Abe's Excavating Inc.

About Abe's Excavating Inc.

Devils Lake sits on the edge of water that has been climbing for decades, swamping the roads and fence lines the old maps still show, and winter is the season the lake finally goes still under a skin of ice thick enough to hold a town of fish houses. Abe's Excavating Inc. runs its plows out from town before the ice-fishing trucks start rolling toward the lake, opening the county roads and driveways that a flat, open prairie lets the wind pile shut overnight. There is nothing out here to break a north wind — no bluff, no stand of timber — so a plowed lane can be full again by noon, and the work is in going back out to cut it clean a second time. By dusk the driveways along the shore sit open to the water, dark gravel against white snow, ready for whoever is heading out to a shack before first light. It is a small, exacting satisfaction: a straight edge cut against a lake that never holds still.