Newly Fallen
by
Travis Stephens
Anthropologist Frank Boas said that the Inuit have dozens of words for snow. Braden is not far behind: goddamn snow is the most common, followed by fuckin’ snow. He spends his winters in the seat of the county grader, the Cat with the snow wings.
Boas may have underestimated the names due to the polysynthetic nature of Inuit, where a base word changes meaning by adding suffixes. Braden does the same, places a tobacco spit between goddamn and snow.
Braden isn’t Inuit; he’s a Minnesota mutt like me. My name is Nelse. At times he calls me Buddy, Bud, Junior and Buck. The new kid at the shop is Shit-For-Brains.
At forty Braden is the elder of the County crew. We gather around the coffeepot as he tells hunting stories, drinking stories, stories about the many snows coming our way. Once there was a winter without snow. Another time it snowed twice in June.
At four thirty last Thursday, full dark, on County Road EE Braden had turned toward Danielson’s
to find a drift that filled from road shoulder to shoulder.
“Christ, Buddy,” he said on the CB, “you ought to see the bull drift here.”
I could hear him spit. “Christ, I hate this sticky shit. Give me sugar snow any day.”
Before he keyed off I could hear the Cat’s engine rise. I thought of how a snowdrift looks in headlights, like a wall of drywall, the wall of a house without windows. A few days ago my uncle had told me something I didn’t know, how Braden had done six years up in Stillwater for burglary. I wondered how many names a man could have for freedom, how many words for silence and for snow.
Boas may have underestimated the names due to the polysynthetic nature of Inuit, where a base word changes meaning by adding suffixes. Braden does the same, places a tobacco spit between goddamn and snow.
Braden isn’t Inuit; he’s a Minnesota mutt like me. My name is Nelse. At times he calls me Buddy, Bud, Junior and Buck. The new kid at the shop is Shit-For-Brains.
At forty Braden is the elder of the County crew. We gather around the coffeepot as he tells hunting stories, drinking stories, stories about the many snows coming our way. Once there was a winter without snow. Another time it snowed twice in June.
At four thirty last Thursday, full dark, on County Road EE Braden had turned toward Danielson’s
to find a drift that filled from road shoulder to shoulder.
“Christ, Buddy,” he said on the CB, “you ought to see the bull drift here.”
I could hear him spit. “Christ, I hate this sticky shit. Give me sugar snow any day.”
Before he keyed off I could hear the Cat’s engine rise. I thought of how a snowdrift looks in headlights, like a wall of drywall, the wall of a house without windows. A few days ago my uncle had told me something I didn’t know, how Braden had done six years up in Stillwater for burglary. I wondered how many names a man could have for freedom, how many words for silence and for snow.
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