Deadhead MileK.N. Johnson
It was cold, not frigid cold, but the sort of cold a good duck down coat and the brisk pace of one adapted to mountain winters could escape. Months of white snow covered it all; the mailman’s shack, the outhouse, the fuel shed.
Perry pulled a pair of sun goggles over his eyes, a hat fat with rabbit fur on his head, the flaps over his ears, the postal service emblem centered on his forehead. On mail day, the helipad needed a quick padding down, so he stepped outside under a sky of cotton clouds, the sun a distant light behind a gray bedsheet.
He groomed the snow with a low-tech device he’d fashioned from rope and a two-by-four, pounding the board onto the winter snow pack, jerking the rope into new positions to force fresh snow into the surface. When the season
