Kris Read online

  THWACK, THWACK, THWACK, THWACK,

  And into the lonesome pine woods their pathway they do steer.

  THWACK, THWACK, THWACK, THWACK,

  Into the lonesome pine woods all winter to remain

  THWACK, THWACK, THWACK, THWACK,

  A-waiting for the springtime to return again.

  A snap of the reins and Gerda was off again, leading us forward into evening and tomorrow. Garin’s old wooden bear, left behind, collapsed onto its side as if felled by one stroke of an imaginary axe. And it rolled to the rear of the sleigh, where it came to a halt as abruptly as Garin’s childhood.

  My mother coughed behind me. It was clear her time was coming to an end. I struggled with confusion. She was stern in the demands she placed on us and especially on me, but she always had watched over us and protected us in whatever ways she could. Now she was determined to see us scattered to the wind with only the smallest hope we might again take root. At the time, she seemed to me without feeling or compassion for our young lives as her own began to drift away.

  I did not know what else to do, except to carry out this task as she demanded. I was helpless to change the path we were now upon, so I executed her dying wish because I could think of none to surpass it.

  I became determined to take what little control I could in my effort to find real shelter for my brothers and sisters. It would be their only opportunity for survival. That my mother wanted me to leave them by the roadside or wandering alone in hopes some stranger would discover them only added to my frustration, deepened my anger, and left me feeling weak and pitiful. It would be years before I uncovered the simple truth that facing your own death was almost inconsequential compared to losing a child.

  In the evening light I spied a modest country inn and set it as the next destination on our quest for gentle refuge.

  My mother stroked Jess’s hair. “You’re beautiful. So, so pretty and red is your hair and your long, long lashes. Our neighbors would stop us to tell me how beautiful you are. I wish I could say it was embarrassing, but I never tired of it, because not only are you beautiful on the outside, you are even more so on the inside.”

  Jess had a sweetness, a kind of rosy glow around her wherever she went. She also had her own world that she lived in all the time. She loved to dance and sing and would make us call her by her name of choice for the day and would not respond to any other. Penelope was her best friend, though none of us could see Penelope. Jess was a joy.

  With Jess in hand, I walked to the inn and sent her inside. I found a slightly open window through which I could see and feel the raging fire radiating from the hearth within.

  A buxom bar matron busily served patrons and travelers, men and women that had gathered inside for warmth who ate and drank in great measure. They shouted raucous songs and engaged in playful banter in the spirit of holiday revelers and were so occupied with their merriment they failed to notice Jess as she entered through a swinging tavern door. I watched from outside and could see Jess make her way curiously through the room until she stumbled and fell in a carpet of scraps and sawdust. All eyes turned to Jess, but no one came to her rescue.

  “Whose child is this?” the bar matron finally demanded. There was no response. Bewildered, the matron swooped Jess up and took her to a chair where she sat, placing Jess upon her lap. She combed Jess’s curly red hair with her fingers and made an occasional playful tweak at Jess’s nose and laughed with her as the singing and drinking carried on around them.

  I raced back to the sleigh, feeling emptiness at losing Jess and great hope for her chances of survival.

  As we pushed onward, night wrapped its gossamer cloak around our sleigh, concealing our secrets and the illness inside. Empty as the world around us, I prayed for some newfound fuel to carry us into tomorrow.

  The church ahead, visible in the silvery moonlight, woke me from my delirium like a beacon of salvation created for us. In that moment, I believed in miracles, but simple momentary miracles are often forgotten in a moment.

  Kendra was sleeping now, too exhausted to remain alert. Quietly, my mother spoke to her as she slumbered.

  “I will miss our days together. I will miss eating fresh snow peas and watching the ducks and even laying on the bed talking. You are going to be a powerful woman. You are tough, but with the kindness you embody you will never be mean, just tough. It is a rare woman that can carry it off, but I believe it will come to you with ease. There is sometimes an old soul quality about you. You are my little wise one. I couldn’t love you any more.”

