by Alan Cumyn
The mellow, rich voice came through crystal clear in the snowfort where the boys lay together warm and dreamy.
“One moonlit night,” said the voice, “a lot like tonight, if there’s room in your imaginations, I remember spreading my coat open like a sail and being blown on my skates through fields and fields. The sky wasn’t black so much as a deep purple. And my skates went faster and faster. The trees were all coated in a sheen of ice, the bushes were glossed over, darkly gleaming.
“I think of that night sometimes, sailing on skates across the fields. Riding the ridges, whooshing down the hills. We don’t get too many nights like that in our lives. With the air so still and clear, you can look into the face of eternity.
“My name is Alan Winter, and this is Winter Nights. I am waiting for your calls.”
There was some music then, and someone called to talk about a problem they were having with hair loss, and then the signal started to fade. It was very late, and there were no aliens, so the boys decided to go home.
On the slope of Dead Man’s Hill they tested the snow. Though it wasn’t frozen over the way Alan Winter had described, there was a shiny crust on top that could hold them up if they lay on their backs. And, if they dug their heels in and pushed, they could slide along like fish swimming in a lake. Up above them the sky was clear and the stars were clustered by the billions, like cities seen from a great distance. Even Leonard, who’d been getting tired and grumpy, was happy to swim on his back along the frozen snow and look up at forever.
That’s what Owen was doing when forever was suddenly replaced by Uncle Lorne’s face. He’d come walking up in his big boots, his jacket wrapped around him and his scarf dangling down, the breath coming out of his mouth in clouds of steam.
“What are you kids doing?” he demanded, towering above them. He said he and Margaret and Horace had been out looking for them for hours. They didn’t know where the boys had disappeared to. “What in God’s name are you doing?” he demanded again.
Owen looked way up at him and couldn’t answer because he didn’t really know himself. It had started out as one thing and then turned into something else and something else again, and to try to explain it so that an adult could understand seemed impossible. Owen thought of trying to show Uncle Lorne the trick about swimming on your back on the snow, but Uncle Lorne was so big he’d probably just fall through. And the way Uncle Lorne was asking the question, standing there so tall with his eyes so wild, made it all seem foolish anyway.
Swimming on the snow? It had been warm just a few minutes ago when they were on their backs looking at the universe. But now it felt like they were locked in a freezer without any clothes.
On that march home the cold slipped inside the boys’ snowsuits and drained away all their heat like a plug had been pulled from the bathtub. Leonard began crying and couldn’t stop, not even when Uncle Lorne picked him up and held him inside his own jacket and carried him along. Owen began to shake and shiver, and even Andy started tripping over chunks of ice and odd dips in the path.
They rested for a bit near the bottom of the hill. But a cruel wind had started up, and the longer they waited the colder they got. Even Uncle Lorne looked cold. He’d hurried out of the house without a hat and mitts.
Finally he said, “March with me. This is something I learned in the war.” And he sang a little song for them:
Down in the bucket, up on the hill
They were after you then and they’re after you
still —
Hey nonny hey nonny
Hey nonny hey!
“That’s the song that got me through the war,” Uncle Lorne said. “I never sang it to anybody else before. This is your getting-home song. All right?”
Uncle Lorne sang it again. His voice started low and weak, like he really was used to just singing it to himself, but as he got going it became stronger. And when the boys sang, it helped with the walking, and soon they were within sight of the farmhouse.
When they walked in, the house was empty. Uncle Lorne ran them a hot bath, then tucked them in bed and went out again to find Margaret and Horace.
The boys were pretty well asleep by the time their parents got back from their searching. Margaret raced into the bedroom to wake them up and hug them within an inch of their lives. Even though Owen was sleepy, he still heard most of Horace’s cursing as if from far away.
In the morning Horace talked to the boys for an hour. He paced back and forth while he talked, and the boys had to stand still and straight and listen to every word. They weren’t allowed to ask questions or make a noise. Mostly Horace talked about how upset their mother was and how there would be hell to pay if they ever did anything as stupid and foolish and reckless as this ever again in their entire lives. After awhile he ran out of new things to say so he took to repeating phrases: If you ever!… What in tarnation?… Tried my best Lord knows I have… Cold month in hell before you’re ever allowed again…
Margaret stayed in bed late, like she did when she had a bad headache. When she came out and saw her boys, she broke down and wept. It seemed like perhaps the end of the world was coming, and Owen was glad they hadn’t told their parents about meeting the Bog Man’s wife in the haunted house on Halloween. Margaret thanked Uncle Lorne again and again for bringing them back safe. Then she made sure the boys marched up to Uncle Lorne and kissed his rough cheek and thanked him themselves. Uncle Lorne got embarrassed and said it wasn’t anything and they weren’t to think about it anymore.
Then Uncle Lorne turned on the radio and they heard the news. Last night a flying saucer had been spotted above the fields outside of town, and Eliot Brinks saw weird lights about one o’clock in the morning when he was sleep-walking and now was missing a cow!
