The Blizzard Read Free Page B

off, and the snow squeaked under the runners.
    Crouper stuck the whip back in its case and took hold of the reins. The sled was moving out of the yard. There weren’t any gates left, all that remained of them were two crooked posts. The sled moved between them, Crouper maneuvered it onto the high road and, smacking his lips, winked at the doctor:
    “Off we go!”
    The doctor raised his coat’s baby-beaver collar in satisfaction, and slid his hands under the rug. They soon left the high road: Crouper turned at the fork; to the left the road led to distant Zaprudny; to the right, Dolgoye. The sled turned right. The road was covered with snow, but here and there occasional mileposts and bare, wind-tossed bushes could be seen. The snow kept falling: flakes the size of oats fell on the horses’ backs.
    “Why aren’t they covered?” asked the doctor.
    “Let ’em breathe a bit, there’ll be time to cover up,” Crouper replied.
    The doctor noticed that the driver was almost always smiling.
    “A good-hearted fellow…,” he thought, and asked:
    “So, then, is it profitable to keep little horses?”
    “Well, how’s to put it.” Crouper’s smile widened, exposing his crooked teeth. “So far it’s enough for bread and kvass.”
    “You deliver bread?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Live alone?”
    “Alone.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “My fly got stuck.”
    “Hmm … impotence,” the doctor realized.
    “But were you married before?”
    “I was.” Crouper smiled. “For two years. Afterward, when I buttoned up, I come to see that I ain’t got the knack for a woman’s body. Who’s gonna wanna live with me?”
    “She left you?” asked the doctor, straightening his pince-nez.
    “Left. And thank God.”
    They rode on silently for a verst or so. The horses didn’t run very fast on the drive belt, but they weren’t slow either; you could tell that they were well tended to and well fed.
    “Doesn’t it get lonely by yourself out there on the farmstead?” asked the doctor.
    “No time for bein’ lonely. In the summer I haul hay.”
    “And in the winter?”
    “In the winter I haul … you!” Crouper laughed.
    Platon Ilich chuckled.
    Crouper somehow made him feel good, and calm; his usual sense of irritation left him and he stopped rushing himself and others. It was clear that Crouper would get him there no matter what happened, that he’d make it in time to save people from that terrible illness.
    There was something birdlike in the driver’s face, the doctor thought, something that seemed a bit mocking, but at the same time was helpless, kind, and good-natured. This sharp-nosed, smiling face with its sparse reddish beard and swollen squinting eyes, swimming in a large old fur hat with earflaps, swayed next to him in time with the movement of the sled, perfectly happy with everything: the sled, the cold, his well-kept, smooth-gaited little horses, and this fox-fur-hatted doctor in a pince-nez who had appeared out of nowhere with his important travel bags—and even with the endless white plain that stretched far ahead until it drowned in a blur of swirling snow.
    “Do you hire out for wagon trains?” the doctor asked.
    “Naw, why shud I … The job pays enough. I used to work in Soloukhi for some folks, then I figured out that another’s bread goes down like lead. So I just stick to haulin’ my own bread. And thank God…”
    “Why do they call you ‘Crouper’?”
    “Ah…” The driver grinned. “From when I was young and I worked at the border. We was cuttin’ a road through the forest. Lived in barracks. I caught the croup, was up all the night long. Everbody’s sleepin’ and here I am coughin’ up a storm, they cain’t get a wink all night. They got good and mad at me and piled on the work: ‘You’s coughin’ all night, don’t give us no peace, so you go chop all the wood, light the fire, draw the water!’ They gave it to me good for that croup, they sure did. That’s what they’d