His eyes are red-rimmed, watery. His forehead, the broad plain of it, is road-mapped with wrinkles. His skin is a yellow shade of pale. His hair has almost as much gray in it as brown; his wife says it makes him look extinguished. His lips appear pinched and they shudder now and then as if he were holding his breath to the limit.This is March, and in Bend, Oregon, that means winter has six more weeks. The snow continues to fall and the snowdrifts continue to pile higher against the windward sides of homes. Windows remain sealed shut with frost so that the world outside appears always foggy, as if seen through a cataract. Icicles the size and shape of spines dangle from gutters. Blue jays and magpies flit from garbage can to garbage can, searching for something to scavenge, while emaciated deer stand, wobbling, on their spindly hind legs to seek out the seed from bird feeders, to peel the bark from low-hanging branches. The air is so thin and dry it makes nosebleeds common, so much so that it isn’t at all unusual to see someone—in the grocery store, on the sidewalk—with blood all over their chest and a Kleenex shoved up their nose like a candlewick, a wet red heat burning through it.
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