The Snow Child

  CHAPTER 19

  Jack had shoveled a path through the snowdrifts and was splitting kindling when Garrett rode into the yard with a dead fox slung across the front of his saddle. Jack stood beside the chopping block and watched the boy ride in. He sat the horse with ease, his head low, his shoulders moving with the shift and give of the animal and land beneath him. It wasn’t until he looked up and saw Jack that his youth shone. He sat up straight with a grin, swept his hand overhead in greeting, and then pointed to the dead fox.

  “What did you bring in today?”

  “Isn’t it a beaut?” Garrett said as he jumped down from the horse. He reached up and took the fox by the scruff and lifted its limp head.

  “A silver fox,” the boy said with some pride.

  Jack set down his hatchet and walked to the horse. The fox’s ears and muzzle were as pure as black silk, but along its back and sides, the fur was a frosted silver.

  “Is it iced up?”

  “No sir,” Garrett said. “That’s the way they come—silver tipped.”

  “It’s splendid, all right,” Jack said. “You catch many?”

  “This is my first ever. They’re not real common,” Garrett said. “Mostly bring in reds and cross foxes. You ever see one of those crosses? They’re a mix of red and black, and they’ve got a black cross along their back.”

  Jack went back to his pile of kindling and sat on the chopping block. “Get yourself any of those recently? Any reds?”

  “About a month ago, pulled a cross fox out of a snare. I missed another one when it stepped over my trap. ’Course I don’t know what color that one was,” Garrett said and laughed at his own joke.

  “No, I guess you wouldn’t. What’ll you do with this one?”

  “I was thinking of a ruff for mom’s parka. Don’t mention it, though. I’d like it to be a surprise.”

  “That’d be a fine gift.”

  “I got her a pair of lynx mittens made last year. Betty down at the hotel—she’ll sew you something if you give her a few pelts for the work. Hats, mittens. She’s pretty good, too. I’d like a wolverine ruff, if I ever catch one.”

  Jack was ready to go back to chopping kindling, but the boy wanted to talk, so he let him. While he set another spruce log on the block, the boy stacked kindling and told him about the tracks he’d seen that day—a pile of rabbits, a porcupine, a few lynx, and a lone wolf heading upriver.

  “Is that unusual, a wolf by itself?”

  “Probably a young ’un, kicked out of the pack and looking for his own way. I set some snares around an old moose kill. Hope I get him.”

  Jack whittled down the spruce log with the hatchet, and slivers of kindling fell neatly to the ground.

  “You like that life, do you?” he said and picked up another log. “Trapping wild animals?”

  The boy shrugged.

  “Beats dirt farming,” Garrett said. His look was quick. “No offense.”

  “Ah well. I’m none too keen on it myself sometimes. But it’s a living. Trapping, though—that’s got to be tough work. Kind of lonely, too.”

  “I like it. Traveling the river. Just me, the wind and the snow. I like to watch the tracks, seeing the animals come and go. When I get older, I’m going to build myself a cabin up the river. Buy myself some dogs. I’d get a team now if Mom would let me, but she can’t stand the barking and howling, and she says they’ll eat us out of house and home. But once I leave the homestead, then I’ll get a team and push my line all the way up to the glacier.”

  “You won’t stay on and farm?”

  “Nah. My brothers—they can have it.”

  Jack felt for the boy. It wasn’t easy to make your own way with brothers already busting ahead of you. He’d watched the older boys hassle Garrett, the way they bossed and teased him. It was no wonder he’d taken to the woods.

  “You seem to know your way around. Your dad brags about you.”

  The boy shrugged and kicked the toe of his boot into the snow, but Jack could tell he was pleased.

  “Guess I’d better be going before it gets too late,” Garrett said. “Do you think your wife might like to see the fox before I go?”

  “Maybe another time,” he said.

  Garrett nodded, pulled himself up into the saddle, and rode toward home.

  “What did Garrett bring to show you today?” Mabel asked when Jack went in for the night. She was setting dinner on the table.

  “A fox.”

