In the Bitterest January

The bitter cold came back before January was over with.

The snow from the weekend had thawed a bit by Wednesday. Now, on Friday, the puddles were turning to ice. The weather forecast warned of a severe cold spell, followed by a snow storm over the weekend. It had been in the 20s on Friday morning, and then it wasn’t anymore.

When it got below ten degrees, I brought the cat’s cardboard box of blankets into the basement, and then I brought the food and water and the litter box, and then I brought the cat. She was astonished to not only be allowed indoors, but carried in when she didn’t answer my call.  I thought she might claw me. When she first took refuge with us, she was violently suspicious and clawed everyone. But she allowed herself to be brought inside. It was already so cold that my skin ached then, and it was getting colder.

After I’d settled her in the basement, went upstairs and scrolled anxiously on the internet, watching the events in Minneapolis: the boy in the blue bunny hat, and the girl in the pink parka. All those people bundled up against the cold, marching with signs. The masked and armed government agents terrorizing children and taunting onlookers. At least three men holding down a civilian, a citizen, and spraying pepper spray in his face. And then, of course, I made the mistake of scrolling though the comments.

It’s not the openly sadistic people that alarm me the most anymore. It’s not the Donald Trumps and the Stephen Millers of the world that drive me near despair. We’ve always had men like that. Throughout history, every once in awhile, a person with no conscience has been born or made, and they do what people without consciences do. There is nothing remarkable about  a sociopath. What chills me to no end is the ordinary people who brush it off as nothing.

“Don’t be hysterical. Don’t have TDS. Biden and Obama deported people too. Our country has laws. There must be some logical explanation. It’s probably his parents’ fault that ICE kidnapped the five-year-old boy and used him as bait before sending him to a prison camp a thousand miles from home. That woman must have been trying to run over the ICE agent who somehow shot her in the temple through the side window of her car. The elderly man dragged out of the house in his underwear must have been a rapist. Don’t come here illegally if you don’t want to be terrorized.” That laugh reaction on Facebook, without saying anything at all. They are the ones who let this happen. They deserve the hottest hell– or the coldest. A hell like Steubenville in the winter.

That evening, I took a shift helping at a church which had a warming center. I wasn’t on the schedule but got called in at the last minute, and I was relieved because they have a beautiful space heater that I like to bask in front of like a lizard. It’s much nicer than the one in my house. When I got there at nine, there was a homeless gentleman waiting on the doorstep with bags of sandwich fixings he’d bought earlier. He set them out on the table next to the coffee and coaxed everybody to take some. We all sat and chatted together as we ate turkey and salami in the glow of the space heater: the first time any of us had felt comfortable all day. I was sorry to leave. I didn’t want to go back out into the bitter cold. I wanted to hide inside, where it was warmer than summer, and people were nice to one another.

I got home late, and couldn’t sleep until late, and woke up late the next morning. That was when I found out that another United States citizen had been murdered.

He was an ICU nurse at the VA, a Catholic like me.

Video after video flooded the internet, showing the execution from different angles: the man running to help a woman, asking if she was okay. The agents jumping him, beating him, taking his holstered gun for which he had a permit. Then, after he was disarmed and helpless, lying on the ground trying to hold his head up, the gunshots. Not a volley from someone squeezing the trigger of an automatic, but the pops of somebody deliberately choosing to shoot him again and again and again. I lost count after eight, but I found out later it was at least ten.

Instantly, the gaslighting and slander began.

“Don’t be hysterical. Don’t have TDS. Our country has laws. He’s a criminal with a record. A nurse, legally carrying a holstered gun, holding up his phone, trying to assist a woman, shot ten times in the back, must have been trying to be a mass shooter. He should have complied. He should have stayed home. He was brandishing a gun– never mind that there’s video footage of him brandishing nothing but a camera. FAFO.” And the laugh reaction.

I did not know that so many brutal, cold, ruthless people existed in my country. And no matter what happens to this administration, they will still be here after it’s gone.

When I  couldn’t take it anymore, I got offline and went to spend time with the cat. She clamored to be let outside, so we went out for fresh air for a short time, and then we played in the basement. She even climbed on my lap, which she doesn’t usually do.

Back online, I watched videos of yet more events in Minneapolis: a man, screaming “I’m an American! You’ll have to kill me!” as masked government agents beat him. Other people in parkas and ski goggles, waving signs and shouting. A woman with a walker, heading straight into a cloud of tear gas. Another group of people blocking off a street with dumpsters. Chaos and noise.

I went to bed, but couldn’t sleep.

And then it snowed.

It snowed for almost twenty-four hours. It snowed until the cars were buried and the streets were impassable. All the businesses in town were closed and the schools and the bus transit line announced they wouldn’t be open until Tuesday.

When I finally got out of the house for a walk, it was nearly evening. People were going back and forth in the middle of the street, because no cars could drive anyway and the street was more walkable than the sidewalk. The flakes were still falling: not the thick, wet snow we usually get in this part of the country but the soft, dusty, feathery snow that falls when it’s so terribly cold that there isn’t any moisture in the air. The snow on the ground came up past my boots. It did not yield to my steps like packing snow. It sprayed out in front of me when I trudged through it, like steam, or the tear gas I’d seen on the news.

I trudged to the end of my block, where you can usually see the shale hills of West Virginia.

Some days, the hills look so close you could touch them. Today, they were barely visible, just a slight darkening of the snow clouds to the east. The winter had taken my tiny corner of Appalachia and blown it into  the sky. We were millions of miles away from anywhere, freezing on an asteroid in space.

I felt as if the winter would go on forever.