In February came the big snow. At the end of the first week in February, with a foot of snow lying old and hard on the ground, it began to come down heavily one afternoon. Charles and the other children sat in the schoolroom gazing as if hypnotized out the tall windows at the thickness of the snowfall. They could not see the cottonwood trees in the middle of the school yard, and then the fox-and-geese track nearer to the building could not be seen, and then it was as if the whole world had sunk beneath a whirling sea of snow, and there was nothing beyond the windows but the crash and tumult of flakes. Charles imagined he could feel the building foundering in the ocean of snow as his balance became disoriented by the sight of all the windows of the schoolroom filled with the same endless looming and whirling whiteness. Gradually the classes stopped. The students stood at their desks or walked as if in sleep to the blank white windows. Miss Wrigley laid down her big history book and stood, one hand on her hip, the other touching her cheek, looking at the windows where nothing could be seen but snow.
They went home early that day, farmers and their wives meeting some of the children on the road to help them home in the blinding storm. No vehicles moved on the highway, so that it became merely a flatter stretch in the arctic whiteness, a guide to the filled in lanes and driveways that led to the invisible houses looming suddenly out of the white darkness as people fought with heads down through snow that was at first pleasantly exciting, then a tiresome nuisance, and finally became a menacing and impersonal danger that even the children began to feel uneasy about. Once inside again, the farm families would stand by the windows as the afternoon darkened and look blindly out into the storm as the children at school had, mesmerized by the sudden emergence of nature’s possibilities for destruction and bland horror.
No one in the local community died that night, though many gained a new respect for what was called in Charles’s geography book “the temperate zone.” In nearby places where the great storm covered the earth and filled the atmosphere for more than eight hours, there were deaths among all warm blooded creatures who found themselves lost in it. Cows and sheep died standing helplessly mired in snow deeper than they could walk in, people in cars and buses would start out for help and get lost in the white darkness, go in circles, and finally stop to rest, to be found days later mere humps in the level sea of snow. Two sisters in Wisconsin started home from an afternoon party, became separated in the early darkness and both died less than two hundred feet from their own back door, coming toward their house from different directions. A middle-aged man left his wife in their car with the engine running and the heater on while he went for help. He floundered off into a deep, snow filled ditch, wore himself out, stopped to rest and froze to death. His wife died before he did, of carbon monoxide poisoning while the car engine idled on until it ran out of gas, and then it got very cold so that they could not tell, three days later when the car was found, if she had frozen or died of gas poisoning. Out of a bus load of children who were returning from a skating trip to a local lake, the driver and four children died trying to reach help alter the bus missed the road at a turn and ran off into snow so deep it came up over the bus windows. The rest of the children remained with an eighteen-year-old counselor who built fires out of the bus seats and saved everyone by huddling them like chickens that night for warmth until they were found next afternoon by a contingent of skiers. And worse than the snow itself was the insidious cold that came shortly after, dropping temperatures as much as thirty-five degrees in three hours. Trains moved more slowly, following the rail plows, cities began to run short on supplies of milk and eggs, the road plows began to break down after thirty-six hours of steady use, and three days after the big storm, another arctic mass of air moved in from the Northwest, dumping another foot of snow on top of the already devastated Midwest.
After the first big snow on Friday, there was a day’s shoveling to do, a few wandering stock to be found, brought home and fed, supplies of food to be checked over, and wood and coal to be piled for the coming weeks. And by Sunday afternoon it was play time for the farm boys who found the snow too deep to hunt in and too heavy on the lanes for sleds, so they resorted to digging caves in drifts that were in some places fifteen feet high. Charles, Douglas, and his brothers built a labyrinth of tunnels in the long drift that ran like a delta from the corner of the highway bridge near the Bent farm across the creek bed and far along the drainage ditch. In a solidified wave of blinding white the drift covered over the wing of the bridge, filled completely the twelve-foot-deep creek bed and lifted to a graceful curl beyond the corner of a long low implement shed. Charles had been the first to see the possibilities and had begun a small tunnel along the hard blue ice of the creek where the edge of the drift stopped at the bridge. Soon they had tunnels going in half a dozen locations, a large room big enough for Douglas to stand up in and were installing elaborations like shelves and ventilation shafts.
Charles sat, panting, his hands numb from digging, his white breath clouding the whiteness of the tunnel. The light filtered in at the top of the big room, a frosted whiteness like a heavy cover of cirrus clouds on a bright day, and further down the sides the whiteness shaded to blue gray, and back in the tunnels it was a darker gray, but near any source of light the tunnel walls and ceiling were a sheer sugar white, whiter than salt, whiter than clouds, Charles thought, with a dark line near the floor that showed the stratum of the old snow.
