After the Snow (16 page)

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Authors: S. D. Crockett

BOOK: After the Snow
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THE MELT
For winter’s rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
May come. All over the drip drip drip of the melt. Start early this year.
Jacob give me a tin of money. He say, “You earned it, Willo.”
We been stuck inside most of the winter. Trouble on the streets. Flames from the shanties. Gangs in the settlements come roaring out at night. I watch it from up here in the tower block. See it pretty good through that great big window. Down below the trucks bristling with soldiers. No one go out after dark no more. Jacob say they barricade the whole settlement now. Aint no way in or out. The streets get quieter. I want to go back and look for Mary. “You won’t get near,” he say. “Can’t get through the streets for a foot of mud. You don’t want to see what they’re doing out there.”
Even in the city the streets turn to muddy slush after the rains. Worse than the snow. Sheets of water washing ice from the roofs. Running in gullies down every road. The stink even worse. Out of every drain putrid slop come bubbling up and everywhere damp and musty. Rats get bold as dogs. Whispering in my ear at night.
Slip through the cracks, Willo, slip through the cracks
. Sometimes I listen out for the dog. But I guess he been running on the hill.
You watch a pack of dogs in the melt and they look like they got a pretty good thing going. Playing and jumping about licking
each other. And they get proper excited when a bitch bring her pups out the ground in spring. I tell you, it gonna make you smile when you see dogs leaping around all over the place like that. And they look out for each other sure as snow gonna fall. Just got to watch out if you been the runt that’s all. But I reckon that been the same for people too. People always looking to find the runt in you and needle it out if they can. I hate that.
But now it’s just those hissing rats. Dog got free back to the hills for sure.
Still, the few weeks of the coming summer in everyone’s mind now. Just like Patrick always say: “Everyone waiting to feel the sun on their shoulders.”
The old woman get out of bed for the first time. Jacob got her propped up in a chair by the window. She busy herself stitching and stirring the pot.
But still I feel like I been trapped in a cage. Trapped in this bad-smelling tower. Feel just like those rats stuck in here.
Now the melt come, old feelings flood back. Wake me up in the night with panic in my heart. In my dreams I see Mary pressed against the barricades, the people crying out for food. She been calling for me, the twins hanging around her legs. Make me sit up pretty sharp. I been here too long. Getting soft. Bad feelings jumping about in my head. Like hares leaping and fighting on the Farngod in the spring.
We been luckier than most though. We got coal enough and food enough with the money we get for the coat. I got papers now. Dorothy Bek-Murzin been true to her word.
“You can come and see me, come and go as you please inside the city now, Willo,” she say. I smile to her, but it don’t feel much like “coming and going as I please” to me.
Sometimes I walk through the dirty streets. I got to know the city now. Got to know the different buildings and corners like they been rocks and crags on the mountain. All the time I been looking at the faces of the people passing in the smog and rain. Maybe I’m gonna see Mary one day.
The first time I come alone to Dorothy Bek-Murzin I been shaking inside. Up the stairs with my hat in my hand, back into that warm room.
Mei-Li pin Dorothy Bek-Murzin’s skirt up so I can do the measuring. Her legs are white and smooth. I get down on the floor with the tape. Fold the leather around her ankles and shins. My hands trembling. She got a warm-smelling perfume about her; I got the smell of it on my hands when I finish.
“Come back next week and take me to the bathhouse, Willo,” she say. “I need someone to carry my trunk.”
 
 
With the money we got for the coat, Jacob buy an old sewing machine. He say we gonna need it to make the boots cos the leather gonna be thick and hard to stitch by hand. “They’ve got to fit like a glove, Willo,” he say.
The machine’s a solid black lump. You got to turn the wheel by hand and fight the heavy needle to get it to punch down through the leather. But it make a pretty neat job after I got to know it roundside about and fiddle with the knobs and threads and
bobbins so it aint pulling the thread too tight or too loose or not at all.
“Where does she get all her money?” I ask Jacob one day when we been cutting the soles out of a thick piece of hide.
“She has friends.”
“And they just give her money?”
“They’re very important friends. Mmm. Hand me the scissors.”
“She aint married, is she?”
Jacob got the awl between his teeth. “Nnn, nuh sher issn marri.”
“But she got men who come and see her?”
Jacob take the haft out his mouth. Look up from the table.
“Yes, Willo. But why all this interest? Mmm? Rich men want a beautiful woman to look at. To touch. That’s how she gets her money and fine things and candles burning all over the house. Mmm, and these clothes too. Pass me the scriver.”
“But she always been so happy and laughing.”
“Well, she’s as tough as leather under that smiling pretty face, my boy, yes yes.” He pull the scriver down across the leather. “Tough as this leather. And probably not as happy as she looks. No no. Not as happy as she looks. Now stop asking questions and hold this skin flat for me.”
The rain stop that day so I sneak out and wander on the streets. The piles of snow on the sides of the road near all melted away now. People walking through the mud, their boots wrapped in canvas. Little girls sell snowdrops.
I feel different inside.
It been five months I been here now. Seem like forever.
Trapped in the city. The fight in me gonna smoulder away if I don’t get a plan. The Farngod seem a thousand miles away. I don’t say my words no more. Cos it don’t seem they gonna help me with the dog so far away and all. Aint got no news of Dad or Magda or the others. Even Mary getting to be a memory. But it been the bad memories that stick—like the mud.
The graybeards always say there aint no point trying to burn a log when it’s green. Got to let it season. Grow hard and dry.
That’s how I feel.
Like I been drying and hardening.
 
