Blanket of White

When an elderly man with dementia wanders away just as a blizzard rolls in, a young acquaintance sets out to find him.

Photo by Mark Rolfe on Unsplash

Mr. Morton needed a new pair of shoes. The soles of his black loafers were worn, and from his halting gait even I could see that he needed to ditch the laces for some hands-free, slip-on orthopedic sneakers.

I glanced at the clock. One more hour. If I hurried home, I’d have time to curl my hair before the Christmas party. I donned my copy-and-pasted work smile. “Hi Mr. and Mrs. Morton. How can I help you today? There’s a sale on select colors in our men’s section.”

“Well, hi, Catherine.” Mrs. Morton tugged off her winter gloves and patted snow out of her crisp gray curls. “You look great, honey! Picking up a few shifts during winter break? Great way to earn some money. You’d better go right home after work. Those meteorologists are saying a blizzard’s on the way. What do you think of college so far? Are you still majoring in Communications? After Mass yesterday, your mom said you have a boyfriend already! How exciting! Is he a nice boy? Where’s he from?”

Mrs. Morton paused to grasp her husband’s elbow, as if to keep him close, and I leapt in to answer the less-nosy questions before she could spout more. “Yes, Communications. The first semester has been great. Lots to learn, lots of new people. You know. Mr. Morton, it looks like you’ve been pretty hard on those shoes. Can I help you find some that’ll be more comfortable? We have some new hands-free ones.”

“Hands-free! You hear that, Lee?” Mrs. Morton said with enthusiasm, gently shaking her husband’s arm.

Mr. Morton didn’t look at me. Beneath the crescent-shaped scar on his eyebrow, his eyes roved at a slow pace over the small shoe store, his gaze distant. For my whole childhood, Mr. Morton had been the designated Santa Claus at church Christmas functions, passing out peppermints and chocolate coins and singing “Jolly Old Saint Nicholas” through his fake beard. During the rest of the year, I had squinted at him with suspicious eyes, trying to figure out why Santa Claus pretended to be quiet Mr. Morton for eleven months out of the year. He might have everyone else fooled, but little six-year-old me knew his secret: Mr. Morton was his secret identity, the Clark Kent to his Superman. Eventually I realized it was Santa Claus who was the alter ego, a disappointing revelation for a child.

Mr. Morton had been my best customer when I sold Girl Scout cookies in the church hall after Mass. He whispered at me not to tell his wife how many he’d ordered, and then winked. When I stared belligerently at him because I was too embarrassed to reveal that I didn’t know how to wink back, he gave me a hard stare. Little lady, he said, you gotta exercise those winking muscles. Get ‘em strong. And he taught me to practice closing both eyes, then opening them one at a time, until an old lady interrupted us, demanding, Are you the one selling Girl Scout cookies? Gimme that sign-up sheet.

“Where did you say those hands-free shoes are?” Mrs. Morton said. “Do they come in black? Lee only wears black sneakers. He’s a man of habit. Aren’t you, Lee? Why don’t you take off your coat, honey, so you don’t get overheated.” With deft fingers, fast-moving as the scrabbling legs of an underwater cleaner shrimp, she undid the buttons and zipper of his winter coat and peeled it back from his arms. Mr. Morton submitted to her without a change of expression.

“The orthopedic sneakers are along that back wall,” I said. “I believe black is one of the colors on sale.”

“Well, that works out just fabulously, doesn’t it?” His coat slung over her arm, Mrs. Morton steered her husband toward the back wall. “Thanks a million, sweetie! I’ll holler if we need any help.”

I’m sure you will. Mrs. Morton would find a reason to need help, if only for the sake of having someone to talk to.

I checked my phone under the counter. A stream of texts and memes flooded my high school friends’ group chat.

PARTY TONIGHT. T-minus two hours losers

I made eggnog 😉 😉

The news says blizzard should we maybe reschedule?

lol no its fine

My phone dinged with a message from my mom: a screenshot of the weather forecast.

I tucked my phone back into the narrow cubby beneath the register.

“Catherine!” Mrs. Morton’s voice echoed from the back of the store. “Do you have any black size elevens in the back? You’re all out of Lee’s size out here, honey.”

I slipped from behind the counter and padded to the back of the store. “Let me check real quick,” I said as I passed them. Mr. Morton sat on one of the little seats with mirrors on the bottom, staring at the rows and rows of shoes while his wife paced the aisle.

“These ones are nice. Blue and red,” she said. “But you’ll never wear those. Let’s see, these are good for trail walking. We don’t need that. Hmm, extra cushioning…”

Her voice faded as the Employees Only door swung shut behind me.

