Snow Blind by Archer Mayor

Archer Mayor
     
    The snow hitting the windshield reminded me of an old movie, as if two guys on ladders were just off camera, pouring confetti out of barrels onto the hood of my car. Except that the effect in real life was more stressful than in a theater. The snow was heavy and thick, dry enough that I didn’t need the wipers, but so incessant, I was starting to think it might never stop. My eyes strained to see into the black night beyond the dizzying white vortex until they felt ready to fall out of my head.
     
    Despite the warnings on the radio earlier, I’d decided to drive home, and compounded the folly by taking the back way through heavily forested hills–ensuring that if I had a wreck, no one would find me until next spring.
     
    Now, one hour and a mere ten miles into the trip, I had doggedly reached the point where continuing would cost me no more than turning back, which, the way my hands and shoulders were aching, was a definite mixed blessing.
     
    All the more so because one irony of my position was that despite its peril, it was also curiously sedating. The car’s heater belied the freezing cold outside, the snow had a created a carpet beneath so thick and sound-absorbent as to make the trip virtually silent, and the serried trees, flickering by in the dim half-arc of my headlights, enhanced the sensation of being encased in a protective cocoon. It was hard to fight the feeling that if I just stayed put for another hour or two, this insulated capsule would deliver me home entirely on its own.
     
    It led to a temptation, lulled as I was by the mesmerizing wash of white static against the windshield, to simply let my hands drop from the steering wheel.
     
    Until I saw a man–young, pale faced, eyes wide with fright–loom up out the darkness like an onrushing meteor, and flash by in an instant mere inches from the car.
     
    With a surprised shout, I hit the brakes, fought the resulting skid, struggling to stay on the road, and ended up with my headlights staring at a tree trunk not three feet away.
     
    “Jesus,” I said to myself, craning over my shoulder to confirm what I’d seen. For a moment, there was nothing besides darkness and snow. Then, emerging into the harsh red glow of my brake lights, a thin figure shimmered into view like a blood-soaked ghost.
     
    In the decades I’d been a cop, facing hazards large and small, I’d rarely experienced the irrational fear I felt right then–a visceral, heart-stopping, utter conviction that my life was about to end.
     
    And then the man passed out of the red light, came up alongside the car’s passenger side, and rapped on the window with his gloved hand like any other pedestrian in need of help. He looked to be in his mid-twenties.
     
    “Hello?”
     
    I leaned over and opened the door, trying not to show my relief. “Get in. What the hell’re you doing out here?”
     
    “My car’s in the ditch about a mile back,” he said, half falling into the seat in a small flurry of snow and a gust of frigid air. He slammed the door and banged his hands together between his knees. “God almighty. I thought I’d had it.” His voice was high and nervous.
     
    I began straightening the car in the road. “You need to go back to your vehicle for anything? Were you alone?”
     
    “Yeah, yeah. I just want to get somewhere warm. I can find the car in the morning.”
     
    I hit the mileage counter button on the dash and started rolling again. “When we reach the next town, you can use a pay phone and tell the police how many miles back you went off the road. Might be hard to find otherwise.”
     
    “I don’t care.”
     
    The sudden flatness in his tone made me glance at him–and see the black hole of a gun barrel pointed at me.
     
    I kept driving, knowing that was my best defense, and stifled the urge to tell him I was a cop, figuring that might get me killed even sooner. “What is this?” I asked instead.
     
    “I want your car. Pull