, now lit, and the smell of the bread is beginning a bit.

And the sky’s going grey at the edge of the town, and the snow’s coming lighter, and slower, and down, and Ray drives to the shed, and he parks, and he yawns, and he walks himself home over three people’s lawns.

And the road is a road, and the town’s waking now, and they’ll never quite think of the man with the plough, who is pulling his curtains and climbing in bed with the snow in his boots and the hum in his head.