The Snow Child

  She remembered how she had left Jack asleep in bed to wander out of doors in her nightgown. Weakened and bruised by her long labor, she didn’t know what led her down the gravel drive to the orchard, where the trees stood brown and leafless in the blue moonlight.

  That is where he would have dug the grave, in the ground his family had farmed for generations. She crawled between the trees, her knees and palms scraped. When she found nothing, she stood and felt a painful tingling in her breasts and suddenly milk trickled down her front, wet her nightgown, dribbled onto her belly, spilled uselessly to the ground.

  I cannot survive this grief, she had thought.

  “Are you OK?”

  Garrett’s shadow fell across her face, and she didn’t know how long she had been there, kneeling in the dirt.

  “Yes. Yes. I’m fine,” Mabel said. She wiped her dirty hands on her dress. “I was only recalling something.”

  When she looked up at Garrett, the boy’s eyes widened.

  “Are you sure you’re all right? Because… well, because you don’t look so good.” The boy gestured toward her face. A few tears must have run down her dirt-smeared cheeks, and the lines would look ghastly.

  “Please forgive an old woman’s weepiness,” she said and began to search for something to wipe her face.

  Garrett stood staring.

  “Surely you’ve seen a woman cry before.”

  He shrugged.

  “No? Perhaps not. I certainly cannot imagine your mother blubbering about.”

  “Should we go back? Do you need a rest?”

  “No. No. Just something to wipe my face.”

  The boy searched his pockets for a handkerchief, and finding nothing, he unrolled the sleeve of his work shirt and held up the cuff. “It’s kind of dirty, but you’re welcome to it.”

  Mabel smiled and blotted her eyes with his shirtsleeve. “Thank you,” she said.

  As the boy turned to reach for the burlap sack at his feet, Mabel caught his sleeve again and held his arm with both hands. “I’ve been wanting to ask you something, Garrett.”

  “Yes ma’am?”

  “Did you ever catch another fox, after that silver one?”

  “No ma’am, never did,” he said. He studied her thoughtfully. “Are you wanting a fox ruff? Because if you are, I’ve got a few pelts left over from last year. I’m sure Betty could sew you something.”

  But Mabel was already bending to the earth to dig another hole.

  She had survived, hadn’t she? Even when she had wanted to lie down in the night orchard and sink into a grave of her own, she had stumbled home in the dark, washed in the basin, and in the morning cooked breakfast for Jack. She had put away the dishes and scrubbed the table and counters. She had baked bread. She had worked and tried to ignore the painful swell of her breasts and the empty cramp of her womb. And then she had done the unthinkable; she had entered the nursery and put her hands on the oak crib, the one Jack had slept in as a child, and his mother before him. She touched the pastel quilt she had sewn, and then sorrow collapsed her into the rocking chair, where she sat with her arms across her sagging belly and remembered how it had been to have another person growing inside her.

  When she had the strength, she began to fold the tiny clothes and blankets and cloth diapers and put them into plain brown boxes. She didn’t stop working, but the sobs came and distorted her face, bleared her eyes, made her nose run. She didn’t hear Jack come to the door. When she looked up he was watching her silently, and then he turned away, uncomfortable, embarrassed by her unharnessed grief. He didn’t put his hand on her shoulder. Didn’t hold her. Didn’t say a word. Even these many years later, she was unable to forgive him that.

  At the end of the row, Mabel stood, put her hands to the small of her back, and stretched. Her hem was soiled, her hands dusty and tired. She looked down the field and saw how much they had done. Garrett slapped his hands on his pant legs.

  “One row down,” he said. “ ’Bout a thousand to go.” And the boy gave her a half smile, his eyebrows raised as if to ask “Are you still in?”

  Mabel nodded.

  “Onward ho?” she asked.

  Garrett raised a hand, like a conquering explorer.

  “Onward ho!”

