The Snow Child (18 page)

When he returned, he saw that Mabel had set one aside.

“We were joking, weren’t we? About cooking one for dinner tonight?”

“It’s not for us.”

“Then what?”

Mabel put on her coat and boots.

“I’m taking it to a place in the woods.”

“What place?”

“Where you left her the treats and the doll.”

So she’d known all along.

“But a dead chicken?” he asked. “For the child?”

“Not for her. For her fox.”

“You’re going to feed one of our chickens to a wild fox?”

“I need to do this.”

“What for?” Jack’s voice rose. “How in God’s name does it make a bit of sense, when we’re just barely getting by, to throw a dinner out into the woods?”

“I want her to know…” and Mabel held her chin up, as if what she said took some courage. “Faina needs to know that we love her.”

“And a chicken will tell her that?”

“I told you, it’s for her fox.”

As Mabel carried the naked, dead bird into the night, Jack wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it. Instead he found himself thinking of what Esther had said about a dark winter’s madness.

CHAPTER 17

A
s he neared the cabin, Jack heard the chatter of women’s voices, and when he came through the door with an armload of firewood, he found Esther with her feet propped indecorously on a chair in front of the woodstove. She wore men’s navy wool pants with the cuffs tucked into long red-striped socks. A big toe stuck out through a hole in one sock, and as Jack loaded more wood into the stove, she wiggled her toes toward the heat.

“I was just telling Mabel, I hope that boy of mine don’t pester you too awful much. I know he’s coming around a lot this winter, talking your ear off I’m sure,” she said.

Mabel handed her a cup of tea and she slurped at it.

“No. No.” He tried not to look at the bare toe. “Not at all. Truth be told, I kind of enjoy his company. I could learn a lot from him.”

“Don’t you dare tell him that. It’ll go straight to his head, and we’ll never hear the end of it. That boy knows a lot, but not half as much as he thinks he does.”

“Ah well. Suppose that was true about most of us at that age.”

“He’s taken a liking to you, though. He’s always talking about you. Jack says this and Jack says that.”

Mabel handed Jack a cup of tea. “There are johnnycakes, too. Esther brought them.”

The two women had spent most of the day sharing recipes and patterns, and even out in the yard he had heard their laughter. He was glad for Mabel to have the company.

Esther stood and stretched and took a johnnycake from the plate.

“I was also dispensing a little advice. I told Mabel here she’s got to get out of the cabin more. All this talk about little girls running around in the trees. Next thing you know she’ll be holding tea parties in the front yard, wearing nothing but her skivvies and a flowered hat.”

Esther nudged Mabel with an elbow and winked, but Mabel did not smile.

“Oh look at you, white as a ghost. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. This is nonsense, all this talk about a little girl.”

“I’m not crazy, Esther.” Mabel’s voice was tight, and she caught Jack’s eyes with her own.

“So you do have some fight in you, my girl.” Esther hugged her waist. “You’ll need every bit of that to survive around here.”

Jack expected Esther to find some reason to leave then, but either she took no notice of Mabel’s cross silence or she had more strength in the face of it than he could ever muster. She plopped herself into a chair at the table and swished tea around in her mouth.

“Good tea. Real good tea,” she said. “Did I ever tell you about the grizzly tea?”

“No. Can’t recall that you did,” Jack said. He had intended to work outside for another hour or two, but he pulled up a chair across from her and Mabel and took another johnnycake.

“Danny… Jeffers? Jaspers? Ah hell, my mind’s going. Anyway, Danny carried around a nasty-smelling burlap bag filled with—well, let’s just say the less-than-desirable parts of grizzly bears. He swore you could brew a tea with it that would improve your love life.”

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.

CHAPTER 18

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 attentive, 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?