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the road, which was still unplowed, the sky much lighter out of the woods, like a weight lifted off him. No car had passed recently, and no plow. The lights were off at the veterinary. The Mercedes was gone. And so was his Explorer.
    He looked again and then looked all around, as if perhaps he’d parked somewhere else, somewhere he’d entirely forgotten. But, in the end he had to admit it: the car was gone. Already, efficient lawyer, he was rehearsing the phone call to Galvin’s Towing. He fingered the keys in his pants pocket, reached for his phone. Which was missing. Or not missing, not at all. He knew exactly where his phone was: his phone had been towed with the car. His sports jacket was soaked through, snow from the outside, sweat from the inside, pocket pulled half off. It was four or five or more miles to town, an hour and a half at a brisk walking gait on a bright summer’s day, so make it three hours in the heavy snow already on the road, face into the increasing wind, the new fresh snow blowing in devils all around him. No houses in sight. Only the veterinarian’s buildings, closed up tight, even the dog kennels quiet, built out here in the boonies where the barking could bother no one, the boarded dogs locked in for the night, maybe some comfort in there, if he could break in. No, no: the vet had had to shut down the kennel after the lawsuit, a requirement of the settlement. Bitch had had him towed; he’d sleep on her desk! But no. He wasn’t going in that place, not for anything.
    No way around it, he trudged in the increasing cold for ten minutes, remembering houses around the big sweeping curve ahead. No lights in sight. Not a blink of light. Power must be down; it was always going down on these country roads. Around the curve was only one house, as it turned out, an old farmstead, faint light in the windows. Eric hurried up the long driveway and to the red-painted door. An elderly man answered, flashlight in hand, ready to use it as a club if this were death come knocking.
    “Sasquatch?” the old man said, comedian. He was the ancient guy from Woodchurch Feed and Lumber, retired.
    “Jack, I need to use your phone,” Eric said, coming up with the name heroically.
    “Haven’t got one,” Jack said, heavy Maine accent, swallowed syllables. Back in the dark house the bright voice of an excited weatherman. Jack would be the guy with batteries for his radio, of course, the guy without a phone. “Fastest ac
cum
ulation in the records,” the old man said.
    Mildly, Eric said, “I’d heard that predicted.”
    “By jeezum crow,” Jack said.
    Behind the old man in the dimmest possible light Eric could make out piles of cardboard boxes and high stacks of newspapers and cat-litter stations, whatever you called them, encrusted cat turds strewn all around, stacks of soiled books, folded lawn chairs, bundles of firewood, stench of piss like the breath of the house, clogged passages through all the junk.
    But Jack wasn’t inviting him in: “So much for all this hockey-puck of yours about global warming!”
    “Hockey-puck,” Eric repeated.
    “They keep uppering the prediction. Now they says four feet!”
    “Four feet!”
    “Forty-eight inches! Just heard!”
    No phone.
    Whom had he been planning to call, anyway? He had had to let his secretary go months since, and she was still bitter. His best local friend, Carl, was in Nigeria for the year. Patty Cardinal, his church friend, didn’t drive anywhere after dark: all these private fears. Alison, be real, Alison was on permanent leave, it increasingly looked, and two hours away in any case, down in Portland, three in this weather, finally living the big life she’d always envisioned for herself, cute condo, high-pressure job, and the company of Ribbie their dog, who spent all day alone. His own house, a tidy little place he’d owned before Alison ever moved in, was on the other edge of downtown, a good five miles away, maybe six.
    Hardware-store Jack had