The more Jill and Leona came to know each other, the more they learned that they were very much alike, or “like two peas in a pod,” as Margaret was fond of saying. Both were extremely friendly, courteous, imaginative, intelligent, inquisitive, and curious about other people and places in the world; and they were especially full of wonder about what the future would hold for them. Most important of all their similarities, and perhaps the reason they were the way they were, both came from loving and supportive families. Although, maybe the real reason they were so similar is because they were born only days apart in April of 1910, with Jill being just thirteen days older than Leona.
“Even though I was born on the 13th, I’m not the least bit superstitious,” Jill told her friend. “So even though my father died last year, I don’t think God was punishing me. My mom told me the reason he died was because he was needed in Heaven.”
“Your mom’s right,” Leona said. “My mama and papa have often said that the reason good people are taken early is because God has special plans for them.”
When Jill mentioned her father, Leona realized that, despite their similarities, there were two significant things about their lives that were different. For one, Jill was an only child and she missed out on the fun of having siblings to play with. But that paled in comparison to the loss of her father when Jill was barely 7 years old. He died from a brain aneurism shortly after turning thirty-two. Leona couldn’t imagine not having her father around, and she remembered feeling terrible when she first heard that dreadful news, the day she met Jill. She also recalled not being able to talk to Jill about her father’s death. But now that they were good friends, she knew she had to tell her friend how she felt.
“Jill, I have something to say to you. I’m so sorry that your father died at such a young age. Even though you seem to have accepted it, the last year must’ah been really hard for you, and your mother.”
“Yes, it was real hard. Still is. But having you as a friend has made it easier on me these last three months. Even my mother is feeling better now that I have a friend. I could tell she was worried about me, but now she seems more at ease.”
“I’m glad,” Leona said. “And if your father is anything like mine, he wouldn’t want you pining away and not enjoying your life. My father always said: ‘Life is too short to not make the best of it, and enjoy to the fullest.’”
“You’re right, Leona. My father always said that too.”
After talking to Jill, Leona felt thankful that she had both a mother and a father who were seemingly healthy enough to live forever. Despite Leona’s many advantages, Jill had something that Leona didn’t: two little kittens, only three weeks old. Seeing how much Leona enjoyed playing with her kittens, Jill unselfishly offered one to her best friend.
“Are you sure, Jill? Won’t you miss Snowball?”
“No, I’ll still have Frisky, and you’ll take as good care of Snowball as I would. Besides, you’re my best friend, and just knowing that you and I have kittens that were born in the same litter makes me feel good. When I play with Frisky I can imagine that you are playing with Snowball. It’ll be almost like we’re playing together.”
“You’re right, Jill! Okay, I’ll take her.”
“If you don’t like the name Snowball, Leona, you can name it something else. I was trying to think of a name for it when my mother suggested Snowball, because it was almost all white. I didn’t want to hurt my mother’s feelings, so I kept that name, even though it wasn’t what I would have picked.”
The kitten Jill kept was almost totally black, except for patches of white on its feet and under its neck. Jill named her kitten Frisky because that’s the way it acted. Leona’s was frisky too; however, she decided to name her kitten Comet, because it continually streaked around the house; “just like comets streak across the sky,” she told her parents. And also because the pure white kitten had a V-shaped black spot on its forehead that Leona thought looked much like the tails of a comet she had seen depicted in Miss Hutchinson’s astronomy book. In fact, she often jokingly referred to the kitten as Haley’s Comet, even though it took a lot less than 76 years for the cat to fly through the Haleys’ universe: their house.
—2—
Leona’s kitten had bluish-green eyes, and the skin of its nose and ears was pinkish. She loved playing with the tiny cat, mostly because it would without warning jump onto her lap at the most unexpected of times, and then playfully try to scratch her hands with its tiny claws. Leona also loved it when the small cat would use its delicate claws to grab onto her sweater and climb onto her shoulder. Once there, the affectionate little feline would walk behind her neck and then walk back and forth between her shoulders, rubbing its soft fur against the back of her head, all the while emitting a cute little meow, as well as occasionally rubbing its cold little nose on Leona’s ears and cheeks, making the little girl laugh and say:
“Stop that, Comet! Your nose is so cold; and your whiskers tickle somethin’ awful!”
Of course, Leona really didn’t want the kitten to stop at all, but she liked to see its quizzical expression when the tiny creature heard the feigned anger in her voice. A few days after being given the kitten, Leona was playing Checkers with Jill at her house, and something was on her mind.
“Jill,” she said, “I have something for you. It’s a gift I want you to have in return for giving me Comet.”
Leona took a chain from around her neck.
“This is my lucky charm. If you wear it, you’ll have nothing but good luck. I’ve had it for three years; since I was five. A very special man named Hans gave it to me; the Norwegian sailor I told you about.”
Jill took the gold oval-shaped locket from Leona and looked it over, admiring its beauty.
“The locket opens, Jill.”
