“Let us thank him for our food,” Judith finished.
“Ah-men,” Mother said. Mary and Joseph and Judith all said the same, repeating “Ah-men” after Mother in the same solemn way. A strong blast of wind shook the kitchen, rattling the windowpane in its frame. The wind whistled in the stovepipe. The walls vibrated around them as if the house were flying through the air. They could hear the screech of the weather vane as it swung to meet the wind.
“They’re singing now,” said Papa, tearing his eyes from the stained ceiling. “Wind’s turned.” He poured the tea into the mugs and rested his gaze on Mary.
Mary’s toes were cold. A draft went right through her sweater too. She thought of the stable and the angels, and shepherds bowing before heavenly messengers. “I hear them,” she whispered. “I do.”
“Who?” Joseph asked.
“Mother,” said Judith, sounding offended. “Just this morning Mary was saying she didn’t want to go to church.”
Mary started at the sound of her name. There was the familiar triumph in Judith’s pinched face. Mary looked down at her plate. She wanted to eat now. She didn’t want to see the disapproval on Mother’s face, nor the approval on Papa’s. She didn’t want either of them to ask why she would or would not want to stay home. Why did Judith have to be so mean? Couldn’t she be nice for a few minutes on Christmas morning?
“Who?” Joseph repeated, mouth full. Somehow a smear of butter had reached his forehead, slicking both eyebrows upward. He looked surprised by everything.
“Don’t speak with your mouth full,” Judith said. Prim as could be, she cut a small piece of pancake and bit it gently.
Papa looked at Judith with the blankest of expressions. The calf, whenever Mary offered him hay, always looked at her like this. She knew this was because calves ate only milk. Mary felt afraid. Papa sighed.
Suddenly the tension annoyed Mary even more than Judith and all her finking did. “I’ll want to go if you want me to, Mother,” she said.
“What I want isn’t important, obviously.” Picking up her mug of tea with both hands, Mother took a slow sip and then turned her gray eyes to Papa. “It’s Christmas, and the children need to go. We all do.”
“In a near blizzard.” He stated it flatly, again like a calf.
“In a near blizzard,” she answered, just as flatly. “If need be.”
“I have to go,” said Judith. “I’m in the play.” Her eyes rolled back and forth over her milk glass, as if measuring the distance between her mother and her father.
Mary thought of the peacefulness of them all snuggled warmly under the quilts in the sleigh. It would be better than this. “Let’s go, Papa,” she urged.
Joseph was standing on his chair. His hands were planted flat on the table, and he still looked surprised as he leaned over his plate and shrieked, “WHO!?”
Chapter 3
“Whoa, Clyde,” Papa said, pulling on the reins. Clyde and his cutter-load of people came to a sliding stop before the fence surrounding the playground. Papa threw back the quilts and hopped out. Cold air rushed over Mary’s legs. Joseph wiggled with excitement beside her. Papa walked forward, patting Clyde’s withers as he went along the shaft.
“Lots of people here, I see,” Mother said.
Papa looked back, and so did Clyde, his breath streaming out in two long funnels. He was breathing fire. He was a dragon on the prowl, searching the street for tasty children, and there were a few. Papa just shook his head.
But it was true. Many children with their parents were coming together at the little schoolhouse, a building located on the edge of town. Some were parking horses and sleds in the drive-in shed of the church next door. Some were walking up the street from the heart of Davidson. Across the road a man was blowing on his fingers and putting his head under the upright hood of his car. Two walkers bent forward into gusts of wind rushing around the grain elevator, which was a tall ghostly gray rising into the snow-swirled heavens. Scarves and arms flapped in the wind. Mary wondered if everyone would find a place to sit. The schoolhouse contained only a single large room.
Giving Clyde’s head a scratch, Papa tied the lead rope to a post. Only then did he call back “Okay!” He returned and pulled a canvas nosebag of oats and a dirty blanket out from under the seat of the cutter. The blanket he threw over the horse’s wet gray back.