  She stopped what she was doing.

  “A fox?”

  “I know what you’re thinking, but it wasn’t Faina’s. This was a silver fox. Nothing like that red one she runs with.”

  It should have been the end of it, but it wasn’t. All through dinner, she came back to it.

  “Does he have to trap fox? Does he try to catch the red ones, too?”

  “It’s what he does, Mabel. And he can’t pick and choose the colors.”

  A bit of quiet, and then, “But he could catch Faina’s, couldn’t he? He could kill her fox?”

  “I wouldn’t worry yourself about it. Her fox seems a wary sort. It won’t find its way into one of Garrett’s traps.”

  “But what if it did? Can’t we tell him to stop?”

  “Stop trapping? Don’t see we have that kind of authority. And Garrett’s not the only one out there. Up and down this river, men are trapping.”

  But Mabel seemed rattled by his assertion. She hardly touched her meal, and she paced in front of the bookshelf several times before taking a letter from one of the books. He was relieved when she at last sat in the chair by the fire to read.

  CHAPTER 20

  It was a tangled, sickening kind of vigil. Mabel watched for the boy, but it was the fox and the little girl that occupied her thoughts. Any sound that could be horse hooves in the snow brought Mabel to the window, pulled her eyes into the trees. Sometimes she even walked to the river to look up and down the ice.

  If Garrett were to ride onto their homestead with a red fox dead in his arms, Faina would be lost to them. That was how the story went. Mabel had reread her sister’s letter until the creases were worn, and it was there, in Ada’s lovely, educated handwriting—the fox is killed, the one that brought the child safely out of the wilderness and to their cabin door. Love doubted. Boots and mittens abandoned. Snow melted in clumps. Another child gone from their lives.

  It was a possibility she could not bear. She wound herself tightly, as if within her girdled ribs she could contain all possibilities, all futures and all deaths. Perhaps if she held herself just right. Maybe if she knew what would be or could be. Or if she wished with enough heart. If only she could believe.

  She hadn’t before, when a life kicked inside her very womb. In a closed-up place in her heart, she knew it was her fault. During the pregnancy she had wondered, Am I meant to be a mother? Am I capable of so much love? And so it had died inside her. If only she hadn’t doubted, she could have born the baby wailing to life, ready to nurse at her breast.

  This time she would not let her love slacken, even for a moment. She would be vigilant and wish and wish. Please, child. Please, child. Please don’t leave us.

  But then she would think of Faina running through the trees with the wild fox at her heels, and of Garrett with his steel traps and snares, and she would wonder if one can truly stop the inevitable. Was it as Ada had suggested, that we can choose our own endings, joy over sorrow? Or does the cruel world just give and take, give and take, while we flounder through the wilderness?

  Either way, Mabel could not stop herself. She paced and watched and held herself tightly. She pestered Jack with questions. How much longer would the boy trap? Where did he go? What had he caught this time? When Garrett led his horse past the cabin window and waved cheerfully, a dead wolf strapped to the back of the saddle, Mabel held her breath. And when Faina appeared at their door the next day, she let out that breath to ask, How is your fox? And the child said, He’s fine.

  At last, when March
came and Jack said the boy would soon pull his traps, Mabel began to breathe more freely. The first signs of spring arrived in fits and starts, snow that melted, and then rain and snow again. The drifts in the yard dwindled to small patches, but in the woods the snow was still deep. Each morning ice formed on the puddles, and water dripped from the eaves and froze into long, glassy icicles.

  When Garrett passed through on his way home, Mabel asked him into the cabin for a hot drink and a piece of bread.

  “So, how many more fox have you caught?” she asked, as if idle curiosity, not desperation, drove her. She set a few slices of fresh bread on the table in front of him.

  “None,” he said. “Not since that silver. I did pick up a wolf, though. And a couple more lynx and coyotes.” The boy was awkward, keeping his hands first at his side, then resting his forearms on the table. He shifted his legs nervously and picked up a piece of bread.

  “How much longer will you trap?” Mabel asked as she put a cup of tea in front of him and lingered behind his chair.

