The Snow Child (22 page)

Through the trees she heard the horse whinny. The trail circled around to the new field, and there she could see the silhouette of the horse, lifting one hoof, then another, still harnessed to the overturned plow.

“Jack? Jack?” she called.

She made out only shapes in the gloomy half-light, but she walked toward the horse. There was a muffled groan.

“Mabel?”

She wanted to run toward the voice, but the rough ground wouldn’t allow her. Still she saw no sign of him.

“Here, Mabel. Here.”

She followed the sound, her head bent toward the ground, until she nearly stepped on him. He lay flat on his back, his face to the darkening sky.

“What happened?”

“The horse. Drug me along. Hours ago.” His words came through a slurry of dirt and blood. Mabel knelt beside him and with her sleeve tried to wipe the mess away from his mouth.

“How did this happen?”

“Black bear.”

“Here?”

“By the woods. I busted a bolt on the damned plow, was trying to fix it. The horse saw the bear first and started prancing.”

Mabel looked toward the forest.

“Gone now. Don’t think it meant us harm. Just ambled out, like he didn’t see us. I tried to get free of the plow. The horse spooked and flipped around on me, caught my leg up in it. Pulled me through the dirt, till I fell free. Hoped he’d bring the damned plow all the way home, so you’d know. But he stopped just there.” Jack tried to sit up, but grimaced in pain.

“Where do you hurt?”

“Damn near everywhere.” Jack tried to laugh, but it came out as a gravelly cough. “It’s my back.”

“What can I do?”

“Unhitch the horse. No, don’t be nervous. He’s all run out now.”

“Then what?”

“Then we’ve got to get me on him so you can walk us home.”

“Can you stand?”

“I don’t know.”

After Jack talked her through it, she unhitched the horse and led it to where he lay. Slipping her arms beneath his, she tried to help him off the ground. He was heavier than she expected, and she sank in the cold mud under his weight. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and, groaning, got to his knees.

“Christ.” He squinted tears from his eyes.

“I should go for help. I’ll get George.”

“No. We can do this. Here.” He held her around the shoulders again and she stood with him, her face crushed into his muddy shirt.

“Easy. Easy there. Grab his bridle.”

With one hand Mabel tried to hold the horse steady while it jerked its head away. Jack fell from her and leaned into the animal’s side.

“Jack, you can’t. How can you mount him like this?”

“I’ve got to.” He grabbed the mane and cried out as he hauled himself up, sprawling belly-down across the horse.

“Whoa! Whoa!” Mabel fought to keep the horse still. Jack eased one leg around so he straddled the bare back, his head against the animal’s neck where the coat was stiff with dried sweat. Jack’s breathing gurgled.

“Jesus,” he whispered. “Jesus.”

“Jack? Should I start walking now?”

“Easy. Easy does it.”

The way home was long and disorienting. Mabel couldn’t discern distance or depth in the murky light. She carried the shotgun in one hand and led the horse with the other. Whenever the horse tripped or stumbled, Jack cried out. Mabel wished she had a rope or lead. Several times the animal yanked the halter strap from her hands, and she feared it might throw Jack to the ground and bolt home.

“It’s OK, Mabel. Just take it slow.”

She led the horse to the cabin door and helped Jack slide slowly to the ground, down to his hands and knees.

“Go on,” he said. “Take the horse to the barn.”

“But—”

“I’ll get myself inside. Go.”

As she led the horse away, she looked over her shoulder to see Jack crawling up the doorstep.

A focused composure came over her as she heated water and helped Jack out of his clothes. She put a wool blanket on the floor in front of the woodstove so he could lie there while she washed the blood and dirt from his skin and hair. He grunted in pain occasionally, especially as she dabbed at the abrasions across his shoulder blades. What concerned her more was the deep purple that had begun to well up across his lower back.

“I should go for help.”

He shook his head. “Just get me into bed.”

She decided to leave the superficial wounds unbandaged, hoping they’d heal faster that way, and slid a clean long-underwear shirt over his head. Half naked, Jack went on hands and knees into the bedroom. Mabel helped him onto the bed. Later she brought him a bowl of broth and tried to spoon it into his mouth, but he only gritted his teeth in pain.

She sat up late that night with a candle on the table and a cup of cold tea in front of her. Occasionally she heard the bed creak and Jack moan. He had shattered bones before—caught his hand between pallets at the family farm, broke his leg when a horse rolled on him—but she had never seen him like this. She knew the pain would worsen by tomorrow. She thought of the empty fields and the frantic pace he had been working, often twelve hours at a stretch, and still he said he would never get it done. Even if he healed quickly, this could ruin them.

Mabel never really slept that night. Her agitated mind worked in relentless circles of planting days and calculated earnings, circles that always came back to a place with no answers. Occasionally she nodded in the chair, only to startle awake at the sound of Jack’s cries.

Her prediction was correct—his pain doubled up on itself through the night, and by morning Jack could hardly speak. She gently rolled him onto his side and lifted his shirt. The bruises ran deep to the bone.

“My feet are numb, Mabel.” His whisper was desperate.

She smoothed her hand across his forehead and kissed him on the lips. She spoke with a calm assurance she did not feel. “I’ll be right back.” She brought him water and soft bread, then told him she would be outside for a while feeding the horse.

