The Plow

A brief note before I start the story; for now on I will give the explanation of my story after the story itself, instead of before.

The Plow

The snow had stopped falling by the time Chris got outside. Now there was a steady rain falling instead; drenching the layer of snow in a heavy coat of rain. Chris adjusted his Seattle Mariners cap, picked up his blue and black snow shovel, and set out to clean the driveway before his wife got home from work.

He had just gotten home from work himself not even a hour earlier, had eaten a short supper, then put on his polyester North Face jacket and went outside. The northwestern sky was dark now. The curse of winter always brought shortened days in Oregon, and when your neighbors are few and far apart, the darkness and chill truly isolates you. Chris began to shovel the space around his car; trying his best to avoid scraping the side of it each time he threw a shovelful of snow to the side of the driveway. The floodlights on the side of his house shone brightly, casting shadows off the trees in a strange and eerie fashion. Chris’s house was one of only two houses on the road. His was on the end closest to the center of the small town of Boyd; the other house was on the opposite end of the five-mile long road.

Chris was almost halfway done with the driveway when he heard the sound of a distant train blowing its horn in the silent darkness. He was drenched in rain by now, and his coat seemed to weigh a hundred pounds. The rain was pouring harder, and the snow got heavier with each lift of the shovel. Then Chris heard a strange sound coming from the woods south of his house. It sounded much like thunder, but Chris knew there wasn’t any storm around. Chris assumed it was probably just the train. Only he knew that he heard that distinct train whistle coming from the west not even five minutes ago. Chris brushed off the thought and continued his shoveling of the heavy, wet snow.

A couple minutes later Chris heard the sound again. This time he stopped shoveling and looked up in the direction it was coming from. He saw nothing, but to him the noise seemed closer. This time he also smelled the faint, and distant scent of diesel. Then suddenly he realized what that sound was, the scraping of a plow against hard, blacktop. The sound came from the direction of Robins Road; the road that was nearest to Chris’s. Robins Road had one resistant on it who went by the name of Richard McDonald, but everyone simply called him Ricky. Ricky owned a large, ford pickup and would go around the town plowing all the roads with the wide, yellow plow he attached to the front. Chris was puzzled though. He hadn’t heard the sound of a plow in Boyd, Oregon since Ricky died of a heart attack nearly three years ago.

It’s just somebody else that happens to be plowing roads around here. Chris thought to himself, but still, the feeling of unease didn’t go away. The driveway was well more than halfway done now; his back was burning with pain and his arms had become weak and shaky. Sarah still wouldn’t be home for another hour from her job at the local clinic, and in these conditions it might take even longer. Chris could see the road now. There was a stream of melted snow running down the middle of it, and the house lights bounced off its glassy surface showing the fast moving ripples in its center. Then that noise came again; the crunching, scraping sound of metal, rock, and snow all colliding into each other. The noise seemed to be even closer this time, so close he could hear the sound of the engine as it backed up, getting ready to start a new round of clearing the asphalt. Chris knew that sound like he knew his wife’s voice. He knew that sound belonged to the engine of Richard’s old Ford pickup. He could hear the sound of the rusty muffler that sounded like a chainsaw cutting into a fresh piece of wood. That sound had woken him up everyday in the winter, until three years ago. Don’t worry Chris, it’s probably just his son or another townie trying to make a couple of bucks by plowing local roads and is using Ricky’s old truck. But Chris knew that Ricky’s truck had crashed into a tree on that day three years ago.

Chris hated that truck. He hated waking up every morning at five to the sound of scraping and crunching, and that muffler, how he hated the unearthly sound of that muffler. Richard lived by himself in his house on Robins Road, and his truck had become something of a child to him. He rode in it everyday and cared about the car more than he did himself it seemed. Yet he never wanted to change parts on that truck, he felt it would take away from its original feel and he would lose his love for it. The whole town saw him as an oddball and a hermit who kept to himself. But over the years Ricky and Chris had gotten into a couple of disputes. First it was over small things like Chris’s dog running around on his property. Then it turned to property disputes after Chris wanted to build a barn in the woods across the street where he could set up a study and space for his engineering work. The fighting made its climax during the winter of 2003, when Ricky’s bright yellow plow, smashed into the side of Chris’s Mercedes when he had it parked in his front lawn. Chris took the charges to court, claiming that Richard was reckless, and drunk the night he hit his car. Richard’s only defense was that Chris shouldn’t have parked his car halfway on the road. The judge ruled in Chris’s favor. Ricky’s license was suspended and he was forced to pay $3000 dollars in fines and damage repair. Ricky swore he would get back at Chris somehow, someday when he was least expecting it. So for just that reason Chris purchased a shotgun a week after the trial.