Maybe Mr. Morton wasn’t feeling well. He’d always had sharp eyes. Not unkind, but observant, noticing little details in what people said and did. Mrs. Morton remembered everything anyone told her and talked incessantly about it. Mr. Morton spoke less but noticed more.

But now his eyes were vacant. Confused, almost. Maybe he was getting over the flu or something. Germs were going around like crazy, with this weather.

I snatched a size eleven black orthopedic sneaker and made my way back into the store. A few more customers had shuffled in out of the cold and were wandering around the front of the store.

I handed the shoe box to Mrs. Morton. “One more in size eleven. I’d better get back to the front. Let me know if you need anything else.”

“Okay, sweetie, you go see to those other customers. Is that Susan O’Brien up there? Oh. No, just the same hat. It’s so hard to tell people apart, all bundled up in these winter clothes. Lee, honey, try these on.”

Mrs. Morton’s chattering blended into background noise as I slipped into conversation with the customers milling around the front.

Forty-five minutes. Almost the end of my shift. Why are so many people buying shoes at 4:15pm on a Friday when there’s a blizzard warning?

In a brief quiet moment, I snuck behind the register and checked the weather forecast on my phone again. The chance of heavy snowfall was up to 80% now, and the string of texts in my friends’ group chat lengthened. I hadn’t seen them in months, but most of them had stayed in town and enrolled in the local university. They spent practically every afternoon and weekend together, taking the same classes, meeting the same people, making new inside jokes. And then there was me, back home again from halfway across the country. Out of the loop.

If I didn’t see them tonight, when would I next have a chance? Spring break?

This blizzard had better hold off.

“Catherine!” Mrs. Morton poked her head around the corner of a shelf. I stifled a sigh.

“I have to go powder my nose,” she said. “I’ll be back in just a minute. Lee is waiting right over there in the men’s section.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. Okay? He’s a grown man, Alice. I’m not his babysitter.

I turned my attention to a woman trying to return the too-small shoes someone had given her little girl as a Christmas gift.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Mr. Morton meander from the back of the store. His gaze passed over everyone in the shop, landing on no one in particular.

“They included a gift receipt,” the woman in front of me insisted. “Can’t you give me cash?”

“Our return policy only offers store credit,” I said. “Maybe your daughter would like a different pair of shoes?”

A slight frown on his face, Mr. Morton pushed open the front door, letting in a whoosh of frigid air, and wandered into the parking lot.

He was wearing the black orthopedic sneakers I’d brought out, and he had no coat.

He must have remembered something he’d left in the car. He’d be back.

I refreshed my work smile. “We have some adorable light-up shoes for little girls. Does your daughter like unicorns?”

After a few minutes, satisfied with a pair of light-up unicorn snow boots in the proper size, the woman re-wrapped her scarf around her neck, tucked it into her coat, and slipped back out into the cold.

“Catherine.” Mrs. Morton appeared by my elbow. Her voice was quiet. “Where’s Lee? I left him over by the orthopedic shoes. His coat and old shoes are still there, but I can’t find him.”

“Has he not come back in yet?”

“What?”

At Mrs. Morton’s white face and icepick voice, I felt a cold flutter of misgiving in my stomach.

“He – went outside,” I said. “I thought he forgot something in the car.”

Mrs. Morton bolted to the door and yanked it open. “Lee!”

Without a coat, Mrs. Morton darted into the freezing winter evening.

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Red and blue lights bounced off the windows of the store, shining in a kaleidoscope across the walls.

“What time did you see Mr. Morton exit the store?” a police officer mumbled through his mustache.

“I think around 4:15. Maybe a few minutes after that.”

“Did you see which direction he went?”

I shook my head. “I was with a customer. I thought he was going to his car.”

“He was wearing shoes belonging to this store. Why didn’t you stop him?”

My mouth was dry, my tongue cleaving to the roof of my mouth and struggling against me as I tried to force the words out. “I just thought he had to go to his car for a minute. I know him. He goes to my church. I thought he’d be right back.”

In a corner by the children’s section, Mrs. Morton’s eyes were grave as she whispered to another officer. Her gray curls were disheveled and frizzy from the wind.

The officer talking to me turned to a colleague. “We’ll have to put out a silver alert. Stat. He can’t have gone too far. We gotta find this guy before the blizzard rolls in.”

---

My hands shook as I gripped the steering wheel, but not from the cold.

A ding came from my purse, and I pulled out my phone.

If we get snowed in at least it will be at my house lol.

Anyone know how to make hot toddies?

Okay, boomer.

I muted the conversation and dropped the phone back into my purse.

