Snow Bound Page 8

  He planned ahead. “I’ll walk to those evergreens.” There seemed to be a road between the trees, as if the area had been reforested. But when he got to the trees, there was nothing but more snow and trees.

  The afternoon dragged on. Several times Tony leaned against the trunks of trees, taking shelter from the wind for a few moments, then moving on. He was having a truly incredible adventure, he thought to himself. When it was all over, his family would be impressed. He’d persevered. He’d gotten through. He had done something nobody else had done.

  “Tony … my wonderful boy.” His mother’s voice was warm in his ears. She put her arms around him and cried tears of joy. “That poor girl would have died without you,” his mother said. “You saved her. You’re a hero, a real hero.” His sisters danced around, wanting to hug him. And his father … his father … why, his father would clap him on the back, take him to the shop to show him off to his buddies. “What happened to the car was an unforeseen accident,” he would say. “It could have happened to anyone. If it had happened to me, I couldn’t have done better than my boy.”

  He was dreaming, his hands deep in his pockets, stepping, sinking, feet rising clumsily to step and sink again. He was almost asleep on his feet. The voices, the admiring voices, the applause, rose in volume. “You walked all that way, kid … in the snow!” “You really are something!” “Hey, you can say that again.” “What a kid!” “Nobody else could have done it, I’ll tell you.…”

  A flight of chickadees landed in a tree ahead of him. Their cries woke him. “Dee, dee, dee!” they whistled cheerfully. Little black-and-white birds cutting in and out like miniature acrobats. He pulled the knife from his belt and flung it at the birds. He lost his balance and pitched forward in the snow. He rose clumsily to his feet. He’d missed by a mile. What good were chickadees anyway—a mouthful of feathers and tiny bones. His stomach growled. He nibbled red berries from a bush and spat them out. So bitter, he thought he’d been poisoned. He spat again and again, scraping bark from a pine, chewing the wood to kill the bitterness.

  Tony picked up his knife under the tree. Behind him he saw his tracks staggering and twisting through the snow. Where had he been? Where was he going? He was alone in a way he’d never been alone before in his life. Around him in every direction he was crowded by trees. Trees behind him, trees ahead of him, trees on either side. All thought of a road was gone. He plunged forward between the trees, where the snow was thinner. Ahead of him he saw a house and a barn. He was saved! He ran forward, shouting at the top of his lungs. “Hello! Hello!” But when he drew closer the house and barn turned out to be the long shadows of trees against the snow.

  He went on. He saw fires and buildings, people waving to him in the distance. But it was always in his mind. The fire of the sinking sun, a white tree with strangely human branches, or the snow whipped up into what seemed to be little outbuildings.

  He didn’t know where he was. He didn’t know where Cindy was. A terrible feeling gripped him. He was lost. He ran blindly, howling at the top of his lungs. Finally he made himself stop. He stood still, breathing hard, grasping the scaly orange trunk of a pine and rubbing his face against it. He bit his icy fingers through his mittens. It was stupid to go on this way. Hopeless. The sun was going down. A blue chalkiness filled the air. He had to find shelter for the night.

  He burrowed into the protective darkness of a low-branching spruce. A grouse flew up with a loud squawk. Tony made a clumsy dive for the bird and regretfully watched it disappear into the trees. It was damp and earthy under the spruce, but he was out of the wind. Tearing branches from the tree, he spread them on the ground to make a bed and blanket.

  He blew on his fingers, flexing them, blowing, working them together until the feeling flowed like fire and they hurt so much that he had to put them under his arms and hold them there. His feet were throbbing, and darts of pain came and went in his legs and back. He curled up in the boughs, and despite the cold and the aches in his body, he fell asleep.

  Tony dreamed about the dog and food. He saw himself in front of the open refrigerator at home. Every time he took something out, the dog snatched it out of his hand. “Down, boy.” He was worried that if his mother saw the dog sniffing in the refrigerator she’d have a fit. He popped a piece of juicy steak into his own mouth. Nothing had ever tasted so good. The dog was jumping up, begging for some, but Tony had to have another piece for himself first. The dog kept jumping and trying to get into the refrigerator. “Stop that,” Tony said, and woke up to hear the echo of a dog’s bark. It came again, loud and chilling. Stiff, aching, he pulled himself up, fumbling for his knife. Barking again, and then that icy howling. His skin crawled. Wolves? Or wild dogs?

