The Long Winter (19 page)

Laura ran upstairs. She scratched a peephole on the window and put her eyes to it. She could hardly believe them. Main Street was level with her eyes.

Across the glittering snow she could see the blank, square top of Harthorn's false front sticking up like a short piece of solid board fence.

She heard a gay shout and then she saw horses'

hoofs trotting rapidly before her eyes. Eight gray hoofs, with slender brown ankles swiftly bending and straightening, passed quickly by, and then a long sled with two pairs of boots standing on it. She crouched down, to look upward through the peephole, but the sled was gone. She saw only the sky sharp with sunlight that stabbed her eyes. She ran down to the warm kitchen to tell what she had seen.

“The Wilder boys,” Pa said. “They're hauling hay.”

“How do you know, Pa?” Laura asked him. “I only saw the horses' feet, and boots.”

“There's no one in town but those two, and me, that dares go out of town,” said Pa. “Folks are afraid a blizzard'll come up. Those Wilder boys are hauling in all their slough hay from Big Slough and selling it for three dollars a load to burn.”

“Three dollars!” Ma exclaimed.

"Yes, and fair enough for the risk they take.

They're making a good thing out of it. Wish I could.

But they've got coal to burn. I'll be glad if we have enough hay to last us through. I wasn't counting on it for our winter's fuel."

“The y went by as high as the houses!” Laura exclaimed. She was still excited. It was strange to see horses' hoofs and a sled and boots in front of your eyes, as a little animal, a gopher, for instance, might see them.

“It's a wonder they don't sink in the drifts,” Ma said.

“Oh, no.” Pa was wolfing his toast and drinking his tea rapidly. “The y won't sink. The s e winds pack the snow as hard as a rock. David's shoes don't even make tracks on it. The only trouble's where the grass is lodged and loose underneath.”

He got into his wraps in a hurry. "Those boys have got the start of me this morning. I was digging the tunnel. Now I've got to dig David out of the stable.

Got to haul hay while the sun shines!" he joked, as he shut the door behind him.

“He's feeling chipper because he's got that tunnel,”

said Ma. “It's a blessing he can do the chores in some comfort, out of the wind.”

That day they could not watch the sky from the kitchen window. So little cold came through the snow that Laura led Mary into the lean-to and taught her how to twist hay. Mary had wanted to learn but the lean-to had been too cold. It took her some time because she could not see how Laura twisted and held the strands and tucked in the ends, but at last she did it well. The y stopped to warm themselves only a few times while they twisted the whole day's supply of hay sticks.

Then the kitchen was so warm that they need not crowd around the stove. The house was very still. The only sounds were the little sounds of Ma and Mary rocking, the slate pencil on the slate, the teakettle's pleasant hum, and their own low voices speaking.

“What a blessing this deep snowdrift is,” Ma said.

But they could not watch the sky. Watching it did no good. If the low gray cloud was swiftly rising, they could not stop it. The y could not help Pa. He would see the cloud and reach shelter as quickly as he could.

Laura thought this many times, but just the same she hurried upstairs through the cold to peep from the window.

Ma and Carrie looked at her quickly when she came down, and she always answered them out loud so that Mary would know. “The sky's clear and not a thing is stirring but millions of glitters on the snow. I don't believe there's a breath of wind.”

That afternoon Pa dragged hay through the tunnel to cram the lean-to full. He had dug the tunnel past the stable door so that David could get out, and beyond the stable he had turned the tunnel at an angle, to check the winds that might blow into it.

“I never saw such weather,” he said. "It must be all of forty degrees below zero and not a breath of air stirring. The whole world seems frozen solid. I hope this cold holds. Going through that tunnel it's no chore at all to do the chores."

Next day was exactly the same. The stillness and the dusk and the warmth seemed to be a changeless dream going on forever the same, like the clock's ticking. Laura jumped in her chair when the clock cleared its throat before it struck.

“Don't be so nervous, Laura,” Ma murmured as if she were half-asleep. The y did not recite that day.

The y did not do anything. The y just sat.

Thenight was still, too. But morning woke them with a howling fury. The winds had come again and the lashing whirl of snow.

