The Winter Letter (2 page)

Cold moved from Will’s skin into his blood. He remembered the too big, too fast truck from fifteen minutes before. 

At 3:31 the police car vibrated over the brick streets by the old train depot. A train sat, blocking all crossings, as it received its few passengers. The car stopped just as the train announced its departure with a mighty shout. The passenger cars crawled by, with very few windows occupied, hardly picking up speed. Across the tracks, between train cars, Will could see the hospital popping in and out of sight. 

“Come on!” he said, but the train didn’t seem to hear (perhaps because of all the noise that comes with being a train).  At 3:35 the final car passed, and Officer Andy crossed the tracks, pulling the car into the parking area of the emergency room. 

“This is William,” he told the nurse as soon they stepped inside. 

“Come with me,” she replied as she stood and started down a hallway. Will followed until they stopped at a door with a big 14 on it. Instantly, his hands started trembling. His pulse quickened. 

“Go on in,” said the nurse. “She’s asking for you.”

Will didn’t move. He was petrified, scared of entering the room, scared of what came next. He swallowed hard. In his throat he felt the quickening thumps of his heart as his thoughts raced by so fast they were but a blur. But still, he wanted to see his mother, so he made himself push open the door.

Helen Wesley was pale with wet eyes and dried blood on her bottom lip. Her long black hair fell messily on her pillow and was set to the side, out of the way of the wires connecting her and a few machines with dancing lines and blinking lights. She was awake, but staring blankly at a round white clock with its shorthand almost on the four and its longhand just past the eight.

“Hey Mom,” Will whispered. She didn’t seem to hear.  “Mom. Hey, it’s me. It’s Will,” he said, his voice cracking in mid sentence. 

Slowly his mother turned, her eyes traveling the desert ceiling until they found rest on Will. “Hey Baby,” she said. It was evident she was hiding a shudder beneath her words.

“Don’t worry, Momma. You’re gonna be okay.” Will was trying to make himself believe it. 

His mother reached over and took his hand. “Baby, I need to tell you something about your father, and it’s not going to be easy, okay?”  

Will paused, then he nodded. The sudden onset of fear seemed to fill every empty space in the room, making the air thicker and the second tick slower. Helen managed, through many silent winces, to turn herself and look her son straight in the eyes. 

“He’s gone, sweetheart. He didn’t make it.” 

For a second every clock paused, then Will doubled over as each of his mother’s words punched him in the stomach, knocking him down and stealing his breath. He stiffened his chin and throat and fought not to break, but break he did. The levee crumbled, sending hot tears into every sob. He looked up and away, then down and away.

Above, the clock read a blurry 3:43. 

“Will,” Helen said, gently pulling his attention from the floor back to her eyes. They were glowing bright blue as if the sun was shining on them at the sunset of a too long, too sad day. “Come here, baby.” Will leaned over, folding into his mother’s arms, and the two shared warm tears upon their cheeks. After a few minutes his mother coughed.

“Give me your hand,” she said.

Will dried his eyes and reached out. His mother set a small necklace in his palm and closed his fingers around it. He didn’t have to look; it was the oval puzzle pendant she had worn ever since he could remember. The whole thing was a mess of twisted bars (just larger than a golf ball) that locked together until you found the perfect combination of twist, grunts, and turns that would slide them apart and set free a locket caged inside. He had often played with it, trying to open the complicated little piece of jewelry, but always without success. Each time, when he had throughly gotten the puzzled tangled together, his mother took it, wiped his fingerprints from the dark blue silver, rearranged the bars encompassing the locket, and put the long chain back around her neck and under her shirt. 

And that’s where it stayed, always.  

“What are you doing? This is yours.”

“Please...”

“Mom, it’s yours—”

Helen shushed her son, straining to lift her arm and gently placing a finger over his lips. “Take it. You’ll need it. It will help you understand. Keep it—” She coughed hard. “Keep it safe.”

“But Mom, I—”

“William, please?”

Will reluctantly placed the pendant around his neck. “Okay, but only until you get better.”