A police squad car passed by me, one of several combing the surrounding neighborhood. The first snowflakes of the impending blizzard landed on my car, melting into tiny puddles against my heated windshield.

I pulled out of the parking lot and onto the mostly-deserted street, my face burning with shame.

Mrs. Morton’s face, looking suddenly decades older.

Silver alert.

Dementia.

Blizzard.

Hypothermia.

So stupid. I dug my fingernails into my palm, gripping the steering wheel with all the strength in my hands. You’re so stupid, Catie.

I should go straight home. Curl my hair. Go to the party. Let the police worry about Mr. Morton.

Never show my face at St. Batholomew’s or look Alice Morton in the eye again.

You’re so stupid, Catie. What did you think he was doing, going to his car in the middle of winter with no coat on?

His eyes had been dull and empty as a rinsed-out beer glass. I should have known. I should have said something, should have stopped for a split second to think.

So stupid.

I turned off my usual route home and drove down one of the residential streets beside the shop. Crawling at a glacial pace along the road, I glanced into people’s yards, checking their gardens, the sides of their houses.

How long could he last in this weather, without a coat?

Not long.

A squad car passed me on the opposite side of the road, and I averted my eyes.

They had this neighborhood covered already. What was I doing? Getting in the way, trying to help out of guilt? I pulled out of the neighborhood and back onto Main Street.

Where would I go if I were confused, wandering around the middle of my hometown. Someplace familiar, someplace I’d been a million times before. Someplace warm.

My home, that’s where I’d go. That’s where I should go right now.

When I got home, my mom would ask me how work was. What was I supposed to say? She’d find out anyway through the grapevine. Your daughter let poor, demented Mr. Morton wander out of the store without his coat on with a blizzard coming, and now he’s dead from hypothermia. Your daughter was stupid, and now he’s dead. Catie killed old Mr. Morton.

Where would Mr. Morton go? If I were lost and cold and confused, I’d go home. Where was Mr. Morton’s childhood home? It was somewhere in town, surely. He’d lived here all his life, I thought. But I had no idea where.

Years ago I’d overheard him tell John Paul Gorski, who had just gotten engaged, about when Mr. Morton had proposed to Alice in the chapel of St. Batholomew’s. She was a redhead in those days, he’d said. Beautiful brassy curls.

A tentative little seed pushed into my thoughts.

St. Bartholomew’s.

I made a U-turn in the empty street, hoping none of the cops saw me. The clouds were heavy and bulging, reflecting the glow of the streetlights while snow fell in thick puffs of white.

I made my way back past the neighborhood, past the shoe shop, and toward the bridge that rose over the railroad tracks and descended into the historic downtown.

BRIDGE ICES BEFORE ROAD, a diamond sign warned.

I took a breath and gritted my teeth. The icy bridge was the fastest route from the shoe shop to the church.

I accelerated onto the steep bridge. My tires groaned against the freezing ground.

Up, up, toward the low purple snow clouds.

Don’t slip, I begged my old car.

I reached the highest point of the bridge, with the town and a slick hill below me. Pumping the breaks, I eased my way down the hill, squinting through the falling snow for any hint of a freezing, confused old man.

“Come on, Mr. Morton,” I whispered. “Please.”

Snowflakes cascaded in thick clumps, washing the twilight world in white. I crept along the street, glancing between buildings and into alleyways.

There were so many other places he could be. Literally anywhere in town within walking distance. He could be anywhere.

The modest steeple of St. Bartholomew’s jutted above the rows of two-story storefronts, its cross barely visible through the dark and the pearly flakes that whipped and swirled in the wind.

The wind howled around my car as though railing against it for daring to be out in this weather.

Maybe the police had found him by now, and I was on a fool’s errand, postponing my Christmas party, letting more snow and ice pile onto the street with each passing minute.

They had probably already found him. There was no way a confused old man would have gotten all the way across an icy bridge in the few minutes between when he’d walked out the door and when Mrs. Morton had called the police.

He was probably safe and warm in a police car right now.

Or dying in the cold.

 My back wheels slipped slightly, but I straightened out and continued down the snow-slick road toward St. Bartholomew’s.

Through the snow, I could just make out the knee-high brick wall enclosing the church’s hibernating flowerbeds. I could remember walking that wall like a gymnast on a balance beam, the perfect white of my stiff Easter shoes stark against the faded brick. And there was the wheelchair ramp, clumsily installed beside the old stone steps. And the massive wooden door –

I gasped, and the blizzard-chilled wind seemed to push down my throat and into my lungs, shooting icy shafts through my arteries. My body crumpled from the inside out as I stared at a dark shape huddled on the frozen steps.