“It does?” Jill opened the locket and saw the picture of an eagle inside. Then she placed it around her neck. “Thanks, Leona,” she said, “it’s really beautiful. I’ll wear it for the rest of my life, and never take it off.”
“You might want to take it off when you bathe or go swimming,” Leona joked, “else the eagle will drown.”
From that day forward, whenever Jill was alone in her room and feeling lonely, she touched the charm that hung from her neck and thought fondly of her special friendship with Leona. That act alone made Jill’s loneliness disappear, for she knew deep down that she now had a friend she could count on, “come hell or high water.” Jill also knew that Leona felt the same way about her.
“You don’t hav’ta worry ‘bout that, Jill,” Leona told her friend, “you’ll be my best friend ‘til the end of time, and long after that.”
That’s one thing Leona was sure of, and having Comet around continually reminded her of that.
—3—
As time went on, Leona grew more assured about going to school, and eventually she began taking Comet with her. Fortunately, Miss Hutchinson didn’t mind having the little kitten around because there was precious little that Leona could do to stop her cat from following her to the one-room schoolhouse. Quite the contrary, the teacher enjoyed having the little kitten in her classroom because its presence kept the younger children entertained when they had nothing else to do; although, they were careful to not laugh out loud at its playful antics when Miss Hutchinson was teaching. After the cat grew older, however, Comet would not stay at the school, even though it still followed Leona there. The large feline immediately ran back to its more comfortable surroundings as soon as Leona went inside the schoolhouse. Eventually the kitten stopped following her to school altogether, but that was okay because Comet would always come running to greet her every time she got home from school.
“And besides,” she told Jill one Saturday while they were playing Checkers, “my Mama needs the company, especially when she’s alone and little Wally is fast asleep.”
Chapter 35
The Nor’eas
ter
Leona had already witnessed a few small snowstorms this year, but with the evening hours of December 17th came the first big snowstorm of 1918. A giant Nor’easter swept down on Maine and dumped 37 inches of snow by the time it ended, nearly forty hours later. Strong 30 to 40 mile per hour winds created drifts that were more than six feet high, some rising halfway up the north side of the Haley house, making peering out the bottom half of the first-floor windows impossible. And after the storm was over, seeing out the top half of those windows was virtually impossible too, but not because of snow. Instead, the culprit was a thin layer of frost that had built up on the first-floor windows during such storms, something that was not too unusual, especially in the frigid weather that often gripped Maine.
Leona watched the ferocious storm begin from the comfort of her bedroom, her place to be safe, warm, and to be alone with her thoughts. She was sitting in her comfy chair near the window reading Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson when the wind began to blow and the snow began to fall, just before dusk. The sudden change in weather made her room much too dark, so she laid the book on the windowsill and got up to light two kerosene lamps that were kept in her room: one on a nightstand at the head of her bed and the other on a small table near where she had just been reading. Returning to her chair after lighting the lamps, Leona then lit two candles she kept on the windowsill, picked up the book, and started to open it once again to page 69, where a bright-yellow ribbon she used as a bookmark was placed. She began to read:
“Chapter Fourteen——The First Blow——I was so pleased at having given the slip to Long John, that I began to enjoy myself and look around me with some interest on the strange land that I was in.
“ I had crossed a marshy tract full of willows, bulrushes, and odd, outlandish swampy trees; and I had now come out upon the skirts of an open piece of undulating, sleepy country, about a mile long, dotted with a few pines, and a great number of contorted trees, not unlike the oak in growth, but pale in the foliage, like willows. On the far side of the open stood one of the hills, with two quaint, craggy peaks, shining vividly in the sun.
“ I now felt the joy of exploration.”
After reading that part, Leona began to daydream about a place she had seen down by the stream that she was now reminded of. Then she started to read again; but upon hearing a howl indicating that the wind had picked up, she instead closed the book and stared out the window watching the developing storm. To Leona’s surprise, it was becoming stronger by the minute, now and then blowing the snow horizontal to the ground. Some of the time, however, when the wind calmed down, she watched the large, white snowflakes drop almost straight to the Earth where they quickly piled up. At other times the snow’s journey to the Earth was more haphazard, being blown this way and that, and once in a while even in a spiral path. Whether or when the snow would fall straight down or take a more circuitous route to the ground was totally unpredictable, and that’s what made the powerful Nor’easter so fascinating to watch from the safety of her perch.
When Leona undressed for bed that night she, as always, did it quickly in response to the cold air filling her darkened bedroom, replacing her heavy clothes with a light, cotton nightgown, or similarly light pajamas she invariably wore to bed. After climbing under a thin sheet and two heavy woolen blankets that she used during the most frigid part of the winter months, only the bridge of her nose to the top of her head was visible.
