Grand Change by William Andrews

grandfather clock on the wall. We mentioned the cold.
    Tom let out another belch of smoke that hung wave-like in the air, a bushy eyebrow cocked and he was off:
    â€œCold! Why, you don’t know what cold is. Now, out in western Canada, back before the big war, it got so cold one night I set a kettle of boiling water outside on the doorstep, and it froze so fast I had hot ice. Yeh, two hundred and ten below zero. Went to kick the cat out the door and froze me foot, just like that, quick as a wink. They dang near had to cut off me big toe. It’s never been right since. Yeh, why I seen a rabbit take a hop and freeze right in mid-air and he hung right there until the first cheenook wind came along and thawed things out.”
    â€œWhat’s a cheenook wind?” I said.
    There was silence for a moment. Tom took a few quick drags on his pipe, his stubby fingers pressing into the pipe bowl between puffs. The bushy eyebrow cocked again and Tom’s voice took on a mysterious monotone.
    â€œNothing can thaw things out like a cheenook wind. One winter there was thirty feet of snow, flat level, and it colder than a witch’s breath. I mind I was coming from town one day in a two-horse bobsleigh. All of a sudden, this warm wind began to blow out of nowhere. Well, sir, it melted the snow so fast, only the front bobs were on snow. The hind ones were in mud and not twenty yards behind, there was me dog choking in dust. That’s the winter we ran out of hay and had to put sunglasses on the cows so they’d eat the snow. Yeh.”
    Through the whole story, Tom’s face, smoke hanging at his bushy eyebrows, was completely sober, completely serious. You could swear he believed every word.
    Old Tom had got religion the past year. Some said it was because he’d been sick. He’d quit smoking and chewing and taking a nip at Christmas and special occasions. He never did swear; always a good living man, great neighbour.
    We got word at the general store on a Saturday afternoon. I was standing by the post office section at the front end of the long counter, looking out through the high, wide window by the glass-panelled door.
    A dusty beam of late afternoon sun, slanting through the window on the west side, was cutting at the shoulder of the pasteboard cigarette girl sitting in the far side of the window space. Its sharp glow was silhouetting the molasses lassie in the near side. Partly obscured by the signs, the faces of two tethered horses hung, their large eyes shadowed by the leather flaps of their blind bridles, white puffs curling from their nostrils, steam streaks weaving from their buffalo-covered backs. Now and then, through the spaces of unobstructed view, beyond the horses, glimpses of brightly clad children flashed, the jugs of their peak caps flopping wing-like at the sides of their small reddened faces, their mittened hands arcing, flinging tightly packed snowballs. I was waiting for The Boss while Frank Brown, the storekeeper—perched on a ladder, picking goods from the shelves, which tiered almost from the floor to the ceiling on the side wall—was working our grocery list. At the stove, at the back of the long alley-like room, John Avery and Pete White were bantering with the one known as Trader Sam. Sam had recently jig-skipped in around the door, his feet hitting the floor with the door’s slam, his arms held out in stage fashion. There were chuckles as the short man ambled to the stove with his bloated overall pant legs stuffed into his short rubber boots and his pulled-up coat collars joining with his cap peak to frame a fat face with a pointed nose, quick eyes and a quick lip.
    â€œThat’s right, boys,” Sam was saying. “I’d trade anything but me wife.”
    â€œYou’d trade her, too, if she had the heaves,” John Avery said.
    â€œNow you know me better than that, John,” Sam said. “I never traded a heaving horse in me