The Children's Blizzard Read online

  But Mother Pedersen was both; she sometimes would stop what she was doing and sit down and cry, so fiercely it looked like her face might split in two while her narrow shoulders sliced through the air in sharp upward thrusts. And her anger! As much a part of her as her bright flaxen hair that she took such care of, her fury was like a harsh, metallic thread woven into her perfectly fitted dresses. You followed the glint of it throughout the house as she darted from bedroom to kitchen to parlor, only staying in one place when she concentrated on baking intricate, dainty pastries that were so light and airy they didn’t seem to belong on the prairie. Their very beauty made Anette shy about eating them—not that she was often offered any. But when she did eat them, she was always disappointed; as sweet as they were, they never did fill her up.

  Mother and Father Pedersen rarely visited the second floor. Mother Pedersen left clean linens at the bottom step of the crude stairs every week, but it was the job of Teacher and Anette to make the beds, empty the slop jugs, sweep and dust what little there was to dust. The rest of the house was nicely furnished, at least in Anette’s opinion, since her old home—and funny how she now thought of it that way—had been sparse, with little furniture, no rugs, a dirt floor. But the upstairs, where the two boarders slept, was just the two bedsteads separated by a curtain. No pictures. The only decoration was the flowers that Father Pedersen brought Teacher.

  But one night last week, Anette had awoken to sounds that were unfamiliar enough to pull her from her exhausted sleep; it had been laundry day but so cold that the water pump froze outside, so Anette had been forced to carry shovels full of snow inside instead, where they melted in a big tub by the stove. When she awoke, her arms and shoulders still ached so much that she couldn’t move them right away, so she merely lay still, listening.

  First she heard Teacher murmuring something—was she talking in her sleep? But then Anette heard more murmurs. Different murmurs. A voice that didn’t belong—

  It was Father Pedersen. Saying something so low, but so sweet that Anette felt her heart yearn for more. She could make out no words; she only knew that it was a song she would have loved to hear, if only she could.

  Then Teacher said something that was interrupted by a creak of the stairs, and Father Pedersen was walking toward the top of the staircase—Anette by this time had pushed herself up on her elbow. She could only see his feet, in his sturdy boots that were dripping melting snow; he must have just come in from seeing to the horses. Although why he would have been doing that in the middle of the night, Anette had no idea. Then she saw Teacher’s bare feet hit the floor, and she had been amazed at seeing the small, bony feet, the little pink toes; it was so cold, why didn’t she sleep with her socks on as Anette did?

  This fact—this odd, distracting thought—so puzzled Anette that she almost didn’t hear Father Pedersen say, “Anna.” Just the one word—Mother Pedersen’s name—but the way he said it was terrible. Anette bolted upright, hugging the quilt to her chest for protection. His voice was vibrant with terror and supplication.

  Teacher cried out.

  There was another creak of the stairs, then something metallic clattered to the floor and Father Pedersen was rushing down, and Teacher must have flung herself back on her bed. She sobbed so piteously, Anette didn’t know what to do. Should she go to her?

  From downstairs she could hear the sound of voices being raised, and the littlest Pedersen wailing from his basket, and doors slamming, a sound like a scream cut off before it was uttered. So Anette remained in her own bed. It was as if a line had truly been drawn—a wall, bricked up—between the two beds. They seemed intended for different things, these two bedsteads. And Anette had never known that before, that beds might have purposes other than for sleeping.

  The days after that strange night had made Anette want to scream; the house was too small for so many people with so many troubles. As the temperature remained well below zero, they were trapped, and everyone behaved so oddly. Father Pedersen wouldn’t talk to Mother Pedersen, who wouldn’t speak to Teacher, who acted terrified of both of them and suddenly both younger and older than she had been before, and no one thought of Anette at all. She felt like she was a ghost, almost; no one could see her, but she saw everything. More than she wanted to. But she wasn’t invisible, at that; all the things she didn’t want to see made her so confused that Mother Pedersen slapped her for allowing a pan of milk intended for the baby to scald.

