And the night pass, and the strange morning break
Upon our anguish for each other’s sake.”
Even with the girls talking away on either side of me I soon had it by heart. “I was a child and you a hero grown.” I recited that to myself over and over again a hundred times.
Absorbed in the book, I was slow to realize something was wrong. The silence alerted me first—the mill girls had stopped their chattering. They sat straighter than before and looked out the window in absolute terror. These were farm girls and you could add to that whatever hard conditions they knew from the mills and yet they were terrified by the storm’s ferocity. The train had slowed down but if anything it rattled even more than it had when it was speeding and I realized it was from the wind—that the wind was blowing furiously, bringing with it the hardest, thickest, most malevolent snow I had ever seen.
We had left Brattleboro at one, which meant it must be four now and yet the dark was already total. The lights in the train went out and soon the heat failed, too. All the girls, dressed in their city best, began shivering. The conductor marched down the aisle with a grim expression, brushing off their questions. “Delay!” he shouted from the end of the car. “Dee . . . eee . . . lay!”
We finally started up again, the girls resumed chatting, but then it became like a giant was rapping his knuckles against the window while his dog grabbed us between its teeth, worrying us this way then that. After ten minutes we stopped again, this time for good.
There were sobs and screams from the flightier girls. They did not like that it was dark. The older ones seemed resigned, they were already unrolling their bundles searching for thicker clothes. I was warm in Alan’s coat but wanted to scream louder than any of them, just because I was so frustrated and worried. Not from the storm but the delay, what it would mean if I was marooned.
“How long will this be?” I asked the conductor on his next trip down the aisle.
“The drifts have us blocked.”
“I have to get home.”
“We’re here for the night, Miss. It will be cold but at least you’ll be safe. We have coffee brewing in the caboose and we’ll bring that around for you. I suggest that everyone make themselves comfortable.”
He said this kindly and his voice stayed calm. But I could not take that for an answer because if I did then everything, all the plans I had constructed so carefully, would come crashing down. Portents of doom were what the heroines of those novels I read as a girl were always experiencing—and now here it was my turn, the portents were real and powerful and bewildering, since I could not understand what the doom would consist of, only that it would come if I stayed on that train.
If we were three hours north of Brattleboro then it meant we had to be close to town where the high school was. The tracks were up high, exposed to the worst of the storm, but things would almost certainly be easier down on the main road. I wrapped the book up again, pressed it down into the coat’s deepest pocket, then walked quickly to the rear of the car so I would not have time to lose my nerve. The door was frozen, it took shoving to pry it open, but then I got my knee and shoulder against the edge and really pushed.
I tried letting myself down slowly but the steps were icy and I tumbled off. It did not hurt, the drift was so deep, but snow got down my collar and turned to ice water against my skin. I felt in my pocket for the book and felt reassured that it was safe. I had come down near the front of the train. The locomotive, so arrogant and unstoppable, had butted its snout into a drift three times as high, so it now looked very meek. Steam whistled from the stack but it sounded soft and plaintive, as if the engine were sobbing in mortification.
I slid down the embankment, spreading out my arms to keep from going too fast. There was a band of alders bent into hoops from the snow but I ducked through them and gained the road. The drifts were not as high as on the tracks, though the snow was still over my knees. There was a crossing gate festooned with icicles, but no sign of traffic—any autos would have been quickly swallowed. With the wind blowing from the south it meant I must keep my back to it in order to head north. I pulled the coat collar up high as it would go, but that left most of my hair exposed and the icy pellets soon made it feel like tangled lead.
Where the road rose the traction was treacherous and where it dipped the wind collected even thicker drifts. Every fourth or fifth step I had to stop and catch my breath, though that was hard with the cold squeezing my lungs. The wind made so much noise it was almost silent. It was like the locomotive had started up again, two locomotives, ten locomotives, they were speeding down icy rails right over my head, yet all I could sense of them was their rushing, belittling power, not their noise.
