May B. (20 page)

      Now the sleigh bells ring clearly.

      “Over here!” I say.

      A sleigh is steering toward me.

      The horse slows,

      then stops.

      “May Betterly?”

      “I’m May,” I say,

      and reach forward.

      A firm hand grasps my wrist.

      “Miss Betterly,” the stranger says,

      “are you all right?”

      I’ve seen nothing move

      for so long,

      save grass pushing at my feet,

      clouds,

      rabbits,

      this endless blowing snow.

      And this is a person!

      He settles me in his sleigh,

      pulls a buffalo robe around me.

      In the moonlight,

      I make out the man’s blue muffler,

      a hat pushed low on his brow.

      His eyes;

      I have seen them before.

      “I’m John Chapman,” he says.

      “I helped Mr. Oblinger with his floor.”

      The neighbor who brought the wood.

      If Ma could see me,

      she’d tell me to remember my manners.

      “How do you do, Mr. Chapman?”

      He nods to me.

      “How do you do?”

      I’m riding in a sleigh

      away from the Oblingers’ soddy!

      We pass a clump of darkness,

      some trees I counted last July?

      “The storm came the first of December,” he says.

      “I dug out last week,

      drove into town.

      That’s when I heard …”

      His eyes dart to me.

      “… heard the Oblingers were gone.

      Seemed funny Oblinger would leave

      without telling me.

      I’d helped him some at his place.

      He’d done some work on mine.

      I asked if anyone knew where he was headed.

      Heard all sorts of stories,

      none of them the same:

      his wife had run,

      he’d given up and sold his land,

      he would come back with family next spring.”

      
Desperate to find the missus,

      how easy it would be

      to forget me.

      Mr. Chapman turns.

      “No one mentioned a girl.

      I got to thinking,

      if he’d run off like some folks said,

      and with those wolves about,

      what had become of you?”

      Someone has thought of me.

      These last few days,

      someone
knew
.

      “I came earlier this week to look for you,”

      Mr. Chapman says.

      “A couple of miles from my place,

      something along the creek caught my eye.

      I dug through the snow,

      reached the spokes of a wheel.

      Oblinger’s wagon must have overturned,

      slid over the edge of the ravine.”

      My heart claws at my throat,

      remembering the way Mr. Oblinger raced.

      Something
had
happened to him.

      Mr. Oblinger never made it to town?

      “Did you see—?”

      Mr. Chapman shakes his head.

      “I walked around,

      looked for more.”

      He clears his throat.

      The wolves.

      There is nothing I can say.

      “Rode faster then,

      
when I figured you were alone,

      but the snow blew through again.

      It was a wonder I made it home.

      I dug myself out this morning.

      Tried again at the Oblingers’ this afternoon.

      When I reached the soddy,

      I found a hole,

      some footprints,

      and the house empty.

      Followed those prints

      until I found you.”

      “It was good of you, Mr. Chapman.”

      “Nothing more than any decent person would do.”

      The horse labors in the snow;

      still, we’re moving faster

      than I ever did alone.

      I lay my head back against the robe’s soft fur.

      I will see my family soon.

      “My folks are just a few miles

      southeast of town,” I say.

      
His eyes are soft.

      “It was foolish of you to try

      to make it on your own.

      Foolish,

      and brave.”

      “Guess I’m the foolish type, then.”

      He laughs,

      but not unkindly.

      It is strange to hear this story:

      a man I’d barely met

      taking the time

      to try to save me.

      I ask, “Could you tell me the day?”

      “It’s Friday,

      the fifteenth of December.”

      Pa delivered me

      to the Oblingers

      five months ago.

      I listen but don’t talk much;

      there is too much to consider.

      I am content to feel the wind

      at my cheeks,

      to take in the stars

      scattered like marbles across the heavens,

      to watch the horse’s sturdy legs

      step gingerly.

      “Pa said he’d come just before Christmas,”

      I hear myself saying.

      Mr. Chapman says,

      “I must have just beat him.”

      The air is sharp in my lungs.

      I’m dizzied

      from hunger,

      or a lack of sleep,

      or from the sweet strangeness

      of my circumstance.

      If I had waited just a few hours more,

      Mr. Chapman would have found me

      still buried beneath the snow.

      But I didn’t wait;

      I pulled myself out of that place

      and set to walking.

      I left a trail for Mr. Chapman

      to come to me.