The Long Winter (15 page)

“I got it some time ago. It was the last bit of sugar in town,” said Pa. “Some folks said they'd use it for sugar, but I made sure of our Christmas candy.”

“Oh, what a lovely Christmas,” Carrie sighed. Laura thought so too. Whatever happened, they could always have a merry Christmas. And the sun was shining, the sky was blue, the railroad tracks were clear, and the train was coming. The train had come through the Tracy cut that morning. Sometime that day they would hear its whistle and see it stopping by the depot.

At noon Ma was making the oyster soup. Laura was setting the table, Carrie and Grace were playing with the jumping-jack. Ma tasted the soup and set the kettle back on the stove. “The oysters are ready,” she said, and stooping she looked at the slices of bread toasting in the oven. “And the bread is toasted. Whatever is Pa doing?”

“He's bringing in hay,” said Laura.

Pa opened the door. Behind him the lean-to was almost full of slough hay. He asked, “Is the oyster soup ready?”

“I'm taking it up,” Ma replied. “I ' m glad the train is coming, this is the last of the coal.” Then she looked at Pa and asked, “What is wrong, Charles?”

Pa said slowly, “There is a cloud in the northwest.”

“Oh, not another blizzard!” Ma cried.

“I'm afraid so,” Pa answered. “But it needn't spoil our dinner.” He drew his chair up to the table. “I've packed plenty of hay into the stable and filled the lean-to. Now for our oyster soup!”

The sun kept on shining while they ate. The hot soup was good, even though the milk was mostly water. Pa crumbled the toast into his soup plate. “This toasted bread is every bit as good as crackers,” he told Ma. “I don't know but better.”

Laura enjoyed the good soup, but she could not stop thinking of that dark cloud coming up. She could not stop listening for the wind that she knew would soon come.

It came with a shriek. The windows rattled and the house shook.

“S h e must be a daisy!” Pa said. He went to the window but he could not see out. Snow came on the wind from the sky. Snow rose from the hard drifts as the wind cut them away. It all met in the whirling air and swirled madly. The sky, the sunshine, the town, were gone, lost in that blinding dance of snow. The house was alone again.

Laura thought, “The train can't come now.”

“Come, girls,” Ma said. “We'll get these dishes out of the way, and then we'll open our papers and have a cosy afternoon.”

“Is there coal enough, Ma?” Laura asked.

Pa looked at the fire. “It will last till suppertime,”

he said. “And then we'll burn hay.”

Frost was freezing up the windowpanes and the room was cold near the walls. Near the stove, the light was too dim for reading. When the dishes were washed and put away, Ma set the lamp on the red-checked tablecloth and lighted it. There was only a little kerosene in the bowl where the wick coiled, but it gave a warm and cheery light. Laura opened the bundle of Youths Companions and she and Carrie looked eagerly at the wealth of stories printed on the smooth white paper.

“You girls choose a story,” Ma said. “And I will read it out loud, so we can all enjoy it together.”

So, close together between the stove and the bright table, they listened to Ma's reading the story in her soft, clear voice. The story took them all far away from the stormy cold and dark. When she had finished that one, Ma read a second and a third. That was enough for one day; they must save some for another time.

“Aren't you glad we saved those wonderful stories for Christmas day?” Mary sighed happily. And they were. The whole afternoon had gone so quickly. Already it was chore time.

When Pa came back from the stable, he stayed some time in the lean-to and came in at last with his arms full of sticks.

“Here is your breakfast fuel, Caroline,” he said, laying his armful down by the stove. “Good hard sticks of hay. I guess they will burn all right.”

“Sticks of hay?” Laura exclaimed.

“That's right, Laura.” Pa spread his hands in the warmth above the stove. “I ' m glad that hay's in the lean-to. I couldn't carry it in through the wind that's blowing now, unless I brought it one bale at a time, in my teeth.”

The hay was in sticks. Pa had somehow twisted and knotted it tightly till each stick was almost as hard as wood.

“Sticks of hay!” Ma laughed. “What won't you think of next? Trust you, Charles, to find a way.”

“You are good at that yourself,” Pa smiled at her.