Helen forced a smile as a tear slid down her cheek. “I’m so sorry this happened today,” she said, then she coughed again, her body jolting violently. When she recovered her voice sounded weaker.  “I love you sweetheart, and your father, he loves you very much. There are so many things he wanted to show you.”

“I love you too,” said Will. Once again he hugged his mother across the bedrail. 

Over his shoulder Helen looked up at Officer Andy, who was standing quietly in the doorway. “Watch out for him,” she said. Officer Andy nodded without a word. 

Will’s mother kissed her son on the cheek and closed her eyes. Her embrace loosened. Her chin bowed. A million loud beeps exploded, and then nurses rushed in and escorted Will to the waiting room. He sat dazed, his gaze crawling up one wall, crossing the ceiling, and falling indefinitely to the floor. 

Above, a somber clock looked down and whispered that Helen Wesley, William Wesley’s mother, had died at 3:55.

The next three hours were out of focus. People came in and out, sat down and stood up, and bought drinks and chips from the vending machines. Some went home; while others stayed. Will never looked up, not even when the doctor told him his mother and father were dead. He simply stood, walked, sat, and buckled his seat belt. He couldn’t even feel the cold on his hands anymore. He was frozen, numb from the inside out.

“Will,” a familiar voice said. Will knew it was the police officer without having to look. “Do you need anything from home before we go to your Aunt’s?”

“Aunt?” Will whispered.

“Yes, I’m supposed to take you to your Aunt Leah’s.”

Leah wasn’t Will’s real aunt. She was his mother’s dearest friend (one of those friends who are usually much closer than any real aunt). Will didn’t have any real aunts. In fact, he didn’t have any real aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, brothers, or sisters. Before today his family was only three.

Now it was only one. 

“What do you think?” Andy asked after a long silence. 

Will nodded. He wanted to get a picture of his mom and dad. He wanted the blanket his mom had made for him. He wanted his pillow so he could scream into it.

The car started, crossed the railroad, turned down a few streets, but then they came to an abrupt stop. A flash of orange light pulled Will’s chin up for the first time in hours. He couldn’t believe his eyes. 

His house was a firestorm, the entire structure drowning in flame.

Three
The Library

The first thing Will noticed when he woke the next morning was the faded flower print lining the top of the walls. He was in his Aunt Leah’s house and had been drug awake by a screaming, coughing, much maintenance needed doorbell.

“Will, you decent?” said a small voice from a crack in the door.  It was Leah’s young daughter, Daphney. Daphney had been blinded by a fire two years before, but if you judged by her ever present smile you would have never known. She was just as bubbly without sight as with. Nonetheless, the question was only polite. She couldn’t see if Will was decent or not. 

“Yeah,” Will mumbled. “I’m dressed.”  Actually, he was wearing the same clothes as the day before, and they still smelled like smoke and hospital. Satisfied, Daphney walked to the bed and sat on its edge.

“I’m so sorry Will,” the girl said. As she spoke each of her s’s slid squeakingly through her front teeth.  Will pulled away. Daphney’s sweet voice brought sour feelings. He had woke still in the nightmare. His parents really were dead; his house really had burned to the ground.

“I asked Momma if I could wake you,” Daphney said as she wiped her blind eyes with the back of her hands. “It’s almost 2:30 and there’s a police officer in the living room. Mom says he’s really big. Are you going to jail?”

“No,” said Will. “Go tell them I’ll be there in a minute.”

As Daphney walked out Will shifted his legs over the side of the bed and put his face in his hands. He took two deep breaths before getting up.

“Good Morning Will,” Will’s adopted Aunt Leah said as he stepped through the bedroom door into the tiny living room. “Do you need anything? Are you hungry?” 

Will shook his head and sat in a chair across from Leah and the big police officer, Andy. “I know this is hard sweetheart,” said Leah, “but we thought you may want to look around the house before the weather gets in. The snow has stopped for a while, and I’m sure there are some things you will want to get.”

Will looked away. He didn’t want to see his home in a pile of ashes, but he remembered stories of people who had forgotten what their loved ones looked like after a long time. He didn’t want to forget. He
couldn’
t forget. “Can I go alone?” he asked.

