The Children's Blizzard

by Melanie Benjamin

  They’d agreed, and he’d inwardly rejoiced although outwardly he remained his usual weary, jaded self. He was ashamed to share the real reason he wanted to go. For a man who had made a career of declaring his every intent and folly, he found himself surprisingly circumspect about his true mission.

  Embarrassed, to be blunt.

  Even when he had one last drink with Ol’ Lieutenant and Dan Forsythe at the Lily before he headed out, he made sure to consume a smaller amount of whiskey than usual, lest the truth, prompted by his heart, push through his tight lips. It was only in the last few days that Gavin remembered he had a heart. He wasn’t quite sure how to go about dealing with it, to be honest. Should he placate it? Make deals with it? For now, he thought it best to douse it in a moderate amount of alcohol and hope it might be pickled back into dormancy.

  At the Lily, Forsythe, who had sheltered with the sleighing party in houses over in Council Bluffs—none of the party had perished in the blizzard—lamented the fact that it hadn’t turned out to be much of a story.

  “Rosewater has me in the doghouse about it. The man has ink for blood and a printing press for a heart. He expected nothing less sensational than cannibalism,” Forsythe grumbled, shaking his head forlornly. “Like the Donner Party. Have you ever heard him envy the newspapers who got that story, back in the day? The amount of ink they sold over that?”

  “He’s a son of a bitch,” Gavin agreed. “It’s a fine line, though—he wants to keep the story alive, sell the papers—tragedy on the plains, all that. It’s good for business—until it’s not good for business, if you get my drift. The boosters are hovering, too, because none of them—the trains, the state, hell, even Rosewater—can afford to scare more of these poor sods off from coming out here. You can bet there’s going to be an exodus of them come spring, all heading back across the ocean. Land’ll be even cheaper than it is now—you might want to think about it.” Gavin addressed this to Ol’ Lieutenant, who looked up from the book he was reading—Bleak House—with an arched eyebrow. “And say, why weren’t you open the other day? I was in dire need of a drink.”

  To Gavin’s surprise, Ol’ Lieutenant held his gaze for a long moment, then deliberately closed the book and placed it on the counter between Forsythe and Gavin.

  The two men exchanged looks.

  “I have kids like everybody else. I had to go get them. And, boys, congratulate me. I’m selling the Lily but I’m not going to homestead.” Then Ol’ Lieutenant did the unthinkable: He poured himself a drink and leaned closer to the two newspapermen. Gavin wasn’t sure how to behave, sharing a drink like this with a colored man; it was all well and good to have him behind the counter, serving. But this was awkward; Forsythe leaned away from the bar a little. Gavin smiled weakly but clinked his glass with Ol’ Lieutenant’s before taking a swig.

  “No, after this storm, when I had to stay with the kids over on the North Side at school—and it’s a damn good thing I did—leaving Alma…” Ol’ Lieutenant looked up at the ceiling, toward the upper floor where evidently he lived, and Gavin understood him to mean that Alma was his wife. He’d never heard her name before. Or maybe he had, and he’d never taken the time to note it?

  “She was here alone in all that—I left her plenty of fuel before I went out to find the kids, but nobody knew that, nobody checked in on her, even though there are plenty of folks—white folks—livin’ around here. So I’m moving to the North Side. Isn’t any place for someone like me here on this side of town anymore. We have to stay with our own kind, take care of ourselves, our kids; this storm just kind of reinforced that in my mind.”

  Forsythe looked annoyed by this speech, and took another drink.

  “Was she all right? Your wife?” Gavin heard himself asking, then blushing, afraid to say the woman’s name for some reason. It seemed wrong—too familiar—when he’d only just learned it. When he’d only just acknowledged the fact that Ol’ Lieutenant had a wife and she had a name and apparently they had children, too. Then he found himself wondering what Ol’ Lieutenant’s first name was, his real name—was it Marvin or Coleson or Harry or Sam?

  Good God, this heart thing was going to be a real pain in the ass, wasn’t it?

