When Winter Comes

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When Winter Comes Page 21

by V. A. Shannon


  After a few minutes, we could see a little strip of light, and then Mr. Breen’s face looking up at us in astonishment, where he was stood in his doorway holding a lantern. He passed us up a couple of shovels, and we passed him down the children; and then we dug away, making a set of steps to lead down into their cabin. After an hour or so hard work, we finally fell through their front door, hands and feet froze with the cold so that we couldn’t hardly feel them at all. Mrs. Breen set the kettle to boil, and had some last scraping of chocolate powder that she used to make us a drink. I thought I had never tasted anything so delicious in my life.

  When the sun was up, Mr. Breen and Mr. Keseberg went and dug out the Murphys, and the Breen boys and I went and dug out the Graveses, making some only half-joking remarks that it would serve them out if they were left to scramble out of their cabin as best they could, with no help from us. Then the Kesebergs and I moved what last of our belongings we could find in with the Murphys.

  32

  Next morning we awoke to no food at all. Not a spoonful of rice remained in the sack, not a mouthful of beans. Mr. Keseberg sent William Murphy out to fetch the last of the hides from the ruin of our lean-to. This is what we were reduced to eating.

  These hides were the skins of the dead animals, and had been used to cover over the cabin roofs. Where they had got wet in the snow and rain, and then warmed when we had some feeble sunshine, they had begun to rot, and the smell of them was hardly to be endured.

  We cut them into strips, and put them in the cooking pot with a bit of water and boiled them up all the day. The stench of them was beyond belief, and the look of them no better. They melted into a thick glue that we choked down, like to vomit from the feel of it in our throats.

  We ate everything and anything we could. The smallest mouse that ventured across the floor of the cabin in search of a crumb was seized upon and thrown, tail and whiskers and all, into the cooking pot. The very laces of the men’s boots, made as they were from leather strips, were roasted on the fire until they crisped up, and the children sucked on them. And we found one of the Graves children in tears, one day, for he had enjoyed his dinner, eating heartily for once, only to ask afterward where his dog was, and to find that his dog and his dinner were the same thing.

  William went out with a long face, not liking to be told what to do. He was a long time coming back, and it turned out that he had spent part of the day with his particular friend Paddy Breen. He’d had his dinner there, and told us that they still had some bits of meat left.

  He was angry, and blustered about, saying that if we were not in the cabin all the livelong day there would have been meat enough for his family, too, and telling Mr. Keseberg that he was not his father and that he could not order him what to do and where to go, and shouting at Landrum that he was the man of the family and to get up out of his bed and order us out of the cabin.

  For poor Landrum was taken to his bed, very ill indeed.

  When we had very first started out on our journey he fancied himself a real fellow with the girls. He was always swaggering back and forth with tales of what girl was sweet on him; how this one had given him a smile and how that one had looked particular at him as he passed by.

  It might have been true, and had I thought myself a pretty girl and was given to flirtatiousness, I guess I would have given him such a look myself. His hair was a mass of black curls, and he had sparkling green eyes and long eyelashes that a girl would envy.

  When Landrum had chased me and stolen that kiss, back on the first snowy day, and I had thrown the snowball, I had laughed myself silly at his startled face, along with all the rest. But sometimes at night when I was falling asleep, I had remembered Landrum’s face on the night of the dance, when I came out of the Murphy wagon in my pretty green dress, and how he had stumbled over his words when he asked me for a slice of my pie. And I imagined that kiss again, and wanted somehow to cry, that I had made him look so foolish for it.

  Now, though, thoughts of kisses and snowballs seemed very far behind me. I could hardly remember the girl I was then. And it was a most sorry sight to see him lying there, staring at the ceiling and muttering to himself all the livelong day.

  He was worried about a pony that his pa had given him when he was just a little boy, and kept asking after it, in a thin, thready voice.

  “The Indians took him. The Indians took him. Poor old boy. Pa, I lost him, I’m sorry, Pa. Poor old boy. Poor old boy.”

  He would pick away with his withered fingers at the blanket that was laid over him, and push it from him.

