FIRST SNOW

FIRST SNOW

The first snow came late, that year. Therefore the new folk of the upper valley got lured into a pleasant illusion that the living was easy. October had been gorgeous, and November had been just lightly rainy, so they’d been able to get the roofing tin on and the log walls chinked with mud and dry grass. The woodpile looked like more than enough to last till spring. Erma, the wife, stood at the window watching the enormous whirling flakes fill the whole sky. “Now, that’s pretty,” she remarked to no one. “I do love snow.”

They all loved snow. When Jacob and the boys came in for breakfast, each one of them had to say, “First snowfall’s always real nice.” Where they had come from, the first snowfall usually was not only pretty but also almost the last; they were lucky to get four or five a year. Of course they’d known Montana would be different, they were prepared for that. But they were tough.

Jacob said, “What say, Erm, you coming to town with us?”

“I think not,” Erma sighed, looking around at the cluttered counter and mud-tracked floor. “Whyn’t you three go on without me. I got plenty here to keep me busy.”

“Suit yourself,” Jacob shrugged. He was tightening his bootlaces and fitting his burly hands into the very lumpy gray gloves Erma had knitted. The boys were performing the same operations, and the atmosphere of people setting off on an adventure was so appealing Erma almost changed her mind. But also, she was on her time of the moon; sitting on the buckboard that many hours would be uncomfortable, to say the least. And while she loved her menfolk dearly, it was possible to grow tired of their endless corny humor and predictable opinions. A day alone promised a good session of housecleaning as well as perhaps a quarter-hour of quiet prayer. She was just as glad to see them roll out, and she stood outside the door to wave them off. The snow really was thick—but it really was pretty.

It kept snowing all day. Erma had done her chores, at least the first layer of them, by ten in the morning. The dishes were washed and put back on the shelf. The food was wrapped in waxed paper and stored in the lock-box outside. She’d given the floor a good sweeping and mopped all around the stove, where splinters and bark mixed with ashes and made a mess. Knowing the fire would be going all day, she decided she might as well bake a couple of loaves. This meant going back out to the lock-box and bringing in the sourdough starter, which she smelled to make sure it hadn’t gone stale. It hadn’t. How could it? It was frozen solid! She set it in the warming oven to thaw out. Then she opened the flour bin—and cried aloud, “Oh my lord!” It wasn’t that there was so little flour in there but that she suddenly realized she’d forgotten to mention the shortage to Jacob. He might remember on his own or he might not. Flour wasn’t his domain.

It kept on snowing hard all the time she was kneading the dough and putting it into a bacon-greased bowl. The grease was also low, but Erma had no fear that Jacob would forget bacon. Nor would the boys. Those three would live on bacon, if they could afford to. She thought of her boys with a wry smile as she draped a dishtowel over the dough and set the bowl on top of the stove. Boys and bacon! She used the last of the hot water to wash up after the breadmaking. Then, deciding she might as well get more water now while the getting was good, she sat to lace up her own boots. ‘Redwing’—the brand was written across each tongue, and Erma never failed to notice that, because it made the song ‘Little Redwing’ run through her mind.

It was surprising how much it had piled up, this pretty snow. When she’d looked at first dawn, there had been maybe three inches. Now she’d say eight. In so few hours! It was still pretty—if anything, even prettier. It covered every single thing, made objects look a lot like rising bread loaves, rounded and white. 

It also made it hard to find the creek. She could hear it gurgling, under the snow. That meant there was probably a layer of ice, which she’d have to break through. She should have asked the boys to make sure there was plenty of water for the house, but somehow she felt she shouldn’t have to ask them for such ‘favors.’ They should know. It was their house too, their meals, their dishes. Grumbling these things under her breath, she fetched the pickaxe and broke a hole. That was easy; the ice was thin yet. But it might not stay that way. Something in her blood was already having a conversation with the snow, th ice, the cold, and the message she was getting back was not as cozily friendly as the one she’d felt when she first saw the snow out the window. She held the bucket under until it was as full as she could carry, and headed back to the cabin. Even before she reached the door she could sense the wind picking up and the thermometer dropping.