  As Esther rounded a row and headed back down the field, she slowed the horse and gave a wave to the two of them. Mabel waved back. A breeze stirred the loose strands of hair around her face and wicked away the sweat. The sky overhead was cloudless and brilliant. In the distance, beyond the trees, she could see the white mountain peaks. She lifted her skirts and stepped over the row they had just planted. Garrett pulled the burlap sack to her and they started again.

  They worked until dusk and arrived back at the cabin well past dinnertime. Jack had lit the lanterns and was frying steaks.

  “What’s all this?” Esther said. She inhaled deeply and grinned. “Something smells mighty good.”

  “Can’t do much. Thought the least I could do is feed my help.” He smiled like a man at fault.

  The next days were a blur of potatoes, earth, sun, and aching muscles as each row of planting went by. Jack did what he could but mostly stayed in the cabin and fixed meals. In the evenings everyone was too tired to talk. The boy nodded off at the dinner table with his chin propped up on his dirty hands. By the time night fell, Mabel was numb with fatigue. She had never understood how Jack could fall asleep in a chair without washing up, talking to her about his day, or even removing his filthy boots. Now she knew. Yet for all the sore muscles and monotony, the days of working in the fields filled her with a kind of pride she had never known. She no longer saw the cabin as rough, but was grateful at the end of the day for warm food and a bedroll on which to collapse. She didn’t notice if the dishes went unwashed or the floor unswept.

  “I think we’ve done it, Jack,” Esther announced one afternoon, hands on her hips. “I know you had plans to do more this year, to get some lettuce and such planted along with the potatoes. But I was thinking, we’ve got the potatoes in the ground and we’ll see what happens.”

  Jack nodded in agreement. Maybe it would be enough to get them by.

  “We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you two.” His voice was gravelly and genuine, but there was a dimness behind his eyes that reminded Mabel of shame. “I don’t know how we’ll ever repay you.”

  Esther waved him off impatiently, and said she planned on going home that evening.

  “It’s been a hoot, but I’m ready to sleep in my own bed, snoring husband and all. You’re shaping up, Jack, and I think Garrett can manage the fields. Nope—no ifs, ands, or buts about it. George and I have talked it out. Garrett works better here than he ever did at home, and our planting’s done. You can fix him a place in the barn to get him out of your hair. Then you two can have your place back to yourselves.”

  It was time, yet Mabel dreaded it. Jack was a different man, unsteady and unsure. She could not forget how, during the worst of it, he had cried and begged her to leave him. And then, while he hobbled about, she had gone into the fields and worked with a new strength and surety. With Esther and Garrett gone, she and Jack would once again share a bed, and she wondered if it would be like sleeping with a stranger. Jack looked at her sadly, as if he could read her thoughts.

  After dinner Esther left and Mabel showed Garrett to the barn loft. He brought his bedroll, and she overturned a wooden box for him to use as a nightstand. There she set a lantern, as well as an alarm clock and a book.

  “White Fang, by Jack London. Have you read it before?”

  “No ma’am.”

  “Please, just call me Mabel. I think you’ll like this one, but if it doesn’t suit you, I’ve got dozens of others to choose from.”

  She was going to warn him to be careful with the lantern, but thought better of it. He had treated her as an equal, so she would try to do the same.

  “Come inside if you need anything, even if it’s just company.”

  “Yes ma’
am… I mean, Mabel.”

  “Garrett, there was one other thing I’ve wanted to ask you.”

  “Yes?”

  “When you were out there trapping last winter, did you ever see anything unusual? Tracks in the snow? Anything you couldn’t explain?”

  “You mean the little girl, don’t you? I heard about her.”

  “And? Did you ever see any sign of her?”

  The boy gave a slow, disappointed turn of his head.

  “Nothing at all? Ever?”

  “Sorry,” he said.

  It was a cold night, and Jack had started a fire. The dirty dishes were left piled in the kitchen, and Mabel sat in a chair in front of the woodstove and stretched her feet to the warmth. She was more tired than she could ever remember being. Her muscles ached and hummed. When she closed her eyes, tilled rows stretched to the horizon. She drifted along the earth.

