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CHAPTER FIVE
The snow finally stopped around ten Saturday morning. The official accumulation was twenty-three inches, but there had been a lot of wind in the early morning hours, and drifts reached the windows on the west side of Dex’s house.
Dex had spent the previous evening quietly, ensconced by the fire with his dogs, watching Netflix, and he spent the first part of the morning doing most of his usual Saturday chores: laundry, cleaning his bathroom, handling a couple minor repairs. His house was pretty old, in a neighborhood of pretty old houses. It had some updates, but most of those were cosmetic, as he’d discovered soon after he’d moved in. Something was always on the fritz or threatening to be. This morning, it was a leaky pipe under the kitchen sink—he had a full repiping in his future but didn’t want to think about that yet—and a floorboard that had developed a surprisingly loud squeak. More of a shriek, really.
Normally on Saturdays when he was off, he spent a couple hours working out. He’d turned a spare bedroom into a nicely tricked out little home gym. But today he knew he’d get plenty of exercise when the snow stopped.
As soon as it did, and the radar showed the storm had well and truly moved on, Dex put all the dogs but Lizzie in the back yard. Lizzie was little, her fluffy coat was more decorative than practical, and she hated to be cold and/or wet. She also hated to wear sweaters. The boys, on the other hand, would live in icy puddles if they could—and Dex had built a warm, roomy shelter for them out there if they needed to get out of the cold for a minute.
Lizzie curled up in her bed next to a heating vent and was perfectly content to have a little peace and quiet. It probably wasn’t easy to be the only princess in a house full of peasant boys.
The dogs sorted, Dex bundled up and got down to the business of digging out of two feet of snow.
Opening the garage overhead, he saw a low wall of snow; drifts had accumulated here, too, and looked more than three feet high. The snow wall remained intact even as the door rolled up, but when he gave it a light kick, the surface tension broke, and most of it collapsed onto the garage floor. Okay. Starting here, then.
He hated snow-blowers; the noise made him tense and twitchy. But he had a few good shovels in different sizes; thick, warm, water-resistant gloves; and a strong back. He got to work.
Several of his neighbors were doing the same, and they all waved when they saw him on his driveway. He waved back.
It didn’t take a big leap to be pretty sure Dex was the richest person in his neighborhood. Not on paper—on paper, he was a service-station mechanic, with the earnings to match the job. But off paper, he had some bank. This was a working class neighborhood, and his neighbors mostly were laborers and service-industry folks, cobbling together two or three jobs or more to make enough to keep themselves and their families warm and fed. Or they were retired from working class jobs and living on the shoestring Social Security provided.
Some of Dex’s club brothers owned nice houses in Broken Arrow or Bixby, but he didn’t fully understand the desire to live in the suburbs like that. His house was nice enough, comfortable enough, and these neighbors took him as he came. To them, his kutte was status, and even protection if they needed it. The people in neighborhoods with circle drives and three-car garages had a different attitude about the Bulls.
Those brothers who’d moved to the country, bought some land, put up a nice house, got some peace and quiet,thathe understood. It was too much to think about as a single man, but in his fantasies, where he could find a woman who could deal with all his baggage, who thought he wasworthdealing with all his baggage, where he thought so, too, he imagined using some of the money he’d been saving to buy a country place.
That was fantasy, though, and would never really happen. And that was fine. He liked it here just fine, and his neighbors liked him the same. They looked on him as their one-man neighborhood watch, and that was fine, too.
Clearing two feet of wet snow from a driveway and front walk with a hardware-store shovel was seriously good exercise, muscle work and cardio both, and by the time his property was clear, Dex had to pull down one of his camp chairs, grab a bottled water from his garage fridge, and take a break. He was sweating profusely, but resisted the urge to peel off more than his scarf. For the same reason, he didn’t go back inside. His work wasn’t done yet, and flipping back and forth between cold and warm was not good on the body.
When he was rehydrated, he scattered some pet-safe ice melt over the cleared driveway and walks, then pulled his gloves back on, grabbed two shovels—a wide one for driveways, and a narrower one for sidewalks— and the ice melt, and crossed the street to Mr. Clement’s house.
The snow here was pristine. Mr. Clement didn’t drive any longer, but he had groceries delivered once or twice a week, and an elder-care service that checked in a few times a month. Dex didn’t know if either of those services would be running for a while; the street was not plowed and likely wouldn’t be for a few days. Tulsa had cold enough winters, but they didn’t often get big snowfalls, and the roads department didn’t have the resources to keep the city from shutting down after a storm like this.
But he shoveled the driveway anyway.
He was about halfway up the front walk when the door opened, and Mr. Clement pushed open the storm door and peered out. “You didn’t have to do that, son. Nowhere I’m going.”
“I don’t want you to be trapped after the plow comes through.”
“The plow’ll undo all your work.”
“Nah. Just a little bit. I’ll come back and clear what it throws up.”
“You’re a good boy.”
Dex smiled and kept working.
Mr. Clement closed the storm door but stood at it, watching. As Dex finished, he opened the door again. “You want to come in for some coffee?”
“Thanks, but nah. I’m wet and sweaty, and I don’t want to drag this mess into your house. I’ll take a raincheck, though.”
“I’m not a lady, Dex. I won’t get the vapors if you leave footprints on my floors. I have a mop.”
Dex laughed, and was about to give in and take him up on the offer, when his phone buzzed. “’Scuse me,” he said and took a glove off so he could dig into his layers and find the damn thing.
A text from Maverick:
Hey. You got time to do me a favor?
