The Snow Child: A Novel (5 page)

“Go on up to the house,” she called out to them. “The boys’ll help you with the horse.”

In the cabin, Mabel sat alone at the cluttered kitchen table, while Jack disappeared outside with George and the younger son. With her hands in her lap, her back straight, she wondered where they would eat. The table was heaped with stacks of catalogs, rows of washed, empty jars, and bolts of fabric. The cabin smelled strongly of cabbage and sour wild cranberries. It wasn’t much bigger than Jack and Mabel’s, except it had a loft where she assumed the beds were. The cabin was catawampus in a dizzying way, with the floor dipping to one side and the corners not square. Rocks and bleached animal skulls and dried wildflowers lined the windowsills. Mabel didn’t move, yet she pried just by allowing her eyes to wander.

She jumped when the door banged open.

“Blasted bird. You’d think it’d know enough to just give up the ghost. But no, it’s got to raise hell when it doesn’t even have a head left on its body.”

“Oh. Oh dear. Can I do something to help?”

The woman stomped past the table without removing her dirty boots and threw the turkey onto the crowded counter. A lard tin fell with a clatter to the floor. Esther kicked at it and turned to Mabel, who stood flustered and slightly frightened. Esther grinned, stretched out a bloodstained hand.

“Mabel? Isn’t that it? Mabel?”

Mabel nodded and gave her hand over to Esther’s vigorous shake.

“Esther. But I suppose you already figured that out. Good to have you out here finally.”

Under her wool coat, Esther wore a flower-print shirt and men’s denim overalls. Her face was speckled with blood. She pulled off her wool hat and fuzzy stands of hair stood on end. She swung her braid over her back and began filling a large pot with water.

“You’d think with all these men around here I could find somebody to kill and pluck a turkey for me. But no such luck.”

“Are you sure there’s nothing I can do?” Perhaps Esther would apologize for her appearance or for the disarray in the house. Maybe there was some explanation, some reason.

“No. No. Just relax and make yourself at home. You could fix us some tea, if you’d like, while I get this damned bird in the oven.”

“Oh. Yes. Thank you.”

“You know what our youngest went and did? Here we raise a couple of turkeys for no other reason than to cook on occasions such as these, and he goes out and shoots a dozen ptarmigan yesterday. Let’s have these for Thanksgiving, he says. What do I need with a dozen dead ptarmigan on Thanksgiving? Why feed turkeys if you’re going to eat ptarmigan?”

She looked at Mabel, as if expecting an answer.

“I… I haven’t the faintest idea. I can’t say I’ve ever eaten ptarmigan before.”

“Well, it’s good enough. But Thanksgiving, it’s turkey as far as I’m concerned.”

“I brought pies. For dessert. I set them on that chair. I wasn’t sure where else to put them.”

“Perfect! I hadn’t had a chance to even think about sweets. George tells me Betty’s a fool to give up your pies. He raves about your baking. Not that he needs any of it. Have you seen the gut on that man?”

Again she looked to Mabel expectantly.

“Oh, I wouldn’t—”

Esther’s laugh was a loud, startling guffaw.

“I keep telling him he’s single-handedly supporting that hotel restaurant, and it’s starting to show,” she said.

It was as if Mabel had fallen through a hole into another world. It was nothing like her quiet, well-ordered world of darkness and light and sadness. This was an untidy place, but welcoming and full of laughter. George teased that the two women were “talking a blue streak” rather than cooking the meal, and it was well into the evening before dinner was served, but no one seemed to mind. The turkey was dry on the outside and half raw on the inside. They all had to pick and choose their cuts. The mashed potatoes were creamy and perfect. The gravy was lumpy. Esther made no apologies. They ate with plates balanced on their laps. No one said a blessing, but George held up his glass and said, “To neighbors. And to getting through another winter.” They all raised their glasses.

“And here’s to eating ptarmigan next year,” Esther said, and everyone laughed.

After dinner and pie, the Bensons began to tell stories of their time on the homestead, of how the snow once piled so deep the horses could walk over the fence whenever they pleased, of weather so cold the dishwater turned to ice in the air when you tossed it out.

“I wouldn’t live anywhere else in the world, though,” Esther said. “What about you? You both come from farms down south?”

“No. Well, Jack’s family owns a farm along the Allegheny River, in Pennsylvania.”

“What do they raise back there?” George asked.

“Apples and hay, mostly,” Jack said.

“What about you?” Esther turned to Mabel.

“I suppose I’m the black sheep. No one else in my family
would think of living on a farm, or moving to Alaska. My father was a literature professor at the University of Pennsylvania.”