  Teacher, observing, rushed to Anette’s side; she pulled her into her arms.

  “You are a cruel, cruel person,” she scolded Mother Pedersen. It was the first time Anette had ever heard her speak angrily to the older woman, and the pain of the slap was forgotten in her astonishment.

  “You know nothing about me,” Mother Pedersen responded coolly. “And despite your silly fantasies, you know nothing about him.”

  Teacher had fled upstairs, sobbing. With a strangled cry, Mother Pedersen erupted in fury, becoming a demon before Anette’s very eyes—her face scarlet, the blue eyes blazing while the coils of her hair seemed to dance with electricity. Mother Pedersen snatched the scalded milk off the top of the cookstove and ran to the door to throw it out, only she closed the door on her hand and collapsed in a heap on the floor, pounding her chest with her fists and hissing, “This cursed place, this cursed land,” over and over again. Teacher’s sobs were audible and the baby started to cry and Liane, the oldest Pedersen child, hit Martin, the middle one, and the two started to scream and tear at each other’s clothes. And Anette simply stood where she was, in the middle of hell.

  There was no way out, nowhere for her to go; she couldn’t even run away, because she would freeze. She could only shut her eyes and try to summon up something good, and she pictured herself running with Fredrik, the two of them skimming the prairie earth. Running was the most uncomplicated thing in the world; all you had to do was remember to breathe and cherish the ache in your chest that came from the freedom of your body carrying your mind and your thoughts somewhere else, your troubles, too—they were mobile, never burdensome, when you were running.

  And Fredrik’s happy face, the sandy hair tickling his arched eyebrows, the freckles on his face even more pronounced when he was running beside her, sometimes reaching out to grab her hand, as if the two of them together could run even faster than each alone—

  “Anette! Anette!”

  A tug on her sleeve, a hand in hers, and she stopped running, stopped remembering, and tried to breathe—but couldn’t. She tried to inhale but only frigid air, grains of ice, invaded her lungs and she began to wheeze, her chest so tight, her throat stinging, her nostrils stuck together. Gasping for breath, Anette turned, tried to open her eyes wide but they were stuck together; she rubbed her eyes with her sleeve until some of the ice melted and she could see.

  The world as she had known it was gone. Everywhere was now white, now grey, now white again. She was in the middle of that furious cloud and could not see anything that looked of this earth. She might have been sucked up in the storm, like a cyclone, were it not for the ground beneath her feet. Ground that was increasingly covered with snow.

  “Anette!”

  “Fredrik!” She could barely say his name, and the wind howled so that it was a miracle he heard it, but he held tight to her hand, leaned in close to her. His eyes were wide with recognition; recognition that this was not anything he had encountered before, this howling tunnel of wind almost knocking them off their feet, of no visibility, no markers at all. She wanted to scream at him—How did you find me? Are you stupid? Go back!

  Please stay, stay with me, I don’t know how to do this.

  But she had to go home, she couldn’t dawdle, it was the only consistent thought as her mind started to open up to the realization that it was foolish, what she had done, to try to outrace a blizzard. Only once did she think of going back, but as soon as she turned around to retrace
her steps, she saw that they were already swallowed up by the drifting snow, and she couldn’t see anything, anything at all, except for Fredrik’s blue—frightened—eyes.

  “We go,” she managed to finally croak, then she shouted the words again, and Fredrik nodded.

  We go. Forward, toward home.

  We go, Anette said in her heart.

  Together.

  CHAPTER 6

  •••••

  GAVIN HAD JUST TURNED THE corner of Farnam, on his way back to the Gilded Lily, when the storm struck Omaha.

  The force of it blew him off his feet and pushed him against a hitching post; he clung to it for a moment, stunned. Sure, the sky had grown dark in the northwest while he was out strolling, which was why he turned around in the first place. But weather, even in Godforsaken Nebraska, didn’t move that fast, as fast as a steam engine on a flat track.

