The Snow Child

  One afternoon, when the nightmares would not leave her, she went outside and blinked against the sun. She threw bread scraps to the wild chickadees and pine grosbeaks and talked to them as if they could understand, but they only scattered at the sound of her voice. She went to the pasture and stroked the horse’s soft muzzle. She wandered into the trees and picked the boughs of highbush cranberries, and, with the tiny white blossoms clasped in her hands, she let her eyes search for the girl, but the woods were silent. She thought of the black bear and the wolves. She only had to get Jack well enough to travel, and then they would leave this place. There was nothing for them here.

  “Hello! Hello! Anyone at the homestead?”

  With the sun in her eyes, she couldn’t make out the figure on horseback. The man dismounted and removed a burlap sack from his saddlebags. It was George. Relief nearly buckled Mabel’s knees, and when he offered her his arm, she took it gratefully.

  “So the old man is laid up, eh?”

  He led her indoors to a chair and began taking clinking Mason jars from the sack. He lined them up on the table, each jar sparkling with clear liquid.

  “Now, don’t give me that look, Mabel. Never been a better excuse than a broken back. So where is he?”

  Mabel pointed to the bedroom where Jack slept.

  “He can’t walk on his own yet,” Mabel whispered. “And when the laudanum wears off, the pain is unbearable.”

  George shook his head side to side and clicked his tongue softly. “Damn. He’s not up to snuff, is he?”

  “No, George. No, he is not.” She stood and began putting the jars of moonshine onto a shelf in the kitchen, as if it made some difference.

  “As soon as he is well enough, I’ll schedule our travel,” she said. “And I know he will want you to have any of our tools and equipment, and of course the horse. We won’t be able to take any of it with us, I’m afraid.”

  “Mabel?”

  “We can’t stay here. You must see that.”

  “You’re leaving the homestead? For good?”

  “We were barely keeping it going as it was, George. And there’s just the two of us. It has been a fantastic adventure, coming here. But now it’s time we accepted our lot and went home.”

  “You can’t just walk away. You’ve done so much work with the place. There’s got to be another way.”

  George glanced toward the bedroom. “How long’s he been like this?”

  “More than a week.”

  “And how much had he gotten done on the fields before he got hurt?”

  “He was still just preparing them.”

  “Nothing’s been planted?”

  Mabel shook her head.

  “Goddamn—excuse the French. It’s just a helluva blow, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, George. It truly is.”

  He was unusually quiet as he mounted his horse.

  “We’ll say goodbye before we go,” Mabel called to him from the cabin door. “Tell Esther thank you, for everything. You were truly the most wonderful neighbors we could have hoped for.”

  George glanced back at her, shook his head, and rode off without a word. Mabel was certain his look was reproachful.

  She was emptying the basin behind the cabin later that afternoon when she heard a wagon approaching on the dirt road. She hurried indoors and began to hide the linens and underwear she had been washing.

  “Don’t do that on our account.” Mabel heard Esther’s laugh at the door.

  “Oh, Esther!” She was surprised to find herself hugging her, then pressing her face into her friend’s shoulder and sobbing.

  “Go on. Go on. You have yourself a cry.” Esther patted her on the back. “There you go.”

  Mabel pulled away, smiled, and wiped her face. “Look at me. I’m a mess. What an awful way to greet a visitor.”

  “I wouldn’t expect anything else. Poor woman, here for days on your own caring for a banged-up man. Strong as they are, they’re like children with pain. No birthing to toughen them up, I say.” Esther looked Mabel straight in the eye when she said this, and there was no wince of regret or embarrassment. It was as if Esther knew exactly what memories she conjured, and Mabel understood—she had gone through labor, if only to deliver a dead child. She had survived that, hadn’t she? It was as if she had reached into her own pocket and discovered a small pebble, as hard as a diamond, that she had forgotten belonged to her.

  “Where the hell am I supposed to put this?”

  Garrett stood in the doorway, glaring over a heap of parcels in his arms.