It was hard staying calm. The more exhausted I became the more my fancy started working on me and it was this loss of control that frightened me most. At one point I thought I saw a bonfire, imagined voices cackling in glee, decided it must be hobos, drunken hobos, so I turned away from the road and tried a detour through a swamp. That was a mistake and it took me a long time to grope my way back. In the willows ahead of me appeared a very still shape—a doe sinking to her knees, the weight on her forehead simply too much to bear.
I had read that to keep your courage up you should always whistle, but when I tried it my lips were far too cracked and dry. What worked better was remembering winters when I was little and how I used to walk back to the Hodgsons’ farm from the library reading a book the entire way. Miss Millay was in my pocket, I was not going to take her out, but I recited to myself the sonnet I memorized on the train. “Some granite night” was the phrase I kept saying, since I was up to my waist in one now, with snow as hard and sharp as shredded stone. It seemed to warm me, the literal truth of it, and then I remembered one of her couplets that helped even more. “Let us go forth together to the spring; Love must be this, if it be anything.” In my stupor, my exhaustion, it became my destination, the only thought my head would allow. I am going forth with my lover to the spring I told myself, over and over until it made no sense. Going forth. Forth. Forth to the spring.
I found another trick that helped. Instead of just carrying Miss Millay’s book, I convinced myself that I was carrying her in my arms, my newest friend, and she was light and lithe and yielding—not a burden but something that lightened my way.
I do not know how long it was before I saw my first light. I was reluctant to believe in it, since I was convinced I was hallucinating. Very tiny, no bigger than a match—a yellow flame, one that grew steadier, less lambent, the closer I got. The town! There were suddenly more lights, so it was like a Christmas tree had blown over and scattered its candles either side of the road. I knew I was safe now or could be if I went to one of the doors and knocked, but all the courage I found in myself was reluctant to just quit. Off in the distance, dark and blocky, I could make out the high school and past that came the first shops, but they were deserted in the storm and in some respects the last half mile I walked was the hardest and loneliest yet.
I had never been to his home before but I knew where it was. On the edge of town near the river, the last in a row of three. A cottage more than a house—it was snug and secret looking behind icy vines. A candle shone from an upstairs window, though there were no lights below. The knocker on the door was frozen so I used my hand. It was not long before Peter came to the door, wearing a silky green robe. He was surprised, but he got over that instantly, seemed ready to start teasing me about something, and then that expression changed, too, once he put the light on and looked at me, really looked at me. Shock, concern, tenderness. They blinked down his face in three successive flashes and I realized for the first time what walking through that storm had cost me.
“I’ve brought you this,” I said. I had practiced saying it all day.
I reached down into the coat pocket and brought out the book. I unwrapped it for him, though my hands shook from cold and something more than cold. He took it, stood staring down at it, and his smile, whe
n he looked back up again, was everything I had dreamed it would be.
“Beth,” he said, taking my hands, drawing me inside. “Dear Beth.”
He held the book up to the lamp, nodded, then very carefully placed it on the mantle over the fireplace and squared it away just so. All his concern was on me now. Outside, I had been able to force the cold away, but once I came into his parlor I began shivering uncontrollably and thought I would fall. He drew me over to the fire, turned me so I was facing it, my back toward him, then gently began removing my clothes. He started with the coat, which was stiff as armor, lifted off my blouse, his hands expert and tender, then kneeled so he could remove my skirt. He stood up again and from behind began kneading my bare shoulders transferring his warmth deep into my skin. After a few minutes I could sense his lips very close to my ear. “Can you remove everything else?” he asked. “I’ll be back when you’re ready. No, here—take this first.”
He stepped away, then came back with a thick woolen sweater. I nodded. I heard his footsteps going up the stairs and so I did what he told me to, took off the rest of my clothes and put his sweater on, which was thick and scratchy and fell down below my hips. The stairs squeaked again. I looked shyly up and there coming down the stairs beside Peter was Lawrence, wearing the same kind of silky green robe, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and not looking happy at all.
“Why hello there, Beth.”
