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Eight o'clock, a cold February night, Oscar Waddle was grinning, flapping his arms together, rousing his house, shouting, "Finally, snow!" Ernest was in his home, a few yards from Waddle's, under a manhole lid, on top of which was written the word 'gas'. Ernest lifted the lid a bit. He was so angry. His nerves were so pricked that he almost knocked the lid over. He had to use both hands to hold the thing steady and to keep it raised just a bit. He glared. His red eyes, and his blue nose too, pointed sharply toward Waddle's house. If intent was action and deed, Ernest's eyes and nose would have been piercing instruments, which would have punctured a hole into Waddle's house and into Waddle. Waddle called together his wife and children and shouted, "Snow! Snow! Look at the beautiful snow!" "Snow, snow ... beautiful snow," these words rung and stung in Ernest's head, incited him to curse, "That darn, silly gander. I'll fix his wagon good." Waddle and his kids ran for their coats and their snow boots, while Waddle's wife returned to the kitchen and to her chores. "They're coming out," Ernest grumbled, growled, groused, in his low gruff voice. A Northerly brisk breath of wind and snow flew under the manhole cover and prickled Ernest's big ears. Ernest cried out from the sharp pain of the cold, dropped the cover and fell down into the hole. The wind blast numbed both of his ears. Ernest hated snow and the cold because of the unfortunate experience of his youth. Ernest and all of his kin were extremely poor, and his and his folks' lives were uncomfortable. Cold weather meant suffering, and snow meant a lot of suffering. Ernest crawled down further into the hole and into the vault which he had built under the street. He went to his large fireplace and to the roaring gas fire and begun the process of warming his ears. Getting the cold out of his ears was difficult. He stood close to the fire. He was sure that the blood was frozen inside the tissue and cell structures that made up his ears, and all of his veins were ice clogged. Ernest was convinced that the cold wind had singled him out to get at him for hating winter and for despising snow. Ernest had a rough week trying to stop the snow. He mumbled, grumbled about a wicked conspiracy, stewed and chewed over in his mind the facts concerning the nature of the malevolent forces, which he had been up against all week. He gritted his teeth as he thought that some demon had taken over the radio and television stations, and all week had media idiots calling for snow, begging for it, sending stupid pleas and simple-minded prayers out into the far ether, and like witches, warlocks, druids, wicked rascals, these terrible nit-wits had done the unpardonable. They had summoned the imponderable forces of the chill that permeates the whole of the cold region beyond the earth. Ernest mumbled of how he hated radio and television weather people. He hated how they worked with malevolent magic: How they used the evil Jinni of computers and the malicious genii of the satellites. He hated how they lifted cold fronts from the Arctic, shifted low pressure zones across continents, bumped the normal February breeze for the Northerly Canadian air, switch to 'off', the mild mid-winter temperature gage, and brought on the horrible snow. Ernest had only old fashion magic, no shiny computers, no dazzling satellites, only herbs, spells and magic dust. The night before, he stood on top of the Washington Monument in downtown Washington, D.C., faced North, and with both of his hands stretched, chanted bravely to keep the snow away. But, quickly - as quick as a swift wind can kick and freeze a poor individual's backside - both of Ernest's hands were frozen. A wicked rushing wind swept around from, and off of the Potomac, and sank into Ernest's bones, and into the cartilages inside the bone. He went screaming from the Monument, fell all the 555 or so feet down and hit the mall like a stone, and lay there ignored on the ground, as five hundred fifty five or so tourists walked over him, to get to see the Monument, like they didn't care that they were stepping over the body of a fellow being, whom was in terrible pain. These inhuman humans acted as though they were extras from some low-budget horror movie. Finally, Ernest's ears were warm. He grumbled, knew that he couldn't stop the snow, but he could do something about people who liked snow, who frolicked in it, as if they were irresponsible fools. He mumbled to himself - "If I can spoil some of the idiotic merrymaking of the fools whom play in the snow, I might be able to get the world to come over to my side and see the foul ugliness of snow." He thought to himself, "A little hot ice under the white sheets of that devious fluffy stuff. Ho! Ho!" He grinned. He almost danced a gig as he continued to plan. "I'll let the hot ice stick up, out a bit, protrude like a rusty nail in a field of green grass. Yeah! Some fool will skip by, slide, slip, spill, spat and bust his silly, stupid behind! Hee, hee, hee." Ernest mumbled out loud. He didn't care if he might be overhead. He wasn't. Suddenly, he stopped. "No, the kids," he thought. Ernest heard them -- Kids, making noise up above, on the street, jumping up and down in joy, hopping on the snow. He knew the racket was from Waddle's kids. Though he hoped to turn people away from snow, so they could see its dark side, he knew he couldn't do anything to hurt kids. "It isn't their fault that the fathers of the world are idiots and don't teach kids about the mental and physical anguish that snow brings to the old and to the poor." Ernest wondered: "What kind of dysfunctional thinking and stone heads do the fathers of the world have?" To kids snow meant no school. To kids snow meant a day or longer of play, making snowmen and throwing snow balls. This was fun, unless you fell down, and who fell down? Besides, falling down was fun when you were a kid, because you know you are going to get up. Ernest was never a kid! To a responsible adult snow meant higher fuel bills. Snow meant buying heavier coats, if one had the money. Snow meant shoveling mean, heavy stuff, straining oneself and getting a heart attack! Ernest was born an adult and old! Ernest remembered all the racket that was on the street last snowfall: The sirens, the screams, the endless wails! Ambulances and cop cars, and the widow crying and screaming and shouting, and the grown children coming back and yelling that it was the other one's responsibility to shovel 'Pop's driveway'! Last snowfall, Mr. Andrew Chase Davis, age sixty four, fell in the line of doing his neighborly duty, removing six inches of nasty snow and ice from his driveway, walkway, and the street in front of his house. First, the ambulance, and then, the grown children's cars were parked on top of Ernest's manhole, so Ernest wasn't able to escape the noise.
Now, ready to act, Ernest lifted the manhole cover. He was prepared in case the wind returned. He had on his ear muffs, and his long red scarf, his long red drawers, and his heavy overcoat with the hood pulled over his head. He wore his goggles, ski mask and his weather screen. He saw Waddle.
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(c) Copyright 1993, by Franchot Lewis ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
