They Came Across the Snow

The clouds were low and heavy, and the air was still in the hour before it came. A long bank of mist hovered over the bare trees which lined the country lanes. And where the lanes converged there was a dead-end road on which the boy lived in a comfortable, rambler-style, house surrounded by 200 acres of deep woods. And his heart was in these woods. 

When the sun dissolved below the horizon, he watched out the front window as darkness filled the leaf-strewn hollows. Cold shadows rose slowly out of the creek bottom, rounding the treetops and washing over the low hills. When a sudden gust came, the clouds stirred and yellow-orange leaves scattered across the yard. First they swirled around the darkening tree trunks but then they went upward, like crows on an updraft.  

He was already in pajamas, kneeling on the couch in the warmth of the living room. A fire crackled and glowed in the fireplace, and his parents were talking softly in the kitchen. His eyelids were heavy after a long day outside, but he was thinking about the coming of winter and how, like the animals, he too would have to adapt. 

And then it came, first as raindrops on the windows then as slush that fell in straight, determined, lines to the ground. When the drops cooled they began to drift sideways. Soon he could only see them flitting in the porch light. The yard had been dark but the ground began to lighten as if opposing the coming of night.      

“Can you help me get the Red Ryder sled out tomorrow, maybe before you go to work?” he asked his father, while being tucked into bed. 

“Sure, I think we can do that,” his father said. “You’ll have to clean it up before you ride it. It’s probably dusty.” 

“Oh, I will,” the boy said. “I’ll make sure to get it back up to speed before I try it out.” Then the lamp clicked off and his thoughts became dreams.

In the morning he rushed to the window and looked out. Nearly two feet of fresh powder covered the landscape. The branches were drooping and bending under the weight. As the sun was just coming over the hilltops, he dressed quickly. After some breakfast, he followed his father out to the garage.

When the sled was out, and while his father was shoveling the driveway, he used a warm washcloth to clean it on the back porch. His bare hands turned red in the fresh air, now more bitter as the sky had cleared. Through puffs of his own breath, he inspected the rails, wiping off any rust. The bottom of the rails were still mostly smooth and silver. He could see a small crack in one of the wooden slats, but it hadn’t grown any since last year. 

They waited for their neighbor, Mr. Billings, to arrive with his tractor so he could drop the blade and clear a path for his father to get to work. The boy watched the two of them talking at the end of the driveway. At times his father was laughing. 

The tractor blade left a perfect sheen of ice and packed snow. As his father drove off, the boy waved goodbye and started out at the end of the lane with his back to the woods. The sled began slowly, but soon picked up speed. He gripped the handles with his mittens, whipping past snow banks and sunlit fields beyond. His face stung from the cold and the snow-mist, mixed with frosted air. When he came to Alice’s house, he dropped his boots and slowed to a stop. 

“Well, good morning young man,” she said. She was holding a shovel and working on her driveway. He offered to finish the job and she gladly accepted. 

“Did you see the turkeys early this morning?” she asked. “Just over there at the edge of the clearing? It looked like the whole flock. I think the acorns fell with the wind and they were eating them for breakfast.”

“No, I didn’t see them,” he said. “I was too busy cleaning off my sled and waiting for Mr. Billings to clear the road.”        

“Well, we might have to feed them a little this year, if this storm is any indication of what’s to come,” she said. “So you’ll probably still get to see them, maybe even up close.”

“I’d like to help with that for sure, if we do end up needing to feed them.” 

“Well I’ll definitely invite you,” she said. “Also, I thought you’d like to know that I saw that wily woodpecker out last evening too, just before the clouds came in. He was working on my old walnut tree like it was a pinata or something.” 

“Did you get any pictures?” the boy asked. 

“No, unfortunately not,” she said. “I can’t work the camera that fast. I’ll have to do better at keeping it at the ready.” She laughed and smiled and looked out on the fields. 

Alice lived alone and her life was mostly quiet now. Sometimes her children would come to visit. But on most days there weren’t many visitors, and during these times she followed the lives of the animals like someone might follow a sports team. She knew about all their habits, and the boy liked to listen to what she knew. Her husband had died five years ago, and the boy never really knew him. She wasn’t outside much in the years before he died. But now he saw her often. She was small but spry. Her hair had gone completely white a couple years ago, and she usually kept it tied in a ponytail. This morning there were little clumps of snow clinging to it.

“Do you need anything else done around the house while I’m here?” the boy asked. 

“Oh, no,” Alice said while looking around. “Thank you for doing the driveway, you’re so kind. I’ll make sure to tell your dad.”    

She brought him some hot chocolate before he left. The cup warmed his fingers and he could feel it going down as he sipped. He spent the rest of the day sledding and making a snow fort in his yard. 

It was a week later, while his mother was making lunch, when he came in again from playing in the snow. He took off his jumper and socks and changed into drier clothes. It had snowed even bigger the night before, and it seemed the winter would now be permanently white. He ate a ham sandwich and went to his room. Outside, the sun was bright and a fine powder was drifting off the roof and sparkling as it went down past his window. 

After making his bed, he happened to look out and saw something moving along a fallen poplar tree at the edge of his backyard. The form was small and lithe. He grabbed the binoculars off his desk and was stunned to see that it was a weasel, an ermine, with fur whiter than the surrounding snow. He watched as it hunted mercilessly in the cracks of the log. “Pity the squirrel he might find,” the boy thought, as the ermine was poking around with its nose. Whenever it did this, its back would arch from the pushing. 

After climbing out of a particular hole in the log, the ermine paused and looked toward him with two small eyes that were like black marbles. Even from a distance he could see its little snout twitching in the cold. Within moments it darted and then flowed like a blur into the backdrop. 

“I can’t wait to tell Alice,” he said to himself.  