It did not seem like the Lawrence I knew, or rather it seemed like him but in an exaggerated form. His expression managed to be arrogant and coy and jealous and friendly all at once. He and Peter had brought blankets which they wrapped around me, then led me gently but firmly over to the couch. Peter left for a moment, then came back with a mug of tea. The two of them sat beside me in their matching robes, none of us saying anything but staring toward the fire, the only sound in the room being the crackle of its flames. I was confused, it combined with the cold to make me dizzy, and then when the blankets and tea did their work there was just the confusion. I remember seeing Lawrence’s school books on the table and thinking that they had not just been casually dropped but stood between bookends like they had been there a very long while.
“You need to sleep now,” Peter said. Never had I seen his eyes look kinder. He shooed Lawrence off the couch so there was room for me, then put his arms under my legs and lifted me around. I was exhausted, I must have fallen asleep before they disappeared upstairs, but I kept my eyes open just long enough to see Peter come back to the mantle and take the poems.
When I woke up it was still dark though the clock read seven. Christmas Eve. I rubbed at the frosty window and saw golden Venus. My clothes were draped over a chair by the fire and were warm when I put them on. Before leaving I walked around the room making sure to tiptoe. There were not as many books as I thought there would be, but almost every one was folded open and turned upside down as if they were all being read simultaneously. Other than that, there was not very much. Mementos of his time in France. A few French coins. A cheap plaster replica of a saint. Ivory cufflinks. A phrase book issued to officers. Medals, scattered across the bookcase with the lesser souvenirs.
I was lucky because the rollers had already been over the road and I was able to walk on the crust. The morning milk train had not yet left and the trainman waved me back toward the caboose. There was less snow on the tracks the further north we went and by the time we got to town there was hardly any snow at all. This frightened me, though I could not say why. That despite the blizzard it had not snowed here even a little.
When I climbed down from the caboose I saw Alan’s truck. He got out, walked around the front, held the door open. “I’ve been waiting here all night,” he said when I got in. “I knew you would come back and I didn’t want to miss you.”
He tried saying this tenderly, but it came out as an accusation. He looked colder, more exhausted than I did, but when I tried giving him his coat he wouldn’t take it.
“I knew you would come back, Beth.”
Three times he said this which could only mean he had been saying it to himself all night. We drove to the house without saying much more besides that. Mr. Steen’s automobile was parked out in front. Alan did not seem surprised to see it there. “Go in,” he said, again trying to sound gentle, but nervousness had him now and it came out rough.
Mr. and Mrs. Steen stood waiting in the back parlor, here against this wall where I can still sense their shapes. Mr. Steen had a new coat for Christmas made of fur and it seemed to shrink him, make him smaller, like an animal withdrawing into his pelt. Mrs. Steen had a new coat, too, and it was as thin and cheap as his was expensive and plush. And yet it seemed to enlarge her. She acted excited and not in a good way—never had I seen her eyes shine so bright. But enlarged is not the proper word. She looked bigger than that, more satisfied, as if she had swallowed hate for breakfast. She looked engorged.
Alan had walked me into the room but now he separated himself and stood with his parents against the wall so it seemed like I was facing a jury.
“Where were you last night?” Mr. Steen demanded, with no preliminary.
I was not afraid to stare them down.
“In town,” I answered. “I was trapped there by the snow.”
“What snow?” Alan and his father asked simultaneously. Mrs. Steen, for her part, stared toward the window and the brilliant blue sky.
“The blizzard. I couldn’t walk any further. Peter Sass took me in.”
Mr. Steen scratched his belly under his coat. “Why would he do that?”
I knew if I told them about the book they would not understand and if they did understand then they would hate me. I said nothing.
Mr. Steen’s bullying instincts took over now, making his chest and shoulders swell back up to their normal size.
“The Jew? The radical? The agitator?”
I stared him straight in the eye. “He took me in. I brought him a book as a gift.”
I could not help saying that, though I regretted it immediately—the hate in their eyes went deeper than anything I had seen so far.
