Snow Bound Read online

  Cindy was watching from the car’s open window. “They must have been looking for people stranded in the storm. We need a signal—maybe a fire—to guide them next time.” She told Tony how the car had looked from the hill, half buried in the snow. “From the air it must look like nothing more than a bump on a log.”

  She was right about that. He followed his path to the edge of the trees and began dragging branches and fallen limbs to make a pile in the middle of the field. If they came again, he’d push a rag into the gas tank and then light it under the wood. That way they’d get a smoke signal up fast.

  Finally he climbed back into the car. He was freezing and needed to warm up. Cindy was working on the fire. “You know something else we ought to do?” she said. “Stamp out the word ‘HELP’ in the snow.”

  Something else for him to do later. She had the ideas, but he did the work. He rubbed his hands over the fire. He’d run out without gloves and with his boots only half laced. She could go next time.

  “What would you like for breakfast this morning, sir?” Cindy asked jokingly. “Scrambled eggs? French toast? I make really superb French toast, crisp and brown on the edges, soft in the middle.”

  “Cut it out. I don’t even want to think about food.” His belly felt hollow, scooped out like an empty cup.

  She opened the cookie tin, started to count out cookies, frowned, and stopped. She’d combed her hair till it stood out around her head like a halo. She looked at Tony, then back into the box. “You took cookies,” she said. “When did you do that?”

  “I only took what was mine.”

  “How many did you take this time?”

  “I didn’t count. I was hungry, so I ate some. What’s the point of hoarding them?”

  Her eyes flashed. “You’re a fool.” She took out a few cookies, closed the box, and put it away. “You’ve eaten more than your share. You stole mine.”

  He ignored her. While she ate, his stomach growled and churned. To show her that he didn’t give a damn he chewed ferociously on a sliver of wood.

  Later, Cindy said she had to get out of the car. Tony watched as she gingerly pulled her socks over her swollen feet. They still looked puffy and awful. Her face was white as she tried to stuff her feet into her boots.

  “Here. Take mine,” he said. He pulled off his boots and shoved them toward her. They were a couple of sizes larger than hers, and she was able to get her feet into them. While she was gone, he rummaged in her denim bag, and then opened the cookie tin and ate a few more cookies. He could have eaten all of them. He snapped the box shut and pushed it away.

  After that he occupied himself turning her nail file into a knife. He used two pieces of wood and some copper wire he’d unwound from the old generator in the trunk. When Cindy returned he held up the homemade knife. “Maybe I can get us a bird or a squirrel with this.”

  “How do you think of these things?” she said.

  “I don’t think of them,” he said, mocking her. “I just do them.” Later, he got out of the car and sharpened the knife on a flat stone—spat and ground the edge, spat and ground again. He tried the knife out, hurling it at a squirrel in the crotch of a tree. The squirrel went chattering away and the knife sank uselessly into the snow. Tony retrieved it, and afraid to lose it, decided not to try again.

  All through the morning, both of them listened and watched. The helicopter didn’t return. Instead, around noon snow began falling again. Not heavily, but enough to cover the wood Tony had piled in the field, and the top of the car he had so carefully cleared in the hope that when the helicopter returned it would notice the shine of the roof. The rescuers should have been here by now. He’d been listening for them for hours and they hadn’t come. The longer he waited the more desperate and impatient he became. How did he know they’d ever return?

  “Can you walk?” he asked Cindy.

  He knew the answer even before he asked. He’d heard her crying outside earlier as she hobbled toward the trees to take care of herself, and she’d come back nearly all the way on her knees. He bent over to feed the fire. They had to do something. They couldn’t just sit around here for another day with almost nothing to eat, waiting for rescuers who might never come. It was up to him. He had to get help for them. She couldn’t walk, so he’d have to go alone.

  “No! We’re better off together,” she said when he told her. “When you’re lost you should stick together, and stay in one place.”