  Grabbing on to the post until he could regain his balance, Gavin felt something like gravel hit the back of his neck. Turning around, ready to yell at some hooligan, he saw no one behind him at all, but when he reached up to touch his neck, he felt hard little pebbles of ice. He gaped in surprise as the buildings he’d just passed were swallowed up by a furious wall of snow, now mixed with the dirt of town so that it was streaked with brown and grey and black.

  Gavin swore; he felt fear despite the fact that he was a mere few feet from shelter. And then, all he could think of was her. That young woman, the one he’d just tipped his hat to, what was it—God, only half an hour ago, it must have been. Dear God.

  She’d be back out on the prairie now, she and her family; rubes they were, Swedes probably, maybe Germans; they all had that open, exposed expression of someone new to this land. Like baby chicks, needing to be taught everything. The family must have come into town for supplies; he’d spotted them out near the Catholic cemetery, at a little dry goods store that nobody who lived in town ever went to because the prices were too high. But the place did a splendid business jacking up the prices for homesteaders who were too overwhelmed to venture farther into town.

  Hitched to a post in front of the store had been a wagon, the wheels replaced with crude sleigh runners; in the bed of the wagon were two small boys pummeling each other and jabbering in their native tongue. Next to them, sitting so that her back was against the driver seat of the wagon, was their older sister, Gavin supposed.

  A young woman, maybe seventeen, who could tell? Gavin certainly couldn’t. But she was wearing long skirts, her reddish blond hair braided into a crown atop her head. She was sitting so still, oblivious to the two hooligans fighting at her feet, her hands folded quietly in her lap, her face turned west, a longing kind of look in her eyes, a half smile playing at her lips. Her clothes were plain, homespun, her cloak a faded dark green. He couldn’t see her feet, but he imagined she was wearing dirty men’s boots, too big for her. Every material thing on her looked made for someone else.

  It was her throat that made Gavin stop, look, feel. To his consternation and horror, tears sprang to his eyes. But her throat was so young, unlined, somehow tender and hopeful, if a throat could be that, but here it was, this womanly throat not yet weighed down by care and death and worry and fear. It held her delicate head aloft as she blinked her eyes dreamily, still looking out toward the prairie, like a stem holds a bud; it yearned.

  Throats do not yearn, Gavin scolded himself. You are giving emotions to things, and that is not what a journalist does. You are imbuing a rather ordinary part of the anatomy with poetry. This is ridiculous.

  Yet there it was. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, she looked so detached from the plainness of her surroundings: the dirty snow, the weathered wagon. Her face belonged to another time and place. The girl must have sensed him staring, for she turned and met his gaze without fear or confusion or even wonder.

  He tipped his hat to her, and she nodded regally. As if she had been expecting him.

  Then the parents bustled up, handing packages to her, and suddenly she was just another young immigrant woman helping her mother and father, pulling apart her squabbling siblings. Gavin found himself, foolishly, hoping one of those brown paper–wrapped packages contained something sweet, something girlishly frivolous—a ribbon or a bottle of scent, a hair comb, a spool of pink thread, maybe. Something for her very own, to place under her pillow at night or maybe keep in a secret drawer.

  But Gavin knew there was no such gift; he knew these people better than they knew themselves, he sometimes thought. There was no money set aside for an object designed to make a pretty girl feel even prettier—to make her aware of herself in a way that had nothing to do with hard labor, disappointment, suffering, sacrifice. And a future just like her mother’s, who looked older, by twenty years, than she probably was.

  Gavin turned and walked back toward town, brushing away the ridiculous tears, laughing at himself. Godforsaken Omaha was turning him into a fool. An old, sentimental goat of a fool. It was long past time for a drink; he headed toward the Lily.