“Tell the truth, Beth,” Alan said. He bowed his head, preparing himself for the worst.
Mr. Steen cut him off. “Oh, a book is it? A married woman visits a bachelor’s bedroom in the middle of the night to read him a book? A pretty name for it. A book!”
“Nothing happened.”
“You lie!”
I should have fought back harder, gone over and spat defiance right straight into his face, but I was still exhausted from fighting the snow. Weakness made me desperate and more than anything I needed someone’s help.
“Lawrence was there. He can tell you about it. Ask him.”
Alan looked puzzled. “That boy in your class? Lawrence?” He turned to his father. “There’s a boy in her class named Lawrence.” He tried remembering what I had said about him. “Very handsome. Very smart.”
Mr. Steen was slow to take this new fact in. I could see his brain working—he even rubbed his hand on his forehead to help it along.
He spoke very slowly and more to his wife than to me. “A school boy. At the teacher’s house. At midnight. A pretty schoolboy.”
He then did something I had never seen him do before—he put his arm around Mrs. Steen’s shoulders and drew her close. They talked too soft and fast for me to make out what they said. Alan was part of the conference, too, though he only ducked his chin toward them without speaking. After a long time their heads split apart again and Mr. Steen began buttoning up his coat.
“Stay here,” he said. “Mother Steen will keep you company.”
He took Alan’s arm and guided him out through the hall. A few seconds later we could hear Alan’s truck cough to life. Mrs. Steen was furious she had been left behind. She stared with enough intensity to pin me to the wall. “Don’t move!” her eyes commanded, and then I heard her spitting into the telephone out in the hall. When she returned she was almost beside herself from excitement. She paced back
and forth across the floor muttering to herself the way she must have when speaking in tongues. The words oozed from her neck like they always did, only this time they seemed covered in gristle and blood.
“Just a good scare is it? Just a good scare? You’ll miss the fun you will. Stay here they say, watch the girl they say, no place for a woman. No place for a woman? No place? No other place. No other place! Just a good scare? We’ll have a party with just a good scare. Women aren’t invited, women can’t watch? Women can’t watch? We’ll watch our fill, the good Lord will watch with us.”
The angrier she grew the faster the words came out, to the point I could no longer understand. After a few minutes a horn sounded out on the road. She grabbed my wrist, not bothering to be gentle and pulled me after her outside. A black truck was waiting, shabbier than Alan’s, driven by a man I recognized as one of the roughest of Mr. Steen’s loggers, feared for the way he used his belly as a weapon during brawls. Mrs. Steen hurried over and issued her instructions, jabbing his stomach in emphasis. He nodded, got behind the wheel, and then Mrs. Steen grabbed me by the hair and forced me onto the back seat next to her.
Mr. Steen’s man drove east toward the village, which puzzled me, and I only became frightened when we reached the main road and swerved south. Mrs. Steen kept urging him to go faster. The road was clear but then we came to where the snow had fallen and he had to stop and put on chains. Mrs. Steen, if she noticed the snow, said nothing. While she waited for the man to finish she drummed her knuckles on the back of the seat and stared toward the steering wheel as if debating whether to take over. She cuffed him on the back of his neck because he drove too slow and cursed him when he skidded. For an hour we drove that way. We passed the high school. We came to the railroad tracks and the river and then suddenly I knew where we were heading.
Trucks had trampled down the snow and parked atop their own dirty tracks. A child’s shredded kite, forgotten in the summer, stuck out of the drifts like a yellow marker showing which way to walk. Mrs. Steen walked on one side of me and the driver on the other so there was no chance of my bolting. There was a band of birch trees, then an abrupt ridge, and it was not until we crested this that we could see the river. It was the color the deepest cold can take on without actually freezing—gray beyond gray, so it was impossible to look at without shuddering. There were icebergs, too, long swelling humps, and they bobbed up and down in the current like racing ponies.
The Writing on the Wall: A Novel Page 9