  “The river ice is going soft,” he said around a mouthful of bread. “Few days, I’ll snap my traps and call it a year.”

  Mabel reached down with one arm and hugged him around the shoulders.

  “We worry about you,” she said. She straightened, embarrassed by her outburst, and adjusted her dress. “Jack and I wouldn’t want you to be out on the river if it wasn’t safe. And you’ve done well, haven’t you?”

  He seemed taken aback by her affection, but grinned all the same. “I’ll get some fur money this year.”

  “Good for you,” she said, and went back to the kitchen counter.

  Mabel dozed by the woodstove just before noon, a book propped open in her lap. Most of the winter she hadn’t allowed herself to sleep in the middle of the day, if for no other reason than to prove she had not even a touch of cabin fever. But tossed about by nightmares, she hadn’t slept well the night before. Now, soothed by the light of day and the warmth of the fire, she drifted off.

  She woke to a small, cool hand atop hers and opened her eyes to Faina.

  I have something, the girl said and pulled at Mabel’s hand.

  Oh, child, you surprised me.

  Please hurry, she said.

  Is it something to draw?

  The child nodded and tugged at her.

  Where?

  Faina pointed out the window.

  Outside? All right. All right. Let me get my boots and coat.

  Your pencils, too?

  Yes, yes. And my sketchbook.

  When Mabel opened the door, the falling snow amazed her. The first week of April, and it was snowing.

  Faina took Mabel’s hand again and together they walked into the yard. Even with snow, it smelled of spring, of thawing creek banks and moist earth, of old leaves and new leaves and roots and bark. Mabel became aware of how they stood together, she and the child, still holding hands, and Faina’s was so slight and cool, and Mabel’s heart was a hole in her chest filling like a well with icy, sweet water.

  Will you draw? Faina said quietly.

  The snow? I wouldn’t know how to go about it.

  Faina let go of Mabel and put her palm to the sky, her mitten hanging from a red string at her wrist. A single snowflake lit upon her bare skin. Faina turned and held it to Mabel.

  Now can you draw it?

  The snowflake was no bigger than the smallest skirt button. It was six pointed, with fernlike tips and a hexagonal heart, and it sat in the child’s palm like a tiny feather when it should have melted.

  It was as if time slowed so that Mabel could no longer breathe or feel her own pulse. What she was seeing could not be, and yet it did not waver. There in the child’s hand. A single snowflake, luminous and translucent. A sharp-edged miracle.

  Please, will you draw it?

  The child’s blue eyes were wide and rimmed in frost.

  What else was there to do? Mabel fumbled to open her sketchbook. She took the pencil into her weak fingers and began to draw. Faina stood motionless with the snowflake in her hand.

  Perhaps we should go inside and sit down to do this, Mabel said, but then realized her mistake. The child smiled and shook her head.

  No, no. I guess we can’t go inside the warm cabin to draw snow, can we?

  The sketch was too small, and Mabel saw it would be impossible to capture every groove and line. She wished for a magnifying glass and flipped to a new page.

  I have never been any good at symmetrical drawings, she said more to herself than to the child. I’m too impatient. Too imprecise.

  She began again, drawing with broader strokes and filling the entire page with the single geometric shape. She propped the sketchbook on one hand and drew with the other, bending slightly to look more closely. But her breath—that alone could reduce the snowflake to a droplet. She turned her face to the side so as not to exhale on it.

  Snow began to land as wet spots on her paper. Mabel worked faster and let out frustrated sighs. If only she were a better artist.

  It’s perfect, Faina whispered. I knew it would be.

  Mabel looked from her drawing to the snowflake in the child’s hand.

  I can always work on the details later. Shall we call it finished for now? she asked.

  Yes, Faina said.

  The child put the heel of her hand to her lips and blew on the snowflake, and it fluttered into the air like dandelion down.

  Oh, Mabel said. Tears came to her eyes, and she didn’t know why.

