“Don’t know for sure, but I’m not gonna think about it.”
They fell silent again. Soon the world beyond their shelter grew totally black.
“I think my nose is froze,” John mumbled.
“Well, if you’d turn over here and face the inside or let me be on the outside for a while it might maw. What difference does it make now anyway? It’s night outside, just as black out there as it is in here.”
All John would say was, “I got to have my air hole at least.”
Miraculously, they slept.
Theodore awakened and blinked, disoriented. At his side John was too still. Panic clawed through him. “John, wake up! Wake up!” He shook his brother violently.
“Huh?” John moved slightly. Theodore reached for his face in the blackness. It felt frozen. But maybe what was frozen was his own hand.
“You got to roll over. Come on now, don’t argue.” This time John submitted. Theodore put both arms around him and held him as if he were a child, willing his own fright to subside. They couldn’t die out here this way. They just couldn’t. Why, when they left home Ma had had sheets hangin’ on the line and bread rising in the oven. By now it would be baked and in the bread box. They were gonna go fishing with Ulmer one day this week. And Kristian was going to be graduating from the eighth grade in four more weeks. What ever would Kristian say if his pa missed the ceremony? And Linnea — oh, his sweet Linnea — she still thought he was mad at her. And she was going to have their baby. He couldn’t die without seeing their baby. Lying in the inky blackness beneath an overturned wagon, with his brother shaking in his arms, Theodore found all these thoughts to be valid reasons why the blizzard couldn’t win.
His ribs hurt terribly. There was no feeling in his toes, and his head throbbed when he tried to lift it off the corn. In spite of it, he dozed again, but some distracting thought kept him just short of sleeping fully — something he had to tell Linnea when he saw her next time. Something he should have told her last night.
He awakened again. John’s breath was steady on his face. He wondered how much time had passed, if it was still the first night. But he felt disoriented and mysteriously weightless. As if his entire body were filled with warm, buoyant air.
He couldn’t keep his thoughts clear. Was he close?
No!
He thrust John back.
“Wha... ”
“Git up, John. Git out of here. We got to move, I think, else more of us is gonna freeze, if it isn’t already.”
“Not sure I can.”
“Try, damn it!”
They rolled out, stumbling. The blizzard was worse than ever. It hit them with the same invincible wall of snow and wind as before. The horses were still there, loyally waiting. They whinnied, shook their heads, tried for a step forward but were thwarted by the drifts beneath their bellies.
The men fought their way to the animals. “Put your hands by Cub’s nose. Maybe his breath will warm ‘em.” Theodore instructed.
They stood at the horses’ heads, trying to warm themselves against anything that would provide the slightest bit of heat. But it was hopeless, and Theodore knew it.
In the eastern sky a dim light was beginning to glow through the driving snowfall. By it he tried to check his watch, only to find that his fingers could not handle the delicate catch to open its lid. He returned it to his pocket, held Toots’s head, leaning his cheek on her forelock, wondering if a man knew when he’d stretched fate to its limits — the exact hour, the exact minute when destiny needed manipulation if he were to survive.
There was one possible way. But he resisted it, had been resisting it all through the cramped, fearful hours of the long night when he’d lain trying to warm his quivering body against his brother’s, knowing that the rifle lay just behind his back. He hugged Cub’s face with an apology the beast didn’t understand. He pressed his icy lips to the hard bone just above her velvet nose. How many years had he known these horses? All his life. They’d been his father’s even before he himself had grown old enough to take up the reins. Behind them he’d learned the terms and tones of authority. To their long, nodding gait he’d learned to control power great enough to kill, should it turn on him. Yet it never did. Cub. Toots. His prized pair. The ones he kept behind, winters. Older than all the others, but with so much heart there were times their understanding seemed almost human. They had, in their years, provided a good life. Could he ask them now to give him life at the cost of their own?
He stepped back, steeling himself, telling himself they were dumb animals, nothing more. “John, get my gun.”
“Wh... what... y... you... g... gonna... d... do?” John’s teeth were rattling like the tail of a snake.
