Whiter Than Snow

by Sandra Dallas

  “Come on, Schuyler, we’ll go home. We’ll fix cocoa….” Grace glanced at the faces around her, the faces of women crazed with worry over their children, and realized how blessed she was. Compared to these women, she had always been blessed. She bit her lip, and then she said in a loud voice, “We’ll fix lots of cocoa, for anyone who wants it. And coffee—gallons of coffee. People will need it. And we’ll open up the house.” She raised her voice. “The children will be cold and in shock and maybe hurt. Bring them up to the mine manager’s house. The doctor can tend to them all in one place. It’s close by. We have plenty of room. Please.”

  She started for the house, and as she did so, one of the women broke away from the crowd and hurried after her. “Like Mrs. Foote says, you bring ’em on up to the manager’s house,” Mittie McCauley called, and because Mittie had been in Swandyke since the beginning and was much admired, the women nodded and knew they’d be welcome. Mittie caught up with Grace and said, “I expect you can use some help with the coffee, Mrs. Foote.” She paused, remembering a conversation of sometime past. “And the beds. I don’t suppose you keep your beds turned down.”

  The crowd of women forgot about Grace then, because one of the workmen called to them, “We found another’n, and it’s alive.”

  The women moved forward as close to the digging as they could get and asked one another, “Do you know who it is?” They watched anxiously as the men dug around the child to loosen the arms and then the legs.

  “Alive!” a workman called. “A girl.” He pulled the child out of the snow and picked her up in his arms.

  Lucy saw the green coat and clutched Dolly. “It’s Rosemary,” she said, tears running down her face. “Oh, Doll, is she all right?” The little girl gave a cry, and Lucy said, “She’s safe,” and lifted the hem of her damp apron to wipe her eyes.

  “Safe!” Dolly said.

  Lucy pushed her way out of the crowd of women and reached for her daughter, whose blond hair and chubby cheeks made her look so much like Dolly, taking her into her arms and holding her tight. Rosemary’s eye was black, and there was a long gash on her arm. She was barefoot, with most of her clothes torn away, and she shivered so. Lucy had no coat, so Dolly removed her cloak and wrapped it around the girl, but the little one was still cold. “Take her to the manager’s house,” Dolly said. “She’ll get pneumonia. I’ll watch for your Charlie.”

  “Jack and Carrie and Lucia, too. I hope your three…” Lucy began, but they both knew what Lucy hoped, so she did not need to say it. “I’ll warm her up and be back.” Then she touched her sister’s arm, and when Dolly turned her gaze away from where the men were digging to look at her sister, Lucy said, “They’ll find them, Doll. They don’t know where they everyone are, but they’ll find them.” Lucy told herself that that had been a stupid thing to say. Of course the children would be found. But would they be found in time?

  Dolly seemed to know that her sister meant well, and she smiled a little, motioning for Lucy to hurry. So Lucy carried her daughter the few hundred yards to the Foote house and went in through the back door. People always entered through the back door in Swandyke. Even in that time of great trouble, Lucy didn’t think to use the front door.

  “Fetch her here,” Mittie McCauley said, indicating one of the straight chairs that the old woman had already drawn up to the stove in the kitchen. Lucy set down her daughter and wrapped a blanket around her. Grace and Mittie had already piled blankets on the table and were filling kettles with water and setting them on the cookstove.

  “This is my daughter. She’s got a bad cut on her arm. The doctor ought to check her out. I’ve got a boy, Charlie—” Lucy said.

  “You go on back. The doctor’s in the other room. We’ll see to your girl,” Grace said, interrupting Lucy, then turned to the child, recognizing her because she was one of her son’s playmates. “Rosemary, isn’t it? I remember your name because no other little girl in Swandyke has such pretty golden curls. We’ll feed you on cookies while Doc takes a look at you.” She brushed Rosemary’s hair out of her face and told her son to pass the plate, then find a shirt and overalls for Rosemary to wear. The little girl reached out with a cold hand and took two of the confections that Grace had baked that morning.

  They did not look like cookies, but more like small cakes, Lucy thought. Maybe they were what passed for cookies with rich folks. Lucy’s heart swelled as she watched her daughter taste the treat. “Her choice food is cookies,” she said, barely able to get out the words because her heart was constricted. “I hate to leave her.”

  “She’s fine with us,” Mittie said.

  “I’ll be right back. I’ll just fetch Charlie.”

  Mittie stopped her. “Your feet are wet. You’ll catch your death. Take these.” She sat down in a chair and removed her rubber shoes, handing them to Lucy. “And my coat, too.”

  Lucy put on the shoes and coat and hurried back to the group of women. When she reached them, she saw that Doll had her arms around a little boy, who shook with cold. “They found your Charlie,” she said. “He’s safe, Lucy. Both of yours are safe.”

  “Yours, Doll?” Lucy asked, hugging her son. “What news of yours?”

