The Snow Child: A Novel (19 page)

Esther’s eyes sparkled mischievously. “Soooo, you always knew who was having trouble in the sack, based on who was talking to old Danny.”

“Oh, you had to drink the stuff? How dreadful.” Mabel wrinkled her nose.

“I was thinking more about those poor grizzly bears,” Jack said. “Imagine enduring that!”

Esther laughed and held her belly.

“Now that would be a sight, wrestling a grizzly bear to the ground.”

“Well you don’t mean…” Mabel wore an appalled expression.

Esther could barely speak for laughing so hard. “No… no… The bears weren’t alive. He killed them first.”

“Oh,” Mabel said quietly, and Jack couldn’t tell if she was embarrassed or thinking of all the dead bears.

“I suppose a lot of characters have come through here over the years,” he said.

“Oh, sure. This place draws kooks like flies. We count ourselves among the sane ones, and that tells you something.”

Mabel did smile then.

“You must have heard about the fellow who painted his cabin bright orange?” Esther asked.

“No, no.” Mabel laughed and shook her head. “I won’t believe you anymore. You’re making it up.”

Esther solemnly held up her right hand. “I swear it’s the truth. Orange as a piece of fruit. Said it would help him keep cheerful during the black winters. His place was down just the
other side of the tracks. I thought it was kind of pretty myself, but all the men in town teased him no end.”

“Did it work?” Jack asked.

“Can’t say that it did. He burned up in his cabin that winter, the whole thing down to the ground. I always kind of wondered—he complained about the cold more than any man I’ve ever known. What in the Sam Hill he was doing in Alaska is beyond me. Everyone said the fire was an accident, and that all the paint fueled the flames, but maybe he was just sick of being cold. Wanted to go out in a blast of heat, like old Sam McGee.”

“Sam who?” Mabel asked. “Did he live around here?”

“Sam who! And your own father was a literature professor?” Esther went on to recite some verses by a Yukon poet named Robert Service that told of all the strange things done under the midnight sun.

As light faded, Mabel asked her to stay for dinner, but she said no, she had to get home and cook for her houseful of men. Once she had dressed in her coat and boots and was ready to leave, she hugged Mabel again.

“Darn it if you haven’t become my very best friend,” she said. “Take care, won’t you?”

“I will,” Mabel said “It was good to see you.”

Jack followed Esther into the yard and offered to hitch their draft horse to the wagon.

“I got it just fine, Jack,” she said. She leaned in close to him and looked back toward the cabin.

“But I do worry about her,” she said. “She’s got a bit of the sadness about her, like my own mother did. Keep a close watch over her.”

Jack expected Mabel to be sullen and quiet when he went back inside, but she was humming to herself at the kitchen sink.

“You two have a good visit?”

“We did. I’ve never met anyone like her. She is full of surprises, and I rather enjoy it.”

She poured water into a pot and didn’t look at him. “Why don’t you ever speak up for me, tell her that you’ve seen the child as well?”

So he was the one, not Esther, who had angered her.

“It completely baffles me, Jack. She’s real. You’ve seen her with your own eyes, sat with her at this very table. And yet never once have you acknowledged it to the Bensons.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe I’m not as brave as you.”

“You’re mocking me.”

“No. You’re different. True to yourself, even if it means people will say you’re crazy. Well, me… I guess I just…”

“You don’t say a word.” But there was more bemusement than anger in it.

She went back to sorting through a sack of potatoes.

“Should I get a pair of those wool pants like Esther was wearing?” she asked.

“Only if you wear the holey socks as well.”

“But didn’t they look warm and practical?”

“The socks?” he teased.

“No no. Those socks were something else.”

As she began to peel potatoes, he stood behind her and touched the tendrils of hair that had fallen from their clips and curled at the nape of her neck. Then he reached around her waist and leaned into her. All these years and still he was drawn to the smell of her skin, of sweet soap and fresh air. He whispered against her ear, “Dance with me.”

“What?”

“I said, let’s dance.”

“Dance? Here, in the cabin? I do believe you’re the mad one.”

“Please.”

“There’s no music.”

“We can remember some tune, can’t we?” and he began to hum “In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree.”

“Here,” he said, and swung her around to face him, an arm still at her waist, her slight hand in his.

He hummed louder and began to twirl them around the plank floor.

“Hmmm, hmm, with a heart that is true, I’ll be waiting for you…”

“… in the shade of the old apple tree.” She kissed him on the cheek, and he swept her back on his arm.

“Oh, I’ve thought of one,” she said. “Let me think…” and she began to hum tentatively. Jack didn’t know it at first, but then it came to him and he began to sing along.

“When my hair has all turned gray,” a swoop and a twirl beside the kitchen table, “will you kiss me then and say, that you love me in December as you do in May?”