“Well, the tunnel's going fast,” Pa said, when he came into breakfast. His eyebrows were frozen white with snow again and his wraps were stiff with it. Cold was pressing the warmth back again to the stove. “I did hope my tunnel would last through one of these onslaughts, anyway. Gosh dang this blizzard! It only lets go long enough to spit on its hands.”

“Don't swear, Charles!” Ma snapped at him. She clapped her hand to her mouth in horror. “Oh, Charles, I'm sorry,” she apologized. “I didn't mean to snap at you. But this wind, blowing and blowing...”

Her voice died away and she stood listening.

“I know, Caroline,” Pa answered. “I know just how it makes you feel. It tires you out. I'll tell you what, after breakfast we'll read for a while about Living-ston's Africa.”

“It's too bad I've burned so much hay this morning, Charles,” Ma said. “I've had to burn more, trying to get the place warm.”

“Never mind, it's no trick to twist more,” Pa replied.

“I'll help, Pa,” Laura offered.

“We've got all day for it,” Pa said. “Everything is snug at the stable till night. We'll twist hay first, then we'll read.”

Grace began to whimper. “M y feet's cold.”

“For shame, Grace! A big girl like you! Go warm your feet,” Laura told her.

“Come sit on my lap and warm them,” Mary said, feeling her way to her rocking chair before the oven.

After Laura and Pa had twisted a great pile of hay sticks and stacked them by the stove, Carrie brought Pa his big green book.

“Please read about the lions, Pa,” she asked him.

“We can play the wind is lions roaring.”

“I ' m afraid I'll have to have a light, Caroline,” Pa said. “This print is small.” Ma lighted the button lamp and set it by him. “Now,” he said, "this is a jungle night in Africa. The flickering light here is from our campfire. Wild animals are all around us, yowling and squealing and roaring, lions and tigers and hyenas and I guess a hippopotamus or two. The y won't come anywhere near us because they're afraid of the fire. You hear big leaves rasping, too, and queer birds squawking. It's a thick, black, hot night with big stars overhead. Now I'm going to read what happens." He began to read.

Laura tried to listen but she felt stupid and numb.

Pa's voice slid away into the ceaseless noises of the storm. She felt that the blizzard must stop before she could do anything, before she could even listen or think, but it would never stop. It had been blowing forever.

She was tired. She was tired of the cold and the dark, tired of brown bread and potatoes, tired of twisting hay and grinding wheat, filling the stove and washing dishes and making beds and going to sleep and waking up. She was tired of the blizzard winds.

There was no tune in them any more, only a confusion of sound beating on her ears.

“Pa,” she spoke suddenly, interrupting his reading,

“won't you play the fiddle?”

Pa looked at her in surprise. Then he laid down the book. “Why yes, Laura,” he said. “If you want to hear the fiddle, I'll play it.”

He opened and shut his hands and rubbed the fingers while Laura brought the fiddle-box from its warm shelter on the floor behind the stove.

Pa rosined the bow, tucked the fiddle under his chin, and touched the strings. He looked at Laura.

“Play 'Bonnie Doon,'” Laura said, and Pa played and sang:

“Ye banks and braes of Bonnie Doon, How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair?”

But every note from the fiddle was a very little wrong. Pa's fingers were clumsy. The music dragged and a fiddle string snapped.

“My fingers are too stiff and thick from being out in the cold so much, I can't play,” Pa spoke as if he were ashamed. He laid the fiddle in its box. “Put it away, Laura, until some other time,” he said.

“I wish you'd help me, anyway, Charles,” Ma said.

She took the coffee mill from Mary and emptied the ground wheat from its little drawer. She filled the small hopper with kernels and handed the mill to Pa.

“I'll need another grinding to make the bread for dinner,” she told him.

Ma took the covered dish of souring from its warm place under the stove. She stirred it briskly, then measured two cupfuls into a pan, added salt and saleratus, and the flour that Mary and Carrie had ground. Then she took the mill from Pa and added the flour he had made.

“That's just enough,” she said. “Thank you, Charles.”

“I'd better be doing the chores now before it gets too dark,” Pa said.

“I'll have a hot meal ready and waiting by the time you come in,” Ma reminded him. He put on his wraps and went out into the storm.

Laura listened to the winds while she stared at the blank window without seeing it. The worst thing that had happened was that Pa could not play the fiddle. If she had not asked him to play it, he might not have known that he could not do it.

