Three in the morning, the plow lights swing across Sawyers Crossing and the snow comes sideways off the river flats. Finn Property Maintenance is out in it — driveways opened, turnarounds widened, walkways cleared down to the step. Grit and salt go where the ice sets up hardest, at the foot of a slope or on the shady side of a garage. Swanzey storms have a way of stacking up overnight, so the work carries through the dark and picks up again at daybreak, when the town plow throws a bank across everything already done. What's left behind is small and specific: a car that backs out at seven without a shovel in the trunk.