And then they were beside the woodstove and Mabel kissed him with her mouth open and soft. Jack pulled her closer, pressed their bodies together and kissed the side of her face and down her bare neck and, as she let her head gently lean away, down to her collarbone. Then he scooped an arm beneath her knees and picked her up.

“What in heaven’s—you’ll break your back,” Mabel sputtered between a fit of laughter. “We’re too old for this.”

“Are we?” he asked. He rubbed his beard against her cheek. She shrieked and laughed, and he carried her into the bedroom, though they had not yet eaten dinner.

T
he cranberries were tiny red rubies against the white snow, and Mabel’s eyes searched them out. She had thought them inedible, but Esther told her they were actually sweeter once they’d frozen and perfect for sauces and jellies. The late February weather had warmed to just below freezing. The sky was blue, the air was calm, and it was surprisingly pleasant to be outside. Mabel waded through the deep snow near the cabin, carrying the birch basket Faina had given them. The berries were small and scattered among the bare, spindly branches, but Mabel was beginning to fill the basket a few at a time. She planned to make a savory relish with the cranberries, Esther’s onions, and spices. Maybe it would make the moose meat taste like something other than the same meal they’d eaten every day for weeks on end. She was smiling to herself, thinking of how necessity truly is the mother of invention, when she looked up to see the child and the fox.

Faina never ceased to startle Mabel. It wasn’t just the way the girl appeared without warning, but also her manner. She stood with her arms at her sides in her wool coat, mittens, scarf, fur trim, and flaxen hair. Her brown fur hat was dusted in snow, as were her eyelashes. Her expression was calmly atten
tive, as if she had been waiting, for minutes, perhaps years, knowing it was only a matter of time before Mabel came to this place in the woods.

Mabel was no longer sure of the child’s age. She seemed both newly born and as old as the mountains, her eyes animated with unspoken thoughts, her face impassive. Here with the child in the trees, all things seemed possible and true.

Just as startling was the fox. It sat beside Faina with its silken red tail curled around its feet and its ears pricked forward. Something in its predatory eyes and thin black mouth told of a thousand small deaths, and Mabel could not forget its muzzle smeared with blood.

Is he your friend? she asked the child.

Faina shrugged her small shoulders.

We hunt together, she said.

Who does the killing? Mabel asked.

Both of us.

Do you ever pet him?

The girl shook her head.

Once I did, she said. When he was a kit, he took pieces of meat from my fingers, and he never bit me. At night he sometimes slept beside me. But he is too wild now. We run and hunt together, but that is all.

As if to show the truth of what she had said, Faina reached her mittened hand down toward the fox. It swiftly ducked and darted around the child’s legs and into the trees. The girl watched, and Mabel thought she saw a look of wonder and longing on her face.

Have you picked many berries? Faina turned back to her.

A few, Mabel said. Not as many as I should have. But it’s a lovely day. I don’t mind that it has taken me most of the morning.

The girl nodded, then pointed past a stand of spruce.

There are more just over there, she said.

Thank you. Won’t you come with me?

But the girl was already running away, toward the cabin. She flickered through the trees and skimmed across the top of the snow, until Mabel was alone again in the forest. Sunlight sparkled on the snow and she could hear the wind blowing down from the glacier, but here it was quiet, so quiet Mabel was left to wonder if she had always been alone. She walked through the snow and into the spruce trees.

It took some time to identify what she was hearing. Mabel had filled her basket to overflowing with the cranberries Faina had pointed her toward. She pulled her mittens back on and held the basket carefully, not wanting to spill a single berry into the snow. As she neared the cabin, she thought she heard shouts. Or maybe it was singing. Then, as she broke through the trees and out into the yard, she heard it clearly—laughter.

Jack and the child stood side by side, their arms outstretched and hands nearly touching. Then, without warning, they threw themselves backward into the deep snow.

Come see! Come see! the child called out to Mabel.

Jack? Faina? What on earth…

We’re snow angels, Jack called out, and the girl giggled.

Mabel walked to them, the basket in her hands, and looked down. Jack had sunk nearly a foot into the snow, and he was waving his arms and legs like a drowning man. He grinned, and Mabel saw that his beard and mustache were caked with snow.

Nearby the child lay on top of the snow, smiling, her blue eyes wide.

She saw now that they were surrounded by angels in the snow—Jack’s large, deep-set figure and the child’s, smaller and lighter. A dozen or more were sprinkled across the yard two at a time, and they shone in the sunlight. Mabel had never seen anything more beautiful, and she walked among them.

Jack struggled to his feet. Then he reached down to Faina and grabbed her hands.

Watch, the child called to her.

Jack plucked Faina from the snow, both of them laughing.

What Mabel beheld in the snow took her breath away. The angel was so delicate, and its wings perfectly formed, like the print left on snow where a wild bird has taken flight.