  “Watch your mouth. And put it wherever you can find room. Then go get the rest.”

  “What is all this, Esther?”

  “Supplies.”

  “But we don’t… didn’t George tell you?”

  “About your harebrained plan to ditch us? Oh, he told me all right. We finally get some interesting friends and you think we’re going let you go without a fight.”

  “But we are leaving, so we don’t need any of this.” Mabel dropped her voice to nearly a whisper. “And honestly, Esther, we don’t have the money to pay for it.”

  Garrett stomped by and dropped another armload onto the table. As the boy marched by, Esther pretended to slap him on the back of the head. Despite herself, Mabel smiled.

  “Don’t worry about the money. Everybody heard about your predicament and threw some stuff together. Nothing fancy, but it’ll keep you for a while.”

  “I don’t know what to say. It’s too much… too generous.”

  “Well, we might not have a doctor around here, but we do have a few kind hearts among us,” and Esther winked over her shoulder as she began unloading boxes and sacks.

  “Oh, I’m appalled at myself! I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just so frustrated.”

  “No harm done. Old Man Palmer was too impressed by your riding skills to be offended. He said he’d never seen a lady gallop in such a gentlemanly way. Garrett, put those bedrolls over there, behind the woodstove. Keep them out of the way for now.”

  “Bedrolls?”

  “Didn’t I mention? We’re moving in. The boy and me. We might be a bossy, ill-tempered pair, but you can’t complain about free help.”

  “Help? With Jack?”

  “With Jack. With the planting. You’ve got us for the rest of the season, or until you get sick of us.”

  “Esther—no, no. We can’t allow this.”

  “Can’t allow it? I don’t think you understand who you’re up against here, dear heart. We’ll be planting those fields, Garrett and me. You can either help or get out of the way, but we’ll be doing it.”

  Her voice was drowned out by the ruckus of Garrett dragging a horse trough through the cabin door. “Cripe’s sake, Ma. What the hell did we bring this for?”

  “If you weren’t working your jaw, you’d be getting the job done. Bring it on over here, by the woodstove.”

  “Don’t you think they’ve probably got a trough or two of their own?” He sarcastically rolled his eyes toward the barn.

  “Not like this one.”

  The horse trough was sparkling clean and took up most of the standing room by the woodstove. Mabel had the comic realization that she was watching her house being turned into a Benson home, quarrels and clutter and all.

  “Garrett, have Mabel take you out to the field so you can take a look at the plow. See if it needs any fixing. Go on, Mabel. Some fresh air will do you good, and I’ll take care of things here.”

  The boy was sullen and unresponsive on their walk, and Mabel soon left him in the field to work on the plow. Despite a niggling guilt, she took the long way back to the cabin. She inhaled the green scent of new leaves and studied the sharp line along the mountaintops where white snow met leafy forest. Then she remembered she had missed Jack’s dose of laudanum.

  “Back already? You should have stayed gone a bit. Your water’s not done yet.” Esther dipped a finger into a giant pot on the woodstove. She had propped open the cabin door
to let the heat escape. Mabel hurried to the bedroom. Jack’s hair was damp and combed, and he smiled meekly up at her from the pillow.

  “She gave me a bath,” he said.

  “Esther did?”

  He nodded as well as he could. Pillows and blankets propped him up in a peculiar position, with his knees bent and separated.

  “Are you comfortable?”

  He squinted self-consciously and then nodded. “Believe it or not.”

  “I’m sorry I missed your dose of medicine.”

  “Esther gave it to me, with a nip of something stronger.”

  “Hurry on out here,” Esther called from the other room, “before the water gets cold or that adolescent son of mine comes back.” She was dumping the pot of steaming water into the horse trough.

  “Usually it’d be the other way around, ladies first, but I wanted to get those wounds clean as possible. You’re getting some fresh water on top of that, though.”

  Mabel wanted to refuse, to tell Esther she had done too much, but she stripped and climbed into the knee-deep hot water while Esther stood guard at the door.

