Under A Living Sky (3 page)

Judith was whining to Mother, “But she wouldn't keep up.”

Not for the first time, Mary wished she had no sister. Everything would be easier without Judith. Don't cry now, she told herself, feeling her eyes prickle. Not on Christmas morning, and not in front of Judith. She looked away, wiped a disobedient tear from her eye and thought instead about her new shoes. They'd be waiting under the tree at home. Brand-new shoes of her very own.

They went into the schoolhouse and sat through the Christmas program. A confusing sea of big heads and red ears and wide hats with feathers turned with every action as students became biblical characters or helped with props. Two children holding up a curtain edged sideways to reveal an angel that Mary did not know. The angel told the Virgin that she would have a baby. The angel seemed nice. Mary expected that by this time next year, she and the angel would be friends. When asked about a room for the night, a ten-year-old innkeeper opened his mouth eagerly, croaked and shook his head without saying a word. The manger was filled with real hay but surrounded by strange-looking beasts like a cow that coughed, a sheep that hiccuped and a big-eared donkey that forgot itself completely and barked. There was no sign of Judith anywhere. Mary guessed the play must be going all wrong.

A rag-doll Jesus was produced, visited by jostling shepherds and sparkle-winged angels and turbaned wise men. The story took them from Bethlehem to Egypt, and on to Nazareth. The actors seemed lost. They milled about on stage and then stopped to stare down at something. No, someone.

As if commanded by the staring actors, the minister rose to his feet. He was laughing and applauding. Everyone clapped, and he led them in a Christmas carol. All the people sang, “Silent night, holy night, all is calm…” Mary sang too. The words floated upward with great feeling and got caught in the rafters, where before there was only the constant shriek of wind.

The minister prayed aloud, asking “blessings for every soul present” and closing, as he said, “quite a busy hour.”

They filed outside, where Papa was waiting on the porch. “That storm's getting worse, Ruth. Look, the cathedral's all gone now.” His thick arm pointed to where the grain elevator should have stood. The same arm swooped down to pick up Mary. Groaning over houses and horses and cars and people, the wind stretched along the wide street to its unseen end.

How did snow and wind make a tall elevator vanish? Another good question for the teacher. Under her breath, Mary began to sing, “Silent night, holy night, all is calm...”

“Aren't we going to the angle cans, Papa?” Joseph asked. His short arms were clasped around Mother's neck.

“Who?”

“Reverend Bartle said they were having a special communion service,” explained Mother. “The Anglicans are inviting everyone to come and join them, and then there's a potluck lunch and games back here at the schoolhouse.”

“And you want to go,” mumbled Papa. He blinked uneasily up at the flakes of snow tumbling everywhere overhead. Nothing at all was visible beyond the tethered horses. “We get stuck here, Ruthie, there sure won't be no room at the inn.”

Mother looked up at the peak of the schoolhouse. Snow was driving off it beautifully. “No, better not, I guess.”

Mother glanced down at Judith. She looked very small with her head so far below them all. “You couldn't have spared a minute to come in and watch Judith do her part?” Mother asked. She turned to lead the way down the path.

“I was there, standing at the back, wasn't I, Judith?”

Judith was being herded forward between her two parents. “I didn't see you,” she said sullenly.

Papa smiled into Mary's face and said, “Well, I suppose sheep are built to stare at the floor. That'll be why you didn't see me. But I was standing there, thinking, By gosh and by golly, she is a sheep, without a doubt.”

“A sheep with hiccups!” Mary said, laughing as she realized where Judith had disappeared to during the play.

“Is it that you're ashamed to sit with us, then?” Mother threw her words forward, out into a little squall of flakes funneling up before her.

Mary looked at Papa. Was he ashamed of them?

He smiled. He wasn't going to be angry. He gave Mary a squeeze. “Just catching up on the gossip is all, Ruthie.”

They arrived at the cutter. “What gossip?”

“Johnson says there's gonna be a war.”