Papa took a long slow look at the nosebag, fingering its old canvas thoughtfully before passing its strap over the big horse’s high ears. The bag smothered the cones of steam puffing from Clyde’s nostrils. The dragon became a plain old workhorse again, hitched to an old sled and wearing an old blanket that sailed off in the wind. Papa caught the blanket and wedged it between the shafts and Clyde’s flanks. He knotted its corners into the harness.
Meanwhile Mother, on the other side of Judith, slid out and hurried her children from the cutter. They had to step carefully because the drift was high, well over the children’s knees. “Watch out for each other,” she said. “And stay clear of the traffic.” Horses and sleighs trampled and swished past them all around the snow-swept yard.
“Hello, Ray!” shouted a man just driving by. He turned his horse and cutter into the deep drift before the next parking post. “How’s my old gelding doing? Still pulling?”
“Pulling good, George!”
As Papa and George began a conversation over Clyde’s broad rump, exposed and steaming due to the horse-blanket being too small, Mother pulled the children away. Mary heard no more of what they said. “We have to hurry to get a seat,” Mother said.
Though she was nervous about all the people, Mary felt eager to meet them and jealous too. Judith was allowed to come here for school while she had to wait practically another year. She had often complained about the unfairness of it. “A whole ’nother year,” Mary said, looking at the schoolhouse longingly. She hadn’t been inside the place since last summer, when Papa had shown her the desk and bench where he’d sat as a boy.
“Talking to yourself now too?” Judith said.
Mary smelt wood smoke then, a brief whiff swallowed by the wind. The chimney was a rusty pipe shoved up into a white sky. But she could see no smoke. That tireless wind rushed everything away into the fluid and stormy morning.
“Must you dawdle, Mary? Come along.” Mother pulled Mary’s mitted hand sharply, then dropped it and stooped to pick up Joseph. “You two girls hold hands,” she said over her shoulder. “And don’t dawdle.”
Judith held Mary’s hand and dragged her along until Mother’s back was turned. Then she pushed Mary off into a drift beside the path. Mary stepped onto the path again to follow at her own pace. She felt a spot of cold where snow entered her shoe through the big crack. Rather, it entered Judith’s shoe. Near the entrance, Mary joined the line to mount the steps.
Judith was whining to Mother, “But she wouldn’t keep up.”
Not for the first time, Mary wished she had no sister. Everything would be easier without Judith. Don’t cry now, she told herself, feeling her eyes prickle. Not on Christmas morning, and not in front of Judith. She looked away, wiped a disobedient tear from her eye and thought instead about her new shoes. They’d be waiting under the tree at home. Brand-new shoes of her very own.
They went into the schoolhouse and sat through the Christmas program. A confusing sea of big heads and red ears and wide hats with feathers turned with every action as students became biblical characters or helped with props. Two children holding up a curtain edged sideways to reveal an angel that Mary did not know. The angel told the Virgin that she would have a baby. The angel seemed nice. Mary expected that by this time next year, she and the angel would be friends. When asked about a room for the night, a ten-year-old innkeeper opened his mouth eagerly, croaked and shook his head without saying a word. The manger was filled with real hay but surrounded by strange-looking beasts like a cow that coughed, a sheep that hiccuped and a big-eared donkey that forgot itself completely and barked. There was no sign of Judith anywhere
. Mary guessed the play must be going all wrong.
A rag-doll Jesus was produced, visited by jostling shepherds and sparkle-winged angels and turbaned wise men. The story took them from Bethlehem to Egypt, and on to Nazareth. The actors seemed lost. They milled about on stage and then stopped to stare down at something. No, someone.
As if commanded by the staring actors, the minister rose to his feet. He was laughing and applauding. Everyone clapped, and he led them in a Christmas carol. All the people sang, “Silent night, holy night, all is calm…” Mary sang too. The words floated upward with great feeling and got caught in the rafters, where before there was only the constant shriek of wind.
The minister prayed aloud, asking “blessings for every soul present” and closing, as he said, “quite a busy hour.”
They filed outside, where Papa was waiting on the porch. “That storm’s getting worse, Ruth. Look, the cathedral’s all gone now.” His thick arm pointed to where the grain elevator should have stood. The same arm swooped down to pick up Mary. Groaning over houses and horses and cars and people, the wind stretched along the wide street to its unseen end.
