Driftless (25 page)

“The tree,” he yelled. “The oak tree at the top of the hill! It should be straight ahead.”

They plodded forward, side by side, connected to each other at arm’s length, Grahm’s right glove holding Cora’s left, with their other hands extended into the black blowing. The cold was now numbing
their whole bodies. They fell, got up, staggered forward, and fell again. Their sense of time became distorted as eternity wrapped around them. Their thoughts blurred. They went on and on until they could no longer feel the cold. Then Cora screamed. Her right hand had brushed against the side of the burr oak. She guided Grahm toward it and they felt their way around its thick, gnarled trunk. Cora tripped and fell away from Grahm. Grahm reached down for her and found a plastic saucer; under it was one of his children, then the other, lying at the base of the tree. A renewed strength whistled through Cora and Grahm as they lifted their children’s limp bodies over their shoulders.

Freezing now seemed inconsequential. The storm lost its inner strength and seemed to only be pretending to be cold, faking fury. They had found the tree, found their children, completed the circle. If they died now they would die together, which was not like death at all. Death was separation—living while their children froze. That possibility no longer existed. It was gone. What they had now bore no resemblance to death, no matter what happened. Only life extended beyond them. Together they could live in the void if need be, forever. Together they could do anything.

They began walking toward what they hoped was the barn, carrying their children over their shoulders and clinging to each other with their free hands. The wind, Grahm noticed, was now behind them, no longer blowing crystals of snow into their eyes.

They tried to keep in the trail they had made on the way out, but this was impossible. The best they could do, Grahm decided, was to keep the wind blowing against their backs, and though blizzard winds could not be depended upon to blow consistently in one direction, it provided their only compass.

Apparently it was not at all good, and once again Cora encountered something solid. A barbed wire along the fence separating the pasture from last year’s cornfield ripped open the sleeve of her coat. At the end of the fence, they knew, waited the machine shed. Once again, a bugling strength sang inside them—a soundless sound that communicated with the numbness in their limbs—and Grahm
carried both children as Cora guided their way along the fence until they came to the wooden post at the corner.

From here they continued to the machine shed, from the shed to the barn, to the toolshed, from the shed to the wooden fence, from the fence to the tamaracks, and from the tamaracks to the house.

Cora stumbled upstairs and returned with blankets while Grahm peeled the coats, boots, and frozen clothes from Seth and Grace. Both were listless, their speech slurred. Grace could hardly keep her eyes open, and could not stand on her own. Cora wrapped blankets around them and set them side by side on the couch next to the space heater, like human cocoons.

Standing over their children and beginning to relax, Cora and Grahm took off their own coats and boots and unwrapped the ice-encrusted scarves from their faces. Their hands shook. Holding her head, Cora began to cry and could not stop. Grahm sat on the floor next to the sofa and realized he couldn’t feel any part of his body. When Cora stopped crying she sat beside him. Their limbs hurt as feeling slowly returned. They looked at each other like people who had just found hell’s door ajar and walked out, and did not know what to say. Nothing seemed adequate.

“Not bad for two people who can’t take hold of the tools of new technology,” said Cora.

Grahm looked at her. Then he smiled. Then she smiled. They began laughing. They laughed until they could feel jabbing pinpricks in their hands and feet. They laughed until it seemed they couldn’t breathe. Then Grahm sobbed for several minutes, blew his nose, and they laughed some more.

“That’s funny,” said Grahm, and they laughed again.

The family thermometer still did not register the temperature of the children, though both Cora and Grahm hit the lowest rung, ninety-four degrees. Outdoors, the wind stopped blowing. The weather station said the storm had moved southeast, toward Chicago. Cora commanded her body to stop shaking, and she began to move around. The home health manual explained that two degrees an hour was as fast as a body could raise its own temperature and
carbohydrates were the best things to eat for quick heat. She warmed some fresh milk, boiled water for tea, and began frying doughnuts, the children’s favorite.

Grahm sat at the table, watching Cora. The dough fizzed and crackled when she placed in the hot oil.

“You did it,” said Grahm.