  “So hot. Too hot. Water. Water. The Indians took him. Poor old boy.”

  Next morning Mrs. Murphy roused herself, the first time in a long while, and set out to the Breens to ask them to spare some meat. They gave her a tiny piece, mostly bones, but enough to make some soup, thickened just a little by a handful of flour. There was a spoonful for each of us, and the rest went to Landrum, though it wasn’t enough to stop him crying and begging for more.

  How Landrum kept alive I do not know, but the next day Mrs. Murphy went back to the Breens once more, and again they gave her some small amount, and a few bits of dried onion and some herbs. The rich smell of it cooking made our stomachs churn and our mouths water, but there was no more than a mouthful or two, and we told her to give it all to Landrum. But it was too late.

  Mrs. Murphy was inconsolable. She said that it was her fault, for when she was coming back from the Breens she had eaten some of the meat herself, raw though it was, and that if she had cooked all yet Landrum might have been saved. In vain we told her that it would have made no difference, and that she needed to eat something herself, for the woman was nothing more than a living skeleton. Many times I had seen her pretend to eat and then slip that mouthful to one of the children; I doubted a morsel had passed her lips for days before. But the guilt of it overwhelmed her. She returned to her bed, clutching Catherine so close that the baby whimpered, and ignoring all else.

  I could see that the baby would not live, and it was a miracle that she had kept alive so long. And I dreaded to think what would happen with Mrs. Murphy when the baby was finally taken from her.

  * * *

  During the night it snowed more, and we woke to a blizzard, such that we could not put a face outdoors. Our wood was gone and there was no means of getting more. So we had no fire, and it was cold, the likes of which you could not imagine; so cold that our bones ached with it, fingers so frozen that we dropped what we picked up, and our toes so numb that we stumbled when we walked.

  You would not think the weather could get worse. But as the day wore on the wind grew more, howling around us so that we could not hear ourselves speak; and then it grew stronger still. At some point there was a shuddering crash that made the earth under our feet shake. It was a great tree in the forest, being torn out by its roots; it was followed by another, and another after that.

  Occasionally there was a lull, when the wind shifted direction; a few moments of calm. And then the wolves could be heard, a chorus of unearthly howling in the far distance, answered by the same blood-chilling lament closer to hand.

  * * *

  The wind died away as dawn broke the next day. The snow still fell so that you could not see your hand in front of your face. And to our horror we found that Baby had died in the night.

  Mrs. Keseberg screamed, and ran about the cabin, Baby clasped to her breast. Then she fell to the ground, crying as though her heart would break.

  The blizzard did not let up. We could not leave the cabin. And Mrs. Keseberg sat in a corner for hour upon hour, holding Baby and rocking him, and crooning a lullaby. Sometimes she jumped to her feet, thrusting Baby at us and begging us all, could we not see that he was still breathing? Did we not think that there was still some life in him? It was a horror to us all to look at that tiny body wrapped up in its quilt, with Baby’s face showing all blue-white and his sightless eyes and his downy gold hair all dull and strawy now, but it was terrifyin
g for the little children.

  Little Naomi Pike put her thumb in her mouth and rocked to and fro, keening. Harriet McCutcheon crawled across to me and pulled herself upright, and clung, her head buried in my lap, so that I could not stir from my seat. Through it all, Mrs. Murphy listened for the wolves, and howled when she heard them as if she was one herself.

  After some time, Mr. Keseberg caught his wife, and wrestled the baby from her arms. Mrs. Keseberg clawed at him, calling him a murderer, and then fell to her knees, clutching at his clothing and begging him not to put Baby out in the cold for the wolves to steal him; and swearing that if he did, she would never forgive him, and would never speak to him again.

  But he set his face against her. He wrapped up Baby in his quilt to be his little shroud. And he opened the door of the cabin to reveal a solid wall of snow, and dug a hole in it, like something a little animal would creep into for shelter, and slid the poor little mite inside. Then he closed the cabin door, and took to his bed, pulling the blanket over his head, and lay in silence for the rest of the day.