Snow kept falling, piling up. Erma began to wonder how Jacob and the boys would fare on their return from town. If there were eighteen inches here, which she’d guess, then how much more would there be on the pass? Certainly the road would not have been cleared. It occurred to Erma that the road might not in fact get cleared at all, not until the snow let up. She tried to imagine the wagon making it up the grade, with poor old Ginger straining in the traces, and she thought to herself, nope. They won’t be coming back today. They’d be stupid even to try. They’d have to stay in town. Lucky them, they might stay at that cute hotel. But she wasn’t sure the hotel was even open. Why would it be, at this time of year? Thinking about all these things made her nervous and uneasy, so she decided to take off her boots and sit by the stove for that quarter-hour of prayer. “Dear God,” she murmured over the steeple of her fingers.

“Dear God” was as far as she prayed. She was too nervous. She wasn’t at all sure a nervous prayer like that even made it as far as the ceiling, let alone up to heaven. Keeping busy was the best cure for nervousness, as she’d told the boys often enough. The dough had risen weakly, so she turned it out and kneaded it again. After a couple more hours, she molded two shapely loaves and snugged them into two well-greased pans. It was starting to look like she’d have to eat them all herself—which she felt right now she could, if there were only enough butter. She didn’t like bread without butter. Butter was definitely on Jacob’s list, but then, she was now convinced she wouldn’t be seeing either Jacob or the butter until late tomorrow.

It amazed Erma that it could be so dark when the clock said five minutes after four. She would have to light the lamps before long. The thought of lighting the lamps for just herself, all alone, gave her a feeling of near-sadness. Lighting the lamps meant Jacob and the boys—meant the bustle of dinner getting ready—meant company and conversation, corny jokes and vigorous opinions, which she now didn’t feel at all tired of. The wind found ways to creep right through holes in the chinking, and its whistle, though faint, was threatening. She did have an excuse to keep the stove roaring, since she had to get a hot enough oven for the bread. But whenever she moved away from the fire, she felt the cold filling up the room. How could they have left so many little spaces in the walls, so much gap around the window frames? Well alright, thought Erma as she stood with hands on her hips, they’d known they weren’t quite finished—but still. Really. When this snowstorm passed, there was definitely going to have to be some raising of standards.

People in town had questioned the sanity of building a cabin up on the old McCaw place. “You won’t want to be wintering in it,” they’d warned. And Jacob had said, with his quiet, assured grin, “That’s alright, we’ll do fine. We’ve seen some hard times and come through with all our limbs still attached.” It was beginning to occur to Erma that perhaps the hard times they’d seen were not all that hard. Seemed like they’d had a little more money back then, the neighbors and the store had been a lot closer. As to the weather, well, she honestly didn’t think they had encountered anything as absolutely numbingly unfriendly and unforgiving as this cold wind-driven snow that showed no sign of stopping.

After awhile Erma’s thoughts began to turn toward her own dinner. No one would be coming, she was sure of that. She’d have to go ahead and eat. The loaves were in the oven, and hot fresh bread could probably suffice her; a few thick slices with what was likely the last of the butter. Yes, she would dine like a king. A queen. She’d just have time to visit the outhouse, then she’d come back in and set the table, as if it was a regular dinnertime. Except it would only be her. She sat down and pulled on her Redwings, leaving them unlaced because she was only going to the outhouse….

“Mercy!” she shrieked into the wind. No, she would absolutely not go out, not tonight. Wading three steps through the drifts convinced her such a venture would be madness. She might easily blow away. She might get lost in the dark. A wildcat might leap on her, or a bear; she hadn’t until this moment even considered such a thing, but now she more than considered it. No, she would go back inside and do her business—which was going to be serious—in a paper sack and throw it out the door. The idea made her want to laugh, except she was far past laughing. She was scared.