Anyone who was not accustomed to living in her house might think Leona foolish to wear light pajamas rather than heavier ones on such cold nights; however, if they were to do so, they would soon learn why light pajamas were more appropriate, even during the coldest months of a Maine winter. The reason? Just before Murdock went to bed, around nine o’clock in the winter, he always filled the stove to the brim with hardwood. As a result, the house became uncomfortably warm for about thirty minutes, necessitating the throwing off of both heavy blankets and sleeping only under the thin sheet. But even that was not sufficient, because if heavy pajamas were worn to bed, one would likely sweat, and when the house finally cooled off as the wood burned more slowly, the dampness of sweat-soaked pajamas made it impossible to stay warm, even after climbing back under the two heavy blankets. Thus, thin, lightweight pajamas, in conjunction with the judicious use of the two heavy blankets, solved that problem.
The little girl had always loved lying in her bed on the coldest of winter nights, listening to the howling winds whistle through cracked or loose clapboards on the old house, and watching the snow being blown in gusts against the bedroom window; and this wild and blustery night was no exception. To make her room that much more special, Leona always kept a lit candle or two sitting on the windowsill so that the blowing or free-falling snow just outside her window would be visible even at night.
She also enjoyed seeing the candles reflect colorfully off the frost-covered corners of the window, enhancing the beautiful winter scene that it framed. And when she saw it she often thought that the view framed by her window on such magical nights rivaled the most uplifting winter spectacle ever depicted, even in the most picturesque painting. As the cold wind crept through the timeworn cracks in the window frame, the candle’s yellow flame almost seemed to dance and make that sight even more special.
Each time it snowed at Leona’s bedtime, she fell asleep watching the delicate snowflakes floating downward, or sometimes being violently blown past her window, causing her to become mesmerized by the snow’s soothing qualities and natural haunting beauty. The effect of sometimes softly-falling snow, and sometimes quickly-swirling snow, accompanied by eerie gusts of howling wind, was as soothing to Leona as the sight and sound of ocean waves hitting the shore along the rocky Maine coast, a scene that she saw and heard for the first time only last fall.
Whenever it snowed, Margaret made sure she remembered to check the candles on Leona’s bedroom window before going to bed. She would dutifully blow them out if Leona had not, which was usually the case. Then Margaret would kiss her angelic little girl on the forehead and wish her “sweet dreams.” Sometimes Leona would only be half asleep when her mother kissed her head, and the gentle kiss filled her with such warmth that it would seemingly keep her safe on even the coldest Maine night; and this night was to be no different.
Leona had been in bed for ten minutes and was almost asleep when she heard her mother come into the room and walk over to her bed. Then she felt her mother’s gentle kiss on her forehead. “Sweet dreams, dear,” she heard her mother whisper. The little girl wanted to open her eyes and say goodnight to her mother, but she was just too drowsy and couldn’t bring herself to do it. All she could manage was a tiny smile when she heard her mother walk over to the window to blow out the burning candles. Leona was fast asleep before Margaret walked back to the bedroom door and said, “Sleep tight; don’t let the bed bugs bite,” just before she closed it and blew out two kerosene lamps in the upstairs hallway.
—1—
When Leona awoke at six o’clock on the morning of the 18th, the Nor’easter was at its peak, with the wind howling wildly just outside her window, causing the house to whistle more loudly and more eerily than she had imagined it could. Still, the chilling sound was music to her ears and the sight of the wind-swept snow against the window was more magical than she could have imagined, as she lie there in her warm bed with her little head propped up, nearly surrounded by her fluffy pillows, her eyes barely peeking over the thick blankets covering her body.
After gathering courage, Leona finally jumped out of the warm bed, and upon seeing her breath floating softly in the cold air and feeling it biting her skin, she hurriedly changed into her clothes and then scampered down the stairs, running for the hot, inviting woodstove to seek its warmth. The Wood, Bishop & Company stove, a top of the line woodstove made and sold in nearby Bangor, was purchased by Murdock when the Haleys moved to Glenburn, to replace an older stove that had clearly seen better days. S
ince then, the ‘Wood&Bishop’, as Murdock was fond of calling it, served as the early morning gathering place for the Haley children, some dressed and some still in their pajamas. They often stood with their backs to the black, cast-iron stove for upwards of fifteen minutes, until the heat soaked into and gradually warmed their tiny bones. Through the fabric of their clothes or pajamas, the skin of their young buttocks and legs initially received the most warmth; and they looked much like pendulums as they suddenly moved away from the stove when its heat was too much for their warm little butts to endure, and then quickly moved back toward its warmth after sufficiently cooling off.
“Oh, that feels soooo good,” Leona said to her mother, while standing with her back to the stove.
Margaret laughed and said: “Don’t stand there too long, Leona, or you’ll overcook those buns of yours.”
Leona giggled.
“We sure got a ton of snow last night, Mama.”
“That we did, dear. And by the looks of it, we’re gonna get a lot more before it’s done. I guess we’re gonna have a white Christmas after all.”
“I sure hope so; I want this to be the best Christmas ever.”
“Get away from that, you little shit!” Leona heard Arlene yell.
“What’s Wally up to now?” Margaret shouted to her daughter, who was in the living room with her pesky little brother.
“He tried to crawl under the Christmas tree again, Mama,” she yelled, “but I’ve got him.”
Journey With the Comet Page 31