The Snow Child: A Novel (15 page)

Then the day came when she appeared without gifts but instead with the questions Jack had seen in her eyes. She arrived early, just after he had finished breakfast and stepped outside into the dim morning, and she followed him around the barn and yard like a shadow.

As he closed the barn door, he felt her small cool hands clasping at his wrist. She tugged at his arm so that he bent to her.

Will you promise?

Her voice small and frightened.

And before he knew the implications of such a promise, he was following her through the snow. The child ran as if alarmed, as if pursued, but when Jack fell behind, she slowed and led him toward the mountains and up the alpine slopes.

He followed as best he could. He was a huffing, slow-footed oaf next to her. Her steps were so light and sure. The way seemed much longer than before, when he had chased her through the woods at night. He sensed the girl’s impatience. She paused just until he reached her, then sprinted away again before he had a chance to catch his breath. He no longer paid attention to where they were going, but only knew it was up. The long, slow climb cramped his calves and ached in his lungs. The solid gray sky pressed down on him. He was weak and heavy. Each time they reached the top of a ridge he thought, This is it. We’ve finally arrived. But then they would continue higher, to the next ridge, and on again. The snow was deeper than before, and he slogged through while the girl seemed to float across it.

Are you well?

She stood above him.

We’re almost there, she said.

Fine, he said. I’m fine. Lead the way.

He tried to smile but knew it was more like a grimace.

I’m not as young as I once was, but I’ll get there.

The girl seemed to make an effort to go slower, to show him where he could place his feet and where he could grab at a tree branch to pull himself up a ledge.

Then he saw rocky cliffs ahead of them and heard the trickle of a creek beneath the ice. He followed the girl up the ravine. Soon they were among a clump of large spruce trees that seemed out of place so high up the mountain, and the large boughs and immense trunks gave a sheltered feeling to the narrow valley. She slowed here without looking back at Jack and seemed reluctant to go on. Then she stopped and pointed toward a snow-covered heap beneath one of the trees.

What is it?

The girl didn’t answer. She only pointed, so Jack walked past her to the heap. He brushed away some of the snow and uncovered a canvas tarp. He looked at the girl again, questioning, but she turned away.

When he pulled back the tarp, a dozen voles scuttled away into the snow, and he saw a man’s neck where blond hair met a woodsman’s wool coat. Jack’s heart beat loudly in his ears. He put his hand to the broad shoulder, and it was like shoving a cottonwood log, cold and frozen to the ground. Jack stepped around the corpse. He saw now where the voles had made their small tunnels through the snow, spreading in a maze in all directions from the dead man. He didn’t want to, but he dusted the snow off the face and head, then off his side and chest. The corpse lay on its side, curled up like a child, but it was no child.
He was a big man, much taller and broader in the shoulders than Jack, and there was no doubt he was gone to this world. His milky eyes, sunk back into his skull, stared blankly ahead. His skin was a ghastly blue. Ice crystals grew on his face and clothes and along his blond hair and long, bushy beard. The rodents had begun to gnaw away his frozen cheeks and nose and the tips of his fingers, and their droppings were everywhere.

Jesus. Christ almighty.

Then Jack remembered the girl. He turned and she was there at his elbow, peering down at the frozen man.

Who is he? Jack asked.

My papa, she whispered.

What happened?

I tried. I tried and tried.

Jack looked into her eyes, and it was like watching water gather on lake ice. No sloppy dribble, no sobs. Only a quiet pool on the blue.

I pulled on his arm and said, Please, Papa. Please. But he wouldn’t come. He only sat in the snow.

Why wouldn’t he move?

The girl’s chin trembled as she spoke.

He told me Peter’s water kept him warm, but I knew it wouldn’t. I wanted to make him warm. I held his hands and then I held his face, just like this.

And the girl reached down and cupped the dead man’s cheeks in her small hands with the tenderness of a daughter’s touch.

I tried, but he was colder and colder and colder.

Jack went to one knee beside the corpse and caught the strong smell of liquor. A green glass bottle was clenched in a frozen claw of a hand. Jack’s stomach turned. How could a man do this, drink himself to death in front of his child?

Why couldn’t I make him warm? the child asked.

Still on one knee, Jack reached up and took hold of her small shoulders.

You aren’t to blame. Your papa was a grown man, and no one could have saved him but himself. This is not your fault.

He pulled the canvas back over the dead man.

When did this happen?

The day the snow first came, the child said.

He knew when. It was the night he and Mabel had built the little snow figure in the yard. Nearly three weeks ago.

Why didn’t you ask for help?

