Winterbound

by Margery Williams Bianco

  “You know, Garry,” Kay went on, setting the supper tumblers in an even row as she dried them, “I think it would do you a world of good if you took a little trouble to be friendly with the right kind of people when you get a chance. I don’t suppose you’re going to vegetate in the country all your life, and you’re old enough to take a little social interest in people if you’re ever going to.”

  “Don’t get on with them,” said Garry, wringing the dish mop out with a vicious twist.

  “You just don’t want to, that’s all.”

  Garry was thinking: “Don’t for heaven’s sake let’s have this all over again!” for it was an old grievance of Kay’s, though during the winter there had been little to bring the question up. Now, like the spring-time violets, it was rearing its head once more. Everyone couldn’t be the same. Kay got along with one kind of person, she herself with another, and that was all there was to it.

  There was a faintly noticeable change in Kay these days; she was a little bit on the defensive, a little bit—and rather suddenly—the grown-up sister. She was stricter with Caroline, more than usually fussy about the household generally. It was all a part of the change that had come over the whole hillside since the hammers first began to ring on the old house.

  “Just as I knew it would be,” Garry thought resentfully. “Everything comfortably settled and going along nicely, and then there’s got to be an upheaval. I wish city people would stay in the city. Once we thought this place was quiet and look at it now—it’s like an anthill!”

  She worked off much of her discontent in the garden—“eating worms,” as Mary Rowe called that particular frame of mind in which all the world seems out of joint—finding a contrary pleasure in wearing her oldest slacks and most disreputable sweaters, and taking comfort only in Emily, a consoling person whom one could never imagine, under any circumstances, shaken or influenced by whatever went on around her. Kingdoms might totter and skies fall, but Emily, thank heaven, would always remain the same. Emily and Mary Rowe, vastly different to the casual eye but alike in more ways than one, which was perhaps why they got along so well together.

  It was during the week of warm weather—almost like a bit of June tumbled out of place from the calendar—that Martin created a diversion.

  On Saturday morning he and Jimmie had set out early for a walk, with sandwiches in their pockets. Emily was enjoying one of her hard-working spells when the typewriter clanked incessantly; Kay, after an early lunch, had gone for a drive with Charles, and it was only at four o’clock that Garry, busy outdoors, realized with a start that neither of the boys had yet returned. She ran across the road, where Shirley and Caroline were playing.

  “They’re late,” said Mary, “but they’ll turn up. They were going to the Falls, back of the old Judd place, and they can’t get lost anywhere round there. I’d worry if there was one alone, but there’s two of them and they’ve both got sense. If they aren’t back by the time Neal gets in I’ll have him take the truck down along the road there and look for them.”

  Time went on, and still there were no boys. At five Garry began to get worried. She had gone back to look at the kitchen clock for the tenth time when Shirley and Caroline came flying across the road.

  “Jimmie and Martin are back, and Martin got bit by a snake up at the Falls and he’s got his leg all tied up and Jimmie says …”

  For a second Garry’s heart stood still. She saw Martin coming slowly up the path, a scared and white-faced Jimmie beside him, with Mary Rowe, almost as scared, at their heels. Martin’s stocking was pulled down; he had a blood-stained handkerchief twisted round his leg and it seemed to Garry’s horrified eyes that he swayed a little as he walked. Copperheads … was it Neal who had said once there were copperheads up at the Falls? Martin’s body felt already limp as she got him into a chair. There was a horrible sick feeling deep inside her, but her voice managed to sound steady.

  “What kind of snake was it, Martin? Did you see it?”

  “Of course I saw it—I had it in my hands. I don’t know what kind of snake it was. Anyway the darn thing bit me. Don’t be scared, Garry. I’ve fixed the bite anyway.”

  “It was a spotted adder!” Jimmie insisted.

  “It was not!”

  “It was too!”

  “Wasn’t I holding it? I ought to know. Get me the snake book, Garry.”