  But when the wind hit, all he could think of was the girl. Out there. In this storm that had roared up so quickly. No one today was dressed for it; she’d been wearing only a tattered cape, her brothers had only jackets patched at the elbows. Now they were out there in the midst of it, most likely a long way from home.

  He wished he’d asked her name.

  Hugging the post, Gavin righted himself and threw himself up to the left, against the buildings, so that he could make his way the three blocks to the Lily. Where the buildings ended, at the intersection of streets, was already hazardous; when he stepped into the void, he could simply pray no horse or wagon or trolley car was bearing down on him, and it seemed only by the grace of somebody’s god that he regained the buildings on the other side of the street, continuing in this way—like a drunk sailor trying to navigate a pitching, wave-washed deck—until he smelled the cigar smoke and clove and beer aroma of the Lily. Pushing open the door was easy as the wind was blowing against it, and he tumbled into the blessedly warm room, slipped on a puddle of melted snow, and fell flat on his ass.

  A few fellows guffawed at him, but most were pressing their dirty noses against the filthy windows, looking outside.

  “Woodson, you all right?”

  Dan Forsythe reached down to haul him up from the floor. Gavin brushed off the ice and snow from his coat, shaking his head.

  “I am now. But God Almighty, that’s a helluva storm out there.”

  “Blew up real quick, it did.” Forsythe followed him to the bar, where Ol’ Lieutenant, the Lily’s owner, was already shoving a shot of whiskey at Gavin, who swallowed it greedily.

  “It’ll pass over just as quickly,” someone staring out the window said. “Wasn’t no cold wave issued for today, was there?”

  Everyone then turned toward a man in a dark blue military uniform sitting at the end of the bar, nursing a beer. The man looked up, surprised. Just a touch guilty.

  Corporal Findlay he was, one of the new “indicators” from the Army Signal Corps, whose job it was to take readings of the weather and send them to the new office in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Gavin had done a piece on them; how they had a division of these indicators, stationed all along the country at forts and railroad stations, who relayed wind direction and intensity, barometric pressure readings, temperature, sun or cloud coverage, via telegraph. These readings were collected in Saint Paul—previously, they had been gathered in Washington—and from these readings the officer in charge up there, a Lieutenant Woodruff, telegrammed his indication for the part of the country lying west of the Mississippi at various intervals throughout the day. The main prediction was the one transmitted just after midnight to the newspapers, post offices, and railroad stations.

  It was a fairly new responsibility for the Army Signal Corps, and there were civilians—those claiming more scientific experience—who disagreed bitterly with
the way the information was gathered and relayed. There was also some corruption—when wasn’t there, when it came to the Grand Army of the Republic? Reports of soldiers who would fabricate an entire week’s worth of data in advance and pay someone to relay it for them while they went off to hunt or fish or drink. The telegraph lines were often blown down by the very weather they were supposed to try to indicate, delaying readings until they were of no use.

  But the railroads had demanded some kind of system to at least try to keep the trains on schedule during these unpredictable, punishing prairie winters; and what the railroads demanded, the U.S. government was bound and beholden to do. After all, the railroads had made this country, reshaped it along routes radiating north, west, and south, like the rays of the sun. The railroads had given the army something to do after it defeated the rebels; it had given them a new, more exciting enemy in the Native. And now that he was defeated, the army needed more to do. Like trying to predict the weather.

  In the winter, the worst indication was one for a “cold wave,” which meant that a front of plunging temperatures following significant snow was to be expected. Today’s indication had not called for a cold wave. No warning flags would have been raised to warn anyone—but even if they had been, Gavin knew, they were of little help except to those living within sight of a train station. Or those who had access to one of the major newspapers, like the Bee.

  Homesteaders, naturally, did not.

  “The readings last night and this morning didn’t indicate this, this—this disturbance from the west,” Corporal Findlay sputtered. “At least as far as I know. I’m not the one in charge, that’s Woodruff. Well, actually, Greely in Washington.”