  “Sure, if someone’s out looking for you, it’s good advice,” he said. “But who’s looking for us? I mean, who knows we’re here? You said it yourself! That helicopter checked this section and he’s not coming back.” He couldn’t sit in the car any longer and freeze and be hungry and let things happen to him without doing something. He’d go crazy this way. His idea was to get up there on the level ground and then keep going, plowing along, leaving signs as he went until he got out of this place. There had to be people somewhere nearby. He’d find them. He had to find them, didn’t he? This was New York State, not the wilds of Alaska.

  “What direction will you take?” she asked. “How will you know to get back, here and find me again?”

  “I’ll leave signs,” he said.

  “Will you come back as soon as you can?”

  “As soon as I get help. Maybe I’ll come back on a snowmobile. Or in a helicopter.” He wanted to leave at once. He laced up his boots, stuck the knife in his belt, and was ready to go.

  Cindy took off her long red-and-black plaid scarf and gave it to him to wrap around his face. “For when the wind starts blowing,” she said. She opened the cookie tin. She said nothing about the extra cookies he’d eaten, but gave him nearly all that remained, leaving herself only a few.

  “They’re yours,” he said, although he couldn’t keep his mouth from watering. “I had mine.”

  “You’ll need the energy. Go on, take them.” Her eyes were filling, getting larger and shining, swimming with lights, like water with the sun’s light on it. He stuffed the cookies into his pocket. He looked around the car. She had a nice pile of twigs in the back seat to feed the fire, and the blanket and Army bag to keep her warm. She only had to sit inside and wait. It was up to him to get help.

  “Maybe I’ll be back tonight,” he told her. “Maybe I’ll find help right away. I’ll be back before you know it.” He went out through the window, striking out eagerly up the hill.

  12

  A HANDFUL OF CHOCOLATE

  CHIP COOKIES

  As Cindy watched Tony plow up the hill the sun came out, making her eyes water. At the top of the hill Tony stopped, turned, and looked back. “Good luck, good luck,” she called. She shut her eyes against the sun, and when she looked again he was gone.

  For a while she stayed by the open window, listening, forgetting the fire, sometimes holding her breath with the hope that almost at once Tony would spot a road or a house. Then he’d be coming back, whooping triumphantly, and they’d laugh hysterically together over their stupidity—to have been so close to rescue all this time!

  The wind was blowing icy particles against her face. Reluctantly she rolled the window up almost to the top. She fed the fire from her store of twigs and sticks. Greedy, how greedy the fire was, licking everything up, like a bright hot lollipop.

  She dozed off for a while, waking to see the sun slanting through the windshield. The wind came gusting across the field, splattering snow against the car. Cindy rubbed her legs and changed position. She nibbled a cookie, ignoring her stomach’s clamoring.

  I’ll be thin when this is over. I’ll never have to diet again. She imagined herself back in school—the questions, the comments. How had she changed from a size fourteen to a petite eight? “My secret,” she’d tell them, “was four days on a handful of chocolate chip cookies. You, too, can do it. Any brand of cookie will work the same magic.”

  The wind moaned. Was there someone else trapped nearby, crying for help? The trees swayed and bent, and the white drifts piled up in s
calloped dunes like sand at the shore. Her father had taken her to the shore the summer she was twelve. That was the same summer he bought her a camera, and every time he pointed to something beautiful—a sunset, whitecaps, a flight of gulls in the air—she had taken a picture of it.

  She formed her hands into a rectangle before her face, squinted one eye. Click! “Lucky me!” Another candid shot of this beautiful nature scene for her album.

  Mother Nature, what a lie! She remembered how she had always loved to walk alone on foggy evenings with the light tunneling around the street lamps. She’d lift her face to breathe in the wet softness of the air. She indiscriminately loved fogs and first snowfalls, thunderstorms, winds of thirty miles an hour, and hailstones—the bigger the better. She loved the first leaves in the spring, the sticky sap on pine trees, the sound of pigeons flapping over the roofs like wet laundry on the line. She thought it all meant something. Could all this beauty be without meaning? In the past she’d said she didn’t believe in God; neither did her father. She’d always felt that Nature was God. What a lie! Beautiful Nature was cruel and indifferent. God, at least, whatever he was, cared.