Andy and Leonard nearly erupted at the news, but Owen somehow kept them quiet, and after that it was only the kids who really knew what a narrow escape it had been after all.
The Rail Bridge
“WHAT WOULD THE aliens want with Eliot Brinks’ cow?” Owen wondered. It was late at night and he couldn’t seem to forget about the invasion of the Earth. He’d taken to going to bed wearing Doom Monkey’s Atrocious Hat, just in case he needed extraordinary powers.
“Maybe they wanted some milk,” Leonard said.
“They probably made a mistake,” Andy said. “They were looking for an Earthling and met up with a cow instead.”
“Cows are Earthlings too,” Leonard said, and they talked about that for awhile, whether all you needed to do to be an Earthling was to live on the Earth. And if that was the case would birds be Earthlings, since they spent so much time in the air, and what about fish?
“Maybe the aliens captured a bird and a fish and a cow and a human,” Andy said. “Maybe they’re making a zoo on their home planet.”
The boys talked about what it might be like to be in an Earthling zoo on another planet.
“What if they put you in the lion’s cage?” Leonard asked.
“Or they might stick you in with an Earthling girl,” Andy said. “And wait around seeing if you’re going to kiss her.”
Leonard said he wouldn’t kiss her and Andy asked what if they didn’t give you any food till you did? “You’d have to crack,” Andy said. “You can’t go without food forever!”
Owen thought it might be all right to be stuck in an Earthling zoo on an alien planet if Sylvia were there. He wouldn’t mind the aliens watching. Maybe after awhile the aliens would start to look like trees or something in the background.
“I wonder what they’d feed you?” Owen asked. Leonard said it was probably mostly ice cream, because most alien planets are quite cold.
“How do you know they’re cold?” Andy asked.
“Mrs. Ogilvie told us,” Leonard said. He was in grade one and was beginning to know weird facts. He knew the phases of the moon and why Holland was under water.
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��Why would the aliens spend their time on cold planets when they could go to hot ones?” Owen asked.
“Mrs. Ogilvie said that most of the universe is expanding gas,” Leonard said. “And the dinosaurs disappeared because they couldn’t adopt.”
“Adopt children?” Andy asked.
Leonard hesitated, then said yes.
“Of course they couldn’t adopt children!” Andy said. “They’re dinosaurs!”
“And that’s why they died out!” Leonard said. “Mrs. Ogilvie said so!”
Horace called out then that they were supposed to go to sleep, but Andy had a plan that they should go to Eliot Brinks’ barn and see where the cow had been stolen. He thought there might be some clues about the aliens. Leonard said he thought they should just leave the aliens alone.
“That’s fine,” Andy said. “You can stay here and leave the aliens alone. We’ll go ahead, and we won’t bother you with any details about what we find out.”
“I’m not going at night,” Owen said, and they agreed it might be better to wait for a Saturday afternoon so Uncle Lorne wouldn’t have to come out and rescue them.
On Saturday the boys set out for Mr. Brinks’ barn. Leonard came too because he couldn’t stand to stay home alone. There hadn’t been anymore reports on the news about flying saucers. But Andy had been picking up some very strange signals on his crystal radio — whirring rattles and odd glop-glop noises that he wasn’t able to decipher even using the table of weights and measures.
Mr. Brinks’ farm was on the other side of Dead Man’s Hill, across the river and up one more set of fields. Andy figured that the aliens had flown straight over Dead Man’s Hill at the appointed time but couldn’t see them because they had been in the fort.
“What do you think the aliens look like?” Owen asked. Andy had borrowed a book from the library, and in it were many sketches of aliens made from first-hand eyewitness accounts. Mostly they looked like lizard-men with big, smooth, shiny heads and saucer eyes, and three long fingers and gimpy legs. They were green or silver and had tiny mouths and no eyebrows.
“They probably look like tin foil,” Leonard said. “And have two heads.”
“Tin foil!” said Andy. “Why would they look like tin foil?”
“Well,” said Leonard, “they would have to be light to fly across the universe. And if they were like tin foil, they could change into different shapes easily. So they could be an airplane if they needed to fly somewhere, or a horse if they wanted to walk, or become really thin to slip under doors. And they have two heads,” he added, “because they marry their cousins.”
Andy said, “What would be the point of being an alien if you were going to look like tin foil and marry your cousin? Honestly!” Then he laughed at Leonard, who tucked his chin into his chest and kept walking into the wind.
“Why couldn’t an alien look like tin foil, just because the book hasn’t thought of that?” he muttered.
With the cold weather the river was frozen over, but there was deep snow on top of it. When Leonard stepped down from the riverbank he fell up to his neck in snow. Andy and Owen pulled him out and then Leonard refused to cross the river because he thought he might fall through the ice.
“Mom and Dad told us to never cross the river on our own,” he said, folding his arms and slumping into the snow.
“Fine. You can stay here,” Andy said. “You tell us if you see any tin foil flying around from outer space.”
Owen said nervously, “Maybe we shouldn’t cross.”