After the stinking sack had been disposed of, Erma took out the bread. The loaf nearest the firewall, she saw by the light of a kerosene lamp, was rather black on one side, and all of them were black on their carefully greased tops. She was too hungry to care, though. She could cut the burned parts off. Leaving the loaves to cool on their rack, she opened the back door to get the butter from the lock-box. Again there was that wind, shrill and biting, full of snow pellets like sand, stinging her face, collecting immediately on her eyelashes so she couldn’t even see the box and had to feel for it with unmittened hands. There among the wrapped packets was the butter. As she’d feared, not very much. Enough for two slices of bread—three if she wanted to be sparing, which she didn’t. When she came back inside and unwrapped the butter, she saw she would have to choose: two slices heavily buttered, or three slices so scantily spread she wouldn’t enjoy them. Well, she was starving. She cut three slices.

It snowed the rest of that night. In the gray morning Erma saw that it was piled right up around the frame of the front window. Then she discovered it had piled against the door as well, and now she must seriously consider that she might not be able to get out. Not through the door. Not that she had any great desire to get out, but sooner or later she’d have to, because out was where the firewood was stacked.

Eventually it occurred to Erma that she could go out the back window. The snow had come from the east, piling up against the door, but on the west side it barely reached the window sill. Never mind that the window was nailed shut—one of Jacob’s interim fixes because he hadn’t yet attached the hinges. Resolutely she broke her way through and crawled out into the snow, where at once she sank to her waist. Getting to the firewood was going to be impossible, she saw right away; she wasn’t sure where it was exactly, and once she found it—if she could struggle her way that far—she’d never find the axe. It could be anywhere. Without the axe, what she’d be faced with would be a pile of foot-wide rounds that wouldn’t fit in the firebox. No, the only thing that made sense was to crawl back through the window, tack a blanket over it, and eat the other loaf. Dry. And next day she wrote a note:

Dear beloved Jacob, we are not stupid, but we have made some really stupid choices. I can see that you won’t be able to get up here in time. I would soon die here if I waited. I don’t want to die in this ice-cold lonely cabin, so I am coming to you. At least I’ll have something to do while dying. I have tied two short boards to my boots so I don’t sink in. This probably won’t work, but what else can I do? I wish we even had a pair of skis here. But remember this, we are not stupid. I love you and the boys very much. My hands are too cold to hold the pencil any more. If we’re lucky, we’ll meet up at the pass. If we’re unlucky, we’ll meet on that heavenly shore.

***

When Jacob finally struggled his way back to the cabin, having left the boys at the house of strangers and borrowed a pair of snowshoes from that same household, he found the note. He did not find Erma; no one found Erma till the spring melt, and then they only knew it was Erma because the body’s boots said ‘Redwing.’ But right now he had the note, and it pretty much told him the whole story. Jacob was not a man to be led astray by sentiment. He could put two and two together in a hurry, and in this case the resultant sum was, there would be no more Erma in his life. Even her footprints had been erased.

He gazed around at the empty woodbox, the cold stove, the blanketed window, the unopenable door, the breadcrumbs on the counter. What was he to do, go digging through twenty miles of deep powder? Truthfully, he would like to. But, as Erma had said, he was not stupid. He had only done a stupid thing—leaving her alone with almost no food, sure he’d be back by nightfall with a load of supplies. That was not stupidity, it was something worse. He wasn’t even sure what worse thing it was, but the certainty of it made him weak. He sank his bulk onto a chair, slapped his palms on the table, and rested his head between them on the note. We are not stupid. The invisible words seared his brain.

He had no Erma. She was simply gone from his life, as a dream was gone in the daylight. He hadn’t even thought this a possibility, since she’d been so long by his side. All he would have from now on was memories, a seventeen-year collection of them. Memories of night-time passion…arguments…mutual decisions…explorations…dreams…parenthood. Small things, like a shared enthusiasm for birds. Memories of the difficult journey to Montana, made less difficult by the glow of their hopes. 

But especially, at this moment, one memory: Erma stands over there by the window, looking out at the whirling white flakes. The early-morning tangles of her hair look almost black in this light. Cooking breakfast must have made her too hot. She wipes her damp hands down her hips, then brushes her bangs off her forehead with one arm. “Now, that’s pretty,” she says in her soft-singing voice, as if she thinks she’s alone in the room. “I do love snow.”