She had saddled a horse only a few times in her life, but she decided it would be faster than the wagon. She did not want to leave Jack alone, but like the problems she had worried over during the night, there seemed to be no other answer. She would go for a doctor.

Despite the summer she had spent in town, she couldn’t recall where to find the doctor. He probably had a room in the boardinghouse or somewhere in the hotel. After the wearying two-hour ride from the homestead, Mabel dismounted and walked the horse along the dirt road to the general store. Jack had always spoken well of Joseph Palmer, the owner. She remembered him as a kind man with a short white beard and quiet manner.

The old man seemed embarrassed on Mabel’s behalf when she asked after a doctor.

“No doctor around here. Nearest one would be in Anchorage. You’d have to catch the train in.”

“What?”

“We don’t have a doctor, dear. Never have,” he repeated gently.

“You must be joking? No doctor? Isn’t this a town, for God’s sake?”

Mabel took a slow breath, tried to find some small reservoir of strength inside herself. Mr. Palmer nodded as she told him of Jack’s injuries. He’d known men who twisted up their backs, and doctors never could do much anyways.

“You’ve just got to let time take its course. It’ll either heal, or it won’t,” and he said it as if he regretted the truth, as if he knew what hung in the balance.

Aside from train tickets to Anchorage, Mr. Palmer could offer her only a brown glass bottle.

“Give him a bit every few hours. It’ll ease the pain and help him sleep,” he said. “And don’t worry about giving him too much. I’ve known men who drink it regularly and don’t seem overly affected.”

Mabel paid and thanked him. As she turned toward the door, he spoke again.

“It might not seem proper, but you could consider getting him a few jars of drink. Ted Swanson, on the other side of the tracks, down by the river. He could help you. It might do Jack some good, mix a bit of that in alcohol. I don’t usually make such recommendations, but it sounds as if he’s in need.”

Laudanum and moonshine—all this place could offer her injured husband. She mounted the horse and galloped toward their homestead, too angry to be frightened.

CHAPTER 23

S
ticky cottonwood buds cracked open beneath blue skies and the mud in the fields turned to moist, rich soil, but Mabel’s grief seemed beaten over and dusty and all too familiar. Something akin to hunger or thirst clung to the back of her throat, and she considered drinking some of Jack’s laudanum but didn’t. Backlit by the brilliant sun, the cabin was dark and cool. She didn’t light the fire, but kept candles burning. In the bed where she no longer slept, Jack lay in a stupor, calling out only when the painkiller wore off. She thought of what Esther had told her about moose, how they often starved to death just as spring arrives. Having lived through the depths of winter, the long-legged animals wallow in the heavy, wet snow and succumb to exhausted despair.

She was alone. The strong husband who had cared for her was a crumpled man who sobbed in the night and begged her to leave him, to go back home and find a new life without him. The little girl she had begun to love had vanished, another child lost. Sitting upright in the chair, she slept in brief, intense bouts at odd hours and dreamed of a bloody, stillborn infant and puddles of snowmelt. The fairy tale from her sister’s letter haunted her dreams. “Whenever I do know that you love me little, then I shall melt away again. Back into the sky I’ll go—Little Daughter of the Snow.”

When Mabel woke, she could not even grieve her dreams. There was too much to be done: caring for the horse, hauling water, helping Jack to a makeshift chamber pot, cooking meals, even if she alone ate them. Fatigue distorted her sense of time, and often she did not know whether it was day or night, dusk or dawn.

One afternoon, when the nightmares would not leave her, she went outside and blinked against the sun. She threw bread scraps to the wild chickadees and pine grosbeaks and talked to them as if they could understand, but they only scattered at the sound of her voice. She went to the pasture and stroked the horse’s soft muzzle. She wandered into the trees and picked the boughs of highbush cranberries, and, with the tiny white blossoms clasped in her hands, she let her eyes search for the girl, but the woods were silent. She thought of the black bear and the wolves. She only had to get Jack well enough to travel, and then they would leave this place. There was nothing for them here.

“Hello! Hello! Anyone at the homestead?”

With the sun in her eyes, she couldn’t make out the figure on horseback. The man dismounted and removed a burlap sack from his saddlebags. It was George. Relief nearly buckled Mabel’s knees, and when he offered her his arm, she took it gratefully.

“So the old man is laid up, eh?”

He led her indoors to a chair and began taking clinking Mason jars from the sack. He lined them up on the table, each jar sparkling with clear liquid.

“Now, don’t give me that look, Mabel. Never been a better excuse than a broken back. So where is he?”

Mabel pointed to the bedroom where Jack slept.

“He can’t walk on his own yet,” Mabel whispered. “And when the laudanum wears off, the pain is unbearable.”

George shook his head side to side and clicked his tongue softly. “Damn. He’s not up to snuff, is he?”

“No, George. No, he is not.” She stood and began putting the jars of moonshine onto a shelf in the kitchen, as if it made some difference.

“As soon as he is well enough, I’ll schedule our travel,” she said. “And I know he will want you to have any of our tools and equipment, and of course the horse. We won’t be able to take any of it with us, I’m afraid.”

“Mabel?”

“We can’t stay here. You must see that.”

“You’re leaving the homestead? For good?”

“We were barely keeping it going as it was, George. And there’s just the two of us. It has been a fantastic adventure, coming here. But now it’s time we accepted our lot and went home.”

“You can’t just walk away. You’ve done so much work with the place. There’s got to be another way.”