A scream from outside frightened him, a scream of rage. It sounded like Rudy. Then there was a whoomp sound like a huge fist plunging into a giant pillow. Some snow sifted down his neck. He looked up at the lightest part, the ceiling of the big room, as the whoomp came again. More snow fell, and he crawled out along the tunnel that ended at the creek bed. It was brighter outside the tunnel, so that he blinked while listening to the cries and curses from the Bent boys. They were up on the highway bridge. He looked up in time to see a bundled form come sailing off the bridge rail and smack down into the snow caves, causing the tunnel Charles had just come out of to cave in with a cloud of bursting snow. Charles cried out. They were jumping down off the bridge wrecking everything. He climbed into the drift trying to get at the boy who was trying just as hard to get out and away. It was Paul Holton, covered with snow and laughing.
“Hey, sucker, you’re busting up our tunnels,” Charles cried, trying to get at the floundering boy.
Another form came leaping off the rail to smack into the area of the big room, and it went down like the crystal palace with a cloud of snow shooting out of the tunnels. Charles was crying out with anger now, and he almost had Paul.
“Now cut it out, Paul,” Charles said, grabbing at the boy and getting his cap. But Paul got away up onto the highway, and Charles turned to see Kick Jones emerging from the drift. “Hey, we been working a long time,” Charles began, but then he saw another figure on the bridge rail, the tall figure of Carl Bent, dark against the sky. With a whoop he leaped and landed spread eagled on the area Charles had just left. It collapsed.
Charles was silent, climbing up to the highway where Douglas was standing watching the other boys leap off the bridge rail to demolish the tunnels and rooms they had spent the whole morning building. Charles felt angry, but he was thinking about jumping too when he saw Doug had tears in his eyes and stood awkwardly watching as Rudy climbed up on the rail. When Douglas shouted out from beside him, he flinched in surprise.
“Fat ass Rudy! Fat ass Rudy!” Douglas said, his tears overflowing.
Rudy turned from his height on the bridge and snarled at his brother, “Shut your mouth, you cripple.” And he turned to leap off the rail.
Douglas took three quick steps, his still leg slicing two wide arcs on his right side, and as Rudy left the rail, Douglas grabbed one pants leg tripping him up. Rudy squealed and fell face down into the drift. Douglas leaned over the rail watching as Rudy crawled backward out of the hole he had dived into. The older boy’s face was packed with snow in eyes, nose, mouth so that he looked as i
t he was wearing a plaster cast on his head.
Rudy cleaned his face as he climbed back to the bridge, murder in his eyes. Charles moved next to Douglas, hoping the brothers Wouldn’t fight if it meant involving him.
But Rudy never stopped to talk or consider. He climbed up the drifted bank, got to the road and came straight for Douglas. Charles instinctively stepped aside, but then grabbed at Rudy’s coat as he began pounding on his brother with both fists, snorting and panting curses. Douglas tried to fend off the blows, covering his head with his arms, and before Charles could figure what to do, Rudy had swung a fist under Doug’s arm hitting him squarely in the nose. Douglas screamed and turned away.
Charles pulled Rudy away, pushed him hard a couple of times until Rudy got the idea he would have to fight Charles if he kept on.
“It ain’t your fight, big hero,” said Rudy panting. “He ain’t your brother.”
“Leave him alone,” Charles said.
“You ain’t nobody,” Rudy said, his face red. “You’re only an orphan, and you ain’t really nobody.” He stepped back and a cool smile came on his face. “You ain’t really smart. You’re just gettin’ in Miss Wrigley’s pants.”
Charles did not for a moment know what he meant, having some vague image of a pair of pants hanging on a hook while he went through the pockets, but in the next instant he heard Kick Jones and Carl Bent laughing as they leaned against the bridge rail, and his face flamed red.
“Everybody knows he’s teacher’s pet,” Kick said.
“He stays after school and gets some free feelies,” Carl said, grinning.
Charles stood astounded as their meaning broke over him. At first he could not believe what they meant, and then he could not believe that they had so quickly turned against him. Like most people, Charles had the inborn notion that everyone loved him, at least those who had nothing against him. Now he was finding out that all of these boys harbored a secret grudge because he had advanced in school so quickly. It was too much to take in all at once, and he stood there with his mouth open stupidly while they taunted and laughed. Behind him, Douglas snuffled while his nose dripped bright red drops into the snow.
“He’s a big lover all right,” Paul Holton said, sauntering back from the spot he had run to when Charles was alter him. “Flossie says he’s hot stuff. She says he tried to do it to her.”
“That’s a lie,” Charles said, feeling guilty for his daydreams. “And if you’re stupid, it’s not Miss Wrigley’s fault.” He felt confused facing the four boys who leaned in a row against the bridge rail and grinned at him. There seemed nothing to say to them that would make an impression. They stood relaxed, a jury that had made up its mind. Charles felt convicted. There was nothing he could do, short of attacking all four of them and getting the tar beaten out of him.
“Charles is going to be a great man,” Douglas said suddenly, sounding as if he had a bad cold because his nose was still full of blood. “He’s smarter than all of you stupid farmers put together.”
The four boys along the rail laughed and pointed at Charles and Doug. Charles knew it was hopeless and turned to pull Doug away, but the younger boy was enraged. His face was smeared with blood as if he had been painted with a brush, and a large red drop welled from each nostril. He looked like a war casualty, Charles thought.