It was three days later when the boy suited up and went out into the morning. He had warm oatmeal in his stomach, and he had just put some jerky in his coat pocket. With the binoculars around his neck, he went out into the deep snow, starting out along a treeline that he followed for two miles toward the creek. As he went, he could see turkey tracks in the snowline, where some of the leaf beds were still exposed. The air was still crisp but warmer than the past few days had been, and the sunlight was almost painfully bright. After a time, the boy spotted a red-tailed hawk sitting in a snag, watching for breakfast. 

“I wish you luck,” he thought and raised the binoculars. He could see the bird tilting its head and looking at the ground. Not far off, a couple of big cows were out in the field. Their backs were steaming. The boy was still following the treeline and looking around.

And then it happened. There shouldn’t have been any left–no one was supposed to use them anymore. But somehow, he found one that had been long-forgotten. He was usually careful about where he stepped, but it was so well hidden beneath a patch of frosted leaves that he had missed it. And when he stepped on it, he almost passed out from the snap and from the shock. The steel had clamped just above his boot, and the jaws were now digging through his socks and pants into his leg.

He slumped onto his back and looked up at the bare branches above him, stark against the sky. He had screamed at first, not being able to control it, but he wasn’t sure if anyone had heard. The pain was so sudden but was chased away for a few moments by the adrenaline. In time it returned. And whenever he moved, the trap seemed to dig deeper. The trap was attached to the trunk of a Gambel Oak about ten feet away by a big rusted chain.

He was lying partly on the snow and partly in the leaves. He could hear the creek nearby. As far as he could tell, his ankle wasn’t broken, but when he tried to pry the trap apart he couldn’t. His fingers were too cold and the rust was too thick, and it hurt too much. Any lubrication the trap might have had when it was first set had dried up long ago.

“I can’t believe I didn’t see it,” the boy said aloud. His words went up into the air on a cloud of breath. “Who’s the idiot that left this out here?” he growled. He thought of all the dumb things the old men had done back then–whenever they were warring against nature. He remembered when his neighbor’s dog died after eating a piece of meat tainted with cyanide meant for coyotes. He was the first to find the poor old hound, all twisted up in a little ditch behind his garage.   

For a time he yelled, but neither the road nor the homes were visible anymore. Soon the minutes became hours and no one was coming. He watched the sun move gradually across the fields, headed west and he knew what it meant; the short winter day would end soon, and the killer cold was coming. At one point, a group of mule deer passed by, and a large four-point stopped to watch, taking his mind away for a moment. 

When the buck left, the boy looked down again at the trap. It had not been noticeable before, but as he moved he could just see the word on the steel. The letters were cheaply engraved and the lines weren’t even straight, but he used his gloved fingers to make them clear. 

“M.I.S.T.A.K.E.” they said, and his breath dropped out of him. He knew about irony; he had always been conscientious for his age. He wasn’t afraid of much but he was afraid of his own mistakes. He knew almost every one he had made since birth. Now their memories began to circle him, like wolves. Tears came, and he laid his head back on the snow. He pulled his knit cap down and tugged on the zipper of his coat.

The golden light was turning to blue and a few stars sparkled above. The temperature was dropping as he prayed. Even though he wasn’t religious, he always believed that if God was real they would be friends, especially if he created all of this beauty. Then he began to think about what death would be like and what God might look like. Did it feel like rushing when you died, or was it more like floating? Did you go up into the stars? Would there be kind people to greet you, like the church people said? He was getting numb and he remembered how people supposedly got numb before they froze. The daylight was almost gone. His eyes wanted to close, but he fought against them. 

Then there was something across the field. It was shapeless at first, just movements detected on the snow. As it got closer, he could see it was small, but moving quickly as if both darting and flowing at the same time. He assumed it was just a dream before death. But it wasn’t a dream. It was the ermine and it was coming to him. When it got close, he couldn’t stop himself from speaking. 

“Hello friend,” he said. “Are you here for me?” His voice trailed off to a whimper. The fierce little eyes reflected like flames in the dim light. The ermine moved closer and began to sniff at his beanie and then at the trap. The black tip of his tail swished across the snow. The boy tried not to move. He didn’t want to scare it away because he wanted company whenever he died. Then he heard her voice. 

“Oh my dear boy, there you are!” It was Alice and she had found him too.   

He couldn’t speak. He could only weep. The ermine faded quickly into the shadows, but Alice got a thick oak branch and the two of them, their hands working together, were able to pry the trap open. She helped him to his feet. A rush of cold air swept over them just as the last of sunset was sinking below a distant ridge. 

“You’ve got everyone out looking for you,” Alice said, wiping her own tears as they began to walk back. “They’ll be so happy to see you. I think your father has already walked 20 miles since dinnertime.” She was no longer old to him. She stood tall and supported him by the arm. She took off her scarf and wrapped it around his neck and brushed some crusted snow off his coat.

“I was looking at a few stars and thinking about death before you came,” the boy finally admitted. “I guess I wasn’t paying attention when I came out here this morning. Everything was so beautiful. I made a mistake and didn’t watch where I was going.” 

“I can certainly relate. I’m no stranger to mistakes. In fact, I don’t think I could’ve gotten old so well without them,” Alice said. “Thank goodness I saw that little ermine, and just decided to follow him. I could never have imagined where he was leading me.”  

“Isn’t he beautiful?” the boy said. “I saw him a few days ago in my backyard, but didn’t get a chance to tell you yet.”

“He was like a little star on the snow,” she said. “And those eyes…”

She put her arm around his shoulders. He was still limping and bent over, watching his step. Along a line of oaks they could just see the wild turkeys, some moving while others were beginning to roost. An owl hooted in the calm. Then they could see the porch lights on the dead-end road, and the boy stood up a little taller and he stopped looking down.