  Little by little the story came out. The boys had reached the Falls and had gone in wading before they ate their lunch. Martin had found the snake on a rock ledge where it had crawled out into the sunshine, half torpid still from its winter sleep. It seemed dead, and he was playing with it when it suddenly came to in the warmth of his hand, twisted round and bit him unexpectedly on his bare leg. Up till then apparently he had been quite positive it was a harmless snake, but after that bite he wasn’t so sure. Horrid doubts rose in his mind. He began to think maybe it wasn’t such a harmless snake after all; its very markings looked different. But he knew what to do, and being Martin, he was thorough about it. He pulled out his pocketknife, set his teeth, and began to hack. The knife was blunt, and by the time he was through and the handkerchief tourniquet tightly and professionally twisted, his leg was beginning to throb in real earnest, and it throbbed more and more as he limped down the road, leaning on Jimmie’s shoulder, to the farmhouse at the foot of the Falls, where they rested some time before the farmer drove them part way home in his car.

  “But that must have been hours ago! Why didn’t you telephone, do something! You mean you just sat there like two idiots, waiting for symptoms?”

  “Well, I …”

  “Well, we …”

  There seemed a gap here in the story; just what had happened no one could make out. Garry’s hands shook as she pulled the bandage off. There was a deep purple welt where the twisted linen had cut into Martin’s leg and below it a nasty-looking mess of crisscross slashes.

  “Shall I call the doctor?” Mary asked. “He has snake serum.”

  Caroline began to whimper, but Emily Humbold peered closely through her glasses.

  “H-m. Did it hurt much when it first bit you?”

  “It—no, it didn’t. I don’t remember. It just bit me.”

  “If it had been a poisonous snake you’d have felt it, all right; I know that much. Four hours ago. … I guess you’ll be spared to us, Martin.”

  Garry insisted: “Martin, listen. Are you perfectly sure you’d know a copperhead if you saw one?”

  “Of course would!” Martin sounded irritable and unsteady. “I tell you it wasn’t a copperhead; it was some other kind of snake. If you get me the darn snake book I’ll find it. It wasn’t till after it bit me that I thought maybe it looked kind of funny, and Jimmie got scared and the book says …”

  Emily chuckled.

  “That’s right—when you do a job, do it thoroughly! Better get some hot water and iodine, Garry, and we’ll wash this off.”

  Bathed and rebandaged, the wounded hero was left to rest on the sofa, poring over the snake book, while Caroline kept awed watch beside him. Emily went back to her typewriter. Garry, getting supper in the kitchen, turned an anxious eye from time to time towards the other room. In spite of Emily’s words she was still uneasy. There was something queer about Martin; the way he acted, the way he looked. His eyes seemed unnatural, his face flushed. Supposing Emily was wrong—supposing snake poison could begin to work hours afterwards? Caroline tiptoed in.

  “Garry, I wish you’d come and look at Martin. He’s breathing in an awful f-funny way!”

  Garry crossed the floor in two strides. Martin certainly was breathing in a funny way. The snake book had slipped to the floor; he lay with his face half burrowed into the sofa pillow, and when Garry shook him, gently at first, then harder, he only gave a faint groan.

  Coma … people did pass into a coma from snake venom. But it evidently wasn’t coma in Martin’s case. He sat up suddenly, stared at Garry with a greenish face, and thrusting her violently aside made a sudden
dash for the back door.

  It was at just that moment that Mary Rowe came hurrying over, opening the front door just as Martin disappeared at the back.

  “Garry—what’s the matter?”

  “It’s Martin. We’ve got to have the doctor! He’s been looking awfully queer and dopey, and just this minute …”

  Mary laughed.

  “That’s what I came over to tell you. Neal says don’t worry about Martin. When he and Jimmie got to telling about that house where they stopped it set me thinking, and I just got the whole truth out of Jimmie this minute. They told the man there what had happened and I guess you know what the first aid for snake bite is, anywhere in the country—corn whiskey or applejack—and that man had no more sense than to fill Martin up with it instead of calling a doctor or letting us know. That’s why they were so late coming back, only neither of them wanted to own up about it. I thought that story of just sitting in the house for three hours sounded fishy!”

