The Snow Child

  When harvest came, Garrett spent long days in the fields and could no longer keep track of where she was. After weeks of rain the sky finally cleared, and Jack and Garrett worked several nights straight through to cut the hay. He sat in a stupor at Jack’s table, eating a breakfast of pancakes, bacon, and fried eggs, and wondered if Faina ever slept alone in the cabin as he had.

  It was the end of September, and cold. He smelled burning wood one evening as he walked the wagon trail. As he got closer, he saw smoke rising from their chimney, and then Faina was standing in the doorway, her hands on her swollen belly. Garrett had never seen anything so welcoming.

  You’re home, he said.

  So are you.

  Inside, rows of large birch baskets crowded the floor, each filled to overflowing.

  What’s all this?

  I, too, have been working, she said with a small smile at her lips.

  She led him through the rows of baskets and paused to put a leaf to his nose, a berry to his lips. Some he knew—Eskimo potato root, blueberries, tender spruce tips. A few of the plants he had seen before but did not know their names; others, like the mushrooms and lichens, he would have been afraid to eat if he came across them in the woods. He trusted her, though, and carried her baskets up into the tall-legged log cache he had built.

  Still she returned to the forest with her canvas pack or her birch baskets. She wore a long wool skirt and full-cut blouse Mabel had sewed for her, and she held the small of her back against the weight of her growing belly. She brought home grayling and salmon, grouse and rabbits, which she skinned and cleaned and dried in strips on racks by the shore of the Wolverine River, where the wind kept away the flies. Sometimes she smoldered a green alder fire beneath the racks to lightly smoke the meat.

  Each night, as the windowpanes turned darker with the coming winter, she was home. She served Garrett strange-smelling soups and bowls of nameless mush. It took time to get used to her cooking. Fried wild mushrooms and smoked salmon for breakfast. For dinner, grouse soup with spruce tips and ribbons of wet green that Garrett could not identify; rendered bear fat and crowberries for dessert. His mother noticed he had lost weight and smelled of smoked meat and wild plants. She wanted to know what Faina was feeding him, but he would pat his stomach and tell her he was faring fine on her meals. Then he would sneak a few of his mother’s buttery biscuits or cookies, and when she forced several jars of sweet jam on him, he did not refuse.

  Faina? Faina? Where are you?

  Garrett held his lantern against the winter night. He had woken and, alarmed, realized she wasn’t in bed beside him. It was a blustery snowfall, the first of the year, but it looked like it would stick. He stood shivering in his boots, bare legs, and wool coat.

  Faina?

  Here, Garrett. And he spotted her, down by the river shore.

  What are you doing out here? It’s the middle of the night.

  It’s snowing.

  I know. You’ll catch cold. Come inside.

  He turned the lantern in her direction and saw that she was wearing only her cotton slip, which billowed around her in the wind and snow.

  Yes. Yes. I’ll come inside for you.

  In the cabin, Garrett set the lantern on the table and put another log in the woodstove. Faina remained just outside the doorframe, her head thrown back. Garrett took her by a hand and pulled her inside, closing the door behind them. She grinned at him, her face damp from the snow, and he wiped the wetness from her cheeks with his palm.

  Here, she said, and put his hand to her swollen belly. There. Do you feel it?

  She pressed his hand more firmly into her, and something pushed back.

  Was that…?

  She grinned again and nodded. He kept his hand there and Faina’s belly moved in a swell, as if the unborn baby were turning a somersault.

  Garrett wasn’t prepared for the screaming. Faina’s voice had always been clear and serene, like a glacier pond, but now it was ripped from her throat in a beastly, tortured growl. He went again and again to the curtained-off door, but Jack put a hand on his shoulder.

  “It’s no place for you.”

  “Is she all right? What’s happening in there?”

  Jack looked tired and old, older than he ever had, but he was calm.

  “It’s never easy.”

  “I want to see her.”

  Just then Esther pushed aside the curtain, and Garrett could only stare at the blood covering his mother’s hands and arms all the way up to the elbows, like she’d been butchering a moose.

  “We need more rags.”

  “Is she OK? Is the baby OK?”