  “Take your time. It’s not every day you’re getting a bath like that.”

  Beside the makeshift tub Esther had placed a chair that held a clean washcloth, a bar of milled soap, and a bottle of lavender-scented shampoo. The water was almost unbearably hot, but Mabel let herself sink until even her head was submerged and her untied hair floated around her. Each time she started to get out of the tub, Esther ordered her back in, so she soaked until the water was tepid and the skin on her fingers and toes wrinkled. When she finally did get out, the sun had disappeared behind the mountains and left the perpetual twilight of a summer night. Esther wrapped her in a towel and fluffed her hair.

  “There. Now we’re getting somewhere. Dinner will be ready soon. Get some comfortable clothes on. Nothing fancy. Just something to sleep in. I expect Garrett will be gone until late, looking at the fields. He’s not keen on bunking with two old women, but he’ll get tired eventually.”

  With both of them wearing nightgowns, Esther served Mabel black bear stew hot from the stove and fresh biscuits. Then she spread out three bedrolls.

  “I figured you’d been sleeping in a chair for days now. I know how it is when you’ve got a sick one tossing and turning in your bed. But these aren’t so bad. I even brought you a clean one. Come on now,” and she crawled beneath her covers and patted the bedroll beside her.

  Mabel found it an unexpected relief to rest her head on a pillow, to be clean and fed and not alone.

  “So, do you really think we can manage this?” she whispered from beneath her covers. “You and Garrett and me? Planting our whole farm?”

  “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think we could do something.”

  “But what about your own place?”

  “George’s got Bill and Michael there to help, and we’d planned on hiring a couple of the youngsters from town to help with planting. We’ve got a good portion done already.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “We’re not there yet.”

  The two women were silent a while, and then Esther spoke gently. “And what of your little girl?”

  “She’s gone, Esther.”

  She reached over and found Mabel’s hand and squeezed it once.

  “Sweet Mabel,” she said. “I suppose now that you’re getting some sunshine and fresh air, she isn’t coming around anymore.”

  Mabel didn’t answer, only stared at the ceiling for a long time. She thought Esther might have fallen asleep, and she had nearly dozed off herself when she began to laugh, quietly at first, but then louder.

  “What’s tickled your funny bone?”

  “You really gave Jack a bath? I can hardly believe it,” Mabel said. “His mother. Myself. I don’t think another woman has ever…”

  “I’ve been married for thirty years and have three sons. When you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ’em all.”

  The two women were giggling when Garrett walked in the door.

  “What? What’s so funny?” he asked, but his stern face and blushing cheeks only made them laugh harder.

  Voices rolled over Jack in waves that left him nauseous and confused, so he let himself sink back into the thick liquid of laudanum and moonshine. It was a warm, black place, without past or future or meaning. Later, when he woke to quiet shadows, his head was clear and thudding. He didn’t understand the laughter he had heard before. Then he remembered Esther, helping him naked into a horse trough of hot water. Pain burned a hole through the center of his back and radiated up through his chest, and he sobbed. He stuffed a fist into his mouth to stifle it, and he sobbed and sobbed. Self-pity. That’s what this was. It wasn’t the searing nerves and muscle spasms that tore him apart. It was his life reduced to useless burden.

  “Jack?” A whisper from the bedroom door. “You needing something?”

  He swallowed hard and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Time for another dose?”

  It wasn’t Mabel.

  “Esther? You’re here?”

  “Shhh. Giving your wife a break. Drink this.” She had mixed laudanum and moonshine in a tin cup, and he drank it down in a noisy gulp. She took the cup, then with a handkerchief wiped the wetness from his eyes and cheeks.

  “This too shall pass, Jack. I know it doesn’t seem like it now, but it will. Me and Garrett are here to help, and Mabel’s tougher than she lets on. This isn’t all on your shoulders now. You’ve got some help. You understand? It’s going to be all right.”

