The Winter the Roads Disappeared

Long ago, in a village tucked between the mountains and the sea, the snow began on a Thursday. By Friday it had swallowed the fences. By Saturday it had swallowed the road.

On Sunday, Grandfather Henrik announced that he could no longer see his barn. Nobody was particularly alarmed. He had been saying much the same thing since August.

Three generations had come to the farmhouse for supper and stayed for the weather. By the third evening they had told every story, sung every song twice, and played every game in the house.

Grandfather had won most of the games and suspected cheating in the rest. Sigrid’s little brother had taken to balancing a spoon on his nose. Even the spoon looked bored.

“We need a new game,” said Sigrid.

“We have perfectly good games,” said Grandfather.

“You win all of those.”

“That is what makes them good.”

Grandmother set down her knitting. “Then perhaps it’s time we made one you don’t know how to win.” She said it so mildly that it took Grandfather a moment to realize what she’d said.

Grandmother fetched stiff paper, a pair of scissors, and a pot of ink. The children cut cards at the kitchen table and painted a number at each end. Sigrid made one with a zero at both ends.

Grandfather said he would have nothing to do with the project. Then he moved his chair closer so he could explain how to cut a straight edge.

Sigrid set the double-zero card in the middle. “If the numbers match, you can make a road,” she said. Soon the cards stretched toward every seat. Her brother laid a double sideways and sent the road off in two directions.

Grandmother looked from the table to the white window. “Well,” she said, “we’ve got our roads back.”

Grandmother found a few copper pennies in the crock by the stove. A penny on a branch meant anyone could play there. Grandfather put his down with great ceremony. Grandmother used the opening before he had even taken his hand away.

“I thought I was being generous,” he said.

“You were,” she said. “Do it again.”

They agreed you had to tell the table when you were down to one card. Grandfather was so pleased with the rule that he explained it to everybody twice.

Then he played his next-to-last card, scratched his nose with a penny still in his fingers, and sat back without a word. Sigrid looked at his hand. Her brother looked at his mustache.

“One card, Grandfather,” said Sigrid. “And one penny.”

Grandfather looked down his nose. A copper penny hung from the curl of his mustache. “UFF DA!” he cried. The penny dropped, Sigrid’s brother slid off the bench, and Grandmother laughed so hard she had to put her cards down.

“That’s what we’ll say when we have one card left,” said Sigrid. By the next deal, it was the name of the game.

In the morning, the snow stopped. A neighbor with a shovel came up the lane, and for the first time in days, everyone could see the road. Grandfather reached for his boots.

“Well?” said Grandmother.

He set them back beside the door. “The road can wait one more round.”

The roads cleared and the neighbors went home. The cards stayed in a little box beside the kettle. Every winter, when the first snow fell, someone would reach for the box and pull up another chair.

And if you’d walked past that farmhouse on a dark winter evening, you might have heard the kettle, the scrape of a chair, and Grandfather’s voice rising above the laughter. “UFF DA!”