  Garry drew a breath. “So that’s it! Mary, I was so scared!”

  “Well, you don’t have to be. Neal says there’s never been a copperhead found anywhere near the Falls since he can remember, and what bit Martin must have been a milk snake; they will if you handle them roughly, especially in early spring when they’re half torpid. I guess what really ailed him wasn’t the snake, it was the cure!”

  Martin recovered from both his remedies, selfinflicted and otherwise, with no worse reminder than a sore leg, and for several days no one was so inconsiderate as to mention snake bites in his presence. He and Jimmie were deep now in a new enterprise, the building of a cabin down by the little brook which ran through a corner of the Rowes’ wood-lot, in which they could retreat from the world and live the simple life all alone. Neal told them they might have the lumber from an old shed which he had long intended to tear down, in return for the work of cleaning the site up tidily after them; Mary promised them the disused laundry stove in the woodshed to cook over, and Garry a set of camp dishes, feeling that she owed Martin something for the lecture she had

  given him that evening in his bedroom after the snake episode. Building was in the air, and with a j ob of their own the boys were no longer hanging round the big house, interrupting the work and getting into mischief, a respite which Neal declared was cheap enough at the price of a bundle of shingles and a few pounds of nails.

  The general fever had taken Shirley and Caroline, too. Left out of this venture they took possession of the disused corncrib which had long been a bone of contention. The sides had been boarded over, the roof was fairly water-tight, and the girls promised Caroline the leftovers of wall paper when the upstairs papering was through. That task was in full swing now, and Caroline followed every movement jealously, sighing as the rolls diminished one by one, and casting anguished looks at each slash of the scissors.

  “We got two more rolls than it said to for your room, so there’ll be plenty left over, and you needn’t go pouncing on all those scraps and snippets as if they were so much gold! Here—you can have all these borders we aren’t using, now, only for the love of heaven take it off somewhere and get out of the way!”

  For with the lack of a stepladder Garry was perched uneasily on a soap box and a bedroom chair, which threatened at every moment to topple beneath her. Papering wasn’t quite such a simple job as it had seemed at first; the paste stuck to everything but the walls, and the lengths of paper, smoothed down carefully as they were hung, broke out next instant in creases and blisters that no coaxing and patting would reduce.

  “Don’t worry. All that is supposed to come out afterwards as it dries,” Kay remarked easily, looking on.

  “I hope it does! This piece looks worse than chicken pox. I got the other side pretty even. Penny’s room ought to be better. It’s got a small pattern and it’s easier to match.”

  Penny’s room had been left till the last, so they could have more practice in the meantime. It was Garry who did most of the actual work; Kay was better at laying paint on than in wrestling with refractory objects like wall paper and paste brushes, and there was only one paste brush at that, so her share was chiefly in holding the lengths up, which she could do more easily, being the taller, while Garry smoothed and patted.

  “It would be funny if after fixing this place all up we had to move right out of it,” Garry said, eyeing the last bare strip of wall in Caroline’s room.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, if they wanted the house back we’d have to. I was thinking of that this morning.”

  “I don’t believe they will. Charles wouldn’t be remodeling this house for another year or so. Maybe he won’t even then; he likes what we’ve done to it so much that I guess it’ll stay the way it is. Though it would be nice to have water piped down and a bathroom put in where the pantry is now, and if they’re going to get electric light carried up the hill …”

  Evidently Kay was changing her mind about the country considerably, in spite of what she might say about “vegetating.” But perhaps that only applied to the winters. Garry gave her a quick look, but all she said was:

  “No more frozen pumps! That would be a comfort, anyway.”

  Kay went downstairs to wash her hands and set the potatoes over for lunch; Garry pasted the last strip and hung it in place. The room looked nice with its gay rosebuds and little garlands. On the wall that was finished yesterday the paper lay smooth and taut, every telltale bubble vanished. She gave it a last critical look, set the windows wide open so the place could dry out, and went down to get in a precious half hour in the garden before midday.

