10. Groundhog Day
The sky above Woodhill, Oregon was crystal, for the moment. The frosty cold seemed to amp up the stars’ twinkle. Someone circling above the town in a helicopter or a flying saucer would see the concentration of lights that was downtown giving way to the spattering of the neighborhoods tied together by the major thoroughfares like Highway 13 and Gun Club Road. To the north, east and south lay the rest of the Willamette Valley, flat with similar-sized towns placed up and down the river. To the west rose the low and ragged Coast Range, guarding the valley from the moist ocean air—for a while at least. And the more substantive Cascade Range lay due east, the huge mountains standing like ghost sentries along the edge of the high desert. Sometimes in winter, if the schoolchildren got lucky, the cold mountain air might creep down the valley to commingle with the wet coastal action and produce snow. Big wet glorious flakes that piled up quickly, but even an inch completely incapacitated the town, much to the amusement of the folks who had moved to Western Oregon from Minnesota or Wisconsin or North Dakota or even Eastern Oregon.
On that particular night, the first of February, the kids slept soundly, not knowing the next morning would bring a huge dump of snow that would confound their parents and paralyze the work schedules of people throughout the valley. Then it would melt in the afternoon leaving just a puddle of memories with the youngsters and a score of insurance claims for fender benders.
When the first flakes began to fall in the foothills west of town, at the Hoffmeister’s Christmas tree farm, Lila snored softly, pressed against Bert’s good left side. She lay buried under the mountain of blankets that warded off the drafts in the old house, unaware that in a few short hours, their peaceful retirement was going to change forever.
Their closest neighbors, the Riccis, were also asleep. The father, Tommaso, alone in the master bedroom, thrashed about in the big bed, still reaching for his wife who had passed away two years before. His daughter Sophie, a first grader at Woodhill Elementary, crept into the room clutching her Furby. She climbed into the bed, patted her daddy’s shoulder, then put her thumb in her mouth and fell back to sleep. In the next room, Tom’s handsome teenaged son Ren lay face-down, motionless, spread-eagle under the covers, dreaming pleasant dreams that he wouldn’t remember when he woke up.
Farther down the hill in town, Ren’s girlfriend Michaela Burke stirred as her teething niece screamed from her sister’s bedroom. She listened until she heard Aimee’s bed squeak, then she put her pillow over her head and thought about the sweetness of kissing Ren. Aimee Burke pulled her baby Misty out of her crib and cuddled her close. She slipped one of the homeopathic teething tablets that her mother had brought home from the store into the baby’s mouth, then rocked her until they both fell asleep on the bed. Downstairs, Michaela and Aimee’s parents slept through it all—one of the advantages of being grandparents.
Downtown, in the Woodhill Hotel kitchen, the crew cleaned up after an unusually late private party—a “business” dinner for a bunch of developers and politicians thrown by Woodhill’s new economic development office (which consisted of one guy from California with big ideas). Jessie Springfield carried a greasy gray tub full of dirty glasses back to the dishwasher. After heaving it onto the counter, she pulled from it a half-full bottle of Oregon pinot noir and waved it at Javi, the head line cook, who was leaving the next day for six weeks in Mexico. He grinned and winked as he scrubbed the grill with a wire brush. The executive chef, Basil Wolf, had just gone home. It was time for the real party, though Jessie was pretty much over Javi. They’d had some fun over the past six months, but it had run its course. She decided she should break it off with him that night.
Basil maneuvered his Suburu station wagon east along Main Street toward Arbor Heights, the subdivision where he rented a two-bedroom two-bath house with his girlfriend, Ellen, who finally seemed to be settling in since they had moved from New York. She had started a public relations business in their spare bedroom, developed a friendship with their next-door neighbor, even learned how to drive, although badly, in his opinion. He had been worried at first, bringing a New York City girl out into the middle of nowhere—and then he was working 15-hour days getting the restaurant open. And she had seemed hopelessly unhappy at first, but was finally doing a lot better. He turned on the windshield wipers. The snow was starting to stick.
Ellen Greenstein gazed out the bedroom window at the flakes floating down onto Hemlock Street. The snow made her nostalgic for her childhood in New York. Oregon seemed hideously green sometimes; the soft white was restful. She smiled and wished she could call her neighbor Candy, but across the driveway the windows were dark. Then she tried to stop herself from slipping into her own little secret dreamworld. In the past year, her feelings for Candy had pitched her into the craziest ride of her life.
A car came up the street and turned into the driveway, startling her. It was Basil; she’d forgotten all about him.
A few blocks over on Spruce Lane, thirteen-year-old Jared Pratt lay shivering on his brother Kyle’s bed. Kyle was still in Iraq, serving in the Army. Jared wasn’t supposed to sleep in Kyle’s bed, but he was home alone; his dad Bill was at some dinner downtown and his mom Dottie was working at the Riverview nursing home. Graveyard shift. She was trying to become a certified nurse’s aide, taking classes over at Chemeketa Community College in Salem. Jared rolled over on his stomach and cried. He missed his brother more and more every day. He didn’t know that just outside the window, snow was blanketing the town in a silent shroud.