Ice Carnival

by Spaeth, Janet

  “I love parades, especially when the band comes by, marching together and playing at the same time. If I were in it, I’d probably tromp right into the fellow next to me. I don’t see how they can do both and not topple all over each other.” She shook her head.

  The crowd shouted, and Christal leaned forward as far as she could, with Isaac holding on to her so she didn’t fall.

  The parade had started.

  Leading the way was the police department, dressed warmly in their winter uniforms. They strode confidently, handsome and strong with their navy blue coats with brass buttons. Two of them were members of the church, and Christal waved at them.

  Then came the parade marshal and his troupe. “He looks so proud,” she said to Isaac, “doesn’t he?”

  “He looks cold,” he said with a laugh. “But he’s probably got a lot to be pleased with. He—”

  The arrival of the Great Western Railroad band cut off whatever Isaac was about to say. Christal clapped along with the songs as they played their way down the street. The music filled the winter day with melodies and marches.

  “Oh, look at her!” Christal said as the band passed them and a sleigh with Clemence Finch in it drew near. “She’s the carnival queen, and the daughter of George Finch, the organizer.”

  Clemence Finch was beautiful as she waved at the people along the street. Her curls glowed like burnished gold under her hat, and her short red coat was bright in the sunshine.

  “I’ve heard she’s wearing the Nushka toboggan team’s jacket,” Isaac said.

  Christal sighed. She knew she shouldn’t be envious—it was a sin—but it must be so much fun to wear a jacket like that and ride in a sleigh in a parade and be the carnival queen. Some things, though, were simply out of the reach of a minister’s daughter.

  After the sleigh came the governor, the mayor, and other dignitaries, looking stiff and formal in their long coats. Yet under the stately top hats, Christal noticed, the men all beamed happily.

  Then came the sports clubs. Snowshoe clubs, toboggan clubs, and ski clubs—they all celebrated winter with great gusto. One club, the Ice Bears, brought shotguns that they fired every few minutes into the air. Christal kept a watchful eye on them and held her hands over her ears as they walked past. It didn’t seem safe at all, but no one else appeared to worry.

  A huge sleigh, shaped like a ship, followed the clubs. Finally, the firemen, postmen, military men, and members of the horseshoe and curling clubs ended the parade.

  Christal sighed happily. Here she was watching a parade with Isaac, the man who was courting her.

  “What did you think of your first parade?” Christal asked him.

  “It was amazing,” Isaac said.

  “Wasn’t it?” Her mind was filled with the images and sounds from the parade. “I wouldn’t have changed a thing.”

  “I would.”

  “What would you have changed?” she asked in astonishment.

  He pretended to shiver. “I’d have had it indoors!”

  Nine

  The days until the carnival were filled with parades and great speculation about the ice palace. Christal had heard murmurs about what it was going to be like, but none of it seemed to be at all possible. The construction was finally beginning, but the majority of it would be done quickly, right before the start of the carnival.

  “An ice-skating rink?” Isaac said one evening as they sat in the parlor eating his uncle’s gingerbread. Now that they were officially courting, the older family members left them alone more, although Christal had seen some inquisitive faces peeking around door frames throughout their evenings together.

  “Maybe it’s a very small ice-skating rink.” Christal took a bite of the gingerbread.

  “You mean the size of one that might be in someone’s yard?” he asked.

  “One summer when I was nine, one of my friends and I decided that we would make a wading pool behind our house. We dug and dug, and finally we had a fairly respectable hole.”

  “Your parents were supportive of it?”

  “I’m not sure they understood the scope of our plan,” she admitted. “Remember, this is me, the same person who had a pet toad. Anyway, we decided the pond needed fish, so we went down to the river, and after getting our clothes snagged on dead trees and our feet ripped up on rocks, we managed to capture a couple of little fish.”

  He leaned back, smiling as he listened.

  “We got back to the house and realized that we had a bit of a problem. The water we’d put in our pool, all painstakingly carried bucket by bucket from the well, had run out. There was nothing there but a mud hole.”