For supper there were hot boiled potatoes and a slice of bread apiece, with salt. That was the last baking of bread, but there were still beans in the sack and a few turnips. There was still hot tea with sugar, and Grace had her cup of cambric tea made with hot water because there was no more milk. While they were eating, the lamp began to flicker. With all its might the flame pulled itself up, drawing the last drop of kerosene up the wick. Then it fainted down and desperately tried again. Ma leaned over and blew it out. The dark came in, loud with the roar and the shrieking of the storm.

“The fire is dying, anyway, so we may as well go to bed,” Ma said gently. Christmas day was over.

Laura lay in bed and listened to the winds blowing, louder and louder. The y sounded like the pack of wolves howling around the little house on the prairie long ago, when she was small and Pa had carried her in his arms. And there was the deeper howl of the great buffalo wolf that she and Carrie had met on the bank of Silver Lake.

She started trembling, when she heard the scream of the panther in the creek bed, in Indian territory.

But she knew it was only the wind. Now she heard the Indian war whoops when the Indians were dancing their war dances all through the horrible nights by the Verdigris River.

The war whoops died away and she heard crowds of people muttering, then shrieking and fleeing scream-ing away from fierce yells chasing them. But she knew she heard only the voices of the blizzard winds. She pulled the bedcovers over her head and covered her ears tightly to shut out the sounds, but still she heard them.

T he hay made a quick, hot fire, but it burned away more swiftly than kindling. Ma kept the stove's drafts closed and all day long she was feeding the fire. All day long, except when he went through the storm to do the chores, Pa was twisting more sticks of hay in the lean-to. The storm grew fiercer and the cold more cruel.

Often Pa came to the stove to warm his hands. “My fingers get so numb,” he said, “I can't make a good twist.”

“L e t me help you, Pa,” Laura begged.

He did not want to let her. “Your hands are too small for such work,” he told her. Then he admitted,

“But somebody's got to help. It is going to be more than one person can do, to keep this stove going and haul hay for it.” Finally he decided, “Come along. I'll show you how.”

Laura put on Pa's old coat and her hood and muffler and went into the lean-to with Pa.

The lean-to was not ceiled inside. The wind was blowing snow through all the cracks of the board walls. Snow traveled in little drifts across the floor and sifted over the hay.

Pa picked up a double handful of hay and shook the snow from it.

“Shake off all the snow,” he told Laura. “If you leave it on, it will melt when you take the sticks in and make them too wet to burn.”

Laura picked up all the hay her hands could hold and shook the snow from it. Then , watching Pa, she followed his motions in twisting the hay. First he twisted the long strand as far as his two hands could do it. Then he put the right-hand end of it under his left elbow and held it there, tight against his side, so that it could not untwist. Then his right hand took the other end from his left hand. His left hand slid down as near as it could get to the end under his left elbow and took hold of it. Pa twisted the strand again. This time he put its other end under his left elbow. He repeated these motions, again and again and again, till the whole strand of hay was twisted tight and kinking in the middle. Each time he twisted and tucked the end under his left arm, the tight twist coiled around itself.

When the whole length of the twist had wound itself tight, Pa bent the ends of hay together and tucked them into the last kink. He dropped the hard stick of hay on the floor and looked at Laura.

She was trying to tuck in the ends as Pa had done.

The hay was twisted so tightly that she couldn't push them in.

“Bend your twist a little to loosen it,” said Pa.

“Then slip the ends in between the kinks and let it twist itself back tight. That's the way!”

Laura's stick of hay was uneven and raggedy, not smooth and hard like Pa's. But Pa told her that it was well done for the first one; she would do better next time.

She made six sticks of hay, each better than the one before till the sixth one was as it should be. But now she was so cold that her hands could not feel the hay.

“That's enough!” Pa told her. “Gather them up, and we'll go warm ourselves.”

They carried the sticks of hay into the kitchen.

Laura's feet were numb from cold; they felt like wooden feet. Her hands were red and when she held them in the warm air above the stove they tingled and stung and smarted where the sharp blades of the grass had cut them. But she had helped Pa. The sticks of hay that she had made gave him time enough to get thoroughly warm before they must go into the cold to twist more hay.

All that day and all the next day, Laura helped Pa twist hay while Ma kept the fire going and Carrie helped her take care of Grace and of the housework.

