‘Ice Storm’

Photographer Douglas G. Campbell lives in Portland, Oregon. He is Professor Emeritus of Art at George Fox University where he taught painting, printmaking, drawing and art history courses. His poetry and artworks have been published in numerous periodicals and journals. His artwork is represented in collections such as The Portland Art Museum, Oregon State University, Ashforth Pacific, Inc. and George Fox University. You can see Douglas’ artwork at: http://www.douglascampbellart.com

Ice Storm

The ice storm was coming. They had been watching the weather reports for weeks. Each report seemed to portray it as being a little worse than the one before. Storm of the century, it said. Stay in your homes, don’t go to work, stores and businesses will be closed, collect your firewood, be prepared for frozen pipes.

By the end of the second week, no one in town was talking about much else. At the gas station, people filled five-gallon cans and talked nervously while the pump clicked. In the grocery story, shelves emptied faster than the manager could put up the “limit two per customer” signs. Milk, bread, canned chili, toilet paper all vanished like magic. Always the toilet paper. In a place used to long, mean summers, the idea of rain so cold it froze in sheets stirred up fascination and a hint of fear.

The storm was still a few days out, but already the crowds in town were slowing, as the temperatures continued to drop. The sky was a constant gray, painting the world below with a dismal shadowy light. The bare branches of the trees stood tall, as though they were daring the ice to come. “Take us if you can,” they said. Even the birds began to hunker down.

The morning of the storm, Hinez decided to open the diner despite the warnings Merv, the chief meteorologist had prompted on the news. After all, the towns people had to eat. Hinez arrived early, well before 5 am, to begin the opening process of the diner. Having owned the diner for over half his life, his actions came as habit, and he was able to allow his mind to drift through adventures while he baked bread and brewed coffee. He figured the crowd would be sparse with the frigid temperatures, and would most likely dwindle as the day wore on and the storm closed in, so he planned his daily rations accordingly.

It was only about an hour later when Clara arrived for her opening shift, using her manager key to unlock the front door. The air was still but the cold forced its way in, flooding the warmth of the lobby.

“Morning,” she called as she hung her coat amidst several unclaimed garments on the rack. The rain hadn’t started yet, but the ominous sky blotted out the sunrise, making it appear darker than the clock claimed.

“Hey there, Clara,” Hinez called from the kitchen, his face present through the pass-through. She smiled up at him as she immediately began readying the cash register and counter top. Hinez had offered her the day off because of the storm, but having lived in the area for so long, she didn’t think it was necessary for the time off due to the weather. And anyway, she could use the extra cash since Darryl left her a single mother. This time for good, she thought. 

The diner was quiet and the smell of fresh baking bread and hot coffee filled the air and mingled with the old bacon grease that clung to the walls since the sixties, when Hinez inherited it as a teenager from his father. Hinez had wanted to get out of the small town of Moody, maybe enlist in the Army, but God, and his father had other plans for him. When Dinah ended up pregnant just before graduation, he did the right thing and married her, securing his place in Moody and the diner for life. The best he could do was make sure his son wasn’t stuck like he was, so as soon as he turned eighteen, Hinez put that boy on a train out west where he settled. Hinez and Dinah never had any other children, so when Dinah died the year after their son left, Hinez retreated completely into the diner. He even started sleeping in a little storage room out back, unable to face the ghosts in the trailer across the tracks.

“Think we’ll be busy today, Hinez?” Clara asked. Unlike Hinez, Clara hated the quiet and could not stand to be left with her thoughts. The less she thought about the hand that life had dealt her, the happier she was. She hated living in Moody, and like Hinez, had big dreams of getting out after high school. And she did. However, after the divorce, she had no other option than to return home. She and her little boy came back to Moody and she immediately got hired at the diner. That was five years ago, and as much as Clara loved Hinez like the father she wished she could have had, she knew it was getting her nowhere fast. 

“No, darlin’. I don’t,” said Hinez, emerging from the kitchen with a tray full of freshly sliced bread. “But, we gotta give the customers some place to go to stay warm.” He laid the bread out in the glass case on the counter before he turned on the weather forecast on the television mounted above the pass-through.

Moody was a small town with about a thousand people, most of them the opposite of wealthy. It wasn’t in the middle of nowhere, but you could see it from there. Just like most small railroad towns, it boomed then dried up pretty quickly when the railroad stopped coming through, leaving the skeletal remains of a main street and a few businesses that refused to give up the ghost. The people that could afford to leave did. The rest is what made up the town of Moody.

Barb and Tony were the first customers of the morning, like they are every morning. The bell fixed to the front door announced their entry as they made their way to the table closest to the counter. Clara appeared with two cups of steaming coffee and placed them on the table.