I kept Fox away. I threw stones and yelled. And I wrapped Papa so the birds wouldn’t peck at him. But now… the voles are eating him.

What choice did he have? He stood and dusted the snow from his knee.

I might have to get some help, from town, he said.

The girl’s eyes flashed with anger. You promised. You promised.

And so he had. Jack sighed heavily and kicked the sides of his boots together. It was more than he had bargained for.

This isn’t all going to happen today, he said. I’ve got to think about this, about how we’re going to take care of… your papa.

All right.

The girl was tired and calm, the fight drained out of her.

You will stay with us until we can sort things out.

Jack spoke as he had that first day when he’d told her it was time to go in for dinner, as if this were the last word.

The girl stood straight, her eyes sharp again.

No, she said.

I can’t leave you here in the woods. This is no place for a child.

It’s my home, she said.

She stood with her head high. The mountain wind blew through the spruce trees and stirred her blond hair.

This was her home. Jack believed it.

In Alpine, he asked around, saying he’d seen ax blazes on several trees, signs of marked trails. Had anyone been trapping near his homestead over the years? Anybody living up toward the mountains?

“Yeah. Yeah. Funny you ask ’cause I haven’t thought of that fellow in a coon’s age,” George said. “We called him Swede, and he never told us different. Didn’t give a name, now that I think of it. More likely Russian, I’d guess—judging from the way he said his words.”

“What did he look like?” Jack asked. “Just curious if I ever met him along the way.”

“Big, strapping man. Built like a lumberjack. Light-colored hair. A beard. A little off, if you ask me. Not the friendly, talkative sort. Esther’s known for inviting the bachelors over for Sunday dinner once in a while, but she never asked him. I wonder what happened to him. You think he’s trapping around your place?”

Betty remembered the man, too.

“Oh he was an odd duck, that one,” she told Jack as she poured him a cup of coffee. “Like a lot of ’em, he panned gold in the summers, trapped in the winters. Probably thought he’d strike it rich and go back to wherever he came from. Couldn’t understand him half the time, always mixing another language in with his English.”

“You seen him lately?” Jack asked. “I just want to know who I’m dealing with, if he’s trapping out my way.”

“Nope. Can’t remember the last time he was in here. But then he only came into town a few times a year. Spent all his spare time drinking with the Indians upriver, from what I heard.”

“Wonder what ’came of him.” Jack casually stirred his coffee.

“Who knows? Maybe he went back to wherever he came from. Or the river drowned him, or a bear ate him. Happens all the time. Men come and men go. Sometimes they just walk off the face of the earth.”

“You recall him having any children?… Or a wife? I was just thinking Mabel might want to get to know her.”

“Can’t say that I do. Seemed a pretty solitary type to me.”

A tired sadness settled over Jack as he rode back to the homestead. The horse trotted sharply and tossed its head, as if invigorated by the brisk weather. Jack’s hands stiffened in the cold as he held the reins. He thought of the girl on the side of the mountain with her dead, frozen papa and wondered if he was doing the right thing. She had made him promise not to tell anyone, especially Mabel, and Jack understood. Most any woman wouldn’t allow a child to stay in the wilderness alone with her father’s corpse. The girl feared being yanked away from what was familiar. Jack had watched when Mabel once or twice reached out to brush hair away from the girl’s eyes or to help button her blue wool coat. The girl flinched and pulled back. She clenched her teeth and pursed her lips as if to say, I can take care of myself.

Jack was fairly certain it was true. The girl knew the woods and trails. She found food, shelter. Was that all a child needed? Mabel would say no. She’d say the girl needed warmth and
affection and someone to look after her, but Jack had to wonder if that didn’t have more to do with a woman’s own desires than the needs of a child.

Besides, he had promised the girl. He made few promises, but those he made, to the best of his abilities he kept.

The secret clung to Jack in the scent of black woodsmoke and melting snow. At night, Mabel pressed her face into his beard and touched his hair with her fingers.

“What have you been burning?”

“Just some of those stump rows from last summer. Good weather to burn. Not too windy or dry.”

“Yes. I suppose so.” She didn’t seem altogether convinced.

The ground was taking longer to thaw than he had predicted. He dragged the dead man out from under the tree and cut it down. Then he cut up the wood where it lay, and built a fire from its tinder-dry branches. The girl watched the tree burn. She stood well back and the flames flickered in her eyes. Jack asked her if she could tend the fire while he was gone, but she shook her head. So when the short day ended and night fell, he piled the wood as high as he dared and then climbed down the mountain. Behind him, the fire crackled and popped and flamed in the night.