How did snow and wind make a tall elevator vanish? Another good question for the teacher. Under her breath, Mary began to sing, “Silent night, holy night, all is calm...”
“Aren’t we going to the angle cans, Papa?” Joseph asked. His short arms were clasped around Mother’s neck.
“Who?”
“Reverend Bartle said they were having a special communion service,” explained Mother. “The Anglicans are inviting everyone to come and join them, and then there’s a potluck lunch and games back here at the schoolhouse.”
“And you want to go,” mumbled Papa. He blinked uneasily up at the flakes of snow tumbling everywhere overhead. Nothing at all was visible beyond the tethered horses. “We get stuck here, Ruthie, there sure won’t be no room at the inn.”
Mother looked up at the peak of the schoolhouse. Snow was driving off it beautifully. “No, better not, I guess.”
Mother glanced down at Judith. She looked very small with her head so far below them all. “You couldn’t have spared a minute to come in and watch Judith do her part?” Mother asked. She turned to lead the way down the path.
“I was there, standing at the back, wasn’t I, Judith?”
Judith was being herded forward between her two parents. “I didn’t see you,” she said sullenly.
Papa smiled into Mary’s face and said, “Well, I suppose sheep are built to stare at the floor. That’ll be why you didn’t see me. But I was standing there, thinking, By gosh and by golly, she is a sheep, without a doubt.”
“A sheep with hiccups!” Mary said, laughing as she realized where Judith had disappeared to during the play.
“Is it that you’re ashamed to sit with us, then?” Mother threw her words forward, out into a little squall of flakes funneling up before her.
Mary looked at Papa. Was he ashamed of them?
He smiled. He wasn’t going to be angry. He gave Mary a squeeze. “Just catching up on the gossip is all, Ruthie.”
They arrived at the cutter. “What gossip?”
“Johnson says there’s gonna be a war.”
“He wants a war just to market his grain.”
“I guess he hears it all on the radio.”
Papa swept the snow from the single cold bench, and Mother tucked the children in. Clyde looked miserable. A snowdrift lay on his back, and icicles hung from his mane. His chin was thrown out bleakly. But at least the bag was off his face. He breathed large dragon breaths again.
Papa untied Clyde’s blanket and lead line and backed him out of the row of sleighs. The snow squeaked under Clyde’s hooves and under the cutter’s runners too. Horses up and down the line, envious of the chance to move and yearning for their own warm barns, turned milky brown eyes toward them. A man two horses down waved. “Are you sure?”
Papa shouted back, “Can’t afford it is all!”
“The Depression is over! The paper says so!”
“Oh, I don’t believe that, and now we’ll be into another goldarn war!”
“Raynold, don’t swear, please.” Mother settled on the bench.
“That’s hardly swearing, Ruth.”
“Maybe not, but you must mean it for swearing or you wouldn’t do it.”
Smiling guiltily, he swung into the sleigh.
“What’s a war, Papa?” Mary knew what a war was, but it being Christmas, she hoped Papa would talk about a distant war rather than start a small one here and now with Mother.
He pulled the quilts around them both. “It’s a time when men with money get men with no money to kill each other off. Home, Clyde. Giddy-up.” Clyde only nodded and gave a small tug. “It ain’t a request!” Flicking the reins, Papa slapped Clyde’s wide icy rump. Clyde sighed and put his shoulder into the harness. They slid smoothly down the road that led out of town.
Chapter 4
“What can’t we afford?” Mary asked. She hoped desperately Papa wouldn’t say “shoes.”
“A radio.”
“Oh. That’s good.” It was nothing important.
They were shut in by snow. “Hope Clyde has his directions straight today,” said Papa with a chuckle. He no longer seemed worried about the storm. “Well, we’ll just follow along the wire for a bit anyway.” The whipping gray telegraph wire hummed and sawed up in the snowy whiteness of the air to their right. “Sounds like an airyplane, don’t it?”
