The light snow that had begun falling earlier in the afternoon had picked up strength off Lake Michigan.  Now the fluffy flakes had turned into biting pellets clinking against the windows as the wind whipped and screamed in nearly continuous gusts.  The single glass window panes rattled in their wooden frames.  Through the minute gaps between window and frame, an icy breeze kissed Steve Thorndyke's unshaven cheek and jaw.   He gazed through the blurred window where he had wiped the frost away with the side of his hand.

   

He knelt on the couch, his knees resting on the thin fabric and foam that didn't keep the inner springs from poking into his kneecaps.   The streetlamp across the street showed the snow sheeting nearly sideways from west to east. 

     

The driveway, which he had so cleanly shoveled at six, was buried again.  Drifts created a ramp up the thigh high snow banks lining the driveway.   The sidewalk out front was drifting over too.  The ruts that had been in the street that city snowplows hadn't bothered to come down today were now filled too.

      

He had not seen snow like this since he was 12.  Nothing kept him from delivering the Gazette, even that winter.  That had been a bad winter.   He had loved the snow until that winter.  He should have moved south three years ago when he graduated high school and his parents died along with the drunk driver that hit them.   But they had left him the house and he was enrolled at the community college.  His best friend since high school, Doug Kaptein moved in and on to college they went, as they had planned.  What a waste that had been.