The Snowy Mountain

A short story about knocking on doors…

On a cold winter’s night Allen returned to the mountains where he grew up. It had been twenty years since he had been there. He arrived at his old home just as it began to snow. Parking his rent-a-car, he went up to the front door. He knocked.

It was so strange to knock. He had lived there for eighteen years and had never knocked before. It had been his home. He never realized how solid the oak front door was. It hurt his knuckles to knock but after a moment without anyone answering he knocked again.

From the day two days after he was born and was brought home from the hospital until the day one month after he graduated from high school he had lived in that adobe house with his family and had never knocked on the front door. And this was the first time he was back. He was now in his forties.

Both of his parents were now dead. His brother was in prison and his sister now lived in New Zealand. He vaguely knew the people who bought the house. Just before he left the area “for good” he had met them at one of his parents’ parties.

Allen’s parents were hippies, or at least that is how he always considered them to be. When they threw parties at least a hundred people would show up, and so would all of their children. There would always be a bonfire and…