Kevin Sampsell
Warm in the Snow
We go to your parents’ farm for Christmas and they give us a Wii. We open presents and play virtual tennis all morning. We decide to take mushrooms in the afternoon, right before dinner and about an hour before some friends pick us up to go out for the night. I’m eating turkey and mashed potatoes and I realize that the mushrooms have killed my taste buds already. I pile a bunch of food that I don’t usually like on my plate—stuffing, squash, cranberry—and I eat it without the slightest grimace on my face. I ask for hot sauce and challenge your dad to a “hot sauced turkey contest.” He drinks a beer and sweats through his new polo shirt. I am laughing and taking the smallest sips of water, chased with hot coffee. Suddenly, there are loud thrusts of wind banging against the window and snow is swirling everywhere outside. Our friends call us and tell us that they can’t come and get us because they’re already snowed in. You are looking out the window and holding the phone to your ear for several minutes, even though no one is on it to talk to anymore. Your mom says curiously to you from behind, “Hello?” and you start talking on the dead phone like your mom is on the line. I walk over to you and take the phone from you and turn you around to face your mom. You start laughing uncontrollably, at first like something is really funny and then like an insane person. Your laugh sounds backwards: Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah. I am trying to usher you away, maybe to your old bedroom in the back, but I feel the rush coming on too. My face is stretched into a mad grin and my shoulders feel hunched. The house is surrounded by a tornado of snow and I realize that we are stuck inside with your parents while our brains turn to goo in our heads. Your dad is shaking his head like he knows what’s going on, but your mom asks in the most innocent country bumpkin accent, “What could be so funny?”
Once we’re in your old room, we quietly try to come up with a game plan. We know we can’t stay inside with the sober family so we tell your parents that we’ll go check on the cows. We find them in the two shelters by the pasture but there is one who is still out in the storm, walking in circles. We stumble around in the wind and try to steer the animal to a shelter but it turns at the last moment and heads back toward the middle. “He likes it!” you shout through the wind. You climb up and get on his back. “Come on,” you say. I try to climb on too, but just drape myself over him like a blanket. I feel warm like a blanket. You run your fingers through my hair and I stare down and watch the cow’s hooves dancing around the glowing white dance floor.
Kevin Sampsell lives and writes in Oregon, where it snows sometimes, and where there are still cows.