  He’d heard plenty of stories about the packs of wild dogs that roamed these deserted lands, tearing live deer apart, savage, untamable. Tony remained still, hairs prickling along his neck, the knife gripped in his hand. He strained his eyes to see through the dark, interwoven branches. They were out there, he was sure.

  Suddenly he yelled. “Aaa-eee!” Again. And again, until his throat ached and his whole body was throbbing.

  After that, he couldn’t sleep. He squatted, hands between his legs, listening until the sun came up, rimming the sky with washes of pink. He rolled out from under the tree and stretched and jumped. He found a heavy, solid stick to use in case the wild dogs were still around. Their tracks circled the tree, the prints in the snow appearing enormous.

  Tony struck out with the sun at his back. He was hungry. His jaw ached, his legs ached, every bone in his body ached. He’d keep going west until the sun was overhead, and then he’d rest. If he hadn’t found anything by then, he’d turn back.

  As he moved along he talked to himself. He was going to find something, somebody—soon. He was lucky. He’d always been lucky. Look at the stories his family told about him. All the times he’d wandered away from home when he was really little. His parents scolded and yelled, but he’d always found his way home all right. Nothing had ever happened to him. Cod wouldn’t let anything bad happen to him. His father didn’t go to church, but Tony still went with his mother and sisters, so God knew about him. God wouldn’t forget him.

  Tony talked to God: “If you’re watching me right now, if you get me through … I’ll be one hundred percent in every way from now on … no swearing, no picking on my sisters, no hitting … one-hundred-percent cooperation with my parents.”

  But God had to get him through to someplace, safe. He wouldn’t go back on his word. The Lord could count on that “Help me, and I’ll be good forever,” he said out loud.

  He nearly stumbled into the stream. Bright, moving water in the snow. A piece of luck. Really good luck! A change in the landscape. Streams went from high places to low places; people lived near streams; animals drank from them. This stream had to lead somewhere. Tony decided to follow it.

  14

  NIGHT CREATURES

  My third night alone. Not sleeping much. Afraid my fire will go out. It’s only me and my fire now. Cold, clear night—the snow blue. If I live here a hundred years I’ll never get used to this awful quiet.

  Woke with a start. I’ve been dozing. What if I fall asleep and never wake? Freeze to death.

  Fed my little fire twice as much as necessary. I’ll live as long as I have my fire. Feel like a cave woman crouched before her hearth, full of superstitious dread.

  Felt depressed and began composing farewell notes to everyone I love. Dad. Grandma. All the kids I knew. I think of you all now. I used to be so critical of people and life—everything. I never gave anyone a chance to get close to me. I had to be so aloof, so critical and demanding.

  Have to stop every couple of words and warm my fingers. I’m shivering all the time.

  The pain and discomfort I’m experiencing now must be for some purpose. I can’t believe that I’m going to die. My life has hardly begun.

  I’m going to live and be a better person. I have to have that chance.

/>   Yesterday I saw three crows sitting on a tree. I felt their black, beady eyes on me. What were they waiting for?

  I just woke thinking I was dead. Then I felt the cold.

  If my thoughts turn to death again I’m going to make a noise in my throat, chrrrrrr, and scare Death off.

  The silence hums. Beneath it, I hear all kinds of strange noises. Little animals, night creatures tunneling under the snow—mice and moles, and God knows what else. My heart, too, thumping away in terror.

  The night makes everything strange. Woods are closer, and the hills hang over the car. I begin to imagine the ground sliding out from under me. The wind crackling through the frozen bushes sounds like the clicking bones of dead people. I almost hear them tiptoeing up to the car.

  “Who’s there?” I actually yelled out loud. The sound of my own voice frightened me more than any noises. I had to laugh at myself. Happy Ghouls’ Day, Cindy!

  But I still locked every door from the inside. As if that would stop those skinny-boned ghouls. They slip through cracks.