“Good morning,” said Clara, wearing her tried-and-true-waitress-smile. “Your usual?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Barb, pouring enough sugar in her coffee to create sludge. “And tell Hinez not to make my eggs runny. He made them runny yesterday and I was heaving the whole day.” 

“Yes, ma’am,” said Clara. “I’m sorry about that. I’ll let Hinez know.” She and Tony shared a glance and smirk, as if to say, “that old Barb, at it again.” Clara disappeared into the back where Hinez was already frying up the eggs.

“Not too runny, Hinez,” she laughed. “You made her heave yesterday.” She and Hinez shared a laugh, reminding her why she had stayed on so long.

As the morning progressed, the regular breakfast crowd began to make their appearance. They saw Shelly stopping in on her lunch break from the bank across the street for her usual BLT. They served the linemen crew working on the downed power line from the accident the day before. And they even saw old Mrs. Paverly, and her dog, who lived in a Tough Shed and didn’t have heat or a fireplace but still gave one of the biggest tips of the morning.

Before noon, the rain had begun, light at first, and then in larger, heavier drops that pounded on the glass. Heavy rain was not unexpected in Moody, as it was a regular occurrence on the doppler radar. However, despite the rain, the diner was full and that made Hinez happy. He loved to lean across the counter and just watch, taking in little bits of conversation here and there and he would remind himself that his father, and God, had placed him right where he needed to be.

“Did you see what old Walter Johnson did to his old place?” 

“Can you believe the mayor wasn’t at church last Sunday? Did you hear his wife up and moved out?”

“Man, you can’t beat these scrambled eggs!”

Everyone was enjoying the warmth of the temperature and the company from within the diner, that no one noticed when the rain began pelting down in sheets of ice. It wasn’t until well after 12:30 that Shelly, grumbling that her lunch break was never long enough as she placed cash on the table underneath her plate, rose to return to work. 

“See you tomorrow, Hinez,” she called. However, as she approached the door, she halted, staring out at the freezing rain. The visibility was near zero and she couldn’t even see the bank. Noticing the same thing she saw, Hinez met her at the door.

“Darlin’,” he said, taking her elbow in a gentlemanly fashion. “You best not go out there. Call the bank and tell them I’m holding you hostage till this storm lets up.” She laughed an uneasy giggle with a final glance outside, nodded, and let Hinez lead her behind the counter to use the telephone. 

The chatter of the customers became more exuberant as their attention fell beyond the front windows. Some folks even emerged from their seats and lined up in front of the glass as though they were watching the fish at the aquarium. The walls of ice grew so thick, their vision could not go beyond the front row of parked cars. Ice began to accumulate at the threshold and windowsills. The excitement was so great, no one noticed the strange man that appeared to have emerged from the back door down the long hall way.

“Excuse me,” he called. He was tall and slender with a pointed nose that hooked downward. He wore a white top hat, white slacks, and a bright, icy blue button up shirt which was soaked through and clung to him like a second skin. He carried an umbrella, but it lay limply in his hand. 

“Excuse me,” he said, a bit louder this time. It wasn’t until Mrs. Paverly’s dog began to growl from underneath his table that everyone took notice. The conversations about the weather outside quickly died down as everyone turned their gaze to this man. Mrs. Paverly rushed back to her table and secured the leash she had carelessly abandoned to view the weather. 

“Hush, Rocco,” she said, but the dog continued to growl, low and guttural, a behavior she had never exhibited from him prior to this day.

It wasn’t often that Moody saw outsiders, as it was a town far off from any major highway. The only time residents received visitors was when someone strayed from the highway and needed help navigating back to their course. And as it was such, a storm of this magnitude would likely keep any type of visitors at bay for days. So to have any visitors, let alone one with an appearance so unusually out of character for the town of Moody, was something of an anomaly.

“Oh, I’m sorry, sir,” said Hinez, rushing over to retrieve a dry towel from behind the counter. The man accepted and began to pat the water from his shoulders and hat, his umbrella still dangling from his hand.

Many of the other customers retreated to their tables and began to gossip about their notions of where this man came from and what business he had in a town such as Moody. And while the sound of the conversations picked back up, everyone stayed quiet enough to keep one ear on Hinez and this intriguing stranger.

Once the man had been satisfied with the amount of drying off he could accomplish with a little dish towel, he seized the stool at the furthest end of the counter. Clara silently approached with a clean cup and the coffee pot.

“Coffee?” The man nodded but didn’t say a word. His top hat still housed little beadlets of water that sometimes dropped and landed on the counter. Once Clara was sure one drop splashed into his coffee. 