“Just get it.”
“N... no! I ain’t g... gonna!” It was the first time in his life John had ever defied his brother.
With a muttered curse, Theodore knelt and fished the gun from beneath the wagon. He’d barely regained his feet when John’s hand clamped the barrel and pointed it skyward. They stared into each other’s eyes — haunted, both — neither of them feeling the icy black metal in their frozen fingers.
“Teddy, no!”
Theodore cocked the gun. The metallic clack bore the sound of doom.
“No, T... Teddy, you c... can’t!”
“I got to, John.”
“N... no... I’d r-r-rather f... freeze t... to d... death.”
“And you will if I don’t do it.”
“I d... don’t c... care.”
“Think of Ma and the others. They care. I care, John.” They stood a moment longer, gazes locked, while precious seconds ticked away and the blizzard raged on. “Let the gun go. Your fingers’re already froze.”
As John’s hand fell, so did his head. He stood slumped, abject, unaware of the wind howling about his head, throwing fine shards of ice down the back of his collar.
Theodore stood beside Cub, his whole body trembling, jaw clenched so tightly it ached more than any other part of his body. In his throat was a wad of emotion he could neither swallow nor cough up. It lodged there, choking him. I’m sorry, old boy, he wanted to say, but could not. His heart slammed sickeningly as he raised the gun only to find he could not see down the sight. He lifted his cheek from the stalk and backhanded the tears away roughly, then took aim again. When he pulled the trigger he didn’t even feel it; his finger was frozen. He fired the second shot rapidly, giving himself no time to think, to see.
Just do it, something said. Do what you got to do and don’t think. He opened the pocket knife with his teeth because his fingers couldn’t manage it. The blade froze to his tongue and tore off a patch of skin. Again, there was no feeling. He had closed himself off from it, moving with a grim determination that had hardened the planes of his face and turned his eyes flat and expressionless.
He plunged the knife to the hilt, shutting his mind against the gush of scarlet that colored the pristine snow at his knees. He ripped a hole two hands wide and ordered, “Get over here, John!”
When John remained rooted, Theodore lurched to his feet, jerked him around by the shoulder and gritted, “Move!” Ruthlessly, he gave his brother a shove that sent him to his knees. “Get your hands in there. This is no time to be queasy!”
Tears were coursing down John’s cheeks as he slipped his hands into the sleek, wet warmth.
Mercilessly, Theodore turned to utilize the warmth of the second animal. While his hands thawed, he forced from his mind all thought of what pressed against his flesh. He thought instead of Linnea, her hair streaming in the wind, her face bright with laughter, the gold watch on her breast, the child in her womb. As the feeling returned to his hands, the pain grew intense. He clenched his teeth and rocked on his knees, swallowing the cry he could not let John hear.
But the worst was yet to come.
When his hands had warmed and he could hold the knife, he knelt beside the warm carcass, closed his eyes, and drew several deep, fortifying breaths, swallowed the go
rge in his throat, and ordered John, “Get out your knife and gut ‘er.”
But even while Theodore set to work on his own grisly task, John knelt motionless, in a stupor. “Do it, John!” Terror, nausea, and pity tugged at Theodore’s body while he performed woodenly, forcing the gruesomeness from his mind. Several times he had to struggle to his feet and turn away to breathe untainted air and gather fortitude. And all the while John knelt beside Toots’s felled body, rattling now with shock, unable to perform the smallest task.
By the time Theodore finished, he was — unbelievably — sweating. It was arduous labor, the horse’s carcass heavy and unwieldy. Much of the job had to be done by feel, leaning low, his cheek laying against the familiar brown hide while he slashed and pulled.
When at last he struggled to his feet, dizzy and weak, he knew John was incapable of helping either of them in any way.
“Get in, John. I’ll help you.”
Staring, glassy-eyed, John shook his head. Snow had made a fresh drift around his knees. His bloody hands rested motionless on his thighs.