  I’ve decided to keep a kind of journal, not really a diary, just writing things down as they occur to me. This is my second day alone. I found the little green spiral notebook that I use in school for assignments and stuff. Too small to make much difference to my fire.

  When Tony comes back maybe I’ll talk to him about some of the things I’ve been thinking.

  In the afternoon: clouds of dusty snow funnel around the car, the wind racing across the open field.

  My foot aches and aches. My face in the car mirror sooty, strange, wild. I don’t recognize myself. There was a smell in the car like burning wool. I’ve singed my hair.

  My second night alone. I don’t dare fall asleep for fear the fire will go out. I’m keeping the fire higher, which smokes up the car terribly. Tony’s poor car! If I open the window any wider I’ll freeze. Between the smoke and the cold and a hacking cough that has lodged in my chest I never fall into a deep sleep. Little cat naps. My neck stiff. Waking scared. Listening.

  Short hooting sounds. Owls? They could be dogs barking. Even horses whinnying.

  My third day alone. I think it’s Saturday, though it might be Sunday. It bothers me that I can’t remember. It was Tuesday we were wrecked. We were together Wednesday, and Thursday Tony left. So it’s Saturday. I feel I’ve been alone forever.

  Am I starving? I’ve hardly eaten, but I don’t feel the least bit hungry anymore, only thirsty. I eat snow and can’t stop shivering.

  Where is Tony? What if he’s lost, wandering in circles, and will never come back. Stop it, Cindy. Stop that kind of backward thinking!

  I saw a deer today. I don’t think he saw me. He came out of the woods at the foot of the hill. He looked so thin and scruffy. He was nibbling something in the bushes warily, raising his head and listening with those big ears, and gentle eyes. If Tony had seen him, he’d have wished for a gun.

  I’ve always hated waiting for anything or anyone. Waiting for Tony to return is the most difficult waiting I’ve ever done in my life. Lots harder than waiting in a dentist’s office, or waiting for Dad to come home at night. I keep looking, expecting that the next moment I’ll see Tony coming over the hill.

  Just looked again, probably for the hundredth time. Nothing. No one. Not a sound. Even the wind has died down.

  It’s strange how you change your mind about people. Take Tony and me. At home I would never have looked twice at a boy like him. Never would have thought about him, or wondered what sort of person he really was. Boys like Tony are all over, a little too conceited, a little too good-looking, a little too know-it-all. They always know better than any girl! So spoke Cindy, the people pigeon-holer. But right now, I freely admit I’ve never waited for anyone the way I’m waiting for Tony. And it’s not only the selfish longing to be rescued from this awful place. I really want to see him. I try not to think about it, but I’m scared for him. He’s been gone so long.

  Stupid feet. If I hadn’t panicked and run off that first morning and gotten my feet frostbitten. If I’d been a little more careful. If I’d sat tight in the bus station.

  Isn’t that the way everyone talks? If, if, if. If ifs and ands were pots and pans, there’d be no need for tinkers. That was in my nursery rhyme book when I was a baby, but it’s still true. The important thing, as my father would say, is to do things right the first time. But that has to be impossible. I can’t help leaping ahead and being frustrated, and then thinking about what’s past and being sorry.

  I blame myself now that Tony and I weren’t friendlier. I’m so quick to feel injury—to find fault, to see the worst side of people. I should have tried harder.

  I think my feet are actually getting better. I can touch my left foot without wincing. The puffiness is definitely down. Right foot still sensitive, but better.

  It’s getting dark. I’ve been writing in this notebook on and off all day. I write a little and then look up, feed the fire, doze, watch out the window, write some more. I dread another storm, Tony lost in it, his tracks obliterated, myself buried in this metal tomb. Oh, shut up, Cindy!

  I’m sipping hot tea. Doesn’t that sound elegant? I crook my little finger—tea is so refined. But really it’s only hot water, and it tastes wonderful. It may he the best thing I ever drank in my life. This is how I got it. Eating snow isn’t very satisfactory as a thirst quencher. First of all it freezes the inside of my mouth before it melts, and then it starts me shivering, and I noticed I got cramps when I took down too much too fast.

