Winter comes at Joliet from the northwest — a dry clipper off the prairie that lays down three inches and is gone before the alarms go off. Allay Landscaping works those nights, plowing driveways and lots while the streetlights are still the only light on Chicago Street. Walks get shoveled down to bare concrete, and salt goes where the melt will run and refreeze before dawn. There is a plain satisfaction in it: someone steps out at six and the way to the car is already open. The route gets kept, storm after storm, right through to the thaw.