Frantic, close to shock himself, Theodore felt tears of desperation form in his eyes. If they coursed down his face, he couldn’t tell, for his cheeks were long since numb. “Goddammit, John, you can’t die! I won’t let you! Now get in!”
Finally, realizing John was incapable of making decisions, or of moving, Theodore rolled him off his knees and pushed him back, stood over him, and wedged the carcass open. “Double up. You’ll fit if you roll up in a tight ball.” The strain was immense, lifting the dead weight. Theodore’s arms trembled and his knees quaked. If John didn’t move soon, it would be too late.
Just when he thought he’d have to let go, John clenched his knees and backed in. A pathetic whimper sounded, but Theodore had no time to waste.
Gutting the second horse was more difficult man the first, for his energy had been sapped. Steel-willed, he struggled on, shutting out the smell and the sight of steam rising from the entrails in the snow and the sound of John’s whimpers. Once he had to rest, near exhaustion, hands supporting himself, head drooping’. The knife blade broke on a bone and he gave up the fight, unable to labor any longer. Through a dizzy haze, he crawled toward the life-giving warmth, but when he was struggling to get inside, his mind grew lucid for several seconds, and he finally remembered what it was that he had to tell Linnea.
On hands and knees he crawled through the snow, groping for the broken knife, taking it with him as he pulled himself underneath the wagon one last time.
Lying on his back in the murk, he pictured the letters, just as she’d taught them, L is for lutefisk. I is for ice. N is for — he couldn’t remember what N was for, but he need not know. By now he could spell her name by heart.
“Lin,” he carved blindly, “I’m sorry.”
His ears buzzed. His head felt ten times its size. Somebody was crawling through the snow on bloody hands. Now why would anybody want to do a thing like that? On leaden limbs he reached his destination, unaware of the miasma or the gore or the fact that he tore his shirt and scraped both his belly and back as he squeezed inside. There, emotionally and physically exhausted, he lost consciousness.
In the school building six miles up the road a child rubbed her tear-filled eyes and wailed, “But I don’t like raith-inth.”
Linnea, her own eyes rimmed with red, forced patience into her voice and soothed Roseanne when all she wanted to do was cry herself. “Just eat them, honey. They’re all we have.”
When Roseanne toddled away still sniffling over her handful of sticky raisins, Linnea wearily pulled the bell rope again, then clung to it with both hands, eyes closed, forehead resting against the scratchy sisal while the woeful clong-g-g resounded like a dirge. Outside the wind picked up the shivering sound and carried it over the white countryside. One minute later it carried another... then another... and another...
23
THE BLIZZARD LASTED twenty-eight hours. In that time, eighteen inches of snow fell. The children were rescued just before dark on the second day by men on snowshoes, pulling toboggans. The first one to reach the school was Lars Westgaard. He rammed his snowshoes into a drift, opened the door and met a circle of relieved faces, three of them — his own children’s — tearfully happy.
But as he held Roseanne, clinging to him like a monkey, and petted the heads of Norna and Skipp who hugged close, he met the haunted eyes of Linnea, waiting beside Kristian.
“Theodore and John?” she asked quietly.
He could only shake his head regretfully.
A sick, rolling sensation gripped her stomach and panic girthed her chest. She interlaced her fingers with Kristian’s, squeezing hard and meeting his young, worried eyes.
“They’re probably sitting at someone’s place in town, worrying about us more than we’re worrying about them.”
Kristian swallowed pronouncedly and muttered, “Yeah... probably.” But neither of them were convinced.
The other fathers straggled in, stomping off snow, and wanned themselves by the fire. When all had arrived, search plans were made, then the fire was banked and the little schoolhouse closed. Someone had brought a spare toboggan and snowshoes for Linnea. Dressed in someone else’s coat, scarf, and mittens, she was pulled home by Kristian.
Already the air was mellowing. In the western sky the red-gold eye of the sun squinted through purple clouds, sending long spans of gilt streaking across the transformed world. The shadows on the downside of the snowdrifts were the same deep purple as the westerly clouds that were already breaking and separating, shedding more sunny shafts and promising a clear day tomorrow.