Leah looked over at Andy. “Officer Andy needs to be there... for safety. Is that okay?”

“I’ll stay out of your way William. It will be as if I’m not even there,” Andy said.

“It’s Will,” Will said, then he nodded his already hurting head.

Neither Will nor Andy spoke until they arrived at the rubble that once was Will’s home. The house, from floor up, was either erased by flame or painted black by smoke. The front three outer walls were standing, the windows were in place, but inside everything was black and brown, wet and depressing. The pictures had lost their perfect form, the mantle was falling apart, and the plant in the corner (although not burnt) no longer snickered. Almost everything was destroyed. If the flame and smoke hadn’t got it, the water from the fire-hoses had. 

I did this
, Will thought as he stared at the fireplace. Where he had dropped the blanket the day before was now nothing more than a blacker spot on the charred floor.

“That’s strange,” Officer Andy said from behind. 

Will turned and walked over to Andy who was standing just outside the library door, peering in with a flashlight. Inside, the library was untouched; not the books, not the painting of the mulberry tree, not even the wallpaper was grey with smoke.

“Can I borrow that?” Will asked, pointing at Andy’s flashlight. 

“Yes,” said Andy. He handed Will the shiny silver torch and stepped out of the way. 

Will crossed through the charred doorway.  As always the air felt a tad warmer. He sniffed, breathing in the heavenly aroma of old paper. Somehow the smell of ash had not squirmed its way into the library. Everything was the same as any other day, only darker. On the bookshelves covering the long walls were books on top of books in front of books, and hiding at the far end of the library was his father’s open roll top desk. It was covered with loose papers, travel logs, and rolled up maps of places Will had never heard of. He walked over and unrolled one of the maps. Hand drawn x’s marked every block of some gigantic city. Will guessed these were a few of the many places his dad had visited. He tossed it and a few others things into an empty cardboard box, then he opened the top desk drawer (where the pencils are normally kept); it was empty. He opened the next one down, and it was full (of uninteresting things). When he opened the last drawer the light fell on an old brown leather bag. Will knew it immediately. It was his father’s travel bag. His dad had taken this bag, and this bag alone, on every one of his trips. Will pulled it from the drawer and unbuckled the flap. As it opened the smell of leather brushed through Will’s hair, a painful reminder of his father. 

Inside was a small journal. Will adjusted the light, flipped open the book, and read:

I have traveled far this trip and am weary of the loneliness, but I must continue. Soon Will will be of age., then we can go as a family. Maybe then these never ending journeys can come to an end…

Will pushed back a tear and flipped the page. Stuck in the crease was a picture of him, his mother, and father, all smiling on his twelfth birthday. He couldn’t bare it; little knives pricked at his heart. He shut the journal, stuffed it in the bag, grabbed the box full of maps and turned to leave, but as he did the light flashed across a letter lying on the long table.

Will froze.

“What is it?” asked Andy, still outside the doorway.

Will didn’t seem to hear.

“William?”

“It’s nothing,” said Will, just loud enough to be heard. He walked over, not taking his eyes off the letter, and set the box just outside the door.

“Are those maps?” Andy asked.

“Yes.”

“Mind if I...?”

“No.”

Andy unrolled one of the maps, labeled:
C.O. A.
His face disappeared behind it. “Did your Dad travel a lot?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Officer Andy leaned out from behind the map. He looked confused. “Did he ever tell you where these places are?”

“No.” 

“Do you kn- -”

“Can you give me a few minutes?” Will asked coldly. Tears were visible in his eyes and could be heard in his voice. 

“Sure, but first, is there anything important in the library you need to save?”

“There’s a safe.”

“Do you have the key?”

“No.”

“Do you know where it is?”

“No.”

“Okay. We can figure it out later. I’ll be out back if you need me.” Will nodded. As soon as Andy was out of sight he creeped towards the letter, like it would explode if he approached too quickly. He picked it up and read, again.

Dear William,

Happy late thirteenth Birthday.