Page 17 of Cruel King
I suspect Jonesy knows I’ve never shoveled a flake of snow in my twenty-three years too, so I wave off his offer. “It’s okay. I got this. Just join in when you get back.”
He eyes me suspiciously but continues to smile as he turns to walk through the path of footsteps he left when he walked over here from the shed earlier. I get it. I’ve never been known as the friendly King boy. Hell, I’ve never even been known as the sort of nice King. If anything, all anyone has ever thought of me is I’m the King son who says little, but when I actually speak, it’s usually something cruel that comes out of my mouth.
None of that would be a lie. That doesn’t mean I can’t be nice sometimes.
I jam the shovel into the foot of snow currently freezing my legs and feet and toss it off to the side. It’s a light snow, thankfully, so it practically blows away in the wind as I dump it onto the area next to the sidewalk.
So this is shoveling. It’s not that bad. Then again, I’ve only been out here doing it for about two minutes. I’m thinking it’s going to suck if I’m out here an hour from now still trying to clear off this sidewalk.
Glancing up at the door, I see the security camara and have to smile at the idea of my father watching this. He’d probably stand there with his mouth hanging open in utter shock if he saw me out here.
“You know, this is as bad as the storm we had in ninety-three. We had one in ninety-two too, but I think this one is more like ninety-three. I swear to God I shoveled a ton of snow that year. An actual ton!” Jonesy says as he joins me at the end of the sidewalk and digs his shovel into the snow at his feet.
I don’t bother to mention those snowstorms occurred before I was born. He knows that, I’m sure, and I doubt he was telling me about them because he thought I knew firsthand about either one.
Thankful he’s bothering to make conversation while we shovel since left in silence I’m going to think about Ava upstairs in my bedroom, I ask him to tell me about the last time we had a huge snowstorm because I can’t remember for the life of me ever seeing this much snow.
Jonesy stops his work for a moment or two to think and nods when he remembers the storm that answers my question. “Right after you were born, I’m guessing. You’re around twenty-two now, aren’t you?”
I toss a shovel full of snow onto the pile I’ve begun creating and nod at his incorrect guess. “Close. Twenty-three.”
“Then yeah, it would be that storm. I remember that one because your mother wasn’t here because she was at the hospital having your brother Theo. January. No February. Those storms are always so much worse than these.”
Curious why he thinks that, I push my shovel over the concrete sidewalk in my attempt to find a better way to clear the path. It makes snow go everywhere all over where I just shoveled, though.
“Why are storms worse?”
He takes a big breath of ice-cold air into his nose, and all I can think is he just froze both nostrils by doing that. Nudging his Giants hat further off his face and revealing his big forehead with tons of lines, he stops working for a moment to answer me.
“Because there’s no chance for a quick warm up so some of it melts. February storms are the worst. You know if you got all that snow even a month later it would melt pretty quickly, but in February and January, there’s nothing but frigid temperatures to keep it all around until spring. Snow is beautiful when it’s falling and even when it’s first on the ground. After a couple days, though, it’s nothing but ugly.”
I look up from my shoveling to smile at him since I agree with that. Nobody likes seeing those huge mounds of filthy snow with dirt and road salt all mixed in sitting on every damn street corner. They’re ugly as fuck, but until warmer weather comes around, that’s all anyone sees up here in the Northeast.
That’s one thing I didn’t miss last year when I got to do a semester abroad in Spain. No piles of ugly snow there for those ten weeks.
“Yeah, I hate that,” I say to continue the conversation.
I’ve never really talked to Jonesy like this, but he’s all right. I have to give it to him. This snow may be light, but shoveling it gets tiring after a while. He’s kept up with me shovel for shovel this whole time.
When we’re nearly finished, I remember we own at least two snowblowers. “Hey, why didn’t we just snowblow all of this?”
The groundskeeper stops and jams his shovel into a pile of snow next to him. “I didn’t believe the weatherman when he said we could get a storm. They’re always saying it’s going to be huge, and then you get all ready for it and all you get are a few damn inches, at most. So I gambled that he was wrong, as usual, and didn’t gas up either of the snowblowers. Guess I lost that bet.”
The way he says that, like it’s no big deal and life goes on, makes me laugh. Nothing bothers this guy. I wish I could be like him. Everything fucking bothers me.
“Well, no big deal,” I say as I scoop up a shovel full of snow and toss it to my right. “We got this done pretty quickly.”
He nods and we get back to work since there’s only a few feet left before we reach the door to the kitchen. This hasn’t been too bad. I don’t think I’d want to do this every day for the rest of my life, but for the past hour, it’s been okay.
Even better, it’s kept my mind off Ava upstairs in my bedroom.
I glance up at the second-floor windows and focus on mine where she’s just a few feet away probably looking at that Playboy magazine. She’s not wrong about those women. They don’t look real. Not that any man actually cares. Those pictures are just helpful in getting things going.
But even though I buy a new one every month, I barely think about those women when I’m looking through the pages. All I ever think of is the one person I’m not supposed to think about.
Ava Sutton.
When we finish the sidewalk, Jonesy stands his shovel up in a pile of snow and smiles. “Thanks for the help. It was nice to have someone to talk to. Makes the work go by so much faster.”