“Don’t know what an airyplane sounds like,” said Mary. Only then did she notice Mother’s silence, that solid wordless presence she’d kept since leaving town. This silence was not right for Christmas day. Mother could do what she liked on other days, but not today. “Do you, Mother?”
“No.”
“You heard one at the fair,” Judith said.
“I don’t remember any airyplane.”
After a few minutes of Clyde’s slow and steady trotting, Judith said, “Why do we always have to be the first to leave?”
“Will you go?” Mother asked.
Nobody spoke. Everyone knew this question was directed at Papa. He drove with his blue eyes straight ahead for a while, then said, “I can’t say. Have to see if we can get up a decent crop this year. If we can’t, maybe we’ll go where all the other neighbors go, if there’s any room left, which would come as a surprise. Them other places must be full up by now.”
“I don’t want you to go,” said Mother. “Or us to go.”
“Army pays hard currency, at least. I don’t know, Ruthie. I hope not.”
Clyde snorted and tossed his head and swished his tail in front of them. His harness creaked as he paced on into the swirling snow and biting wind.
“And you really were standing in the back, back there?”
“On my toes in the clean air at the back,” Papa answered. He reached his mitted hand and massive arm across the children’s faces and patted Mother on her knee. He left his hand there a moment too. Mary saw it all.
She was thrilled. She glanced at Judith, who was smiling too. Not wanting to catch her sister in a moment of weakness, Mary turned back to Clyde.
His tail swished back and forth among the snowflakes. Flecks of foam gathered at the seam where his rear legs joined his body. His horsey smell swept past them. Today Clyde did not clop. He thudded, for the snow was thick, even on this raised road. He went along steadily until they reached their track, where he turned off without being signalled.
“Wants his oats,” said Papa. The wire thrummed wildly as they slid underneath it. “Here’s one old boy that will move mountains for oats, make no mistake. And this time he may have to move mountains.” Papa raised his arm and pointed ahead. Large drifts lay across the track, like winter’s white arms stubbornly crossed. Ridge upon ridge of snow rumpled the treeless landscape ahead. A blast of wind, racing over these ridges, put the finishing touches on filling in the tracks they’d made only a couple of hours before.
Clyde
plunged into the first drift. He dragged the cutter through. The second drift went well too, but more slowly. The third went more slowly yet. These were deep drifts. Finally Papa said, “Help’s a-coming, Clyde, my boy.” He jumped out and began to lift and push. Mother stepped out to help too, and he said, “That’s all right, Ruthie. You can get back in.”
“His legs are shaking.” Mother went behind to push.
Papa handed the reins to Mary, who was closest, and Judith shot her a look of such meanness that Mary tried to give them back.
“No. It’s easy,” Papa assured her. “Just slow him down for me on the other side.”
Then they were through. “Whoa,” Mary said.
“Whoa, boy!” called Papa. “WHOA!”
Clyde was breathing hard and pulling hard on the reins. “Papa,” said Mary, “I think he wants to try the next drift.”
Judith snorted. So did Clyde.
Papa grabbed the reins. Pulling the horse to a stop, he said, “Maybe so. But maybe Clyde just wants to get home to his oats, and that drift happens to be in his way.”
“He wants to get warm,” Joseph said, his voice muffled by layers of clothing. He himself could not possibly be cold.
“See all that sweat,” said Judith. “Anybody could see he’s warm already.”
“I’m sure he has a horsey reason,” said Mother, breathing hard, “to get home.”
Papa and Mother stood on the running boards for the shallow icy stretches, where the hard snow had been swept clean by the wind and could take the weight of the cutter. They jumped off to push in the softer drifts, where the slender runners sank in. Except for “Whoa!” and “Giddy-up!” no one spoke again. But Mother laughed once, a small tickling sound that Mary hadn’t heard for months.
The drifts grew deeper as they slid down into the wide valley where their farm lay. Then, after miles of thudding hooves and ice particles stinging their faces, they reached the yard. They were home. The air moaned as the wind cut itself on fences and the nooks of their outbuildings. Mary and Judith hopped off into the drift closest to the house, a live drift that seemed to move up around their feet as they stepped down. Mother carried Joseph off.
Under A Living Sky Page 2
