Grand Change by William Andrews

least snow resistance, each farmer in his own allotment, they broke the winter road. And it wound, resembling twin snakes following a shallow ditch pitted by horse hooves and peppered by horse buns. Across open fields, twisting and turning to avoid the heavier drifts, through fences with cut wire furling back, through yards and ditches and sometimes on the road, it wound, its ragged brush markers stating its course. In its run, where it crossed the lesser banks, which in themselves could be formidable, jolting pitches formed from the rock and ram of sleigh runners, making for a precarious ride.
    There was also a bit of the precarious in the fact that there was only one trail for two-way traffic. There were road rules, of course. Empty and full sleighs meeting got a track apiece; an empty sleigh gave right of way to a full sleigh; a sleigh passing from the rear, empty or full, got a wave. Misdemeanours were punished by name-calling and expenditure of smashed sleigh sides and broken runners.
 

LateFallandEarly Winteron HookRoad
CHAPTER 3
    Wally Mason and I made our musical debut at the Christmas concert that year. The whole thing came about in the way peculiar to endeavours that have no real direction. The course of things began the previous summer, when a country music show came to town. The fiddler they had stacked up with the best. Segments of the show were aired over the local radio station. Wally Mason got inspired and dug an old fiddle and bow out from the attic.
    They could have belonged to a grand-uncle, but nobody knew for sure. Neither was much to brag about—maybe fifteen hairs left in the bow, and they had to be knotted, there was such a wow in the shaft. The fingerboard had finger-worn patches and the strings—mostly of gut—were dirt-stiff and blackened. But it was sound enough to tune and Jim Mackie set it up and gave Wally a few basic lessons.
    Joe Mason’s farm was directly across from ours, with the same frontage running down to Tom Dougal’s line. There was Joe and his wife, Mabel, his daughter, Jenny, and son, Wally, who was around my age and a little younger than his sister. Wally and I pretty much grew up together: played together, fought together, went to school together; he was the closest thing to a brother I would ever have.
    I came into the Masons’ yard one evening not long after Wally started into the music. Joe was standing by their porch door, short, bandy-legged and belligerent. He was thrusting his arm toward the barn with cants of his cannonball head, his word phrases coming in shots: “Get to the barn with that thing, go up loft, scare all the rats out of the granary they’ll think twenty seven mad cats and a drunken piper is out to get them, and don’t squawk that thing when the milk cows are around, they’ll not let down their milk for a month.” Wally came out then, his long, skinny legs dragging his oversized feet in his waggling shuffle. There was a sulky scowl on his long, thin face, made sharper by a long, thin nose. Of course, he had “that thing” under his arm.
    In any given evening after that, you could find Wally perched on a loft girder in the barn, sawing away, staring in concentration, his tongue lolling out and his jaw working to the dip and saw of the bow.
    I’d sit on the girder and watch for a while. Eventually he’d pause, take a quick look at me and say, “Now tell me what this one is, Jake.” And he’d saw away with his eyes staring at me.
    I’d make a few guesses when he’d finish and his eyes would go blank in their stare. Then he’d shake his head in disgust. “You don’t have much of an ear for music if you can’t even tell what that is, Jake,” he’d say. But one evening I caught the second half of “Saint Anne’s Reel” over and over with Wally sitting smug-faced and his jaw clamped shut. He didn’t have much time for me that night.
    The next