“You’re just jealous about him because he’s going to pass you all up this year, and it took you all this time to get in the grade you’re in, and Paul can’t even do his multiplication tables past six, and Carl can’t read big words, and …”
Charles had him by the neck of the coat, dragging him away. He would get them both bloodied, and he might feel like getting beat up, but Charles knew how it felt and was not eager to feel it again.
“That don’t matter,” Rudy said, grinning. “You’ll always be a cripple.” And when Douglas wrenched away from Charles, Rudy added, “And I seen you jerkin’ off last night in the outhouse.”
Then Douglas went insane with rage, tearing part of his coat collar off as he pulled away from Charles’s grasp and tried to get at his brother. Rudy easily stepped in and hit Douglas twice more, once in the face, once on the top of the head, until Carl told him to stop.
Douglas was staggering, his eyes glazed. “Tattle tale, tattle tale, hanging on the bull’s tail; when the bull takes a pee, you’ll have a cup of tea,” he screamed in a high baby voice, chanting it over and over until Charles took him by the arm and began walking him to the house. The boys at the bridge rail were still laughing and making obscene signs when Charles got Douglas to the Bent house and put him in the care of his mother. Inside the warm house he heard the screaming of the youngest Bent, another boy, born early in December, and he listened to it with sudden clarity. It was a child, and it would grow up to be a boy, then a young man, go to school, get a job, get married, have children, maybe become famous. He could do that, the baby. And as Charles mumbled something to the angry Mrs. Bent and backed out of the house to start the walk home, he kept thinking about the baby’s cry, how it was born, how it would live. He walked back up the lane ignoring the boys still standing on the bridge. It wasn’t really important, what they said. But what mattered could not be changed. He might beat them up one at a time, maybe even Rudy and Paul at the same time, but it wouldn’t make him be any different. He felt the cold, buzzing stone in his pocket, the leather thong he had put through the hole and pinned into his jacket so he would not lose it. If he did not have this, what would happen?
Was he, Charles Cahill, the only creature of his kind in the world? Or was it like Doug when he jerked off in the darkness thinking his was the only guilt in the world? Was everybody like him? But they didn’t ever show it. Maybe the whole world is like me, Charles thought with a sudden burst of illumination. But the next moment he knew it wasn’t true. The notorious gangsters in Chicago like Machine Gun Jack McGurn who had just got killed battling police, they were murderers, but most people weren’t. Animals were animals, people were people. But what was he? As he approached the dark stand of woods and the hidden house of the widow Stumway, Charles felt again the uncertainty, the empty feeling of fear in his guts that he always felt thinking back about what had happened at Thanksgiving. For a time then, he had simply not existed. He had no memory, no feeling of being when the Beast had shifted into someone else by mistake. He recalled the thing that stood in the dim bathroom of the Boldhuis house, looking at its giant bulk of power and terror, and feeling that it was part of him. But then he knew that wasn’t right, because of the strange shift that the Beast remembered but he did not. And he knew he had it all turned around. It was not part of him, even if it did save him from death and try to keep him from getting hurt. It was only trying to survive. He was part of it, and he would exist only as long as that power needed him for its own ends, whatever they were. Unless he could always have the stone, what Mrs. Lanphier called his “amulet.” If he always had that with him or in the house he was in, couldn’t he be like other people?
He stood on the widow Stumway’s back walk that he had shoveled off yesterday and watched blankly as snow started to drift down again. Looking into the dark trees back of the house as the snow began to fall harder, he could see the image of that powerful creature he remembered from the mirror. It was fearful, horrible, teeth like knives, small mean ears set close to the back of the long muzzled head, the heavy rounded shoulders that could lift a ton of automobile. He thought of Beauty and the Beast, the light-hating figure of Grendel, the wicked ones, the unhappy ones. Was he waiting for a hero to come along and rub him out?
***
Charles grew wary of his conduct, always giving some excuse when Miss Wrigley wanted him to stay after school to do extra work or to talk further about the lessons, talks that Charles had loved before and missed so that he gritted his teeth thinking about them. He hated the thought of giving in to the suspicions and gibes of the other boys, but what if all the kids thought things like that? His manner grew noticeably cool toward the
girls, noticeably more reserved and deferential toward the older boys. Miss Wrigley recognized the signs and thought he was having growing pains, seeking entrance into the secrets of manhood. She felt a warmth at her own understanding.
By the end of March, it seemed winter had been forever. Snow had become a way of life, as it is to Eskimos, and then almost overnight in the first week of April, it was gone. Rain began in the night, rain and a warm southwest wind that carried with it odors of growing things and warm wet earth that the farmers and their families had not smelled for an eon of cold. Charles woke in the night to hear the rain like low voices on the roof. He slipped out of bed, surprised at how warm it suddenly was, so warm he could not see his breath. He lifted the window and opened the little wooden vent on the storm window. The breeze that came through that little slot melted something, like the icy crystals that had prevented the little boy from seeing truly in the Snow Queen story. Something around Charles’s heart fell loose, and he prickled all over with a new excitement. Spring!
The Orphan Page 21