“We both did it,” said Cora.

“It was you,” said Grahm. “It was you.”

Grahm felt his strength return as he warmed up, and at a little after midnight, worried he could hear the cows bellowing from the pressure of milk against their udder walls, stepped outside. By then the air was almost calm. He
could
hear his cows bellowing. He put on his coat, stepped off the porch, and headed toward the barn. In the distance, a siren. From the windows in the milk house he watched as the township snowplow, followed by an ambulance with lights flashing, came up Sand Burr Road and onto Q.They pulled in the drive and four men and three women ran into the house.

The children were fine, with only frostbitten ears and fingers.

That night Grahm and Cora both slept, without dreaming, like stones.

The following morning, temperatures climbed above zero. After milking the cows—two hours later than usual—Grahm looked out the back door of the barn at the expanse of snow leading into the pasture. No signs remained of the trails they had made, no trace of what had happened the night before except the end of the rope attached to the barn door. It ran a short distance and disappeared into high, level snow.

In the machine shed he cut a length of snow fence, carried it through the snow, and placed it in a circle around the oak at the top of the hill. To the fence he wired a wooden sign: WARNING: NO-ONE HARM THIS TREE, GRAHM SHOTWELL.

Then he went to the toolshed.

Grahm found the pipe bomb he had made but not yet found a way to use, set it in the vise, pulled out the fuse, unscrewed the end cap, and poured the powder out on the shed floor. He struck a match
and tossed it onto the dark pile of powder. Lacking containment, it flared briefly in a bright, white
phooost,
filling the shed with smoke and the smell of sodium nitrate, carbon, and sulfur.

Outside, he could hear cars moving along the road at an almost-normal speed. The storm had passed.

FAMILY

M
AXINE DROVE TO THE MADISON AIRPORT AND RETURNED in the afternoon with her sister and mother. The trip took longer than expected because the flight had been delayed due to hazardous winter weather. Rusty met them in the driveway, took the walker from the trunk, and helped his mother-in-law fasten onto it.

“How does it feel to not farm anymore, Russ?” asked his sister-in-law Marjorie as she walked carefully along the path shoveled through the frozen yard in her heels.

“I keep busy,” said Rusty.

“Yes, Maxie tells me you’re quite industrious. Do you still have all those dogs?”

“Only one.”

“Did you paint the house or something?” asked the old woman, looking hard through her thick glasses.

“A while back,” said Maxine. “Be careful there, Russell. Watch her hands going through the door.”

“Nobody paints anymore,” said Marjorie. “Vinyl siding has done away with all that. I don’t think there’s one painted house in our whole division. Vinyl’s cheaper in the long run and much nicer.”

“Did you remember my bags?”

“Yes, Mother, we’ve got them in the car. Russell will bring them in.”

“Doesn’t smell quite like I remember,” said Marjorie.

“The animals are all gone,” said Maxine.

“Well, thank goodness for that. With all the other inconveniences you put up with, you should at least have fresh air.”

As they entered the kitchen, the old woman asked again about her bags and Maxine reassured her that her bags were in the car. Rusty parked the walker next to the table and Maxine set out glasses.

“We have fruit juices, milk, and soda,” she said. “What would you like, Mother?”

“Fruit juices?”

“Yes, orange, grape, grapefruit, and vegetable juice.”

“What kind of soft drinks do you have?”

“Just about any kind you can name.”

“Oh my, I’m afraid I can’t name many. Nothing for me.”

“Nothing for me either,” said Marjorie. “I’d forgotten what an older kitchen this was. You don’t even have a microwave.”

“I’m afraid not,” said Maxine. “We don’t have a place to put one, and Russell can’t see a need.”

“Really, Russ! You’ve got to get with the times. I couldn’t live without a microwave. Nobody really
cooks
anymore. Nobody has time for it.”

“We’re just old-fashioned,” said Maxine.

“Where’s my room?” asked Marjorie.

“Are you sure you won’t have something to drink?”

“Do you have a downstairs bathroom?”

“Right around the corner.”

“Did you remember to bring my bags?”