  But Jack was seeking out that deep, opaque place where sound and pain and light are muted, where a man doesn’t have to put words to his despair because his numb tongue and useless lips can’t speak anything at all.

  CHAPTER 24

  Esther insisted on being Jack’s primary nurse, slowly reducing the laudanum doses and increasing the length of his daily walks. First, just to the kitchen table. Then to the outhouse so at least he wouldn’t have to use a chamber pot.

  “You’re too easy on him, Mabel. He’s got to get up and move. It’s the only way those muscles can start to work again.”

  “But he’s in so much pain.”

  “At some point his hurt is deeper than a sore back. Do you know what I’m saying? It’s a more terrible kind of hurt, a kind that opium and drink only make worse. He’s got to get on his own two feet. He’s got to see his land and help us make some decisions so that he knows it’s still his, even if he can’t get his hands in the dirt.”

  So while Garrett showed Mabel how to cut seed potatoes so each piece had one eye, Esther spent the morning walking Jack around the fields. Mabel couldn’t bear to watch his slow shuffle. It was as if he had aged a century in a month. His face was gaunt and his back bent. When his foot caught on a root or rut, he would grunt and stand in one place, his eyes closed and his jaw muscles clenching and unclenching. She would have been ashamed to admit it to anyone, but she was glad to sit in the yard with Garrett, to cut seed potatoes rather than escorting her husband on his agonizing walk.

  And the boy wasn’t such terrible company. Esther said he was chafing at the humiliation of having to work another man’s homestead with two old women. He thinks he wants to be a mountain man, Esther said, that farming is beneath him. But he’s a good boy. He works hard when he puts his mind to it.

  Mabel observed Garrett’s resentment; he stomped in and out of the cabin and sulked when his mother ordered him around. But when she was alone with him, the boy was less petulant. He was, actually, patient and instructive, and did not patronize her. Never once did he say, “Now, watch that knife” or “Mind you don’t cut yourself.” He assumed Mabel could do the work, and so she could. Soon she was almost as fast as he was with the paring knife.

  The sun climbed higher in the sky and warmed the top of Mabel’s head while she tossed the cut seed potatoes into the burlap sack between them. It was lunchtime, and she didn’t know wher
e the morning had gone. The boy followed her inside and helped her fix a meal of cold sliced moose steak and yesterday’s bread. After Esther helped Jack back into bed, the three of them ate quickly while standing in the kitchen, Mabel’s hands still smudged with dirt and her dress sleeves pushed up.

  When they went out to load the wagon with the seed potatoes, Mabel followed. It was only as she handed a heavy burlap sack to Garrett on the back of the wagon that she appreciated what she was doing—farmwork. The boy took no notice of her pause, but grabbed the bags and hopped down. As Esther drove the wagon toward the field, Mabel and Garrett followed behind.

  “Maybe none of my business,” he said, “but that dress might get in your way. You don’t have any trousers or anything, do you? Mom always wears overalls when she’s working.”

  “No, I don’t have anything like that. The dress will have to do.”

  Garrett looked skeptical but kept walking.

  Esther dropped sacks of seed potatoes up and down the field, then harnessed the horse to a cultivator to form the rows. Garrett and Mabel followed. The boy showed her how far apart to plant and how deep to dig the hole before dropping in the cut potato, following her to scoop dirt over the top and lightly pat. As they worked, they dragged the burlap sack along with them.

  After a time the work became methodical and rhythmic, and Mabel’s mind wandered. She planted with bare hands and thought of soil, warm and crumbling between her fingers, and of sprouting plants and decaying leaves. She stood, shook out her skirts, bent again toward the earth, dug another hole, dropped in a potato, then another hole, another potato. She pressed her hand into the dirt mound, like a little grave.

  Here in the potato field, the colors were too sharp and full of yellow sun and blue sky. Even the air was different than back in Pennsylvania, drier and cleaner. Time had passed, more than a decade. Yet as she knelt here, Mabel was back there. Pewter moonlight. The paths of the orchard. Rough ground beneath her knees. A dead child two days buried.