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Black Ice
by Ralph A. Sperry

From time to time in everyone's life – if, perhaps, in mine more than most – the totally unexpectable emerges for just an instant from the mundane blur. It might be a glimpse in a crowd of a face you know that oughtn't be familiar to you – or a commonplace phrase that abruptly strikes you as conveying a suspiciously pertinent meaning. It might amount to no more than a detail you suddenly sense is out of place in an otherwise everyday scene. But whatever the instance, for that moment, life as you're used to it briefly skews into an alien point of view.

Then, as swiftly, the intrusion disappears, like a snowflake dissolving on a windowpane. And just as you're finding that your basic assumptions appear to have acquired new definitions, you're once again in your ordinary world, with only a dwindling afterimage of this bizarrely compelling revelation. And in little more than another instant, it hardly seems worth the effort to reflect on whatever it was that happened.

Even discounting the facts of my life, I'm generally willing to do what you'd do: dismiss such unsettling incongruities as merely transient glitches in the electro-chemical links between my self and my surroundings. Yet every once in a while, I'm forced to consider if that's really wise: for instance, one of my recent encounters with life's little subtext, which, as always, arose from the midst of the perfectly ordinary – during lunch at the Burger King on Boylston Street in Boston's Back Bay.

To be sure, I usually prefer a more substantial midday meal. All that morning, however, I'd been engaged in an especially abstruse translation from Russian – trying to separate the merely possible from the likely in a language that has no use for the subjunctive. And of course, the work was due to be sent out for type by mid-afternoon. So, though I needed a chance to clear my head, I didn't think I ought to be away from the Institute for long.

I might have waited a bit, I suppose, if I'd been thinking more clearly. But the force of synchronicity aside, I invariably make the same mistake whenever I'm preoccupied with deadlines. So, it may be called "fast food," but at lunch on a weekday the wait seems endless. And to make matters worse, once I'd finally gotten my Double Whopper, small fries and small Coke, it took even more time to find a seat.

I was just about to abandon hope and my tray, and take the food back to my office, when I came across an empty table – the modern sort of nearly unnoticeable space, supposedly designed for two. Easing into the very small seat, I nodded apologetically at two young women who were sitting at the table beside me, just inches from my own. But they continued cheerfully chatting, seeming not to notice me at all, as if I were light-years away, instead of merely a handspan or two from being in the middle of their conversation.

Meanwhile, the feeding frenzy around me was reaching such a disturbing pitch that I was once again prompted to try to accomplish what others can do with such marvelous ease – zone out. So, tearing apart a soggy packet of salt and dumping the contents on my fries, I began to wonder with determined absentness whether I really had to be in such a hurry. I calculated that my translation could be delayed an hour or so without causing an insuperable production crisis.

After all, this was the first warm and sunny spring day. And if not the most leisurely of lunches, perhaps a walk through Back Bay would refresh me.

And naturally, as I made the effort to let my mind drift away from my surroundings, I started to reminisce on the long-gone Middays of my youth – to recall those carefree, unhurried small meals I used to enjoy with my long-gone friends, along the Embankment on warm and sunny spring Middays just like this one. But as I wrested my straw from its tight paper wrapper and jammed it into the die-cut hole on the lid of my drink, my ear caught two phrases – "black ice" and "outer space" – pronounced in a curiously evocative voice by one of the young women beside me.

"And before I knew it," she was saying with chagrin, "there I was in my car, terminally stuck on black ice on the edge of the Richardsons' drive. And every time I'd try to pull out, my car would slide backward a little bit more toward the drop-off down into the woods. We finally had to call Charlie to come tow me out. You remember meeting Charlie, so you can imagine how stupid I felt. I'm suppose to be a native of Littleton, New Hampshire, not some ski-crazed alien who decides that every accident is the fault of the scenery."

I'm not in the habit of evesdropping, to be sure, but under the circumstances it was almost impossible not to listen.

"Oh, come on, Joan," the other young woman protested. "Black ice is what happens up there at this time of year. It's the mountains of northern New England. It could have happened to anyone."

"Anyone from downstate," Joan replied with rather self-deprecating emphasis. "And frankly, Cathy, when they say 'downstate,' they don't just mean southern New Hampshire. It's the rest of New England ... the rest of the country ..." She picked up her last remaining fry and used it to gesture around the restaurant. "... even the rest of the world ... even the rest of the universe, I guess." She popped the fry into her mouth with a sigh.

