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The sun was a burnt orange hint on the horizon as the crows screeched from the trees. To the east the mountain loomed an imposing black. I walked hands in pockets dodging white stains of excrement from the birds, wondering when the harbingers of ill times would shit on me.

It was cold; the type of cold that bit through the layers and found its home deep within the bones. I relished it and despised myself for needing it.

I knew she hated it. She pretended to tolerate it, but I knew. She would tell everyone I had dragged her over here against her will with promises of mild temperatures and no snow, but the reality was she was desperate to join me. She needed me and the security I could provide.

Put another way, she needed my money. She wasn’t broke by any stretch of the imagination, but when I’d met her in the bar in Boise, she’d been on her last legs. Down to the last couple of free drinks her smile would buy and three days short of the start of the month and the next allowance payment from home.

I should have known better then – I do now – but I was raw in the moment. I was coming off the death of my dreams: it was the end of a ten-year marriage, and a fifteen-year career, both ended by a fifty-something with an axe to grind and great legs. I was empty and looking for something I couldn’t put my finger on until she smiled at me.

She had emerald eyes that looked right through you, but caught enough to hold your attention, even as hers drifted. Her smile brought you in and had you feeling like you were all she needed, despite her wandering eyes. She was a dream.

I told her I was easing my way west, looking to end up in Alaska. She said that sounded nice and I should tell her over a drink, so I bought her a drink and told her. 

That was on Monday. I saw her at the bar Tuesday and Wednesday, but she was dancing with other partners. I felt the old jealous rage rise up in me.

She came to me on Thursday. Her allowance had come through and she’d paid off most of the debts her smile couldn’t cover, and was after another drink, wanted to hear more about my trip west.

I bought her a drink and I told her, and by the time I was on the train Monday morning, heading west to Oregon, she was sitting next to me, staring out the window taking it all in.

Every rotation of the train’s wheels brought each of us further west than we’d ever been. We loved it, ate it up, as we told each other more about what we were hoping to find. Her youth energized me. I don’t know what I did for her. We were both young enough to mistake this lust for love.

I’d like to say we were able to ride the wings of lust, or love, for a year or two, but we lasted three months before an unseasonable snow rolled through Portland in mid-December. This was on the heels of the coldest November in the last 50 years. 

The bloom fell off the rose then and she couldn’t keep her mouth shut about how I’d lied to her about what it was going to be like. She couldn’t help but nag at me about it. I see that now, that she couldn’t help it.

It got to be like the sound of these damn crows: a piercing screech, echoing about my head as it echoed about the buildings. It hurt, and I had to stop it.

You know what does warm me: that all these big cities have dirty rivers running through them where you can dump stuff you don’t want. So it goes with dreams.

His eyes were blue steel, hard. The crow’s feet that emerged from them belied his years. He couldn’t have been over 30, but he took everything in like a seasoned 20-year man.

His jaw was pointed and firm and in his first week, they’d already seen it wasn’t for show. They’d tried to go at him, testing his authority, and he’d shown them a stiff backbone and an unrelenting work ethic.

When the first of the heavy snows came, they arrived at work as best they could, to find the paths between buildings already cleared. He stood inside the doors of the main office in a t-shirt with sweat beading on his forehead to hand out the day’s assignments.

Within six months of his working there, he had turned them into the most productive unit in the company. What amazed his superiors was how little blowback there was from the employees. To a man, not a single negative word was spoken. 

Instead they heard stories of problems that had arisen and how cool he had been in the face of them, putting people into place to fix what was wrong and make it better. Nothing fazed him.

Shock rippled through the unit when the executives came in and fired him. Rumors of it rippled through the buildings before the truth crashed down at the end of the day.

He left the same way he’d come in; quiet, cold steel in his eyes. He shook each of his men’s hands on the way out, staring them in the face and telling them to ‘keep up the good work.’

When the executives gathered the unit together at day’s end they were asked why they had let him go.

“You were too productive. You made the rest of the company look bad.”

They strolled through the quad’s explosion of orange and red leaves, which dotted the perfect green lawn. The boys would run off together, one the receiver and one the defender, and he would loft the football in a high arching spiral. The leather would crunch amongst the leaves as the boys rolled on the ground laughing.

He and Pete used to do the same thing with Pop, though they would end up coming to blows after the third or fourth tumble. He missed Pete.

Those early September afternoons, much like this one had been perfect, the heat wasn’t oppressive like it was in summer, but the cold didn’t bite you like it could in the fall, the sunshine was plentiful in the cloudless sky.

It was a good day to be alive. He wished Pete were here to see it. They’d talked about going to college here to play football, and a hundred other dreams.

And then high school had come and they’d taken different paths, their old dreams becoming lost memories. He wondered what his boys would do. If they would stick together, or drift apart over time. He wanted to believe blood was a binder, but he knew not to put hope in clichés.

Uncle Ted had met Pop at the gate before each game. While the boys ran the sidelines and played pick-up games, Pop and Uncle Ted would stand at the top of the bleachers and watch the game.

He could hear the noise of the crowd and the scratch of the announcer’s voice over the PA as they approached the brick gates. As he did every time, he looked for Pete, even though he knew he wouldn’t be there.

The boys went to meet their friends. He climbed to the top of the bleachers alone.