The snow was a scandal in Piedmont, Alabama. It wasn’t the good, packing snow of storybooks, but a thin, disrespectful dusting that turned the kudzu-strangled pines into ghastly skeletons and made the town gazebo look like a lopsided wedding cake. Bobby Lee Baxter, feeling caged by the unseasonable chill, decided a walk was in order.

He bundled up in his late Uncle Cletus’s old hunting coat, a garment so thick with past misdeeds and spilled bourbon it could probably stand up on its own, and crunched out onto the porch. The world was hushed, holding its breath. It was, he thought, prettier than a postcard from Pigeon Forge.

Bobby Lee stomped down the steps with purpose, aiming to be the first to scribble his name on this clean, white page of a morning. He marched past the dormant azalea bushes, past Miss Eunice’s prize-winning but now frostbitten petunias, and all the way to the rusty gate of the old cotton mill. He took a deep, satisfying breath of the cold air, feeling right with the world.

It was then, turning to admire the long, lonely street back to his house, that he noticed it. Or, more precisely, the lack of it.

There were no footprints coming from his porch. The snow remained as fresh and unmarked as a newborn baby’s soul.

Bobby Lee blinked. He looked back at his house, a cozy little smudge in the distance. He looked down at his own boots, big, brown, and undeniably present. He stomped his foot. The snow crunched satisfyingly beneath his heel. He took another step forward. He looked back.

Nothing. The snow behind him was as pristine as a banker’s conscience.

“Well, I’ll be dipped in shit and rolled in Rice Krispies,” he muttered.

He tried a little jig, a shuffling two-step he’d seen on the Grand Ole Opry. The snow protested with a series of crunches, but the moment his feet lifted, the impression vanished, the snow fluffing back up as if he’d never been there.

A slow, creeping dread began to itch at the back of his neck, right under his collar. This was the kind of thing his Mawmaw Baxter would have had a full-bore conniption over. She was always on about haints and signs. Bobby Lee, a practical man who only believed in things he could hit with a hammer, had never put much stock in that malarkey.

He decided on a test. He marched resolutely toward the gazebo corner, his boots making all the right noises. He passed the shuttered hardware store, the “We Bare All” hair salon (which, despite the name, only did perms and sets), and Lively’s grocery store. He saw Marla Kaye Haggerty scraping ice off her windshield.

“Mornin’, Marla Kaye!” Bobby Lee called out, his voice unnaturally loud in the stillness.

Marla Kaye jumped, peering over her car roof. “Bobby Lee? Where’d you come from, boy? You materialized out of thin air like a bad idea.”

“I walked,” Bobby Lee said, pointing a thumb over his shoulder. “Right up the road.”

Marla Kaye squinted. “Road’s clean as a whistle. Not a mark on it. You gettin’ airlifted around and not tellin’ folks?” She chuckled, a sound like gravel in a tin can, and went back to her scraping, clearly deciding Bobby Lee’s peculiarities weren’t worth the brainpower before her first cup of coffee.

This was a problem. A serious, metaphysical problem. Bobby Lee leaned against the cold granite wall of the post office, thinking hard. If he wasn’t leaving footprints, what did that make him? A ghost? A spirit? He didn’t feel dead. He felt hungry, and he could still smell the faint, funky aroma of Uncle Cletus’s coat, which suggested he was very much anchored in the mortal realm.

He pinched his own arm. It hurt. He kicked a fire hydrant. It hurt more.

Then it hit him. Uncle Cletus. The coat.

Uncle Cletus had been the shiftiest man in three counties. He could steal the pie from a preacher’s plate and the preacher wouldn’t notice ‘til he got done ‘turning thanks’. He was famous for never leaving a trace—no fingerprints, no boot prints in the mud, no evidence of any kind. The family joke was that Cletus Baxter was so slick, he wouldn’t even leave an impression on a pillow.

Bobby Lee looked down at the worn, waxed-cotton fabric. He smelled the ghost of cheap cigars and cheaper whiskey. He patted the pockets and felt a lump. Reaching in, he pulled out a small, tarnished silver flask. Engraved on the side, in flowing script, were the words: For a Light Step.

He unscrewed the cap. It was empty, but a faint, magical scent, like ozone and peppermint, wafted out.

Bobby Lee burst out laughing, a great, relieved guffaw that echoed in the silent square. He wasn’t dead. He was just wearing his uncle’s godless, anti-footprint coat. It was just another one of Cletus’s shady miracles.

Shaking his head, he stuffed the flask back in the pocket and started for home, his invisible journey now a source of profound amusement. He’d have to tell the boys down at the VFW about this. They’d never believe him.

He was still chuckling when he saw Miss Eunice on her porch, shaking a rug out with a violence that promised damnation for dust mites. She glared at him as he approached.

“Bobby Lee Baxter,” she snapped. “You track one ounce of that wet, sinful snow onto my clean porch and I’ll beat you ‘til you holler!”

Bobby Lee just grinned, tipped an imaginary hat, and walked right up her freshly swept steps. He stood there for a moment, smiling at her.

Miss Eunice looked down at her spotless porch, then back at him, her eyes wide with outrage and confusion. There wasn’t a single wet mark to be seen.

“Why, you insolent…” she sputtered. “You’re floatin’! You’re defying gravity just to spook me!”

“No, ma’am,” Bobby Lee said cheerfully. “Just got a light step is all. Family trait.”

And he continued on his way, leaving no trace but a very flustered old woman and the lingering, unshakable suspicion that the Baxter family was even weirder than everyone already thought. The dry-cleaning bill for this coat, he decided, was going to be the pure-dee ol’ devil to pay.

*****

And, you know I couldn’t possibly neglect the obligatory shameless self-promotion. New Yesterdays, a very nice stocking stuffer, is available through the following links: Books-A-Million, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon as well as your favorite bookshops. The Audiobook is available from Libro.fm, as well as Amazon.