"You see," she went on, "it's not a matter of altitude, but attitude. People from 'downstate,' wherever they come from, are just expected to get into trouble. But not a genuine local. We're supposed to anticipate things like black ice ... to have a bucket of sand in our trunk, or a tattered rag rug. We're at least supposed to know how to cope before getting stuck like I got stuck.

"And don't think Charlie didn't let me know it. Here's a guy I've known my entire life. But now that I work in Boston, he says to me, 'Already got out three people who got themselves stuck just like you, and they wasn't even from around here part of the time.' Part of the time!" she deplored. "That's the way we talk about people with weekend cottages. And when he said it to me, he made it sound like I only drop in now and then from another galaxy."

Cathy chuckled indulgently. "And I suppose that happens a lot in Littleton ... people from another galaxy? Of course, I'll admit the tourists I saw up there last winter did look a little freaky, but in an Earthbound sort of way."

"Well!" Joan retorted, arching an eyebrow. "In this case, another galaxy might be the point, as I found out the following morning. Now, maybe there is alien life, or maybe not. But I have to say, if it does exist, it seems the folks in my town are ready for it.

"See, Charlie was so busy with all the stranded tourists on Saturday night that he told me to stop by the station Sunday on my way to get the papers, to fill out the Triple-A forms for the towing. And when I got there, the two guys from his night crew, Bill and Tom, were still hanging around. They're real Down East types. They stand with their hands in their pockets, and their toes pointed outward. They talk with 'ayuhs,' and they aren't fazed by anything. And while I fussed with the Triple-A paperwork, I got to listening to them talk about what had happened the night before.

"Bill started by asking Tom in a voice you'd use for a grocery list, 'Did yuh see anythin' last night?'

"After a very long pause, Tom replied, 'Nope, I didn't see nuthin'.' And then, after another very long pause, he finally added, 'Did you?'

"'Nope,' Bill replied. 'I didn't see nuthin'. But I guess that trooper sure did. Sure must'a been sumthin'.'

"'Must'a been,' Tom agreed. 'Course, could'a been from sittin' by them snowbanks too long. Ain't yuh never had that happen?'

"'Sure have. Remember one winter I was out all night towin' and I started seein' all kinds of things.' Then they fell back into that stony silence that punctuates every local conversation, like ..." Joan herself paused, as if searching the empty wrappings on her tray for an appropriate simile. "Well, just like the rock walls that divide up their land.

"But after a minute or so, Tom went on, 'Still, that trooper did get awful upset. Kept yellin' in the radio ... callin' for reinforcements.'

"Bill nodded. 'Heard him all the way down to Franconia, I hear. Comes from downstate, yuh know. Rhode Island, they say. Probably got none of them lights in Rhode Island.'

"'Well, yuh didn't see any of them lights yourself, did yuh?'

"'Not last night. Still, I thought there might be sumthin' to it, so I called the top of Mount Washington.'

"'And what he say?'

"'Ask him if he's seen any lights. He says to me he's been up on that mountain twenty years now, and he's seen all kinds ... red ones and blue ones and yellow ones and green ones. But he don't make no mention of 'em. Don't see no reason to. I just let 'em alone, he says to me.'

"Tom shrugged. 'Could'a just been the trooper.'

"'Could'a been. Like you say, them folks from downstate get pretty edgy when they're out all night.'

"'Still,' Tom declared quite matter-of-factly, 'I did get out and check the rig.'

"'And what yuh do that for?'

"'Make sure I could pull the weight if I had to. There was a lot of black ice last night. Suppose, like that trooper kept yellin', them people did land their machine. Just like everybody else from downstate, they'd get stuck, you can bet. I figure somebody's got to be ready to tow them out.'

"So, you see," Joan concluded as she stood and picked up her tray, "that's why it was especially awful to get stuck on the Richardsons' drive."

"Oh, don't be silly!" Cathy admonished. "You may be a space shot, but I don't suppose that people will actually think you come from outer space."

The two of them burst into merry giggles as they dumped their empty wrappings in the trash, then went off to the warm spring sunshine.

Now, it's not as though I've never encountered this sort of anecdote before. If nothing else, you can find such things in tabloids – if usually in more lurid detail. But for an instant, I was inexplicably struck by what Joan had said. Northern New Hampshire was where I started out – stranded in a rural town that wasn't substantially different from Littleton.

And though it might be better to write this episode off as just another of life's improbable incongruities, I still can't help but find it disquieting – perhaps because of its matter-of-factness. After all, I know, as Joan and Cathy never could, that the universe does contain alien lifestyles. And every once in a while, they do get stuck in awkward situations.

So, at least this once, I'm prompted to wonder if this lifestyle might have been mine.