“He wants a war just to market his grain.”

“I guess he hears it all on the radio.”

Papa swept the snow from the single cold bench, and Mother tucked the children in. Clyde looked miserable. A snowdrift lay on his back, and icicles hung from his mane. His chin was thrown out bleakly. But at least the bag was off his face. He breathed large dragon breaths again.

Papa untied Clyde's blanket and lead line and backed him out of the row of sleighs. The snow squeaked under Clyde's hooves and under the cutter's runners too. Horses up and down the line, envious of the chance to move and yearning for their own warm barns, turned milky brown eyes toward them. A man two horses down waved. “Are you sure?”

Papa shouted back, “Can't afford it is all!”

“The Depression is over! The paper says so!”

“Oh, I don't believe that, and now we'll be into another goldarn war!”

“Raynold, don't swear, please.” Mother settled on the bench.

“That's hardly swearing, Ruth.”

“Maybe not, but you must mean it for swearing or you wouldn't do it.”

Smiling guiltily, he swung into the sleigh.

“What's a war, Papa?” Mary knew what a war was, but it being Christmas, she hoped Papa would talk about a distant war rather than start a small one here and now with Mother.

He pulled the quilts around them both. “It's a time when men with money get men with no money to kill each other off. Home, Clyde. Giddy-up.” Clyde only nodded and gave a small tug. “It ain't a request!” Flicking the reins, Papa slapped Clyde's wide icy rump. Clyde sighed and put his shoulder into the harness. They slid smoothly down the road that led out of town.

Chapter 4

“What can't we afford?” Mary asked. She hoped desperately Papa wouldn't say “shoes.”

“A radio.”

“Oh. That's good.” It was nothing important.

They were shut in by snow. “Hope Clyde has his directions straight today,” said Papa with a chuckle. He no longer seemed worried about the storm. “Well, we'll just follow along the wire for a bit anyway.” The whipping gray telegraph wire hummed and sawed up in the snowy whiteness of the air to their right. “Sounds like an airyplane, don't it?”

“Don't know what an airyplane sounds like,” said Mary. Only then did she notice Mother's silence, that solid wordless presence she'd kept since leaving town. This silence was not right for Christmas day. Mother could do what she liked on other days, but not today. “Do you, Mother?”

“No.”

“You heard one at the fair,” Judith said.

“I don't remember any airyplane.”

After a few minutes of Clyde's slow and steady trotting, Judith said, “Why do we always have to be the first to leave?”

“Will you go?” Mother asked.

Nobody spoke. Everyone knew this question was directed at Papa. He drove with his blue eyes straight ahead for a while, then said, “I can't say. Have to see if we can get up a decent crop this year. If we can't, maybe we'll go where all the other neighbors go, if there's any room left, which would come as a surprise. Them other places must be full up by now.”

“I don't want you to go,” said Mother. “Or us to go.”

“Army pays hard currency, at least. I don't know, Ruthie. I hope not.”

Clyde snorted and tossed his head and swished his tail in front of them. His harness creaked as he paced on into the swirling snow and biting wind.

“And you really were standing in the back, back there?”

“On my toes in the clean air at the back,” Papa answered. He reached his mitted hand and massive arm across the children's faces and patted Mother on her knee. He left his hand there a moment too. Mary saw it all.

She was thrilled. She glanced at Judith, who was smiling too. Not wanting to catch her sister in a moment of weakness, Mary turned back to Clyde.

His tail swished back and forth among the snowflakes. Flecks of foam gathered at the seam where his rear legs joined his body. His horsey smell swept past them. Today Clyde did not clop. He thudded, for the snow was thick, even on this raised road. He went along steadily until they reached their track, where he turned off without being signalled.

