The Sudden Weight of Snow by Laisha Rosnau

the porch of one of the buildings. We looked at each other, took a deep breath, and walked past this group and into the building, looking at our feet until we got inside. It was clear that whatever craft fair had taken place earlier was over now. Long tables, like the ones in the basement of our church, were pushed up against the walls. At church, once a potluck was over, women would wash all the Corning and Tupperware before we could come down from all the Kool-Aid we had drunk. We’d go to the bathroom, almost expecting to pee lime green or cherry red, and would return to find the tables pushed aside, all the bowls and casserole dishesdisplayed across the taut plastic tablecloths, ready to be picked up and taken home by whoever had filled them with potato and jellied salads. God helps those who help themselves, cleanliness a virtue, idle hands and something about the devil. At Pilgrims, food still clung to dishes and platters, crumbs and whole morsels all over the table, and there were things like candlesticks, small painted boxes, coarsely woven bags amongst the food, obviously left over from the craft fair.
    Like anthropologists, we examined the items on the tables, looking first, then picking through the remains as though hoping to discover something. We dipped the crumbs of chips into the remnants of different sauces – red, yellow, green dips, all with a brownish hue – turning to each other for assessment.
    “What do you think that was?”
    We were interrupted by a balding man with a grey ponytail and beads around his neck. “Hey, you two been on the sleigh ride yet?” he asked. Despite his appearance, or possibly because of it, we knew he was one of the worst kind: the hippie version of the sportswriter at the arena.
    We looked back at him as though we couldn’t have been more bored. “No, we haven’t.”
    “Oh, you have to go on a ride. They’re just about to take another one out. The moon is almost full, it’s solstice, the air is clear. Oh man, I’m telling you, it’s the most beautiful thing.” He said all this in a slow, drawn-out way, like pulling gum out of his mouth, seeing how far it would stretch.
    “Are you sure it’s the
most
beautiful thing?” Krista asked, narrowing her eyes and looking pointedly at him. I suppressed a laugh. For one moment, he looked as though someone hadgiven his ponytail a quick jerk, then he was back to a slow blinking, rhythmic nod.
    “Well, if it’s the most beautiful thing, we’d better go then.” I pulled Krista past the man and we made a path to the door through a gauntlet of large sweaters, musky smells, hair. On the porch, people talked and smoked with the urgency that cold brought, hauled on joints then funnelled laughter out of their throats in tight bursts. We smoked anything anyone passed to us, bare hands stinging when we took off one glove to accommodate the tiny ends of joints. By the time the sleigh pulled up to the porch, the huge horses snorting out steam clouds of warm air and jingling with bells, I felt delighted with the entire evening. I even started thinking in clichés about being my mother’s daughter. Vera must have stood bundled on porches waiting for horse-drawn sleighs to pull her through fields of snow. She may have even sneaked a drag off someone’s cigarette, imagined the flame would warm her, unsubstantiated beliefs like that existing as they did back then.
    The “sleigh” was a flatbed covered with hay, no ornately curved sides, no furs, no burly men with bodies like bears, teasing pipes to light and then dim with their lips. The group of us on the porch piled on, jousted our limbs against one another until we could find some place to sit still without being cramped. My foot met with an ankle and someone cried out. The man up front, reins in hand, turned and directed us to all sit with our backs toward the middle, feet drawn in so they wouldn’t catch when we went through gates. Told us to hold on, the ride would be bumpy.