  Harriet McCutcheon died next. She had never spoke a word since Mrs. McCutcheon left, but now she called out in a hoarse, rasping voice, begging for her mama. And the next to die was my own poor darling girl, little Margaret Eddy.

  The year turns round, and the boiling days and humid nights of late summer are full upon us. We sleep with all the windows open and nothing but a sheet to cover us.

  Jacob snores beside me. I hear the mournful cry of an owl swooping through the woods, and the cut-short anguished squeal of some tiny creature snatched up in its claws.

  Eventually I rise from my bed. I walk through the house and into my kitchen, with the big table that Martha scrubs clean each day with salt and sand, and the chairs that Jacob made with his own hands, a new one each time a baby came along and each carved with a little animal—a cat for Meggie and a rabbit for Hannah, and for Clara a family of bears.

  I stand at the kitchen window. From here I can see the shape of the mountain in the far distance, black against the starry indigo sky. Even in this heat I shiver, thinking of twenty feet of snow up at the pass, and more falling. I turn away.

  So far I have made my way through the house in the dark. I do not need a light to know where to place my steps in my own home. But now I light a candle and take it with me.

  Beyond the kitchen is another little room, with a stone floor to keep it cool, cedar shelves to keep away the insects, and no windows to let in the vermin. This is where our food is stored. A slab of good butter melting away to nothing in a dish with a lid over it, another of sweating cheese, and a side of cold beef. German sausages hang on hooks from the ceiling, and bunches of herbs, and plaited strings of onions left to dry. There are apples wrapped in sacking; eggs in a china dish; and row upon row of the bottled preserves that I make through the summer and into the fall, from the currants and string beans that I grow in the garden. Packages of coffee, and tea, and chocolate powder.

  And there are sacks of flour and sugar, and bags of dried goods, oatmeal and grits, beans and peas and rice. More, by far, than we could ever need.

  I count them, checking to make sure I have not missed anything, and then count them again to make sure.

  I imagine how many days they will last for. And I think how Mrs. Reed, so rich and so proud when we started off, fell to her knees before Mrs. Graves, begging for a handful of rice to feed her children, and how Mrs. Graves looked across at her own children, and refused her.

  I have my own children now; another on the way. I put my hand to my belly, thinking of the babies and little children who died in my care: Catherine Pike, Harriet McCutcheon, Margaret Eddy and her little brother James. And Mr. Keseberg’s tiny son, Louis, and George Foster. I would not say it to another living soul, but the truth is, if I was Mrs. Graves, I would have done the same.

  I would refuse all and any, no matter who they be or what my heart tells me, to save the life of one of my children. And I can hardly live with the shame of having such plenty before me.

  33

  So. Margaret died; that sweet and lovely child.

  Mrs. Eddy was close to death herself by now, lying in her bed in the little room that Mr. Eddy had constructed for his family. She begged us to leave Margaret safe in her arms, so we took little James Eddy in with us, and carried Margaret in to lie with her mother.

  For the three days it took Mrs. Eddy to die, I sat with her. I pulled the blanket over her when she pushed it off in her fever, and sponged her face with cold water. Mrs. Eddy did not know me. She called me by her sister’s name, asking me did I remember this thing and that? Stories of when she was a girl. And she asked for her mother, and wept that she did not come.

  Toward the end her sight failed, and she begged me over and over to light the candle, saying that she was afraid of the dark—though lit it was, and the light shining full upon her face. Eventually she fell silent. I held her hand, and sang, some silly little song or another, just so she would know she was not alone. And I stroked Margaret’s little face, and put my lips to her cheek and kissed her good-bye.

  When the wind died away and the snow stopped, the Breen boys came across and dug out our steps for us again.

  Meriam and I sped out of the cabin as fast as could be, right thankful to get out into the clean-smelling air. We went across to the Breens and called in for Virginia. Paddy Breen came, too, and we all walked a little way into the forest, collecting cones and bits of fallen wood.