“Can I get you a menu?” Again the man nodded without saying anything. He kept his head down, his eyes peeking up under a mass of stringy wet hair plastered down over his forehead and pinned down by his hat. 

Outside the freezing rain continued to pelt down onto the parking lot, hitting the cars with a ping. On the television, Merv predicted this storm to pass by three but warned drivers to use caution as the roads would be icy for the next few days. Considering the customers would be stuck until then, Hinez brought out the board games and Clara refilled coffee. 

Several customers teamed up to play Monopoly and Scrabble, but no one let their attention stray too far from the strange man sitting at the far end of the counter. He sipped his coffee slowly, turning the pages of the menu over and over until finally he closed it and pushed it aside. 

“What can I get you to eat, sir?” asked Clara, her pen and pad drawn and ready to take note.

“Nothing to eat,” said the man. “Just more coffee.  Nice and hot.” His voice was soft and gravelly, as though he hadn’t had a drink of water in days. Clara wondered if perhaps he was a homeless transplant, but he didn’t seem to fit the bill. He was clean and appeared to have been pressed before the rain hit. She returned with the pot and topped off his cup, noticing the man staring up at the silent weather report on the television. She glanced up, quickly reading the update scroll across the bottom: Ice storm hits central Moody County. Thousands of residents without power. No ETA for restoration. Clara had never seen a storm of this enormity hit the town of Moody, at least during her lifetime, although she knew there had been others of the past.

The man continued sipping his coffee silently, not looking up from his top hat. Clara kept her eyes curiously on him, as did the others, while they patiently awaited the storm’s passing. Not very much time had passed when the man gently glided his hand into the pocket of his white overcoat, still wet but drying in the warmth of the diner. Clara had thought of asking to take his coat and hang it on the rack to dry but something about the displacement of the man made her uncomfortable and she chose to stay quiet. When the man withdrew his hand from his pocket, with it he carried an old-fashioned silver pocket watch. He flipped it open and gazed at it, Clara not seeing what he viewed in its face. He shook his head slowly and silently and replaced the pocket watch in his pocket and returned to his coffee.

“Storm’s supposed to pass by three,” said Clara, hoping to elude her discomfort toward the man. “You have somewhere to be?”

The man appeared to stiffen at her question but, keeping his head low, shifted his eyes to meet her face. 

“The train comes at three,” he said.

Confusion swept through Clara’s mind, as the train hadn’t stopped in Moody in over fifty years. In fact, it so happened, that the Moody train station, while still in its original location half mile down the road, was all boarded up awaiting historical restoration with the intention to draw visitors to the small town. It had been in the same disarray for so many years with the promise of city upkeep and many of the townspeople had given up on the idea, however, there were still a few that held out hope.

Deciding to play along and possibly press the man for more information, Clara inquired, “you’re catching the train at three?” Her tone was that of one used to speak to a young child, slow and gentle, with a little higher pitch than normal. The man returned his gaze to his coffee indicating to Clara that the conversation had ended. 

With all orders in and cooking completed, Hinez had pulled a chair up to join Barb and Tony and had been engaging in talk about the prospects of their ranch come spring when Clara placed a hand on Hinez’s elbow and leaned in close to his ear.

“Hinez,” she said, low enough, she hoped, to evade the ears of Barb and Tony. “Can I see you in the kitchen.” With a nod to his table partners, Hinez lifted himself from the table and followed Clara to the kitchen where she began to explain her feelings toward the man. She had always prided herself on picking up the “vibes” of people, and “this guy just feels off,” she told him. 

Hinez emerged from the kitchen with the coffee pot and greeted the man at the end of the counter once again. 

“Can I refill your cup?” asked Hinez, his voice bright and cheerful as always. The man stayed silent, simply placing his left hand over the rim of his cup while simultaneously his right hand extracted his pocket watch once again.

“Headin’ out soon?” said Hinez. The man closed his pocket watch yet again and returned it safely into his pocket. Up close, Hinez could see the man in clearer detail. His fingers were long and bony with long nails that curled gently over the tips. They were clean and appeared to have been scrubbed and polished to a shine. His skin seemed almost as thought it had been pulled tightly over his bones and was so white it nearly had a translucency to it. He wasn’t an old man, yet while his face exuded a youthful appearance, there was an air of maturity about him. Wisdom, even.

“My train comes at three,” answered the man. 

“Heck,” said Hinez, letting out a friendly, bellowed laugh. “No train has come through here since the fifties.” The man still refused any real conversation but drifted his eyes up toward Hinez and for the first time, Hinez saw the striking blue color staring fixedly back at him. A blue so bright and icy, Hinez wondered how he had missed it the first time he greeted the man. They locked onto Hinez’s eyes, almost as though they refused to let him go. Hinez stared into the man’s eyes, feeling himself get drawn deeper into their pull. Everything seemed to drain away outside of Hinez; the ice storm, the customers, the diner, and he felt as though he were seeing himself staring back through those eyes. 