  “That doesn’t sound good,” he commented.

  “It wasn’t. My parents got upset when they saw what a mess we’d created. They made us take the fish back to the river and let them go, and we tried to fill in the hole, but mud has a mind of its own. No matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t get the ground level again.”

  “Especially if you’re only nine years old.”

  “Exactly. Plus every time it rained, it got worse. It never dried out the rest of the summer. That winter, though, we had a wonderful area for ice-skating back there, so it wasn’t a total loss.”

  “So you think that the ice-skating rink at the ice palace is going to be the same thing?” he asked.

  “I think it’ll be planned a bit better,” she said, laughing.

  Her father cleared his throat from the doorway. “We’ve had just about enough of hiding out in the kitchen. It’s time for us to go home, Christal.”

  She popped the last of the gingerbread into her mouth. “Waste not, want not. But I’ll still want more later on.”

  “Dr. Bering gave your mother a platter of it,” Papa said, “so I think you’ll live through the night. Isaac, you’re going to the opening of the ice palace?”

  “Christal and I are going to it as soon as the last patients leave. You know that I was a doubter all along, but I’ve been impressed so far with what I’ve heard and seen of the Winter Carnival. Tomorrow will be the pinnacle. First, though, we’ll go to the last parade of the carnival. I hear it’s going to be quite a spectacle.”

  “I’ve been told the same thing. Christal, shall we?”

  As they proceeded to the entryway, Christal hung back to walk beside Isaac. Their fingertips brushed and intertwined.

  Courting, she thought, was really quite wonderful.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said at the door. “Finally, the carnival!”

  As soon as she got home, she said good night to her family and went to her room. She had to be alone with her thoughts.

  Had her life ever been such an odd mixture?

  She was in love, and yet mixed in with her great happiness was great sadness.

  Within eight—no, seven!—months she would be on her own. A huge wall of loneliness loomed ahead of her. What would she do without her parents and her aunt? And Dr. Bering?

  She probably could, if she fought hard enough, go with her parents on their missionary trip, but even as she considered the idea, she dismissed it. The reason was simple: If she were with her parents, she wouldn’t be with Isaac.

  She wanted them all to stay together, for everything to remain exactly as it was now. That would be perfect.

  “Perfectly unrealistic,” she said in disgust.

  No, what was going to happen was going to happen, and she needed to acknowledge that.

  Or she could not think about it at all. At least not tonight. Maybe after the carnival, when the world got bleak again, she would deal with it. Right now, though, life in St. Paul was exciting and vivid, and she was going to enjoy it.

  She pulled a book off her shelf and plumped up the pillows on the bed before plopping down to read. It was a European legend in a collection of stories she had borrowed from the library, and in it there were a king and a queen and a prince and a princess and a palace. Within moments she had left frozen Minnesota and was on the French countryside, astr
ide a white steed.

  In this story, no one left the princess, and they all lived happily ever after.

  She got to the end of the book, closed it, and clasped it to her chest. “God,” she said softly, “do fairy tales ever come true? Or is that why they’re called ‘tales,’ because they don’t?”

  ❧

  “And so, we’re off to the last parade of the carnival!” Isaac announced to his uncle. “I have to say I’ve become quite a fan of these events, but I am looking forward to viewing one in the summer! Are you ready? I’ll go next door and—”

  Ruth Everett burst in. “I’m sorry for not knocking, but it’s John. Come quickly. I’ll get Sarah, and we’ll meet you there.”

  Isaac and his uncle looked at each other, and each seized his medical bag and threw on jackets and sped out the door, racing to John Lawrence’s house.

  The man was on his chair, his eyes shut. Aristotle flew from one corner of the room to the other, cawing with great agitation.

  Uncle Alfred dropped to his knees beside Mr. Lawrence and put his fingers aside the sick man’s throat. “His pulse is thready but there. Help me.”

  They lifted Mr. Lawrence and carried him to the couch where they stretched him out. Isaac straightened the sick man’s arms and legs and rubbed them, trying to generate blood flow.