  “I said more rags,” and she turned back to the room where Faina lay on their bed. Before the curtain fell closed, Garrett caught a glimpse of her legs, her bare feet in the air, and blood, everywhere blood.

  “Jesus Christ. Is this how it’s supposed to be?” Garrett thought he was going to be sick. Jack pushed by him with a bundle of dish towels in his arms. The warm, humid smell of blood and sweat and something else, something like a salty marsh, overpowered Garrett and he stumbled to the door.

  Outside it was dark and cold. How many hours had passed since he first went for help? He gulped the fresh air and walked toward the river. Then he heard Faina cry out again. Could he do nothing while she suffered? He went back indoors and asked Jack if he should fetch more towels or heat more water.

  At some point in the night Garrett dozed in a chair, and when he woke to the absence of screaming, he jumped to his feet. He went to the curtain and listened. Faina moaned softly, and then there was Mabel’s voice, cooing and soothing like a mother’s.

  “Is it here? Has the baby come?” he whispered loudly through the fabric. His mother came to him and put her hands to his shoulders.

  “Not yet, Garrett. Not yet,” and her tone, gentle and kind, was so unlike his mother that it terrified him all the more.

  “Jesus, Mom. Is she OK? Is this all right?”

  “It’s hard. Harder than what I went through with you boys. But she’s strong, and she’s still fighting.”

  “Can I see her?”

  “Not now. We’re letting her rest up a bit, before she pushes some more. She’s asking for snow, of all things. You could bring her a cupful. It can’t hurt.”

  He packed a pitcher with fresh snow and gave it to his mother.

  “Tell her I love her. Will you do that?”

  It was hours later, the sun a faded circle in the sky, when the voices rose again.

  There you go. Come on, dear. Push with all your might. Come on. Come on.

  There was that feral scream again, and again.

  The head’s crowning. Come on, now. Don’t give up on us yet, girl. Come on. Come on.

  And then there was a cry like the bleating of a calf, and Garrett didn’t understand what he heard. He looked at Jack, who stood beside him.

  “It’s your baby, Garrett. It’s here.” Jack guided him toward the curtain. “He’s coming in now, ladies. Coming to see his baby.”

  “Give us just a cotton-picking second. Let us get everybody cleaned up.”

  “Is she OK? Faina, are you all right? Can you hear me?”

  Yes, Garrett, and it was the voice he loved, the one that was like a sweet whisper in his ear. We’re all right.

  Then there was the child’s cry again, racking and tiny.

  There we go, little one, Esther said. Time to meet your daddy.

  Mabel stood beside the bed, tears streaming down her cheeks. Esther was at the nightstand, dipping rags into a basin. Faina was propped up in the bed with pillows behind her. Her face glistened with sweat, and her hair was a ragged mess. She looked up at Garrett and then down into her arms where a blanket was bundled.

  Go on. Don’t be afraid, Esther said. Go meet your son.

  Son?

  That’s right. As if there weren’t enough of you around here.

  When he got to the bedside, he put an arm around Faina’s shoulder and looked down
into the blanket where a small, wrinkled, and red face looked up at him. The newborn slowly blinked his bleary eyes and scrunched up his brow. Garrett bent and put his lips to the baby’s cheek, and the skin was so soft he could barely feel it. Then he turned to Faina and kissed her damp forehead.

  CHAPTER 54

  The days became fragile and new to Mabel, as if she had only just recovered from a long illness and stumbled outside to discover summer had passed to winter while she slept. It was like the time she had followed Faina into the mountains, when the world seemed just cracked open and everything sparkled and shone with the inexplicable wonder of snow crystals and an eternity of births and deaths.

  And all of this—the entire world—was held in the little clenched fists of the newborn baby. It was in his crying mouth and in Faina’s milk-swollen breasts and in the words Mabel knew Garrett could not speak because he was too full of awe. But it was greater than all that. It was even in the way sunlight shattered against the February snow so Mabel had to squint at the brightness.