  Faina took her hand again, leaned into Mabel and held tightly to her. The wet snowflakes landed all around them. The world was silent. The snow fell heavier and wetter, and Mabel’s coat turned damp.

  Faina pulled on her sleeve. Mabel leaned down, expecting her to whisper something in her ear, but instead Faina put her cool, dry lips to Mabel’s cheek and kissed her.

  Goodbye, the child said.

  When Faina let go of her arm and ran into the snow that was now rain, Mabel knew. She tucked the sketchbook under her coat and stood in the rain until her hair was dripping wet and her coat was soaked through and her boots were in mud. She stood and stared through the rain and tried to see into the forest, but she knew.

  CHAPTER 21

  Winter had been a foolish waste of time. He had tinkered in the barn, sorted tools, plucked chickens, played in the snow. He should have done more in the cold months to prepare, but what? It was true what they said about this land—all the work was done in a few frenzied months. The only reason a man could farm here at all was because the sun lasted twenty hours a day during the height of summer, and vegetables grew overnight to enormous sizes. George said he’d seen a cabbage come out of the fields at nearly a hundred pounds.

  But here it was May, and Jack couldn’t till a row without the horse nearly drowning in mud. Back home the crops would already have been in the ground a month. As he waited for the soil to thaw and dry, he heard a ticking clock, not just the one marking the minutes of each day but another, more resounding thump that counted down his own days.

  This season the homestead had to support itself. He was banking on the fact that several farmers had given up, walked out on their land, even as the market seemed to open up with the railroad expansion. He would throw everything into this year. He’d plant not just potatoes but also carrots, lettuce, and cabbage, and sell vegetables throughout the summer to the mining camps.

  He and Mabel talked little, but when they did, they argued. He mentioned that he needed to hire a crew of boys from town to help plant, but they had no money for it.

  “We’ll have to find some other way,” Mabel said, absently staring at her hands.

  “What way? How, in God’s name?” His voice was angry, too loud. “I’m not a young man,” he said more gently. “My back aches, and I can hardly make a fist in the morning. I need help.”

  “Who says you have to do this alone? What am I?”

  “You’re not a farmhand, Mabel. And I won’t let you become one.”
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  “So you’d rather beat yourself to death out there, and leave me in here, so we can each suffer alone.”

  “That’s never been what I wanted. But the truth is, it’s just the two of us. Someone’s got to care for the home, and someone’s got to earn us a living.” So once again it circled back to the void between them where a child should have been. A girl to help Mabel with the housework. A boy to work in the fields.

  “What about the hotel? Maybe I can bake for Betty again.”

  “I thought we came here to farm, not to peddle pies and cakes like gypsies. This is it. If this land is ever going to support us, this is the year we’ve got to do it. And I just don’t see how I can do it on my own.” He walked out, but kept himself from slamming the door.

  Even as a boy Jack had loved the smell of the ground softening in the thaw and coming back to life. Not this spring. A damp, moldy dreariness, something like loneliness, had settled over the homestead. At first Jack did not know its source. Maybe it was only his own mood. Perhaps it was the spring weather, with overcast skies and freezing rain that soaked through the cabin walls. Mabel, too, seemed beset by a morose restlessness.

  Then Jack counted the days—nearly three weeks since the girl’s last visit, the longest absence since she’d come into their lives. He tried to train his thoughts on the planting season before him, but he was troubled.

  The child’s name had gone unspoken. Her chair sat empty, and Mabel no longer put a plate in front of it. Jack worried as much for his wife as for the girl. Mabel no longer watched out the window for her, and he often found her gazing into a basin of dirty dishwater as if she’d lost track of the hours. Sometimes she didn’t seem to know he’d entered the cabin until he put a hand on her arm.

  The past winter had been so different. Jack had looked forward to their meals together, even when Faina wasn’t there. He and Mabel had talked, then, of their plans for the homestead and their future. Jack did not fall asleep right after dinner but helped clear the table. The first time he stepped in and began to wash the dishes, she had pretended to swoon, the back of her hand to her brow, peering through half-closed lids until he kissed her smile. They laughed and danced and made love.