They made a mournful little caravan, four toboggans pulled by Ulmer, Lars, Trigg, and Kristian, with Raymond walking beside. It had been decided, in the interest of expedience, that the Westgaard children would all be taken to Nissa’s, which was closest, so the men could set out immediately on their grim errand. Even on the short walk home they were alert, watchful, each of them carrying a long cane pole, occasionally stopping to pierce a drift in several places. Each time, Linnea watched the latticed tracks of their snowshoes create cross-stitches on the snow, listened to their low, murmuring voices, and dreaded what they might find. She gazed in horrified fascination at the depth to which the cane poles sank and, holding her stomach as if to protect her unborn child from worry, said a silent prayer.
Poor Kristian. She herself was weary beyond anything she’d ever imagined, and he must be, too. Yet he stalwartly moved with his uncles over the suspicious-looking hillocks, watching while the poles disappeared again and again into the snow, leaving it pock-marked. Each time he returned to her toboggan, resignedly picked up the rope, and high-stepped behind the others, the sleds whining a mournful lament against the pristine surface of the snow.
When they reached Nissa’s house the men had to shovel a drift from the back door. They worked to the continuous bawling of the cattle who stood near the barn in snowdrifts, with painfully bulging bags, waiting to be milked since last night at this time. But the cattle were ignored in light of the much greater urgency.
It was clear that Nissa hadn’t slept at all. It was equally clear that she was one of those who functions well under stress, whose thought processes clarify in direct proportion to the necessity for clear thinking. She had gear all packed: quilts tied into tight bundles like jellyrolls; steaming coffee and soup in fruit jars bound with burlap; sandwiches wrapped in oilcloth; bricks in the oven and hot coals ready to be scooped into tins. Though her face appeared haggard, her movements were brisk and autocratic as she scurried about the kitchen, getting the boys outfitted and prepared to move out again. Recognizing the value of time, they wasted little of it on useless consternation. The only pause came when Kristian and Raymond insisted on going along. The men exchanged glances, but to their credit included them. “You sure?” Ulmer asked.
“My pa is out there,” Kristian answered tersely.
“And I go with Kristian,” Raymond stated unequivoc
ally.
With Ulmer’s nod, it was decided. Within minutes after their arrival, the men were gone again.
Nissa neither fretted nor watched them snowshoe away. Instead, she turned her attention to her grandchildren, for whom she’d prepared a pot of thick chicken noodle soup. There was fresh bread, too, and a batch of fresh-fried fattigman, evidence that she’d remained industrious during her worried hours alone.
How Linnea admired the scuttling little hen. No taller than her eight-year-old grandsons, Nissa didn’t slow down a bit. She moved like heat lightning, rarely smiling. Yet all seven children instinctively knew she loved them as she tended to their needs and they babbled about their night at the schoolhouse.
Somehow Roseanne’s voice could be heard above all the others, shrill and lisping. “And Grandma, gueth what! Aunt Linnea made me eat raith-inth, and I did it! I can’t wait to tell Mama.” Her mobile face suddenly drooped. “But I lotht my lunch pail and Mama’th gonna thpank me for thure.”
The jabber continued as soup bowls were emptied and refilled. When the children were stuffed, they seemed to droop in unison, and within minutes were asleep on the two downstairs beds.
The house quieted. From outside came the sound of snow melting off the roof, dripping rhythmically, even though the sun had gone down.
Nissa gripped the tops of both knees as if to navigate herself up from the hard kitchen chair. Her faded skirt drooped between her thighs like a hammock. She looked as if a deep sigh would have done her a world of good, but instead she sounded stern.
“Well, I guess I better try to give them cows some relief.”
“I’ll help you,” Linnea offered.
“Don’t think so. Milkin’ cows is harder’n it looks.”
“Well, I’d like to try, at least.”
“Suit yourself.” Nissa donned her outerwear without the slightest hint of self-pity. If a thing’s got to be done, it’s got to be done, her attitude seemed to say. For Linnea there was great reassurance in sticking close to the stubbornly determined little woman.