Ma, with Carrie crowded in beside her, sat in her rocking chair by the stove, opposite Mary. She held Grace in her arms and rocked slowly, softly singing to her:

"I will sing you a song of that beautiful land, The far away home of the soul

Where no storms ever beat on that glittering strand

While the years of eternity roll."

The wailing hymn blended with the wail of the winds while night settled down, deepening the dusk of whirling snow.

In the morning the snowdrift was gone. When Laura made a peephole on the upstairs window and looked through it she saw bare ground. Blown snow was driving over it in low clouds, but the street was hard, brown earth.

“Ma! Ma!” she cried. “I can see the ground!”

“I know,” Ma answered. “The winds blew all the snow away last night.”

“What time is it? I mean, what month is it?” Laura asked stupidly.

“It is the middle of February,” Ma answered.

Then spring was nearer than Laura had thought.

February was a short month and March would be spring. The train would come again and they would have white bread and meat.

“I am so tired of brown bread with nothing on it,”

Laura said.

“Don't complain, Laura!” Ma told her quickly.

“Never complain of what you have. Always remember you are fortunate to have it.”

Laura had not meant to complain but she did not know how to explain what she had meant. She answered meekly, “Yes, Ma.” Then , startled, she looked at the wheat sack in the corner. There was so little wheat left in it that it lay folded like an empty sack.

“Ma!” she exclaimed, “Did you mean . . .” Pa had always said that she must never be afraid. She must never be afraid of anything. She asked, “How much more wheat is there?”

“I think enough for today's grinding,” Ma answered.

“Pa can't buy any more, can he?” Laura said.

“No, Laura. There's no more in town.” Ma laid the slices of brown bread carefully on the oven grate to toast for breakfast.

Then Laura braced herself, she steadied herself, and she said, “Ma. Will we starve?”

“We won't starve, no,” Ma replied. “If Pa must, he will kill Ellen and the heifer calf.”

“Oh, no! No!” Laura cried.

“Be quiet, Laura,” Ma said. Carrie and Mary were coming downstairs to dress by the stove, and Ma went up to carry Grace down.

Pa hauled hay all day, and came into the house only to say that he was going to Fuller's store for a minute before supper. When he came back he brought news.

“There's a rumor in town that some settler, eighteen or twenty miles south or southeast of here, raised some wheat last summer,” he said. “The y say he's wintering in his claim shanty.”

“Who says so?” Ma asked.

“It's a rumor,” Pa said again. “Nearly everybody says so. Nearest I can find out, Foster is the man that started it. He says he heard it from somebody working on the railroad. Some fellow that was passing through last fall, he says, was telling about the crop of wheat this settler raised, said he had a ten-acre patch that must run thirty or forty bushels to the acre. Say three hundred bushels of wheat, within about twenty miles of here.”

“I trust you aren't thinking of starting out on such a wild-goose chase, Charles,” Ma said gently.

“A fellow might do it,” Pa remarked. “With a couple of days of clear weather and a snowfall to hold up the sled, he ought to be able to make it all ri...”

“No!” said Ma.

Pa looked at her, startled. The y all stared at her.

The y had never seen Ma look like that. She was quiet but she was terrible.

Quietly she told Pa, “I say, No. You don't take such a chance.”

“Why...Caroline!” Pa said.

“Your hauling hay is bad enough,” Ma told him.

“You don't go hunting for that wheat. ”

Pa said mildly, “Not as long as you feel that way about it, I won't. But...”

“I won't hear any buts,” Ma said, still terrible.

“This time I put my foot down.”

“All right, that settles it,” Pa agreed.

Laura and Carrie looked at each other. The y felt as if thunder and lightning had come down on them suddenly, and suddenly gone. Ma poured the tea with a trembling hand.

“Oh Charles, I'm sorry, I spilled it,” she said.

“Never mind,” said Pa. He poured the spilled tea from his saucer into the cup. “A long time since I had to pour my tea into the saucer to cool it,” he mentioned.

“I'm afraid the fire's going down,” said Ma.

“It isn't the fire. The weather's turning colder,”

said Pa.

“You couldn't go, anyway,” Ma said. “There'd be nobody to do the chores and nobody to haul hay.”