Chapter 16

Nobody knows where Tom is. Every time Gustie calls the park, Johnson tells her, “We’ll ask him to phone you as soon as he gets in.” Now Johnson admits they don’t know where he is; he’s not answering his radio. The last time they spoke to him was five hours ago. They’ll start searching for him as soon as the weather breaks.

Gustie is beside herself. The snow is getting higher and higher. The wind is blowing around forty miles per hour, with gusts up to sixty. The wind chill is below freezing.

And Tom is lost.

She sits on her bed, rocking back and forth, hugging herself against visions of Tom out in the snow or in the truck, frozen solid, alone, with the radio chirping his name … What were those last minutes like? Did he trust that someone would be out there looking for him? Did he despair that nobody came? Did he despair at all? Hypothermia’s supposed to be a pleasant way to go. You get drowsy … You don’t care what’s going on around you … All you want to do is sleep … Is that how it was for Tom? What will she tell the girls? Will Effen handle the funeral? And what will become of her afterwards? She’ll never survive in Fair Mantle on her own, not even if she could find another job to supplement the income she earns at The House. Where will she go? What will she do? Will social services take the girls away from her? Will they be given to their father? Perhaps they should have been with their father all along. None of this would have happened. They would all be safe, secure in the knowledge that they could never lose their home or never have enough food on the table.

Dusk approaches. It’s going to be a white night, so bright from the snow and the light refracted from the clouds that night will never really fall. The light diffuses softly through the curtains; the girls won’t need their night light.
They’re in their room, reading and listening to the cassette players Tom gave them for Christmas. Gustie prays they don’t come looking for her. They mustn’t see her in such a state. She doesn’t notice time pass. The white light stays with her until dawn and the dying of the storm.

To Effen, half a mile away, the brightness could mean six at night as well as six in the morning. It doesn’t matter. Someone can’t stop ringing the bell at the back door. It’s too cold to get up. But maybe he doesn’t have to get up? Maybe a wire shorted in the snow? Yes, that’s it. A wire shorted. He’ll fix it as soon as the storm stops.

The only way he can stop the pounding on the door is by going to see who’s responsible for the noise.

Not being one for running around undressed, especially in winter, he takes the time to throw on jeans and flannel shirt. If the person wants him bad enough, the person can wait. He restrains his rush down the stairs, taking care not to step on the untied laces of his hiking boots.

Gustie’s daughter, Anne, the thirteen-year-old, is at the door. She’s dressed for the storm, but her hat’s blown away. She’s almost covered to the waist in snow. Her nose is red. She’s crying. It doesn’t stop her teeth from chattering. “I’m sorry,” she says between teeth and tears. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know who else to go to.”

Horrified, Effen whisks her inside and upstairs, and gives her his robe and socks to put on. Her boots and parka are set in the bathroom to dry. Her socks are draped over the radiator. (Hopefully, Gustie’s already managed to shrink them.) All the while, Anne tells how a ranger took her mother to the park because something had happened to Tom. She and her sister Mary are alone. The electricity went out twice during the night. It was still out when she left.

Effen can’t believe what he’s hearing. “Mary is alone?”

Anne nods.

He phones Mary to tell her he’s on the way, then hurries to his room, girds himself with winter woollies beneath his barnwear, and returns to his guest. Lacing up the thermal barn boots, he asks, “Annie, why didn’t you call me? I told your mom you should call me in case of emergency.”

The girl sniffs. “I did. But I got Matt. The calls are going to Matt.”

(Damn, he forgot about that!) He assures her it’s a temporary thing. Matt offered to field the night calls to give him a chance to sleep. “Did you tell Matt it was an emergency?”

She whimpers. “No. I hung up on him. I didn’t mean to be rude.”

Effen smiles. “That’s all right. Knowing Matt, he probably appreciated not having to get up so early.”

“Don’t you want to know what happened to Tom?”

“Yes, but I’d really love to get your sister over here first. Whatever happened to Tom, he’s being taken care of, I’m sure. Right now, it looks like I’m the only one who can take care of you and Mary. Okay?”

She wants to go with him, but he tells her to help herself to breakfast.

He can’t resist another bit of advice: “Don’t play the radio too loud. You’ll wake up the dead.”

Anne makes a noise that’s part laugh and part groan. Effen enjoys his success.
For the moment. He’s failed to tell Anne that he has no idea how long it will take him to reach Mary. He expected the road to be plowed. He expected Matt or Ben or one of the neighborhood kids to help him shovel the driveway. But the road has not been plowed, and there is no sign of Matt, Ben, neighbor-child or anybody else who might want to make a few extra dollars liberating someone from the nearly three-foot sea of snow that smothers the land.

There’s too much snow for him to try to shovel by himself. And even if he does shovel, there’s no place to shovel it to. He enters the path that Anne had blazed, determined to follow it right up to Gustie’s door, though the snow is over his knees and the path is too narrow for a grownup. At least the wind has died, and the snow blows almost tolerably in gentle wisps atop the drifts.

Except for Annie’s trail, the snow is undisturbed. Nobody except Effen has dared leave the comfort of home or bed. He’s alone, without so much as the company of a barking dog or chirping bird. It’s been years since he’s taken a walk on the beach, but the beach is what he thinks of as he barges through the snow. It’s like walking through sand, really. There’s the same, leg-straining resistance, the same lack of sure footing. When he reaches Gustie’s door half an hour later, he’s as wet and thirsty as if he’s been hiking over the dunes in the summer sun. He has a notion of making tea and resting a bit before starting the return expedition with Mary.

His plans are obliterated when he enters the cottage. The place is dark and cold. The pilot lights in the gas oven are on, but they’re not enough to warm the rooms. And then there’s Mary, the eight-year-old, who stands aside, statue-still in her thrift-shop coat, neither pleased nor upset at the prospect of being rescued.

Mary. Such a simple name for a child with so complicated a past! Oh, Effen knows about Mary. She’s the child-that-ought-not-to-have-been. It’s not that her parents didn’t want her. They wanted her, all right. In the worst way. She was conceived to keep her parents together. She’s grown up a sullen, soured child, as though she senses her parents are keeping secrets from her, her own reason-for-being being the darkest secret of all. Perhaps, had her parents been happy, they’d have had no reason to bring her into the world. She wouldn’t be here. And her parents would continue living without being reminded day after day of their failure and selfishness.

Effen is ashamed to think he’d put his comfort ahead of what’s best for this child. He asks her if she’s ready to go, and brings her outside when she says she is.

Though he’s made Anne’s original path wider, the snow is still too deep for Mary to walk through, especially for such a long distance. He picks her up. When she complains about being cold, he puts her down, places his own jacket around her and picks her up again. She doesn’t thank him or ask if he’s cold. It’s almost as if she expected him to do no less. She sits in his arms with her own arms around his neck, her head turned away from him, staring in the direction of The House.