Snow's Fuel Company

About Snow's Fuel Company

Four in the morning in January, and Town Cove lies black and rimmed with ice while the snow keeps coming sideways down the length of Orleans. Snow's Fuel Company is out in it, plow lights sweeping the empty roads, cutting driveways open one after another before the town has stirred. The satisfaction is precise and physical: a clean edge of pavement, a walk scraped down to bare, a car that will actually leave the yard at seven. Cape storms arrive wet and heavy and rarely alone, so the trucks go back out for the second and third pass without being asked. When the sky finally lightens over the water, the streets look manageable again — which is the entire point.