  Uncle Alfred raised Mr. Lawrence’s torso, placing pillows under his chest and head. He then covered his extremities with a light blanket. “Let’s make it as easy for him as possible. He’ll breathe more comfortably if he’s on an incline, but you’re right to massage his extremities.”

  With his stethoscope, Isaac checked the patient’s heartbeat and respiration. “I don’t know,” he said to his uncle. “Would you listen?”

  The older doctor did, and rocking back on heels, he said, “The congestion is thick.”

  “What do you think?” Isaac asked, afraid to hear the answer.

  His uncle only shook his head.

  Ruth came in with Mrs. Everett. “We’ll be in the kitchen if you need anything. Tea? Coffee?”

  “Tea would be good, thank you.” Uncle Alfred’s voice was calm, and Isaac was reminded of what one of his professors had said, warning them about upsetting the patient with their tone of voice. Stay calm, the professor had said, to keep the patient calm.

  John Lawrence’s breathing became labored, with longer periods between each inhalation. Isaac leaned over and again placed his stethoscope against the man’s chest. The rattle was unmistakable. Isaac had read about it, the death rattle, but this was the first time he’d heard it.

  Without a word, Uncle Alfred lifted the blanket that covered the man’s feet. The skin was mottled, nearly blue and white. He met Isaac’s eyes and rewrapped the man’s feet.

  “Lord of all we know, this is Your blessed servant, John Lawrence. He has been Your own from his first breath, and now as he undertakes his last journey to Your arms, we ask that You hold him tightly in Your arms. Cradle him now as You did when he came to us at his birth.”

  The man coughed a bit, and Uncle Alfred wiped his lips and swabbed his mouth with water.

  Isaac took the old man’s hand in his own. It was cold, an indication that Mr. Lawrence was nearing his final moments on earth. His eyes filled with tears. How could he let this man go, after all he had done to try to pull him through? How did his uncle do this, praying the patient into heaven? He knew that Mr. Lawrence was old, and that there wasn’t anything they could have done to save him from death. Yet it didn’t soften the loss. He barely knew Mr. Lawrence, but in the short time he had known him, he’d taken him to his heart because of the older man’s gentle ways and true faith. Isaac truly believed that this man was going into heaven, that he was stepping upwards as the culmination of a life of faith, but how was he to manage? What was he supposed to do?

  Uncle Alfred wiped the man’s face again and hydrated his lips. “You’ve had a good life, John,” he said, “and I know that you are bound for Glory. You—”

  The man lifted his head, and his face broke into a beaming smile. “Maryanne!” he said in a long exhalation. He held the posture, and time stood still until at last he smiled even more widely and dropped back upon the pillow.

  Uncle Alfred ran his fingers over the man’s face and looked at Isaac. “It’s all right to cry.”

  Isaac realized that his face was wet, and he put his head in the palms of his hands. Sob after sob wracked his body as he sat at the bedside.

  His uncle stood and made his way around the bed to put his hands on Isaac’s shoulders. “This seems like a loss, but it’s a win. He’s going to heaven. I know that. You know that.”

  Isaac reached out and touched Mr. Lawrence’s face. So this was what death looked like. It looked quite a bit like life, as if he were still breathing.

  “Uncle Alfred!” he shouted. “Uncle Alfred! He’s not dead!”

  “No,” John Lawrence mumbled. “Not dead.” He took a deep breath, coughed, and breathed again.

  His uncle laughed and rubbed the wizened hands of the elderly man. “You old codger! I thought you’d gone to your heavenly reward!”

  Mr. Lawrence opened his eyes a slit and smiled slightly.

  “Do you know that you went right to that door of heaven, my friend? I suspect you even peeked in between the posts, just to see.” Uncle Alfred laughed again. “I think you’ll have many more days with us.”

  Ruth and Mrs. Everett rushed in from the kitchen. “What is all the noise about?”

  Aristotle resumed his frantic flights across the room, squawking at the women.