  Each morning she walked the snowy path to Faina and Garrett’s cabin. Garrett had suggested she stay at night, but she knew the three of them needed time alone. In a basket, she brought hardboiled eggs, bread, or slices of bacon left over from her breakfast with Jack, along with a sack of diapers, washcloths, and clothes that she had washed at home and dried by the woodstove.

  How are you today, child? she would ask Faina, and Faina would smile and look down at the baby in her arms.

  I am well. And so is he. See how he looks at you when you speak. He knows you are here.

  The infant did indeed seem to be thriving. The first few days of nursing had been a trial, but Esther had helped guide the baby’s mouth to Faina’s nipples and showed her how to stuff his mouth full of her breast. Don’t give him a chance to chew on that nipple, or you’ll be sorry, Esther had advised as the baby howled and turned his face this way and that. It’s up to him, she said. He’s got to figure it out.

  And he had. Now, two weeks later, he slurped noisily as Faina covered herself with a blanket of muskrat furs she had sewed. She cooed to him as he ate, and closed her eyes contentedly while he dozed, and Mabel took out her drawing pad and pencils and made little sketches.

  When he woke, Mabel changed the baby’s diaper, his legs bending and straightening as he screamed a protest.

  He doesn’t get any more used to that, does he? Mabel said, as she pinned the clean diaper.

  But Faina wasn’t listening. She had gone to the window and was looking out over the bright snow.

  You can go outdoors for a bit. I’ll stay here with him.

  Faina did not speak as she put on her blue wool coat and her knee-high moccasins, but when she opened the door, she glanced back at Mabel and her son. She did not smile, and Mabel could not read her expression. Did she feel guilty for wanting some time without the baby? Was she frightened to leave him, even for a moment?

  Whether because of the gust of cold air or the sudden absence of his mother, the baby fussed in Mabel’s arms, so she stood and held him against her shoulder, bouncing slightly as she walked from one end of the cabin to the other. Garrett had gone to help Jack take care of the animals back at their barn, and then he was going to haul some more firewood. It had been a cold winter, cold and calm and snowy, and the woodpiles were dwindling already.

  Mabel went to the window, still patting the newborn and swaying from side to side. The baby quieted and stared wide-eyed over her shoulder. She turned her face into him, into his smell and warmth, and she was filled with the wonder she had seen all around her. She had just begun to hum into his small ear when out of the corner of her eye she saw the blue coat against the white snow.

  Faina was walking across the meadow and toward the trees, but she struggled in the snow and stopped frequently to rest. It was some time before she reached the edge of the forest, and all the while Mabel watched and was troubled by what she saw. It was too soon. She shouldn’t have let her go out. The labor and delivery had taken a terrible toll on her body, and she needed more rest. She considered going to the door and calling out for her to come back home, to come inside and lie down, but then Faina was no longer walking. She didn’t sprint into the spruce trees like she had so many times before. She simply stood, a single, forlorn figure in the snow, the wilderness stretched out before her, her arms at her sides, her long blond hair shining in the winter sun. And then she turned back toward the cabin, toward her son and home, and followed her own deep trail back through the snow.

  Have you named him yet?

  Faina did not answer. She rocked the baby in a wooden cradle beside the woodstove.

  Night was coming on, and Mabel knew she should begin the walk home soon.

  You must give him a name, child. It can’t be like with the dog. He can’t just come to a birdsong. We all have to be able to call him something.

  Still Faina did not answer, but only rocked the sleeping baby side to side.

  It was dark when Mabel left. Garrett offered to walk with her or to send her with a lantern, but she refused both. It was a moonless night and well below zero, but she would find her way. As the glow of the cabin windows turned to flickers through the trees and then to black, her eyes adjusted and the starlight alone on the pure white snow was enough to light her way. The cold scorched her cheeks and her lungs, but she was warm in her fox hat and wool. An owl swooped through the spruce boughs, a slow-flying shadow, but she was not frightened. She felt old and strong, like the mountains and the river. She would find her way home.

  Mabel woke with her pulse racing, sat bolt upright in bed, and waited to understand what had startled her.

  “Mabel? Are you awake? It’s me, Garrett.” A hoarse whisper from the bedroom door.