“Oh, come on!” Andy said. “This river’s been frozen for months! The Empire State Building wouldn’t fall through that ice!” Owen thought that even if the Empire State Building did fall through the ice it would still be tall enough to stick out a mile into the air. But little kids would sink and drown.
“They did tell us,” Owen said. “And they were pretty angry before.”
“All right then!” Andy said. “Both of you stay here and look for flying tin foil!” He turned and started walking out across the frozen river. He was the tallest and the oldest but even he was having a hard time in all that snow.
He fought his way about halfway across. Then he turned around and looked back at his brothers, who were standing on the shore watching him.
“It’s all right!” Andy called back to them. “You can — ”
But before he could finish, the river made a sound like a cannon being fired. Crack!
Andy didn’t wait. He ran back to shore faster than if a rocketship had been after him.
“What was that?” he gasped when he was safe again. They all watched the river and listened. And after awhile Owen could hear what he hadn’t been able to before — the size of the ice underneath the snow, and how hard it was pushing against itself, so that there were little creaks and groans, and long pauses full of strain. And every so often, after it felt like the whole river had been holding its breath for ages, the same kind of crack! as before.
“It isn’t safe,” Owen said, and Andy was silent.
“I guess we’ll have to take the bridge,” Andy said. He was looking over at the railway bridge that crossed the river about a quarter mile downstream. He started off and the other two followed. There was no path along the river at that section so they had to make their own, tramping through the deep snow, falling every so often. Owen hated the melting snow squiggling down his neck and forcing its way into the space between the tops of his boots and the legs of his snowsuit.
When they got to the base of the bridge they had to climb a high chainlink fence, then crawl their way up a steep, snow-covered slope to get to the tracks and the bridge.
They stood at the edge looking across to the other side.
“There’s no sidewalk,” Leonard said.
“Of course there’s no sidewalk!” Andy laughed. “It’s a train bridge.”
“But there’s no handrails either!” Owen said. It was just flat — two tracks on railway ties with steel girders underneath.
“Why would they put handrails?” Andy asked. “If a train jumps the tracks, you don’t think a handrail is going to keep it from falling off?”
Leonard put his finger on the problem soon enough. “We aren’t supposed to go across this bridge!” he said. “It’s not a people bridge at all!”
“It isn’t very far,” Andy said in a low voice, looking at the snow on his boots. “It would only take a couple of minutes. Besides, there’s no other way across, unless we head another mile along the river to the highway.”
“What do we do if a train comes?” Owen asked. He looked up and down the track anxiously.
“We either hurry up and go across, or we turn around and go back,” Andy said. “It isn’t that hard.”
“But if we got caught on the bridge — ” Leonard said, and his lip began to wobble.
“The only reason we’d get caught is if we panicked,” Andy said. “And we didn’t panic in the haunted house, did we? We fell in a little trouble but we got ourselves out. Anyway, do you see any trains?”
They looked up and down the track. Owen could see for quite a distance in both directions, and there was no sign of trains.
“My foot would get caught,” Leonard said. “Halfway across. And then a train would come and I wouldn’t be able to get out of the way.”
Andy said, “You just leave your boot in the track and run in your sock feet back to the safe part.”
“I don’t want to lose my boot,” Leonard said.
“It wouldn’t happen,” Andy said. “It’s just going to take two minutes to go across and then it’ll be over.”
“Maybe we should think about it some more,” Owen said.
“On the way home we’ll have to cross again,” Leonard said. “Look how windy it is.”
It was true. The wind was screeching along the river, carrying snow from the surface in slow
-motion waves.
Andy said, “It’s two minutes! You have to go across this bridge, Leonard!”
Andy was usually convincing but Owen knew something had happened to Leonard. He’d stood up to the ghost in the haunted house all those months ago. He wouldn’t do just anything that Andy said anymore.
“You didn’t go across the river on the ice,” Leonard said.
“I tried, and that’s the important thing!”
“The important thing is do I want to cross this bridge just so I can get captured by aliens and put in an Earthling zoo? Maybe I just don’t!”
At that moment Owen saw a train coming. It had somehow snuck up on them when they were arguing, and now was hurtling at them faster than they thought possible! The three of them scrambled down the bank and huddled against the chainlink fence, covering their ears and eyes, while the train roared past louder than a world war. Owen looked up once and saw a conductor leaning out of a window yelling at them, looking angrier than Mr. Schneider on a bad day. It was the longest train Owen had ever seen, and it took three lifetimes to go past.
When everything was quiet again, Andy said, “I guess we could hike down to the highway and cross the river there.”
It took most of the day. All the way along Owen thought about what would have happened if they hadn’t listened to Leonard. They would have got halfway across the bridge and then that train would have been on top of them. It was too big and moving too fast to stop in time. They would have had to hang off the railway ties by their fingers, waiting while the longest train in the world roared past. They would never have been able to hang on. They would have dropped off and fallen down—Leonard first, then Owen, then Andy. Maybe the snow on the river would have been deep enough to cushion their fall but maybe they would have plummeted straight through the ice and into the freezing-cold water.