  Where is Tony? I keep looking for him. Surely by now he’s found someone, something, someplace. The worst ideas go through my mind. I can’t help remembering how greedily he grabbed everything. What if he’s found help and forgotten me. Tony, you better come back!

  Just before dawn I fell asleep, long enough for my fire to go out. Stupid! I shook the fire can. Barely warm. Not a spark left, and it was cold again in the car. First mad at myself, then anxious, then remembered the cigarette lighter. Not to worry.

  I pushed it in and waited calmly. Tore out the last sheets of my geometry book and rolled them up. Got my twigs ready. When the lighter didn’t pop, I pulled it out. The coils were cold. Puzzled, I pushed it in again, waited, meanwhile inspecting my feet. They seemed one hundred percent better, but I needed the fire. I’d die without the fire.

  Again I had to pull out the lighter. Gold and dead. This time I thought to turn on the radio. That, too, was dead. The battery was dead. I didn’t stand a chance without a fire. Already I felt the cold creeping into the car.

  I asked myself what I should do. I remembered the bonfire we’d planned to make if the helicopter returned. We were going to use a gasoline-soaked rag. What I had to do, then, was get some gasoline on a rag, then try to get a spark out of one of those limp book matches I’d saved. A spark and gasoline.

  I pulled on my boots and crawled out of the car. My right foot still hurt when I put too much weight on it. A long stick wasn’t hard to find, and I ripped a piece of upholstery to tie on the end. Tony would have a fit.

  The gas tank cover was frozen and wouldn’t give to my efforts to unscrew it. I dug around in the snow for a rock and banged away at the cap until it broke loose. I pushed the stick down the neck of the tank as far as it would go. I came up with nothing. Too short.

  I followed the path to the woods, found a longer stick and attached my rag again. A simple movement, but it took the longest time. My hands were stiff as ice. I seemed to have ten wooden thumbs. But it was done finally, and again I pushed the stick down into the gas tank. I swished it around, and when I pulled it up I didn’t have to sniff to know the rag was soaked.

  In the car again, I put the soaked rag in the fire can, said a little prayer to fire and wood, and struck one of the paper matches. Nothing happened. My heart sank. I was so cold. I studied the matchbook, looking for the driest, roughest place. Doing everything slowly and deliberately. I held the match and booklet next to the rag, said another prayer to sparks and fire, and struck down again.

  The fire exploded out of the can, throwing me back, singeing my face. Thick, acrid black smoke filled the car. But when I saw the yellow flame I forgot my stinging face and fed paper and then twigs until the fire held steady. I warmed first my hands and then my feet, and then my hands again.

  Now that my fire is going again, hunger has suddenly returned to torment me. I’m ready to eat bark from trees. Not a bad idea?

  Found this poem in my English book. By Christina Rossetti. I memorized it easily before I burned it.

  In the bleak mid-winter

  Frosty wind made moan

  Earth stood hard as iron

  Water like a stone;

  Snow had fallen, snow on snow

  Snow on snow,

  In the bleak mid-winter,

  Long ago.

  15

  COLD BEANS FROM A CAN

  The hut stood on a knoll across the stream Tony had been following. A dark, weather-stained structure, with a steep tarpapered roof. Tony crashed across the stream and up the other side, yelling with excitement. No one answered his call. No smoke rose from the chimney, and as he approached he saw that the windows were boarded shut and the door padlocked.

  The cabin was empty. A terrible anger gripped him. Anger at whoever owned the cabin for not being here. He pounded on the door. Tears smarted his eyes. To have come all this way for nothing! And now his feet were wet, too—his boots soaked through. His feet would freeze! Enraged, he picked up a rock and hammered at the lock, battering it until the hasp tore loose and the door swung open.