Rusty went to the car to retrieve the suitcases. As he pulled the luggage from the trunk, a shiny black Ford Expedition with tinted windows and a license plate reading MOVEOVER pulled into the drive with a blast of the horn, announcing the arrival of his daughters, sons-in-law, and grandchildren. The two families had ridden together from Chicago. They bailed out beside him, and his daughters carried his grandchildren into the house after learning that their grandmother and aunt were inside.

“Where should I park this baby, Pops?” asked Drake, referring to the Expedition.

“You can park it in the barn,” said Rusty.

Drake surveyed the distance to the barn. “On second thought, I’ll just leave her here for right now. We won’t be staying overnight. This way I can keep an eye on her. We’ve got rooms rented.”

“Maxine planned on you staying here.”

“I know, but we don’t want to put you out. And anyway—you
know—the swimming pool is a big feature. We also want to go to the Dells tomorrow and check out some of those water slides. I suppose you’ve been there many times.”

“No.”

“How ’bout them Packers!” shouted Tim. He was the younger of the two and, as Rusty recalled, a sports enthusiast.

“How about them,” said Rusty.

“Looks like they might pull it off this year.”

“Hike!” sang out Drake, and the two young men jumped in the air and pretended to run forward with footballs tucked under their arms.

“Here, we can take those, Pops,” said Tim when Rusty began carrying his mother-in-law’s bags across the yard.

“I’ve got them.”

“No prob-lem-o,” said Drake.

“Hike!” they both shouted again and ran around hunched over as though carrying footballs. Drake tossed the diaper bag between his legs and Tim threw it to him as he ran toward the house.

Inside, the younger grandchild cried while Brian, age three, ate cereal with milk and sugar. Maxine seemed to hover from one place to another, like a spider on a thread.

“Sit down, Maxie,” said Marjorie. “You’re making the children nervous.”

“There’s no reason you can’t stay here.”

“Ashley didn’t sleep in the car,” said Elizabeth over the cries of her daughter. “Maybe I better go upstairs and see if I can put her to sleep.”

“Brian slept most of the way—and he’s hungry,” said Rebecca.

“Did you remember my bags?”

“Yes, Mother, your bags are here now. Russell, put them in the guest room. Drake, what would you like to drink?”

“We brought beer,” said Drake.

“I told you not to bring the beer in,” said Rebecca.

“I know,” said Drake, “but your parents don’t mind—do you, Pops? Everybody needs a little refreshment.”

“I just don’t know how you can live without a microwave. But I guess that’s the way it was years ago. Right, Mother?”

“We didn’t have microwaves,” said Blanch. “We hardly had a pot to piss in.”

“Oh, please!” said Marjorie. “Let’s not have any of that crude language, Mother. You make it sound so unpleasant.”

“Well, we didn’t,” said the old woman.

“As I remember,” said Marjorie, “we were one of the more respected families.”

“Tim, take that bowl away from him—he’s spilling.”

“Here, I’ll get that,” said Maxine.

“Hike!”

“You two go outside if you’re going to horse around,” said Elizabeth. “Now you’ve got her started again.”

“Who else wants a beer?”

“I’m going to take her upstairs.”

“Use Rebecca’s room. Marjorie’s staying in yours.”

“Oh great, I’ve got to climb all those stairs.”

“You can share Mother’s room if you’d rather.”

“No thank you. No offense, Mother, but privacy is a commodity you can’t be without these days. It’s the main reason homes are so much larger than they used to be. Living on top of each other like this is no longer civilized.”

“You girls were always spoiled.”

“Did you hear that, Maxie?”

“Tim, I told you to take that bowl away from her.”

“What are you
doing,
Maxie?”

“I’d better get the roast in the oven.”

“Does old Mrs. Jackson still live down the road?”

“She’s not that old,” said Maxine. “She still lives alone, though she uses crutches now. She still has a big garden.”

“No, you can’t watch television, Brian. We’re not here to watch television. Maybe you’d like to tell Grandma what you did at day care. No, you can’t watch television.”

“Anybody know who’s winning the game?”