  I don’t think my mother was done talking when I lifted Kendra from the bench of the sleigh and carried her into the vestibule of the church. I didn’t care. Kendra was cold and needed to go inside, I told myself.

  Her beautiful, freckled, five-year-old face was radiant in the candlelight. She did not stir. She did not waken as I lay her upon a large wicker mat on a table in the vestibule and left her there for God and his messengers to watch over. On the table beside the mat was a small, rough nativity, crudely carved from some dark obsidian rock. For a moment I bowed my head; then in a burst of anger, I swept the figurines to the ground, bouncing and scattering across the stone floor.

  As the sleigh pulled away from the church, I felt someone watching, perhaps the eyes of heaven upon me. I didn’t care. The only forgiveness I wanted was from the family I had left behind.

  Snowflakes.

  Lazy, floating snowflakes.

  I ran through the experiences of the day as we rode through the slow, soft snowfall. My mother’s task accomplished, I was done. Something good had taken place today. Something unexpected. Something impossible. But over and over again I lived each delivery. I critiqued each moment. And all I wanted was to turn around and gather us back together.

  Sometime past the dark early hours of morning, my mother’s shawl broke free, unraveled from about her head, and sailed into the night. I watched, mesmerized. It floated, turning gracefully in the sky like the snowflakes. Defying nature, it danced upon the air rising higher and higher.

  I stopped the sleigh and retrieved the shawl from where it had finally come to rest on the snow. The peace of the quiet snowfall was calming. Still fascinated by the descending snow, I watched one oddly large snowflake fall as I walked around to give my mother her errant shawl. The flake landed on her face and didn’t melt. I gently placed the shawl around her head, almost afraid to wake her from her endless sleep. A small, wooden snowflake pendant rested upon her neck. She had worn it my entire life. A gift, I believe, from my father. Carefully I untied the necklace and wrapped it in my hand. Then I wrapped my arms around her. “What about me, Mama? What words for me? How am I special, Mama? How do you see me?”

  The blankets covering her body began to stir, and a cry broke the tranquility of the silent night. I recoiled.

  “My God.”

  I had forgotten. I had forgotten the precious life my mother held to her breast. I had forgotten I even had a days-old infant brother. Frantically I tore at her clothes and pulled my naked brother from the ebbing warmth of her grasp. The wind whistled through the barren winter land surrounding us. Nikko cried as I held him away from my body.

  What was I to do with this squealing infant who had no protection from the world? I trudged across the snowy field toward a gathering of trees.

  How would I find him comfort in this forsaken land now that my mother had died? Surely, he would not survive until morning. Who would feed him?

  Would it not be better for him? It would happen so soon. He would have no recollection of loneliness and suffering, only eternal life.

  So I walked, the snowflake pendant dangling from my fingers, the tearful shivering infant in my outstretched arms.

  I walked to one tree. And then the next. What I was horrified to consider I could not find the will to do. I walked through the stand of trees knee-deep into the fresh powdery snow. Slowly, I pulled him into my protective body, and I walked through the rolling snowy hills.
<
br />   I walked until I could not walk another step. Until weariness overtook me. Until my legs became so heavy that I stumbled and fell. Until I had no other choice but to accept our fate and surrender to exhaustion.

  I removed my old cloak and laid it over the snow then gently placed Nikko upon it, laying my own unprotected body in the snow beside him.

  “Don’t worry, little one. The cold will not last long.”

  As we lay there, gazing into a glittering and translucent sky, I held the wooden snowflake pendant and thought about the way snowflakes formed and fell to earth. Each like a crystal jewel. Each unique, with unrivaled form. Each drifting from heaven like a silent prayer or a gentle kiss from God. Each finding its own special place, yet joining so many others, as the world embraced and absorbed them.

  And then I thought of Nikko and all my brothers and sisters, who were as delicate as any of these snowflakes. Each unique, each now sent drifting in search of a special place and hoping for the world’s embrace.

  “Nikko, do you think it is Christmas yet?” I asked.