  If only I had something hot to drink! I thought. It seemed like the most impossible wish in the world. Then—I don’t know why—I thought of the ashtray in the dashboard. I pulled it out. Full of cigarette butts and gum wrappers. I dumped the cigarettes, but saved the gum wrappers, then wiped the inside of the ashtray with my shirt. I dipped fresh snow into the ashtray through the window, put a stick through the little bar across the top and balanced it over my fire.

  I had a tea kettle! I felt as thrilled as Fulton must have when his steam engine worked. Even so, the first few times I melted snow in it, it still tasted of cigarettes. Ugh. I had to dump it out and boil away again. Finally, success! Hot water with a little spearmint gum flavoring. What could be better? My belly is full of hot water, beautiful hot water.

  13

  THE DESERTED LANDS

  After leaving the car, Tony didn’t look back until he had climbed to level ground. Then a quick glance showed the roof of the car below, like a blue plastic bubble. Hesitation gripped him. The bare hills rolled in every direction with not a sign of human life anywhere. Now he had to choose. Forward, or back. Forward—how long before he found someone? What if he never did? But when he thought of going back to the car, he imagined Cindy laughing at him scornfully, calling him a coward.

  He turned slowly, memorizing the dip in the land, the black-and-white scratchy hills rising on all sides, and higher than anything else, the wide-armed branches of a giant oak.

  He started off. With each step he floundered knee deep into snow, soft and heavy as mud. It was an effort to lift his foot and take the next awkward step. And then another. And another. By the time he’d gone fifty feet he was beginning to sweat. He looked back. Already the car had disappeared from view. Would he be able to find his way back? He looked to the giant oak for reassurance. The wind nipped his face. He readjusted and knotted Cindy’s scarf more tightly around his head. Slowly he continued trudging forward.

  It was hard work, the hardest he’d ever done. He had to stop frequently to get his breath. The sullen gray sky slowly changed to broken clouds. The trees, black against the snow, also changed color, the aspens glowing like gold. Tony stopped often to look around, note some landmark, break a branch as a marker. He knew there were dirt roads, cow paths, old logging trails crisscrossing all through these hills. The thought that he would come out to a real road made his heart l
eap and gave him the strength to keep going. His thoughts kept flying ahead to the snug farmhouse with smoke rising from the chimney … or the farmer’s red pick-up truck … or the line of telephone poles he’d follow.

  Onward and upward, his steps slogged along to that phrase. Onward and onward. He trudged doggedly forward. But when he turned and saw behind him the crooked, disordered line of footprints disappearing in the snow, something curdled in his stomach and a sinking feeling took hold of him. In the back of his mind was a fear he wouldn’t admit, that nightmare he sometimes had of being pursued down a dark, reverberating tunnel … running along dark corridors, faster and faster, opening doors to empty rooms that went on and on and led nowhere.

  He forced his attention to a bare rock face on the hill behind him. “That’s a rock face,” he told himself. And before that there was the split pine, and before that the big oak. He noted shapes of trees, and rocks, and made markers that would help him retrace his steps.

  It must have been a mile to the top of the rise. Breathing hard and hot, Tony estimated that the mile, which under ordinary circumstances he could walk in fifteen minutes, had taken him over two hours. He wiped his forehead. He’d had to fight the snow every step of the way, but now he was at the top. He looked around expectantly. Before him lay a plateau covered with snow, clumps of woods, and more snow. There was no cozy house, no barns, no road of any sort. No sign of people or animals. Nothing to direct him. Only the desolation of trees and snow everywhere, as if this were a million years back in time, and he the first and only man on earth.

  “Hell-ooo,” he yelled. “Helll-ooooo!” His voice echoed back to him, lonely and uncertain.

  He was cold. His feet, which had ached for so long, were now without feeling. He thought of stopping and longed for a fire, but he was afraid of falling asleep in the snow, afraid of losing time, afraid of not getting across this barren sea of snow.