  Mabel scrambled over Jack and pulled a sweater over her nightgown as she walked into the main room of the cabin. She would have been startled by anyone waking her from her bed in the middle of the night, but Garrett’s presence was enough to make her trembling old heart sink into the pit of her stomach.

  “I’m sorry to wake you…”

  Mabel held up a hand to Garrett. She was weak and nauseous.

  “Let me sit.”

  Garrett pulled a chair out from the table and put a hand on her shoulder to steady her.

  “There. Let me catch my breath.” She sat and did not speak, and she was tempted to go on like that for some time, keeping the truth at arm’s length. But finally she inhaled deeply and said, “Yes? Faina?”

  “She’s not well,” Garrett said, and just then Jack came from the bedroom.

  “What is it? What’s going on?”

  “Shh. He’s telling us. Go on, Garrett.”

  “All day she was restless and not herself. She kept going outside, as cold as it is, and I tried to stop her. But I couldn’t. I should have…”

  “And now?” Mabel asked, trying to help the young man focus.

  “She got worse. She said she hurt, and when I asked where, she said all over, and her cheeks were red. She didn’t want to get out of bed, and she wouldn’t eat a thing. But she nursed the baby, and they both went to sleep, so I thought I’d wait until morning and see how she was. But then, just now, I rolled over and my arm touched hers, and she’s burning up hot.”

  “She should have had the baby at the hospital. We should have taken her to Anchorage,” Jack said.

  “She didn’t want to go,” Mabel reminded him. She went to the bedroom and got dressed by candlelight. When she returned, Garrett was sitting in a kitchen chair with his head in his hands. The clock said it was just after midnight.

  “Where’s the baby?”

  “I left him at home, sleeping in his cradle. I didn’t know what to do. It seemed too cold to bring him.”

  “You did fine.”

  “In the morning, we’re taking her straight to Anchorage,” Jack said as he laced his boots.

  “If the train’s running. If the tracks are clear,” Mabel said, but then she saw Garrett’
s frightened face. “We’ll do everything we can. If we can’t get her to Anchorage tomorrow, at least we can send a telegram to the hospital and get some advice from a doctor. It’s going to be all right, Garrett. Now, let’s go take care of her and that baby of yours.”

  On the way, Mabel tried to prepare herself for what she would find, and the same kind of calm determination settled over her as when Jack had injured his back. When they arrived, the baby was still asleep in his cradle, and Faina was in bed. Garrett was right to be concerned. She was curled up on her side, arms wrapped around her middle as she moaned softly, and then she rolled over onto her back and Mabel could see her face. Droplets of perspiration ran down her temples and dampened her hair, and her skin was flushed and blotchy. Mabel went to her bedside and put a hand to her forehead. It was hot to the touch. She closed her eyes, her hand still on Faina’s forehead, when she felt burning fingers around her wrist and heard a dry-throated whisper.

  Mabel? You are here?

  She opened her eyes and Faina was holding on to her. At first she thought rivulets of sweat were gliding down her cheeks, but then she saw that they were tears. Faina was crying.

  What is happening to me?

  Shhh. Don’t be frightened, child. We will get you well again.

  What sickness is this?

  An infection in your blood. That is what causes the fever. But there is a medicine you can take that will make you better.

  I won’t go to the hospital. I won’t leave my baby.

  Mabel was relieved to see that defiant jut of the chin, the flash in the blue eyes.

  Let’s not fret about that now. Here, I brought you water. You must drink it. It will cool you, and it will help you make milk for the baby.

  Mabel held the glass to Faina’s chapped lips, and she drank and drank until it was empty. Then Mabel dabbed a washcloth at her forehead, wiping away the sweat. When Garrett came to the bedroom door, she asked for a basin of snow. She dipped the wet cloth into the cold snow and wrapped a clump inside it. When she pressed this to Faina’s skin, the girl gasped and then sighed in relief. Again and again, until her cheeks began to cool and lose their ruddy coloring. With her bare hands, Mabel picked up a handful of snow and slid it across Faina’s brow, then put another clump to her lips. Faina opened her mouth, and Mabel broke off a small piece for her to eat. It melted as it touched her tongue.