  A star flared in the night and raced across the sky, then was followed by sparks and cinders that floated upon the wind. A fire, I thought. We must be near a fire.

  I wrapped Nikko in the cloak and headed off to follow the trail of burning, pulsating embers.

  From beneath the crest of a hill poked a smoking chimney. Attached to that chimney, among the hills of nowhere, was a cottage. When I found that cottage, with its chimney spewing sparks into the sky, I set about devising a way to deliver Nikko to his new home.

  I laid him in the snow outside a window that had not been sealed and peered inside to see who might be within the small house. An old couple sat at the table near the fireplace, eating stew. I ran to their door and knocked on it boldly.

  Surprised, the old cottager arose, picked up a walking staff, and headed to the door. His curious wife followed close behind. As they opened the door to see what sort of wandering stranger had beckoned them, I crawled through the window with Nikko in my arms.

  “Who goes there?” the cottager called out to the empty night.

  Quickly and quietly I set Nikko near the hearth, on an old blanket that lay folded there. I placed the wooden snowflake on his breast. Nikko’s tiny little hand held onto my thumb. I peeled his hand off my finger, and in the blink of an eye I was gone out the window. For the first time in hours Nikko began to cry.

  The cottager’s wife must have turned to discover Nikko lying near the hearth, for I heard a muffled shriek from inside. Minutes later the old cottager started up again.

  “Who goes there? Hello?”

  But I was a far distance by then, now truly alone as I walked away into the night.

  It is difficult to look back and remember the pain of that long day’s delivery because there were so many good times to follow. Though weary beyond belief, I did eventually make my way back to the sleigh and Gerda, who somehow braved and survived that chilling journey. As I think about it now, I realize that I wasn’t fully alone. I had her. She was with me through all of it, just as she would see me grow into a man over the coming years.

  I wasn’t there yet. It was the early 1700s, and though I wasn’t a boy, I was not yet a man. You see, tragedy doesn’t make a man. It may end a childhood, but only learning to embrace responsibility of your own free will makes a man. So far I had only been on the ride. Now I had to learn to do something with my pain and my experience. It helps to have an example, if not a teacher, for a young person to truly come of age. God was good enough to give me both in the years to come.

  You might think of my story as tragic. I want you to know that I am grateful for the experience. It made me who I am, who I was to become. Heroes must pass through a trial of fire. In time I would pass through mine to become someone I loved and respected, someone, I hope, who brings joy to others. But once again, I wasn’t there yet.

  You may be curious about my mother and what became of her. I could tell you a story of a child frantically trying to dig into the frozen earth with hands and sticks. Or I could tell you about days of looking for rocks to pile, or of hands too frozen to light the smallest of fires.

  In the end I laid my mother’s body near the roadside, propping her head up gently with a mound of snow until it seemed she was at last peaceful in her eternal sleep. I remembered Garin’s toy bear and retrieved it from the sleigh, placing it in my mother’s arms as a reminder of the children she had planted along the road. I prayed that in time her body would be discovered and given a more fitting burial, which I could not do alone.

  Eventually I realized that we had to move on and that I had decided to live.

  Chapter 2

  Rebuilding

  Galloping horses broke the peaceful solitude of the fresh winter’s morning. A wagon filled with wooden furniture and other wares passed me, bucking and bouncing on the rough trail. Its boisterous passengers, a group of three boys, kept the older driver from noticing me as they moved past. Thankfully Gerda and the sleigh were well hidden in the trees beyond the roadside.

  Behind the old, rugged driver, in the overloaded wagon bed, the three young men about my age were cavorting, poking and smacking at each other as the wagon rumbled past.

  A storm was beginning to build in the distance, its dark clouds and steadily growing winds heralding the approaching blizzard. I decided I would secretly follow this group to wherever it was destined, in hopes of stealing some form of shelter.

  In a short time the wagon approached a modest cottage on a ridge above the road and skittered to a halt. I left Gerda behind the last bend in the trail and moved closer so I could watch and listen without making myself known.