  “Yeah, she’s fine. Shaken up, worried about me and the kids all night, but fine. Still, she’s the one been harping to move and now I see her point. These are the last drinks the Lily’ll serve, gentlemen. Enjoy them.” Then Ol’ Lieutenant grinned, poured the men and himself another, and finally returned to his book, to Gavin and Forsythe’s relief.

  “Well, I wouldn’t have expected a tenderfoot like you, Woodson, to head out there, not in winter. I don’t care what Rosewater does to me, I’m staying in town.”

  “It was my idea,” Gavin said mildly.

  “You say,” Forsythe replied with a smirk. “Well, I’ll give you some advice—”

  “Since you’re such an adventurer yourself?” Gavin couldn’t help himself.

  “I’m no Greely, but I have ridden out on a cattle drive. Once. Partway. All right, it was just for a day, to get background for a story. But still—stay close to the railroad tracks; that way you won’t get lost. You’ll hear most of the news in the towns; they all know what’s going on in their districts, even at the most remote homestead. I have no idea how but those Swedes and Norskis have their own telegraph system almost. Just don’t head out away from the tracks without someone to guide you. You’ll get lost and the wolves’ll have a field day with your lard ass.”

  “Thanks.” Gavin would have been irate at the insult, but the man had a point. He drained the last of his whiskey—probably the last he’d have for a while now because he couldn’t imagine that the poor sons of bitches in soddies had the time or money for drink—and set the glass on the counter. He tipped his hat at Ol’ Lieutenant.

  “Bye—uh, sir,” he said awkwardly; for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to call the bartender by his usual handle, the moniker that Gavin and the others had given him without much thought. “Good luck on the North Side. I’ll be sure to stop by once you open up your new place.”

  “Sure you will,” Ol’ Lieutenant said with unconcealed amusement, and Gavin was ashamed of the emptiness of the promise. “But do me a favor, will you, Mr. Woodson?”

  “What?”

  “While you’re out there hunting for stories, make sure you tell about the colored folk, too. You know there’s a settlement west of Yankton—in Sully County—that’s mainly colored. Maybe you can get up that way? There are people here in town would like to hear about them, see if they made it through.”

  “I’ll try,” Gavin said. He had no idea there were Negro homesteaders, but the law didn’t prevent it; the Homestead Act didn’t specify race, except, of course, it excluded the Indians. So he’d lured them out here, too, had he? Jesus Christ. He felt a strange twinge, and it occurred to him that it was his conscience—the annoying, hectoring better angel of his heart, he realized with a wince. He didn’t know how far he’d have to go before he found what he was looking for—who he was looking for—so he offered no promise. But he thought that Ol’ Lieutenant understood, by the way the man nodded.

  Gavin impulsively reached across the counter to shake his hand, and he wasn’t sure how to parse the gaze that Ol’ Lieutenant bestowed upon him when he did. Then he shook hands with Forsythe, and headed out toward the livery stable, where his dainty sleigh and questionable horse awaited him.

  And now here he was, as alone, as small, as he’d ever been despite the fact that he spilled over the seat of the sleigh. Experiencing, for the first time, the terrifying heartlessness of the Great Plains he’d sold thousands of suckers on.

  Have you longed for the magic of a prairie winter, gentle yet abundant snow to nourish the earth, neither too cold nor too warm, only perfection in every way?

  His stomach soured as he recalled his own words. He was all alone i
n a great dome of sky, trapped like an insect, unable to escape the evidence of the lie he’d perpetrated. No gentle snow was this; the train tracks to his right were completely obscured, only the adjacent telegraph poles sticking up, some at an angle, some broken completely, to keep him on the right path. He’d left the Union Pacific yard with the curses of railroad men in his ears; trains were stuck, they’d need to have work crews break up the snow to get those trains off the line before the great wedge plows, pushed by several locomotives, could come through and clear the tracks. Snow was the railroad’s winter curse; the massive spring floods were nearly as much of a headache. Then the grasshoppers in the summer, drawn to the heat-retaining steel, their bodies clogging up the wheels. Really, sometimes Gavin wondered why in the hell these men had invested so much money and time in the endeavor.