I slammed on the gas pedal, fishtailing across the last stretch of street, and skidded to a stop in front of the church. I stumbled out of my car, leaving the door wide open, and ran up the steps, yanking my phone from my pocket.

“Mr. Morton? Mr. Morton?” I bit the tip of one glove and extricated my hand to dial 9-1-1. He was curled against the wall, arms tucked in, forehead against his knees.

9-1-1. Police, fire, or medical?

“Um, uh – I need medical.” I reached out to touch his arm, my movements jerky.

He was cold, ice cold. Was he dead? Ice cold and dead in the blizzard?

What’s your location?

“Saint Bartholomew’s Church on Washington Street.” I shook his arm and whispered, “Mr. Morton?”

Slowly, his head moved, tipping up to look at me with glassy eyes.

In a rush of relief, my knees wobbled beneath me.

An ambulance is on its way to you. What’s your emergency?

“I found Lee Morton, the man from the silver alert.” I leaned down closer to him. “Mr. Morton, can you stand up? It’s warmer in my car.”

---

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A little light goes farther on a snowy night than it does during a harsh, bright day.

The flashing red and blue police cars and the headlights of an ambulance and fire truck lit the thick snowflakes and the new, shimmering blanket of white, casting an unearthly glow on the little church.

The policeman in front of me, his nose red and runny from the cold, had a thorny expression beneath his grey-flecked eyebrows. “You live around here?”

“Not in this neighborhood. On the other side of the bridge.” I didn’t look at him, watching instead the shivering EMTs loading Mr. Morton’s stretcher into the back of the ambulance. Alice Morton, chattering an anxious stream of questions, most of which went unanswered, clutched her husband’s hand.

“So what were you doing over here?”

“I go to church here,” I said.

“Seems like the church is closed for the night.”

“I just – I know the Mortons from church, and I thought, maybe, he might have come this way.” My stomach squirmed, hot and tight and nervous, within my belly. “I was the one at the front desk in the store when he walked out.”

“Yes, I’m aware.”

“I felt bad. I just wanted to check around a couple places to see if I could find him.”

“So how’d you know where to find him?”

The hot churning in my stomach turned to nausea.

“Bert Hastings!” came a shrill voice.

I turned to see Alice Morton stomping toward us through the gales of icy flakes.

“Bert, why are you keeping this girl out in the snow?” Mrs. Morton strode up beside us to the front door of the church and stopped, hands on her hips. “My husband tries to wander off five times a day, only this time he succeeded. Miss Catherine here found him, and that’s enough for me. You don’t have to get all bristly because she found him before you did.”

“It’s my job to look at all the possibilities,” Officer Hastings began.

“Then you look at all the possibilities and come talk to Catherine about it indoors in the daylight when there’s not a blizzard bearing down on us. Come on, honey.”

Mrs. Morton linked her arm in mine and yanked me away from the church and toward my car. Out of earshot of Officer Hastings, she slowed her step.

“Lee really had me going there for a while. I really didn’t know if we’d find him before – Well, anyway, he picked the darndest time to wander off. I’m telling you, he’s been declining for a year or two now, but these past few months his mind has been slipping away so fast.” She gave my arm a squeeze. “Catherine, thank you. You’re one of the good ones.”

Mrs. Morton glanced over her shoulder at the ambulance, then patted my arm. “I hope that boyfriend of yours knows how lucky he is. Now, I’d better be going, sweetie. Have – oh.” She paused. “I think he’s still wearing those shoes from your store.”

“No.” I shook my head, waving her toward the waiting ambulance. “Really, he can keep the shoes.”

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Thanks for taking the time to read this story! When it was rejected from the journal to which I submitted it, I was actually excited, because now I get to publish it here! While the validation of having stories published in fancy, established journals is nice and definitely has its place, I love the engagement and interaction that I’ve found with sharing stories on Substack.

Things I’ve enjoyed reading:

On Substack: “Train Stop Tavern” by Cole Noble

This was a beautifully written, eerie, and touching story that, to me, was reminiscent of the life-affirming themes of It’s a Wonderful Life. This one will stick with me, and I highly recommend that you give it a read, if you haven’t already!

Train Stop Tavern

Off Substack: The Stationery Shop by Marjan Kamali

About a year ago, I was desperate for a good book to read, but my toddler decided to turn the local library into his personal playground. So I grabbed the closest book with an interesting cover. And, oh boy, am I so thankful it was this one. I’m not a big crier, but during a bout of pregnancy-related insomnia, I wound up sobbing at 4 a.m. while reading this incredible and sensitive story of first love, loss, family, and political upheaval in 1950s Tehran.