Winter 1935

 

 

       It was the time of year when icicles dangled from edges. Long frozen teardrops hung from roof beams, fence rails, the trees along the road, the rocks on the mountainside. In the pasture, winter’s snow lay shoe mouth deep, covering the dry grass beneath it like a blanket. Three cows emerged from the trees along the iced over creek and walked the worn path to the barn. Ghostly shapes gliding across the misty landscape bawling to be milked, their voices echoing far up the frozen valley.

               

       Mary McLennan loved December mornings. She'd rise before dawn to sit quietly in the old chair by the front window and watch the darkness retreat, waiting for the sun’s early light to slowly, slowly paint color to the day.

Deep within each winter sunrise there was a moment when Mary felt sure she could touch eternity. Sometimes the moment would linger to fill her heart with joy and hope. But this morning it flew by, leaving her feeling lonely and small. Like a summer gourd sucked empty by the long winter.

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       If I could hold my life in my hands and shake it, that's what it'd surely sound like. An empty gourd.

 

       Snow was falling again. Ghostly flecks of frozen water drifting silently to earth, covering the land with tiny white feathers. She leaned her head against the dingy glass and stared across the cove.

 

       Snowfalls in this age of deliverance are trapped within my memory like the life I used to know.
 

      Mary rose and walked barefoot across the cold plank floor. She stirred the embers of the fire with the iron poker and waited patiently until it sprang back to life. Snowfalls, snowfalls. Fifteen years of snowfalls.

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       As she passed the bedroom door, her husband stirred in the bed. Beside him, the boy lay curled in the crook of his father's arm. The dog had burrowed deep under the covers in the middle of the night leaving only his long black tail exposed to the cold.

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       I used to lie there with my husband, safe, warm, sheltered from the snowfalls.

In the corner, the baby lay in the cradle, eyes open, her thin lips parted in the smile Mary loved so much, the pink flannel bonnet perched sideways on her big head, a casualty of what little movement Delia had made in the night.

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        "Should of named you Snowfall," she whispered. "Snow don't think or feel or laugh or cry. Just falls to earth and lays there for as long as it can. Waiting for the sun to melt it awa-a-ay up into the air. Just like you. Laying in that cradle two years now. Waiting for the sun to come and raise you up."

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        She wriggled her finger in front of the baby's empty stare. "Oh Delia, why can't I be your sunshine?"

 

        The baby turned its head slightly and gazed back at the mother, it’s smile unchanged. Mary lifted the child from the cradle, walked to the front door and stared back into the room. To her plain, simple life illuminated now only by the flickering fire and the cold light of another winter sunrise.

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        "Snowfalls. Snowfalls," she said quietly. "So many snowfalls gone by."

 

        An hour later, the man stirred. He ran his fingers lightly through the boy's hair until he too awoke. He reached for his clothes, slid them under the blanket and pulled them on quickly before his warm body met the cold air.

 

        "Let's go, son," he said. "Chores before breakfast."

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        The boy rolled to the opposite side of the bed and opened his eyes. "Delia ain't in the cradle, Birch."

 

        In the barn, the cows stamped their hooves impatiently. The chickens fluffed their feathers to ward off the chill. The horses snorted great puffs of steam into the cold morning air and rubbed their wooly hides against the rough stalls.

In the yard, snowflakes piled up against the side of the old log house and blew across the front porch in little swirls of white, like souls in the afterlife, wandering aimlessly towards eternity.

 

        And on the mountain high above Sugar Cove, Mary McLennan’s solitary footprints filled with fresh snow. Soon she and the child would blend into the silent haze. Soon there would be no trace that anyone had ever passed this way.