  The old man, Josef, a salt-of-the-earth grandfather whom the boys called by name, jumped from the driver’s seat of the wagon and walked toward the cottage.

  “Jonas!” he yelled. “Paddock them horses. Markus, you and Noel grab them chairs. We need to beat this weather.”

  He paused there for a moment and turned back to the boys. Unaware, the boys started to roughhouse. Josef barked at them again, “No horsing, hear? That’s a blizzard brewing.”

  Then the door opened, and he entered the cottage, leaving the boys to their work.

  Jonas, perhaps thirteen and the smallest of the group, seemed somewhat shy and timid in his manners. He nearly fell as he awkwardly dismounted the wagon and hit the ground. Regaining his balance, Jonas gathered several large pieces of wood that he wrestled over to the wagon wheels where he wedged them to hold the wagon in place. As he stood, a mound of snow hit him on the back of the head with a THWACK. He yelped.

  Markus, a fresh-faced and powerfully athletic boy, along with Noel, a thin and sneering lad, both about fourteen, jeered at Jonas and continued their snowy assault from the protection of the wagon bed. Jonas couldn’t find cover. Every time he blocked one assault, another would find the opening it left. Sputtering and jerking, he moved in first one direction and then the other, until finally he dove with desperate courage at his attackers, crawling beneath the wagon in an effort to avoid being pelted.

  Markus turned his attention to one of the tarps covering the chairs in the wagon bed. He grabbed it firmly by one side and yanked on it, flipping it off the chairs and onto Noel, who screamed in entangled self-defense, “Hey! Get this off.”

  Markus laughed as Noel stood in the wagon, squirming beneath the tarp. In his struggle to escape, Noel tripped over the side and landed with a great thud in the snow beside the wagon. Markus, a laugh now half-caught in his throat, flopped onto his belly and looked down at Noel with concern.

  “Noel, you hurt?” Markus asked in a worried voice.

  Noel frantically popped his head out. “I did that just to make you laugh,” he said with false bravado as he struggled to catch his breath.

  Markus threw another tarp over him.

  While Noel continued to thrash about once again, Markus grabbed two chairs from among several in the wagon and placed them on the ground. Ju
mping down from the wagon, Markus stacked the two chairs in the snow. As he turned to lift out another chair, a snowball exploded against the side of his face. Markus looked about in newly fueled anger.

  For a moment, Noel stood champion atop the wagon, sneering; then his smile froze. Markus vaulted onto the sleigh. Desperately, Noel staggered through the wagon and tumbled over the side, running. Markus chased him relentlessly, a predator on the tail of his prey, and when Noel finally stumbled, Markus leapt upon him. They tumbled end over end, head over foot, to the ground fighting.

  Jonas crawled out to watch Markus pummeling Noel and rubbing his face in the snow. I followed, initially caught up in the fiasco. Beside me in the back of their wagon sat a chunk of salt-cured meat. I devoured it before I even remember picking it up.

  Josef’s voice boomed through the open door of the cottage, “Markus! Noel! If you are playing the fools, you will feel the lash! Hear?”

  I turned to dash back to the trees in the hope I would not be discovered and ran directly into Markus. I spun and tried to move in another direction, but Noel blocked my escape and pushed me back toward Markus once again. As I struggled to get my balance and escape in yet another direction, Markus grabbed me and tossed me into the chairs that were sitting in the snow. They snapped and splintered as I hit them, sending pieces of wood in all directions.

  Josef yelled again, “If we’re caught by the storm, I’ll be looking for new apprentices, and your parents will have to find something else to do with you.”

  As I lay on the ground, Noel grabbed one of the satchels from the wagon and threw it at me. I caught it as it hit me on the chest. “Thief! We captured a thief!” Noel began to scream loudly in an effort to muster Josef’s attention.

  I tried to stand.

  Markus ruthlessly pushed me to the ground and yelled, “Josef!”

  “You’ve got it coming now,” Noel taunted.