Chris was nearing the road now. His hands were frozen, his feet wet and cold, and he was beginning to have a headache. He saw headlights turning onto the road, and for a moment his heart jumped. Then he realized that it was only his neighbor coming home, and he gave a slight wave as they drove past, trying his best to move his sore hand from side to side. But the only thing he got in return was a splash of freezing water and slush all over his body. He shook off as much water as he could, and went back to shoveling after cursing under his breath. Just when he finished his cursing, he heard the sound again. This time he knew it was coming closer, and he thought it was probably on the main road now, closing the distance between them quickly. Suddenly, the outside floodlights went out, leaving Chris in total darkness. He walked over closer to the house, waving his hands to try and trigger the sensor in the lights to have them come back on. After a minute or so of waving his hands and jumping up and down, he finally gave up of in his vein attempts, and set off to finish shoveling his driveway in near darkness.

Richard was back on the road the year after he hit Chris’s Mercedes, and he was once more plowing away the roads and driving that noisy beast every morning. Only now Richard made sure to cause as much discomfort as he possibly could for Chris. He would often idle his truck in front of Chris’s driveway at five in the morning, plow over his mailbox on more than one occasion, and make sure to box in their driveway with as much snow as he possibly could. All of this annoyed Chris, but he knew extra snow and broken mailboxes were the least of his worries. Chris simply played along with Richard’s games of retaliation, and kept his mouth shut. Things remained as normal as they could for most of that winter, at least until that fateful day. That day started out like any other, Richard plowing roads around the small Oregon town, and he turned down Chris’s road thinking up a way to annoy him this morning. He took his eyes off of the road for a second to grab the beer in the cup holder, but when he looked up he saw Chris’s dog running across the road only a couple yards in front of him. Startled, Ricky slammed on the breaks of his Ford, making the car swerve across the small road before crashing into a tree directly across from Chris’s house. The doctors said he would have survived the crash; only he died of a heart attack before the metal even hit the trunk. Chris felt a mix of guilt, and relieve after that event. For he knew his dog had killed him, but he also knew he was no longer a threat to him or his wife, or so he thought at the time.

Chris looked over his shoulder at the tree where the truck hit, gave a brief shudder, and then resumed shoveling. He had only a small portion left to shovel, and he wanted to get back in the warm house as soon as possible. Then he heard the sound of that engine again. It was louder than ever. He knew the truck was on his road now, picking up speed. It was so close to him that Chris thought he could hear the sound of the pistons driving up and down in its metal box under the hood. Only this time the engine sounded different; it sounded less threatening. He could no longer hear the sound of the plow against the snow; the sound of the engine had overpowered it. Chris was staring down the road where the sound was coming from, bracing himself for the worst, waiting for those headlights to come into view. Then he saw them, bright yellow fluorescents that lit up the night and were coming straight toward him. Chris was scared out of his mind. He wrecked my car, wrecked my dog, and now he was coming to wreck me. Chris thought. He was just about to drop his shovel and run when suddenly the car stopped. A dark figure got out of the car and started walking toward him. Unable to move, Chris could only stand and stare at the figure. At last the figure came into the light, it was Sarah home from work.
“Wow sweety, you did a nice job! I didn’t think you would shovel tonight because of the rain.” She said.
Relieved, Chris could only shake his head in agreement.
“Well I think you’ve done enough work for one day, why don’t you call it quits?”
Chris could still only shake his head in agreement.
Sarah got back into her truck and parked it next to Chris’s new Mercedes in finished driveway. Chris walked over to her as she got out, and together they walked into the house. Just before Chris went inside, he looked over his shoulder into the Oregon woods toward the main road, swearing that he could hear the faint sound of metal scraping against asphalt, and the sound of a muffler that has been worn thin by years of rust and salt.


I actually wrote this story after a night very similar to this one; where I had to go outside and shovel the wet, heavy snow before my father got home. I was busy shoveling when I heard a strange noise that sounded something like thunder, coming from the south. And although I don't have any disgruntle neighbors around my area that plow, it still creeped me out a bit.