  But of course he knew why, and it was all around him—land. Too much land, it seemed to him, an astonishing amount; how could it ever be tamed and parceled, even by the hordes who had come here to do just that? He didn’t dare gaze too much at it, for fear of becoming snow blind; he’d been instructed to keep his head down and trust his horse, outfitted with side blinkers to cut down the glare. But he did raise his head and let his eyes water in the cold and brilliance, now and then. Simply to gaze on a landscape he’d never fully understood—that he’d never tried to understand.

  Everyone said the prairie was flat, but it wasn’t. The snow-carpeted land swelled and dipped even though the horizon presented itself as one straight line. But the utter lack of natural landmarks, the unbrokenness of it all, made it seem so. And the air today, so still after the storm, also lent to the notion that he, the horse, and the sleigh were perched upon an infinite cloth-covered table, above the rest of the world. And yet, there would come a point where, if they weren’t careful, they would fall off the edge and be lost forever.

  Every once in a while, he did see tiny dark dots, far off, close to the edge of that table. Houses that, despite a thin trail of smoke from a chimney poking a tentative finger up in the sky, appeared utterly desolate, despairing. Those were homesteaders. Despite the temptation to veer off to talk to them, he stayed along the tracks as Forsythe had recommended.

  And really, he asked himself—he was already aware that he would be carrying on entire conversations with himself or the horse before this thing was over—what would he do if he did decide to turn the nag and take off over that landscape full of traps and obstacles buried by the snow? What would he say if he knocked on the door of one of those soddies or cabins?

  Excuse me, I’m looking for a girl. Maybe you know her? Maybe she lives here? She’s young and has reddish-blond hair, and her throat was yearning, and I don’t know her name, and she doesn’t know mine, either. But I need to find her, because—

  Because why?

  Well, that was it, wasn’t it? Why on earth was he on such a fool’s errand? Could it be that he was in love? With a girl at least half his age, whom he had seen for a couple of minutes?

  No, he didn’t think so, probing his feelings—a distasteful exercise he’d generally avoided until recently. He didn’t long to enfold her in his arms or whisk her away to a homestead of his own. God, no.

  Gavin had had romantic entanglements in the past, an almost-engagement back East, and a regular Sunday dinner invitation from the sister of one of the printers at the Bee that he had let peter out, sending his polite refusal one too many times. But he was no stranger to the softness of a woman’s body—that softness he required, now and then, to reassure himself that he was still solid, a man of sinew and bone, despite all evidence to the contrary. Oh my, no, he was no stranger to the contours of a woman, pillows of flesh, excitable nipples, eager legs wrapping around him until he lost himself entirely, the moment always too brief, and then there was the brisk transaction of money, the quick ushering out the door and he was back in Godforsaken Omaha, his disappointing self once more. And that transaction sufficed—at least he’d thought so. Just the physical contact was enough. Emotions, needs, yearnings, comfort, companionship, a sense of purpose, of being necessary to someone, less alone in the swamp of his miserable thoughts and actions—these he believed he’d outgrown. Or never needed in the first place.

  So no, he didn’t want to marry the girl, it wasn’t that. He didn’t want to marry at all. And to marry a Swedish or German homesteading daughter—he shuddered at the very notion of being entangled with a family still halfway stuck in the Old World even while they battled, with spirit-breaking results, the new. He tried to imagine himself living out here on this callous flatland, trying to break it—he could feel its unyielding surface beneath the runners of the sleigh—trying to coax it into giving him something to live on, to keep going, to do the same thing year after soul-sucking year. The numbing repetitiveness of it, like Sisyphus, only instead of a boulder, a plow. He tried to imagine living in one of those squalid little soddies, surrounded by people needing something from you—your thoughts, your food, your sweat, your dreams, your very breath; you’d never have your full share of anything, ever again. And for what? One hundred and sixty acres of land that was worth so little, the government was practically giving it away.

