#6 Cold Snap

by Darrelyn Saloom

You stood on the front porch of your farmhouse with your seven-year-old twin boys and told me cold snaps were rare in south Louisiana. By the next week, temperatures had dropped and you spent a day wrapping pipes and blanketing your mares in foal.

“This has only happened once since my wife died,” you said. “The bad weather must’ve followed you here from Chicago.”

I blew a foggy trail with my breath and said, “Guess you can’t run away from the cold.”

You laughed and forked hay bales.

Dark arrived early and you tucked in your sons.

You scooted next to me on the couch and pushed your hands under my thighs to warm up. You kissed me with bourbon breath and said, “I need a wife, the boys need a mother, and you need a home.”

“What you need is a shave,” I said.

Later, you slipped from bed and stepped outside to turn on the sprinklers. You aimed them at a pile of fence boards and scrub brush under the live oak near the barn.

After breakfast you bundled your sons in jackets, gloves, and knit caps. With only bright faces exposed, the boys tramped to the barn. Indulging in a winter wonderland, they played most of the day and envisioned new worlds in what they called, “the ice castle.”

That night, thawed and hungry for love, you proposed marriage.
“No,” I said. “The road is my home.”
“Stay,” you said. “Stop running from the cold.”