“And you left all that to come here? What in God’s name were you thinking?” Esther shoved Mabel’s arm playfully. “He talked you into it, didn’t he? That’s how it often is. These men drag their poor women along, taking them to the Far North for adventure, when all they want is a hot bath and a housekeeper.”

“No. No. It’s not like that.” All eyes were on her, even Jack’s. She hesitated, but then went on. “I wanted to come here. Jack did, too, but when we did, it was at my urging. I don’t know why, precisely. I believe we were in need of a change. We needed to do things for ourselves. Does that make any sense? To break your own ground and know it’s yours, free and clear. Nothing taken for granted. Alaska seemed like the place for a fresh start.”

Esther grinned. “You didn’t fare too badly with this one, did you, Jack? Don’t let word get out. There aren’t many like her.”

Though she didn’t look up, Mabel knew Jack was watching her and that her cheeks were flushed. She so rarely spoke like this in mixed company. Maybe she had said too much.

Then, as the conversation began to turn around her, she wondered if she had told the truth. Was that why they had come north—to build a life? Or did fear drive her? Fear of the gray, not just in the strands of her hair and her wilting cheeks, but the gray that ran deeper, to the bone, so that she thought she might turn into a fine dust and simply sift away in the wind.

Mabel recalled the afternoon, less than two years ago. Sunny and brilliant. The smell of the orchard in the air. Jack was sit
ting on the porch swing of his parents’ house, his eyes shaded from the sun. It was a family picnic, but they were alone for the moment. She had reached into her dress pocket and pulled out the folded handbill—“June 1918. Alaska, Our Newest Homeland.”

They should go, she had said. Home? he asked.

No, she said, and held up the advertisement. North, she said.

The federal government was looking for farmers to homestead along the territory’s new train route. The Alaska Railroad and a steamship company offered discounted rates for those brave enough to make the journey.

She had tried to keep her tone even, to not let desperation break her voice. Jack was wary of her newfound enthusiasm. They were both nearing fifty years old. It was true that as a young man he had dreamed of going to Alaska, of testing himself in a place so wild and grand, but wasn’t it too late for all that?

Jack surely had such doubts, but he did not speak them. He sold his share in the land and business to his brothers. She packed the trunks with dishes and pans and as many books as they could hold. They traveled by train to the West Coast, then by steamship from Seattle to Seward, Alaska, and by train again to Alpine. Without warning or signs of civilization, the train would stop and a solitary man would disembark, shoulder his packs, and disappear into the spruce trees and creek valleys. She had reached out and put her hand on Jack’s arm, but he stared out the train window, his expression unreadable.

She had imagined the two of them working in green fields framed by mountains as tall and snowy as the Swiss Alps. The air would be clean and cold, the sky vast and blue. Side by side, sweaty and tired, they would smile at each other the way they
had as young lovers. It would be a hard life, but it would be theirs alone. Here at the world’s edge, far from everything familiar and safe, they would build a new home in the wilderness and do it as partners, out from under the shadow of cultivated orchards and expectant generations.

But here they were, never together in the fields, speaking to each other less and less. The first summer he had her stay in town at the dingy hotel while he built the cabin and barn. Sitting on the edge of the narrow mattress that had certainly bedded more miners and trappers than Pennsylvania women, Mabel considered writing to her sister. She was alone. The ceaseless sun never gave her a moment’s rest. Everything before her—the lace curtains at the window, the clapboard siding, her own aging hands—was leached of color. When she left her hotel room, she found only a single muddy, deeply rutted trail beside the railroad tracks. It began in trees and ended in trees. No sidewalks. No cafes or bookshops. Just Betty, wearing her men’s shirts and work pants and issuing endless advice about how to jar sauerkraut and moose meat, how to take the itch out of mosquito bites with vinegar, how to ward off bears with a blow horn.

Mabel wanted to write to her sister but could not admit she had been wrong. Everyone had warned her the Territory of Alaska was for lost men and unsavory women, that there would be no place for her in the wilderness. She clutched the advertisement promising a new homeland and did not write any letters.

When at last Jack brought her to the homestead, she had wanted to believe. So this was Alaska—raw, austere. A cabin of freshly peeled logs cut from the land, a patch of dirt and stumps for a yard, mountains that serrated the sky. Each day she asked, Can I come with you to the fields? but he said no,
you should stay. He returned in the evenings bent at the back and wounded with bruises and insect bites. She cooked and cleaned, and cooked and cleaned, and found herself further consumed by the gray, until even her vision was muted and the world around her drained of color.

Mabel smoothed her hands across her lap, chasing the wrinkles in the fabric again and again, until her ears caught a few of the words around her. Something about the mine north of town.

“I’m telling you, Jack. Don’t give it another thought,” George was saying. “That’s a quick way to leave this world.”