At four in the morning Bourbonnais is a set of empty lots and streetlights, with river fog freezing onto every windshield. The Poolice - To Collect And Serve is out in it, plowing drives and lots, cutting walkways down to pavement and putting salt where the ice wants to set up. The point is that nobody leaving for Kankakee at six has to think about it — they back out, they go. Storms here come in off the open country west of the village and can drop in one night what takes hours to move. When the sun finally clears the trees, the blacktop is black and the piles are stacked well out of the way.