“The rain’s just about stopped,” said one of the linemen, shifting from his chair as it slid along the linoleum. “Best get back to work.” Suddenly Hinez felt as though he were sliding, or falling, down a chute and landed with a thud, but when he finally dropped his eyes, breaking contact with the man, he realized he was still standing in the same place at the counter and had not moved an inch. How much time passed, Hinez couldn’t recall, but when he glanced at the clock, it showed ten minutes to three.

The linemen were the first of the customers to emerge out into the frozen landscape beyond the diner doors. A thick blanket of ice lay over the entire parking lot, covering cars, bushes, and walk ways. Drips from the awning over the door had frozen into long drops of icicles. 

Gradually, the customers began to depart, one by one, Barb and Tony, Tony leaving first to warm up the car, Shelly, old Mrs. Paverly and her dog. Clara busied herself clearing dishes and wiping tables, waving as they disappeared into the remnants of this long awaited storm, calling “be careful!” as she did. Neither Hinez nor Clara saw the man leave.

Hinez retreated into the kitchen and began filling the large commercial basin with soapy water. He could not figure out what had happened but knew he needed to go home and take a nap just as these dishes were finished. He was feeling quite tired after all. Perhaps he had just imagined it all. Maybe what they saw was simply just a kind vagrant coming in out of the cold. But that gaze! He just couldn’t shake it.

After the last customer had departed, Clara turned off the neon OPEN sign and locked the front door before returning to the counter to wipe up. She was also feeling unusually tired, as dreary weather always made her so. It donned on her that she had not seen the man leave. She paused, her rag resting in her hand on the surface of the counter, as she combed the recesses of her memories of the last few minutes trying to summon up the image of the man leaving. When she couldn’t, she walked over to the counter where the man had taken up residence for the afternoon, and opened his menu. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for but knew she was hoping to see something. 

“What a day,” said Hinez, emerging from the kitchen, his sleeves rolled to his elbows yet still slightly soaked at the ends. “Glad we never lost power.”

“Hmm,” she agreed absentmindedly. “Hinez, did you see that man leave?” 

“No, ma’am,” he said. “He sure was an unusual fellow, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, he was. What a weird day.”

“What a weird day,” Hinez repeated. 

Hinez and Clara finished closing up the diner and readying it for the early morning festivities of the next day. Ice landscape or not, the townspeople had to eat. Purple, orange, and charcoal gray washed over the sky as evening began to fall. Hinez locked the door of the diner and walked Clara out to her car, ensuring she was safely seated and locked in before he retreated to the storage shed he called home. However, Clara did not start the engine right away. Instead, she sat there, in the frozen parking lot of the diner she had spent the last five years, her mind still on the strange man in the white overcoat. 

“I never saw him leave,” she said simply. Her words came out in tufts of steam from the cold. Her mind was still baffled as she remembered saying goodbye to everyone as they walked out of the diner just a couple hours ago. She could recall Mrs. Paverly; “stay warm tonight! We’ll see you tomorrow!” She patted Rocco on the head. She could see each of the five linemen leave, filing out in a single line and hoisting themselves onto their truck. She could still hear Barb warning Tony to drive safe and best not kill them both. She even walked Shelly out to the door, giving her the leftover bread from the front case. 

Clara turned the key and the engine fired up, awakening the deep voice on the radio, rolling out like the long black train he was singing about. Steam spilled from the exhaust behind her, billowing out in soft pillows into the cold night air. The dash lights flickered to life, casting a red glow across her face. She turned the volume down, the voice fading into a hum, until all that remained was the low idle of the engine and the steady breath of the heater.

She waited a moment longer, hands resting on the wheel, staring out toward the dark stretch ahead. Then she shifted into DRIVE and rolled slowly over the tracks, heading toward the glow of the sunset toward the trailer, where her mother would be waiting, her son already tucked in warm in the bed they shared.

Her mind drifted again to the man in white and how he’d appeared from nowhere, how he’d looked sadly into the face of his pocket watch waiting for a train that would never come and then seemed to disappear after the storm.

And as she drove home, just beneath the rumble of the tires and the whisper of the heater, from somewhere deep in the night, she thought she could hear the long, low blast of a train whistle.

Misty Van Staaveren is a California native now living in Texas. Misty received her undergraduate degree in Liberal Studies at California State University Fresno. She holds a teaching credential in California and Texas, where she teaches English Language Arts to fourth graders. When not writing, she is always up for a road trip. She recently had the opportunity to be a credited reader for Bluestem Magazine.