For dinner they had baked potatoes and mashed turnips with pepper and salt, and for supper Ma chopped the potatoes and heated them in the oven because there was no fat to fry them in. But the food was hot and good, and there was plenty of tea and still some sugar.

“This is the last loaf of bread,” Ma said, the second night at supper. “We really must have some flour, Charles.”

“I'll buy some as soon as this storm lets up,” Pa said. “No matter what it costs.”

“Use my college money, Pa,” Mary said. “Thirty-five dollars and twenty-five cents will buy all the flour we could want.”

“That's our good girl, Mary,” said Ma. “But I hope we won't have to spend your college money. I suppose prices depend on when they can get the train through?” she said to Pa.

“Yes,” Pa said. “That's what they depend on.”

Ma got up and put another stick of hay on the fire.

When she lifted the stove lid, a reddish-yellow smoky light flared up and drove back the dark for a moment.

Then the dark came back again. The wild screaming of the storm seemed louder and nearer in the dark.

“If only I had some grease I could fix some kind of a light,” Ma considered. “We didn't lack for light when I was a girl, before this newfangled kerosene was ever heard of.”

“That's so,” said Pa. “The s e times are too progres-sive. Everything has changed too fast. Railroads and telegraph and kerosene and coal stoves—they're good things to have but the trouble is, folks get to depend on 'em.”

In the morning the winds were still howling and outside the thick-frosted windows the snow was still whirling. But by midmorning a straight, strong wind was blowing from the south and the sun was shining.

It was very cold, so cold that the snow squeaked under Laura's feet in the lean-to.

Pa went across the street to get the flour. He was gone some time, and when he came back he was carrying a grain sack on his shoulder. He let it slide to the floor with a thump.

“Here's your flour, Caroline, or what will have to take the place of it,” he said. “It is wheat, the last that's left of the Wilder boys' stock. There is no flour in the stores. Banker Ruth bought the last sack this morning. He paid fifty dollars for it, a dollar a pound.”

“My goodness, Charles,” Ma gasped.

“Yes. We couldn't buy much flour at that price, so I guess it's just as well Ruth got it. We may as well learn now how to cook wheat. How will it be, boiled?”

“I don't know, Charles. It isn't as if we had anything to eat on it,” said Ma.

“It's a pity there isn't a grist mill in town,” Pa said.

“We have a mill,” Ma replied. She reached to the top of the cupboard and took down the coffee mill.

“So we have,” said Pa. “Let's see how it works.”

Ma set the little brown wooden box on the table.

She turned the handle for a moment, to loosen every last grain of coffee from the grinders. Then she pulled out the little drawer, emptied it, and wiped it carefully. Pa opened the sack of wheat.

The black iron hopper in the top of the mill held half a cupful of the grain. Ma shut its top. Then she sat down, placed the square box between her knees to hold it firmly, and began turning the handle around and around. The mill gave out its grinding noise.

“Wheat will grind just like coffee,” Ma said. She looked into the little drawer. The broken bits of wheat were crushed out flat. “Not like coffee, either,” Ma said. “The wheat hasn't been roasted and has more moisture in it.”

“Can you make bread of that?” Pa asked.

“Of course I can,” Ma replied. “But we must keep the mill grinding if I'm to have enough to make a loaf for dinner.”

“And I must go haul some hay to bake it with,” said Pa. He took a round, flat wooden box from his pocket and handed it to Ma. “Here's something you can maybe use to make a light.”

“Is there any word of the train, Charles?” Ma asked him.

“They're working again at that Tracy cut,” said Pa.

“It's packed full of snow again, to the top of the snowbanks they threw up on both sides when they cleared it last time.”

He went to the stable to hitch David to the sled.

Ma looked into the box. It was full of yellow axle grease. But there was no time then to think about making a light. The fire was dying and Ma put the last stick of hay on it. Laura hurried into the lean-to to twist more hay.

In a few minutes Ma came to help her. “Mary is grinding the wheat,” Ma said. “We must twist a lot of hay to keep the fire going. We must have a good warm fire when Pa comes back. He will be almost frozen.”

It was late afternoon before Pa came back. He unhitched the sled near the back door and put David in the stable. Then he pitched the hay into the lean-to until there was hardly space to squeeze through from door to door. When that was done, he came in to the stove. He was so cold that it was some time before he was warm enough to speak.