“Wants his oats,” said Papa. The wire thrummed wildly as they slid underneath it. “Here's one old boy that will move mountains for oats, make no mistake. And this time he may have to move mountains.” Papa raised his arm and pointed ahead. Large drifts lay across the track, like winter's white arms stubbornly crossed. Ridge upon ridge of snow rumpled the treeless landscape ahead. A blast of wind, racing over these ridges, put the finishing touches on filling in the tracks they'd made only a couple of hours before.

Clyde plunged into the first drift. He dragged the cutter through. The second drift went well too, but more slowly. The third went more slowly yet. These were deep drifts. Finally Papa said, “Help's a-coming, Clyde, my boy.” He jumped out and began to lift and push. Mother stepped out to help too, and he said, “That's all right, Ruthie. You can get back in.”

“His legs are shaking.” Mother went behind to push.

Papa handed the reins to Mary, who was closest, and Judith shot her a look of such meanness that Mary tried to give them back.

“No. It's easy,” Papa assured her. “Just slow him down for me on the other side.”

Then they were through. “Whoa,” Mary said.

“Whoa, boy!” called Papa. “WHOA!”

Clyde was breathing hard and pulling hard on the reins. “Papa,” said Mary, “I think he wants to try the next drift.”

Judith snorted. So did Clyde.

Papa grabbed the reins. Pulling the horse to a stop, he said, “Maybe so. But maybe Clyde just wants to get home to his oats, and that drift happens to be in his way.”

“He wants to get warm,” Joseph said, his voice muffled by layers of clothing. He himself could not possibly be cold.

“See all that sweat,” said Judith. “Anybody could see he's warm already.”

“I'm sure he has a horsey reason,” said Mother, breathing hard, “to get home.”

Papa and Mother stood on the running boards for the shallow icy stretches, where the hard snow had been swept clean by the wind and could take the weight of the cutter. They jumped off to push in the softer drifts, where the slender runners sank in. Except for “Whoa!” and “Giddy-up!” no one spoke again. But Mother laughed once, a small tickling sound that Mary hadn't heard for months.

The drifts grew deeper as they slid down into the wide valley where their farm lay. Then, after miles of thudding hooves and ice particles stinging their faces, they reached the yard. They were home. The air moaned as the wind cut itself on fences and the nooks of their outbuildings. Mary and Judith hopped off into the drift closest to the house, a live drift that seemed to move up around their feet as they stepped down. Mother carried Joseph off.

Papa led Clyde away. The old horse tottered on sweat-streaked legs, but still dragged the cutter with ears-forward eagerness.

Without a word of protest, Mary let herself be turned from the windy chaos of the yard and pulled inside through the back door. Suddenly tired, too tired even to take off her coat, she fell asleep in a chair by the cold stove.

She awoke in her bed, and the first thing she did was wiggle her toes, all warm under the covers. She counted each of them, up to ten. The roof sloped above her and the window shuddered in the occasional blast of wind. Mary wondered if Christmas had come yet. The tiny dormer window let in some light. It must be morning.

Then she remembered. They'd already been to church. Or at least they'd been to the school that, next year, doctor willing, she would attend. They hadn't stayed for church, but had come home in a rush because of the weather. The light above was evening light, not morning. Mary sighed. Someday soon she'd have a part in the Christmas program, as Judith had that very morning. Except she'd be Mary, not some foolish hiccuping sheep. Maybe Joseph would be her husband in the program, if he was tall enough by then.

Then she remembered her shoes. They'd be waiting for her downstairs under the tree! Throwing back the covers, she saw she was still dressed from the morning at school. Judith and Joseph were asleep. She ran down the stairs into the front room.

Three parcels lay under the tree, and the nativity scene had been set up there too with its ceramic animals and strangely dressed people. Two of the presents were big enough to be shoes.

Papa sat at one end of the sofa, reading a newspaper. He leaned toward the thin light offered by the frosted-up front window. He was using all his fingers to hold together the newspaper's many torn flaps. At the sofa's other end, Mother sat knitting with a bright blue yarn that looked like the yarn from a baby sweater Grandma had made for Joseph when he was a newborn, just before she died.