  All around us, trees lay uprooted. If we had saws and axes and some men to help us, we could have got ourselves plenty logs. But it needed more strength than we had alone. After we had collected what we could, we sat down. There was some weak sun filtering through the trees, and it was lovely to feel it warm on our faces, and we sat there for a while on one of the fallen tree trunks, with our faces tipped to the blue sky.

  When Meriam spoke, her voice was very low. “Do you think anyone will come for us? Or will we all die here, do you think?”

  John Breen answered that his family prayed for help every night before they went to sleep, and he was sure that help would come very soon, and we should all be saved.

  We sat in silence for a while more.

  “Have you ever seen the ocean?” Meriam asked me.

  “No,” I replied. “I have seen the Ohio River, though. That’s plenty big. And there are paddle steamers on it and all kinds of other boats. Ships going right across the ocean, as well, and bringing back all manner of things. I once saw a man with a monkey on his shoulder, and it snatched a cracker right out of my hand!”

  Paddy Breen stared at me, his mouth agape. “That’s grand! A monkey, you say? I’d sure like to see a monkey take a cracker out of MY hand!”

  John cuffed him round the head. “If you had a cracker in your hand, Paddy Breen, it wouldn’t be a monkey that would snatch it from you!”

  We kind of laughed at that, but soon enough we were sober again.

  Meriam smiled a little.

  “When we started out, all I wanted was to get to California and see the ocean. And after that to be married in a lace gown with a long train behind and a garland of pink and white flowers on my head, and for there to be a party for all my friends with a great wedding cake.” She added, softly, “I don’t suppose I ever shall, now.”

  John Breen flushed up bright red at that, and jumped to his feet and made a great show of collecting up his wood. I reckoned he was set sweet on Meriam, and it would have been sport to have teased them about it, but I didn’t.

  Meriam had been the prettiest girl in our little band of travelers when we set off, with great gray eyes and thick black eyelashes and shiny dark hair right down to her waist, that she wore tied back with a ribbon. But now, her eyes were sunk deep into her face, with dirty-looking shadows round, and her lovely hair all dull and as sparse as my own, which came out in handfuls.

  Meriam and Virginia and I walked back to the Breens’ cabin with the boys, and went in to visit
for a while. Their cabin was much neater and tidier than ours, for it had a proper wooden floor and a table to sit up at, and even a couple of benches that the previous inhabitant had left behind. Mrs. Breen gave us a morsel of bread and a cup of hot water with some little bit of sugar in it to share, and asked us our news. I told the Breens about all the deaths in our cabin, and they told us theirs. Mr. Spitzer had staggered into their cabin in the height of the storm, demented by the hunger, and had died begging for even a morsel of meat to taste before he died, but they had none for him.

  The other little bit of news was that in his delirium he had spoke of Mr. Wolfinger; and had begged mercy from God, for it was he had killed him.

  Mrs. Breen told me this last in a quiet voice, and said that she would like Mr. Keseberg to know that she was sorry to have doubted him, and would tell him to his face, when next she saw him.

  With Mr. Spitzer’s death, that left only three men in the camp. Milt Elliott was in the Breens’ cabin along with Mrs. Reed and her children, but he was on the point of death himself and of no use to anyone. The others were Mr. Breen, ill in bed, and Mr. Keseberg, who could hardly stand. So now there was no one but the two older Breen boys, Virginia and Meriam and me, to bury the dead.

  Baylis Williams had been buried with a song, and prayers said over his grave, and a wooden cross with his name on driven into the ground to mark his resting place. But those days were long behind us, and now we could do no more than lay the bodies on the ground at the edge of the camp, and shovel snow over them.

  * * *

  The steps that the boys had cut for us to get from our cabin up to the surface were hardly wide enough for one person to walk up. John carried little Harriet out of the cabin and up the steps easy enough, and Edward carried Margaret. But taking Mrs. Eddy from the cabin was a terrible thing.

  Her body was set rigid, and it took four of us to wrestle her to the surface. The boys went ahead, carrying her feet, and Mr. Keseberg and I held her arms. But Mr. Keseberg had not the strength to get up the steps with her, and there was not room for us to walk side by side.

 

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