 
When it aint raining Jacob open up the windows and let the fresh air wash away the stink of smoke clinging onto every bit of clothing and blanket in our little rooms. We wash the soot off the walls. Scrub the floor. We rent a tinbath from the soap seller. I help Jacob collect rainwater in buckets and heat it on the stove. Aint no use waiting for the power to come on. Jacob hang a curtain around the fire.
It been good to sit in the bath. Soak away my worry in the steaming water. Fire warming my face. Take me right back home. Magda hauling water over the stove, shouting out, “Willo, come down and get in!” The twins all laughing and steaming, standing by the hearth, dripping wet with the sheet wrapped around them both, Magda rubbing their hair so that it stick up like new-grown grass. Me got to get in the tub, filled to the brim. Covering myself. And Magda telling me, “Don’t be silly, Willo, it’s only me,” but I’m still gonna cover myself up til she go out. Then I can pour the
water over my head and feel it running down my shoulders, tickling the skin on my back. Bath day always better than you think it gonna be.
Sometimes at night the tears feel like they gonna come. And I turn to the wall then. Try to breathe still. That lowdown feeling make me want to blub like a kid. It really do.
But blubbing like a baby aint gonna bring my dad back, nor Magda nor the twins. Aint gonna help me find Mary. And now the melt come I know I got to find them. Even if I die in the trying. Got to get into the settlement, go back to the canal, the beerhouse. Maybe Vince gonna know something. It aint the dog telling me what to do. It been in my heart.
I got to get a pony.
Got to be soon.
Sneak out one night and head west.
I feel the sap rising up in me.
 
 
Then the weather turn cold again. All the meltwater and mud frozen on the streets. It kind of freeze the smell up so it aint all bad. The streets get like a frozen pond. I see a horse scrabbling on the ice, falling down on its knees between the shafts of a cart. Horse screaming out. Driver shout, trying to pull that horse up. It bellow out more. He whip it and push it and pull it until it just give up. Fall over on its side exhausted. Nostrils wide. Breath steam in the frozen air. The people from the cart crowd around. Horse look pretty scared. Someone got to come and shoot it cos it been broken in the legs. Army truck come and do it. Drag the horse away. Make a
pretty big crowd come out to see what all the fuss about. But they get off pretty soon when the soldiers come out with their guns. Driver shouting that it been his only horse. They aint got no right to take all the dead horses, he shout. He got mouths to feed. But the soldiers push him away. I get away too. I got papers but I aint in a hurry to show them to no one.
“Why Bek-Murzin want me to take her to the bathhouse? She got a girl for that, aint she?” I ask Jacob.
“She likes you, Willo. Remember. Patience.”
“But I aint never been before. What she want me for?”
“You aren’t going
in
the bath with her. No no.” He laugh. “Just carrying her trunk.”
“Why she got to take a trunk to the baths?”
“She’s hardly going to come out with wet hair and no rouge on her cheeks, is she, you silly boy?” say Elizabeth. “She’ll have a new set of clothes and all her potions and perfumes in that trunk. Too heavy for her girl. So be sure not to drop it.”
Before I go the old woman reach out to me.
“Take care, Willo. Take care.”
Reckon she’s getting soft in the head.
I sharpen up the remains of the studs on the soles of my boots. Aint much left of them with walking on the icy roads. But I don’t want to slip carrying Bek-Murzin’s trunk.
Today I’m gonna ask her. I’m gonna say, “What about my dad—you hear anything about my dad?” I aint told Jacob. It get him wringing his hands and whining, “Now don’t pester her, Willo. Patience, patience, patience.”
But I aint got no more room inside for patience. I been storing so much of it, it gonna come bursting out like beer that ferment too quick and blow out the bottle. I been patient enough when I been sitting out on the Farngod waiting for hare. That kind of patience got an end. A good big stewpot of an end. But this kind of patience aint got nothing good in it. It’s just like waiting for bad really.
So I been cursing the street and the ice and the carts and the grog sellers and the flurries of snow that whip down from the peaks and the shitty smells and the choking smog and the man whipping his lame horse and the beggars sitting in the gutter and the cold burning my nostrils. I been cursing it all on that walk across the city to Chinatown.
Mei-Li waiting at the bottom of the stairs. The trunk is open and she wrap a hairbrush and comb in a square of silk, fold a linen towel and place it on top.
“I pack it all for her good. But keep it upright. No tip. No tip the trunk. Everything fall out. Madame get angry. No tip.”
“I aint gonna tip it up, Mei-Li.”
“No no. You no tip it, Willo.”
“Did you remember the powder, Mei-Li?” Dorothy say at the top of the stairs.
“Yes, Madame.”
Dorothy, wearing a loose cotton shift tied at the waist, coming down the steps. Over her dress, a soft wool coat. Mei-Li fetch a hooded fur cape—lay it over her shoulders and tie it at the neck.
“Such a fuss to be clean,” Dorothy say through her soft red lips.
Mei-Li bend down with a pair of clogs, the flat wooden sole
raised off the ground on tall wedges. Dorothy Bek-Murzin climb up onto them—hold my shoulder to steady herself. Mei-Li tie them tight with ribbons, and towering above me Dorothy clop out into the street. Slow and careful like she’s crossing a stream. Her feet and hems high off the dirty ground.
“Stay close, Willo.”
The trunk bite into my legs. But I tell you, people move out the way quick when something pretty as that come walking down the road.
She start talking all soft under her breath. “Now don’t speak. Look straight ahead.”
“Why?”
“You’ll find out. I have some news for you, Willo. It is about your father. I want you to meet someone. A friend of mine. He is coming to my house later. That is why I asked you to come with me to the bathhouse. To tell you this. I don’t trust anyone anymore. They watch me. Mei-Li especially.”
The studs on my boots crunch down in the ice. My arms ache with holding the trunk out.
I have some news for you, Willo.

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