  “God wasn’t quite ready for our friend.” Uncle Alfred turned to Isaac. “Sometimes we’re fooled as doctors. We think we know exactly how life is going to go, how death is going to go, and we are wrong. This is one of those instances. Remember that in all things, God is the One who is in control. He wasn’t ready for John to advance to heaven. Not yet.”

  The crow flapped over to the couch and plucked a button off his owner’s shirt.

  “God looks after this crazy crow as much as He does his owner, and I guess He wasn’t ready for one without the other,” Ruth said with a fond smile.

  “Aristotle,” John Lawrence said, lifting his hand. The bird jumped onto it, bit the man’s knuckle, and flew off to the top of the bookcase.

  “That,” said Mrs. Everett, “is love.”

  His uncle decided to stay a bit longer, and Christal’s mother volunteered to sit with Mr. Lawrence. “You and Ruth go ahead,” Mrs. Everett said. “Take Christal to the carnival.”

  The carnival! He’d forgotten all about it.

  Ruth Everett had her hand on the door when he went to leave.

  “To walk with you, Ruth Everett, I’ll even button my coat and put on my hat and gloves.”

  Christal’s aunt laughed. “You’re a quick study, Isaac.”

  As they walked back together, she told him stories of her youth, of the good times they’d all had, ice-skating and sledding and having snowball fights.

  “It was as if we were crazed to have our last moments of wildness before putting on the heavy garments of adulthood. We played, we gamboled. . .”

  “You gambled?” He couldn’t imagine her with a pair of dice or a deck of cards in her hand, not now, not as a young woman. “I can’t see you at a game of chance, gambling.”

  She laughed. “Gamboled with an o. As in, we frolicked. We reveled. We celebrated whatever could be celebrated. And probably some things that couldn’t. You know what it’s like.”

  Actually, he didn’t. Having spent his entire youth as a somber, study-absorbed child, going to college simply moved him to the next stage of the same behavior. The thought of letting himself act so freely ran contrary to the way he was.

  He couldn’t gambol or gamble.

  He realized that she was watching him with a puzzled look on her face. “You didn’t, did you?”

  He cleared his throat. “Didn’t what?”

  “Didn’t enjoy the carefree d
ays of childhood.”

  This was wrong. He drew himself up straighter and protested, “I did. I had a wonderful childhood.”

  “Oh, Isaac, I didn’t mean that!” Her hand flew up to her neck and fluttered around the knot of the scarf like a wizened sparrow. Her face was wrinkled with concern. “I know your family was wonderful. Alfred has spoken often of the kindness of your mother and the love your father shared with his children.”

  “I was a somber child, and I am a somber adult,” he said. “It just simply is not in my nature to be merry and convivial.”

  She stood on the street, studying him with her head cocked to one side, until at last she said, “Well, we will have to change that.”

  He felt himself sagging inside. He wasn’t the center of attention at social gatherings; in fact, he was rarely at social gatherings. The most he could manage was church, and he shuddered as he recalled the first service he attended when he’d had to meet everyone. He’d made it through that situation only through the literal grace of God—and a certain scripture. The fact was that he didn’t like wrestling with God. It was so much easier to stand firm on what was comfortable for him, to assert that this was, after all, the way God had made him and the way God had established the world around him.

  He’d been ridiculously pleased, though, when he’d forced himself to greet the people at the church. To tell the truth, it wasn’t as if he’d had any choice. Once Christal’s father had announced his presence and invited them all to say hello to him, he’d had little opportunity to slide out unnoticed.

  “Everybody needs to savor the gifts we’ve been given,” Ruth said. “Even if we’re just sitting in the sunshine or enjoying the grace of snowflakes floating to earth, we need to acknowledge and appreciate the wonders.”

  “I don’t have time—” he began, but she interrupted him.

  “Even a moment is enough. Understanding that simple beauty is really not simple at all is important. It comes from our Creator. Think, Isaac, if you had made a daisy, a little common daisy, wouldn’t you be incredibly pleased? And wouldn’t it be nice if someone said, ‘Good job, Isaac’?”