Belmont Hill does not forgive a snowstorm; every driveway on it runs downhill toward a road that will not wait. F E French Construction is a construction business that takes on snow removal here, plowing and shoveling the steep approaches, the switchback drives, the walkways that glaze over first. The work happens in the dark, once in the middle of a storm and again at its end, so the second push doesn't undo the first. Salt and sand go down where the pitch is worst — the foot of a drive, the last three steps to a door. Morning arrives on the hill and the pavement is simply there, dark and dry, as though winter had politely skipped the house.