  One third of the vegetable patch behind the house was already dug up and raked, and Garry had planted two rows of early peas that should be up in another week. There was lettuce two inches high in the cold-frame and she was longing for the time to set out the cabbage and cauliflower seedlings already growing rank and leggy in their boxes. No one round here planted garden before May, Mary Rowe said, but Garry had her own ideas about starting things early. Meantime there was plenty to do, for weeds were coming up thick and fast in her pet cold-frame along with the lettuce and radishes, and the last few days had given her no time to attend to them.

  It seemed she had barely settled down to work before Caroline came lagging round the corner of the house.

  “I wanted to go down by the brook where the boys are, and Martin an’ Jimmie are just awful mean and they started getting funny, and they say it’s their place, an’ Martin …”

  “Well, they’ve only got Saturdays and after school to work in, and I guess they don’t want you tagging round and hindering them,” Garry returned, feeling a strong sympathy just then with the young house builders who wanted to make the most of their free moments. “Go ahead and start fixing your own place; there’s plenty to do.”

  “We can’t till we get the wall paper. You said you’d make us paste this afternoon, and I thought maybe——”

  “Then think again! I’m not going to stop my work and make you paste right this minute, if that’s what you’re after. Can’t I get one half hour quiet to myself?”

  Caroline edged off before firing her parting shot.

  “Well, anyway I just came round by the kitchen an’ the potatoes have started to burn, so I guess …”

  Garry sat back violently on her heels.

  “Oh, Lord! Where’s Kay?”

  “I saw her going up the road a while back. I did pull the saucepan off, Garry, but I guess you better look at them.”

  “I guess I had!”

  Garry fled to the kitchen, where an only too-familiar smell of burned saucepan greeted her nose; the kitchen clock marked twelve-thirty. Creamed sauce still to make for the mince, and the salad not even prepared.

  “You think anyone wouldn’t walk off up the road without a word and leave potatoes to look after themselves all morning! What on earth’s got into Kay anyway, these days?” she muttered as she clattered round. “I’ll attend to all this. You go wash your hands, Carol
ine, and get the table set, quick. And then go up the hill and tell Kay dinner’s ready.”

  Everything was done, the cream sauce made, the rescued potatoes keeping hot in the oven, before Caroline returned, alone and important.

  “Where’s Kay? Did you find her?”

  “She said to go ahead and start. She an’ Charles …”

  “Mr. Bassett,” Garry corrected.

  “Well, you all call him Charles!”

  “What grown-up people do doesn’t include little girls. I suppose they were busy measuring or something.”

  “They weren’t busy either,” Caroline burst out. “If you want to know, they were just sittin’ out on a rock back of the house, going chu-chu-chu about nothing at all with their heads together, and when I told Kay dinner was ready all she said was to run along and not come bothering.”

  Garry drew a long breath, staring at the minced ham.

  “Heavens!” she thought to herself. “I wish Penny would hurry up and come back!”

  Kay’s Day

  AS a matter of fact there had been something rather odd about Penny’s letters lately. Usually she wrote long and gossipy accounts of everything, the people she met, all the little things that she and Peggy had been doing. But her last few letters had seemed unaccountably flat; tame notes referring to this and that but giving no particular news, except that everything was all right and she hoped to be home before long. If not exactly constrained they were so unlike her natural self that Kay grew quite concerned.

  “Isn’t she funny? She doesn’t mention a single thing that was in our last letters, and she must have had them by now. I just don’t make it out. She might tell us a little more.”

  “Maybe she’s just fed up with the place and can’t think of anything new to write about,” Garry suggested.

  Kay frowned. “The whole thing is so sort of detached and funny, but the writing looks all right. She couldn’t be having a nervous breakdown or something, and Peggy not wanting to tell us?”

  “Not Penny. I tell you, Kay, she’s been writing long letters all winter and now she’s suddenly got bored with it. That’s what it reads like to me. It’s the sort of stuff you write when you have to fill a page in and don’t know what to say. I’ve done it myself.”