  “Mabel. You’re falling asleep. Come to bed.”

  Jack rubbed her shoulders. “This has been too much for you.”

  “No, no.” She looked up at him. “It feels wonderful to share in the work, to feel like I’m doing something. Today might very well have been one of the best days of my life…” Her voice trailed off as she understood what she was saying. Jack nodded without speaking.

  She put on her nightgown and got into bed. Jack, stripped to his long underwear, sat on the edge.

  “Jack?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “We are going to be all right, aren’t we? I mean, the two of us?”

  He groaned as he eased his feet onto the bed. He rolled on his side to face Mabel, reached to her, and ran his hand down her unbraided hair, again and again, without speaking. Mabel saw tears in the corners of his eyes, and she propped herself on an elbow. She leaned to him and kissed him on his closed wet eyelids.

  “We will, Jack. We will be all right,” and she cradled his head in the crook of her arm and let him cry.

  CHAPTER 25

  That summer was a farmer’s blessing. Even Jack could see that. At perfect intervals the skies rained and the sun shone. Of his own accord, Garrett planted rows of vegetables to supply the railroad, and the plants flourished in the fields.

  Jack’s back still gave him trouble, and there were mornings when he had to slide out of bed to the floor and crawl to the bureau to pull himself to a standing position. His hands and feet sometimes went numb, and other days his joints swelled and ached. He suspected a morning would come when he wouldn’t be able to get out of bed at all.

  But in the evenings, when the snow-capped mountains went periwinkle in the twilight of the midnight sun, he would walk the fields alone, and his step was lighter. He would go down the perfect rows of lettuce and cabbage, their immense leaves green and lush. The earth was soft beneath his boots and smelled of humus. Often he would scoop some of the soil in his hand and run his thumb over it, marveling at its richness, and sometimes he would pull a radish, rub it clean on his pants, and bite into it with a satisfying crunch, then toss the greens into the trees. From there he would walk down to the new field where the potato plants had grown thigh high and had just begun to flower. It hardly seemed the same stretch of lifeless, bone-bruising ground the horse had dragged him across last winter.

  He owed this to Esther, he knew, and the boy. Garrett staggered the lettuce and radish crops so they were ready when the railroad needed them week to week. He weeded and hilled the potatoes. He knew which kind of fertilizers worked and which didn’t, so Jack didn’t have to trust the salesman in Anchorage but could go on real experience.

  Even at fourteen the boy was a dependable farmer, but his heart wasn’t in it. With permission, Garrett would leave for days at a time, taking his horse, a rifle, and a knapsack. Sometimes he returned with the pack full of rainbow trout or spruce grouse for dinner. Once he brought Mabel a beaded moosehide pouch sewn by an Athabascan woman upriver. Other times he came back with stories of a mountain waterfall he had discovered or a grizzly bear he had seen playing on a patch of snow.

  “That bear was just like a little kid, running to the top and sliding down, then back up to the top.”

  One evening, the summer sun glinting down the valley, Garrett asked to join Jack on his stroll around the fields.

  “I’ll bring a gun. Maybe we’ll run into a grouse or two.”

  Jack was self-conscious about his slow pace and disinclined to give up his solitude. Also, he didn’t care much for the boy shooting game on the farm. Jack had spooked a grouse or two on his walks, and he enjoyed the burst of excitement it gave him when the bird flapped noisily up from his feet and then settled, plump and ruffled, on a spruce branch. He said nothing in hopes the boy would take the hint, but Garrett dashed to the barn to get his shotgun.

  “We’ll be back in a bit,” Jack said over his shoulder as he walked out the door, but he doubted Mabel had heard. She was bent over the table, working on the sewing project that had consumed her evenings, and he felt a rush of affection for her.