  God, no.

  But the prairie—this desert masquerading as a grassland—had its own beauty, he could admit. A cruel beauty, like that of a breathtaking woman who will never remember your name. The cloak of pure snow, like a cloud on the ground—no footprints, not even a leaf print on it—made him feel as if he were the first person to step onto an unexplored planet. A horizon so far off it seemed like a mural. A sky so blue it seemed like a dream of blue; color shouldn’t be this vivid in real life.

  A cold so unnerving, he realized he was shivering and that he had been for longer than he had any idea of—damn, this place! What good was beauty when a man’s balls were frozen? This godforsaken place!

  The horse was slowing down, so Gavin tugged on the reins, pulled on the brake, and slid out, taking a feedbag with him; he unbridled the nag, strapped the bag over his big ugly face, but held on to the harness just in case the beast got a notion to run off toward one of those homesteads himself. Gavin needed to stay near the railroad, and he thought he was only about five miles to the next station. You’d think, though, that you’d be able to see five miles down the tracks in weather like this, but nothing was in sight, so maybe not.

  The horse ate steadily, so Gavin dropped the harness to go off and answer the call of nature, but the thought of unbuttoning his pants to allow egress made him pause. Jesus Christ, in this ball-shriveling cold—should he just let loose and keep it inside? But no, he couldn’t do that, it would freeze. So he tentatively poked himself out through the smallest opening he could allow, uttered epithets so vociferously the horse stopped eating and looked his way, then hastily buttoned himself back up again and raced back through snow above his knees to the sleigh. He slipped the bit back in the horse’s mouth, dropped the half-empty feedbag onto the seat beside him, and slapped the reins, this time less tentatively.

  And back to his contemplation of the girl. What was her allure? Not corporeal; he put that notion firmly to rest. She represented something ethereal. An idea. A notion. A prayer. A song. Something spiritual, something spectral. Something.

  He simply had to find her, he supposed. To relieve his conscience, to absolve him of his sins. She was his church, this maiden of the prairie. And Gavin needed absolution. He hadn’t known he’d needed it until he saw her the day of the blizzard.

  He needed something good to come from this place, this place that, in his worst moments, he could almost believe he’d created all by himself—the Great God Gavin Woodson. Yes, that was it—maybe he’d started to feel that he’d populated these Great Plains all on his own, with no help from the government and the boosters and the railroads and the hustlers. Somehow he could make himself forget their part, especially after too much whiskey, too much sitting at an ink-stained
desk with nothing to do but brood. He could convince himself that he’d done it, he’d created these homesteaders, they wouldn’t exist without his pen.

  Even God needed his Garden of Eden, his Adam, his Eve.

  So Gavin Woodson needed his maiden, but unlike God, he had no wish to punish her. No—the realization became more potent with each step of the puffing nag—he needed to save her. Like a pudgy, dissolute Lochinvar, riding in on his noble steed to rescue her from the fate of the prairie.

  And if not her, well, then someone else. Because something good had to come out of the despair and tragedy in the wake of this blizzard that appeared to have struck with more ferocity, leaving more casualties, than any blizzard in the short history of these homesteaded plains. Not even the winter of 1880 to 1881, still talked about in hushed tones, surprised an entire region like this one had.

  Now the old-timers had something new to talk about. There would be a rush on wood for coffins as soon as the tracks cleared, he’d heard when he’d picked up the horse and sleigh. There just weren’t enough trees for the poor souls to provide their own.

  Frankly, Gavin wondered how they’d even go about digging graves in ground this solidly frozen. What would they do with the dead, then? Keep them in barns or lean-tos? The wolves would surely be after them.

  This godforsaken place. It killed these poor bastards, then refused to receive their bodies with any kind of dignity.

  The horse continued plodding. Gavin realized he’d been traveling north, so he’d picked the wrong goddamn train track to follow, since the girl and her family seemed to have gone due west; typical Gavin, he cursed himself. Finally, up ahead, he saw a cluster of buildings, spreading out on either side of the track for about a city block both ways.