  It was dark inside and even colder than outdoors—a chill, numbing cold that made Tony’s head ache. He was in an uninsulated hunting-and-fishing camp of the cheapest construction, probably used only in milder weather. There were chairs stacked on a table, a couple of cot mattresses folded double on bare metal springs, and a stuffed duffel bag on the floor. A half-filled woodbox stood behind a squat old fashioned black stove. On a shelf Tony found a book of wood matches—sturdy, dry matches that struck bright and true the first time. He threw kindling into the stove, opened the draft, watched the strips of wood catch, then added more and more wood as the fire roared up. Nothing in his life had ever looked or felt so good. He shut the front door, threw more wood on the fire, pulled off his wet boots and socks, and collapsed on one of the bare mattresses.

  Hours later he woke to the sound of hammering. Still groggy, he thought it was his mother calling him to get ready for school. He didn’t want to get up. He was cold and shivery. He felt horrible. Why didn’t she leave him alone?

  He sat up, looking dazedly around the dark cabin. The cabin. Of course, he was in the cabin. Was it night already? Then he remembered the boarded windows that he hadn’t had the strength to open. He stumbled to his feet. “Who’s there?” The hammering stopped, then started again. He pulled open the door, half expecting to see the wrathful owner of the cabin. No one was there. The countryside spread before him, pale, blank, and ferocious. The hammering had begun again, this time on the other side of the hut, and he realized that it was only a woodpecker probing beneath the bark slab sides for hibernating bugs.

  Tony built up the fire again, then looked carefully around the cabin. It was an ordinary hunting and fishing camp, but he examined each object in it as if it were made of gold and jewels. A wooden shelf between the studs of one wall held a candle stuck in an empty beer bottle, a jelly glass, and a battered teapot. On the front of a high wooden cupboard door was a faded calendar with a picture of a fisherman in hip boots smiling proudly at a trout glistening on the end of his line, while behind him a waiting bear was smiling too.

  In the cupboard Tony found a yellow canister with seven teabags, a large glass jar filled with rice, a salt shaker, a full bottle of ketchup, two cans of beans, a can of tomatoes, a can of corned beef, and a green glass jar filled with sugar. His mouth watering, he dipped a handful of sugar and almost gagged on the sudden rush of sweetness to his stomach. He knocked the chairs off the table and spread all the food from the cupboard in splendid array. In a dark corner of the cupboard he found two spongy, sprouting potatoes that he added to his hoard. He was dizzy with his wealth. He wanted to devour everything at once.

  He decided on a steaming bowl of beans and searched for a can opener, swallowing his saliva. He yanked out the drawer in the kitchen table. Everything clattered to the floor. He was slow and clumsy with hunger and fatigue. There was a real knife, a few
forks, a spoon and corkscrew, but no can opener. He flew into a rage and kicked the chair. He couldn’t control himself.

  He filled the tea kettle with snow, put it on top of the stove and poked up the fire. He’d soon need more wood, but he dreaded the thought of going out in the snow. Instead, he took one of the wooden kitchen chairs and bashed it against the wall until it splintered and came apart in his hands. He fed the chair into the fire. After the water in the tea kettle had boiled, he threw in handfuls of rice and shook in ketchup freely. The spicy smell was dizzying. He licked the rim of the ketchup bottle and carefully capped it While the rice was cooking, he investigated the duffel bag. It was full of blankets.

  When his meal was cooked he gobbled the rice and ketchup, scraping out the bottom of the pot, then licking his fingers clean. To keep the fire going he broke up another chair. Then he slept under seven blankets.

  In the morning the fire was out and the hut cold, so Tony stayed under the blankets dreaming about snaring a rabbit and roasting it over the fire. Reluctantly his thoughts shifted to Cindy and the return trip. Those fields of snow. Sinking down to his hips. He could almost feel it all again like a physical presence, an enemy punching and battering him, dragging him down until he didn’t know or care where he was or what happened to him.

  Outside, the sky was slate gray. It had begun snowing again. What was the use of going out and getting lost in a snowstorm? Wouldn’t it be better if he stayed here and waited for someone to show up? Then he could lead them to Cindy. They’d both be better off waiting in different places. He’d been gone two days now. Cindy had as good a chance of being rescued as he did, maybe better. Maybe somebody had already come for her, and his return trip would be entirely wasted.

  Yes, he’d stay here a while longer. There must be fish in the brook. He could burn the rest of the chairs and then the boards on the windows. After that, there was plenty of dead wood around.