  It humiliated him at first, knowing she was working the farm in his place. Now, with summer mostly gone, he knew his step was lighter in part because of her. She was no longer a lost soul—she was right there beside him, the same dirt on her hands, the same thoughts on her mind. How many rows of reds should we plant next year? Do we need to lime the north field? When the new hen starts laying, should we let her hatch a dozen or so? The fate of it all, the farm, their happiness, was no longer his alone. Look what we’ve done, she said to him one morning as she pointed to the rows of radishes, cabbage, broccoli, and lettuce.

  Shotgun in the crook of his arm, Garrett trotted down the dirt road and caught up with Jack. “We’ll probably never see another year like this,” the boy said. He shook his head in disbelief as he looked out over the field. “Can you believe it? We want rain, it rains. We want sun, the sun shines.”

  “It’s been good.” Jack bent and pulled two plants. He handed a radish to Garrett. They both wiped them on their pants and silently ate them.

  “Can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve done here.” Jack tossed his greens into the trees.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “No, it is something.”

  They followed the trail that led to the new field. Garrett led the way, carrying his shotgun and kicking at dirt clods. What are you feeding my boy over there? Esther had joked, and Jack, too, had noticed that Garrett had shot up several inches during the summer. He had lost some of the boyhood softness in his face, and his jawline and cheekbones were more prominent. His mannerisms had matured as well. He looked Jack in the eye, spoke his opinions clearly, and rarely had to be asked to do something. George doubted it, said they were too kind to speak so of his youngest son, but during their visits he eventually saw the change, too. Maybe we should have sent our others over as well, George said and laughed. But Jack suspected the boy could only come into his own without his brothers looming over him. There was even some sign that Garrett took pride in the work he had done here at their homestead.

  The trail ran along the edge of the field and past a swath of black spruce. The waning daylight did not penetrate far into the spindly, dense trees, and the air was noticeably cooler in their shadow. It was such a thin line, just a wagon trail, that separated the forest from the tidy green of the field, and Jack was thinking of the work that had gone into it when Garrett stopped in the trail and broke down his shotgun as if to load it. Jack looked past him. It took a moment for his eyes to focus, and just as they did, Garrett dug a cartridge from his pocket and thumbed it into the barrel.

  “No! Wait.” Jack put his hand on the boy’s back. “Don’t.”

  Garrett looked at him out of the corner of his eyes, and took aim.

  “I said don’t shoot it.”

  “That fox? Why not?” Garrett squinted in disbelief, then swept his eyes back down the gun barrel, as if he had misheard. The fox ran out of the woods and crouched in the trail. Jack couldn’t be sure—one red fox from another. But the markings l
ooked the same, the black ears, near-crimson orange fur, the black-socked feet. It was all he had left of her.

  “Leave it be.”

  “The fox?”

  “Yes, for Christ’s sake. The fox. Just leave it be.” Jack shoved the gun barrel down.

  The animal took its chance and darted into the potato field. Jack glimpsed the fluffy red tail between the plants, and then it was gone.

  “Are you crazy? We could have had it.” Garrett broke down the shotgun, pulled out the cartridge, and stuffed it in his pocket. Their eyes met and Jack saw a flash of irritation, maybe even contempt.

  “Look, I wouldn’t have minded but—”

  “He’ll be back, you know.” Garrett’s short, disrespectful tone surprised Jack.

  “We’ll see.”

  “They always are. Next time he’ll be picking through your dump pile or sniffing around the barn.” Garrett walked ahead, and as they circled the field he watched where the fox had run but didn’t say anything. It wasn’t until they neared the house that he spoke again. “It doesn’t make any sense, letting it get away.”

  “Let’s just say I know that one. He used to belong to somebody,” and Jack found the words hard.

  “Belonged? A fox?” They neared the barn and Jack wanted the talk done and Garrett off to bed, but the boy stopped in front of the door.

  “Who did it belong to?”

  “Somebody I knew.”

  “There’s nobody else around here for miles…” His voice trailed off and he turned to the barn, then back again. “Wait. It’s not that girl, is it? The one I heard Mom and Dad talking about? The one Mabel says came around last winter?”

  “Yep. That was her fox, and I don’t want anyone shooting it.”