  Doll shook her head, biting back tears. She might have thought it unfair, might have been a little jealous that Lucy’s two children were all right when her own three had not been found. But she was not. She joyed for her sister.

  Just then, Henry Bibb, who had been working underground at the mine, came up beside his wife. He saw Charlie and smiled, then he turned to Lucy, but before he could ask, she said, “Rosemary’s at the manager’s house. She’ll be fine. You take Charlie up there. I’ll stay with my sister. Dolly needs me.”

  Henry stared at Dolly, just then recognizing her. He had never seen his wife and her sister standing close together, but he did not comment on it. Instead, he asked, “Her children? Are they all right, Mother?”

  Lucy shrugged.

  “We will pray for you, Sister Dolly,” he said.

  Then it was Lucy’s turn to stare. She’d never heard her husband utter Dolly’s name.

  On the far side of the slide, the children were gathered in a group, frightened and whimpering, while two of the teachers tried to calm them.

  “There’s no need to worry. The men will dig out your little friends in no time. They won’t have a scratch on them,” said the young teacher, who had been employed at the Swandyke school only since the fall.

  The other teacher, the older one, who had been there for a long time, shushed her. “The children know better than that. They’ve lived here all their lives, and they know what an avalanche does. That’s no way to comfort them.” She raised her voice. “The men are digging as fast as they can. Let’s all go back to the schoolhouse. Your fathers will come for you when the road’s clear.”

  She was herding the little ones toward the school when Essie reached the road, calling for Sophie. If the teachers—or the students, for that matter—thought it odd that a hooker was looking for one of the schoolchildren, they didn’t say anything. “Sophie?” asked Essie, breathless, as she reached the children. “Where’s my Sophie? Is she here?”

  The teachers looked around but did not see Sophie, and then a girl spoke up, “She’s up ahead. She went with Rosemary to see the puppy. They were in a hurry.”

  Essie looked at the older teacher, who gestured with her head at the tons of snow now resting at the bottom of the slide. “I’m afraid…”

  Essie put her hands over her face.

  “But the men are digging,” the teacher added. “There’s a good chance—” She stopped and then said brightly, “Would you help us? We need someone to take a list of the missing children to the families on the other side.” She corrected herself. “We need to tell them the names of the children who are safe. We’ll go back to the schoolhouse and—”

  “Take them to the Pines,” Essie said. “It would possibly be good for them to go there. Miss Fanny’s got hot food. And beds she
has.”

  Another time, the teacher might have chuckled at the remark about beds at the hookhouse, but young children had been caught and perhaps killed in the avalanche, and it was no time for jesting.

  Essie led the way back down the trail, and while the hookers petted and fussed over the little ones, feeding them bits of cake from their own dinner, Essie, together with the teachers, made out a list of the children who were safe on the west side of the slide. Then she wrote a second list, a harder list, of the students who were missing. One of the teachers offered to take it to the families, but Essie insisted she would do it. “I will wait with the other mothers,” she said.

  The young teacher looked at her sharply, but the other one said, “Good luck to you, miss.”

  “Mrs. I am,” Essie replied. “Mrs. Esther Schnable. Sophie Schnable’s mother.” Clutching her lists, she went back up the trail, and stepping like a bird on sore claws, she crept across the snow, past a child’s boot, a plaid scarf, an arithmetic book. “Sophie,” she called out softly, but she heard no answer, and the men digging in the hard snow ignored her. She picked up a cap lying on the ground, but it belonged to a boy.

  Finally, one man told her kindly, “Lady, the men are tasked to do this. Best you wait with the mothers over there. We’ve already found three, two boys and a girl.”

  “Sophie?” she asked.

  The man shrugged. “I don’t know what they call the girl. She had on a green coat.”

  No, that was not Sophie. Essie went to the group of women, standing a little apart from them, as was proper for a hooker, and then she realized that the others didn’t know who she was. Besides, she had the lists, and so she spoke up. “I came from the other side of the avalanche. The children that are all right, I saw them. Here’s their names. The teachers say to them, ‘Stay until it’s safe to cross.’ We got food there and beds.”

  “Why, there’s nothing over there but the hookhouse,” said an old woman. She had no teeth, and her chin turned upward.

  “Where else could they have went?” asked her friend. “You want them to stand in the cold?”

  The first woman ignored her. She stared at Essie a few seconds instead, looking at the eyes that were outlined in black stuff and the thick hair piled on top of Essie’s head in a fashionable way. “Why, you’re nothing but—” She put her hand over her mouth.

  “I’m a mother,” Essie said fiercely. “I am distressed.”

  “Let her be,” a woman said.

  “The list. Who’s on the list?” someone cried, and the crowd grew as still as midnight.

  Essie read the names on the first list quickly, and with each name, a woman sighed or cried out or thanked God. One fell to her knees in prayer. When Essie had finished, she looked out over the crowd of women, seeing the ones with fear still on their faces. “I got another list. These here are the kids that started across the road.”

  “The ones caught in the slide,” a mother whispered.

  “Hush, let her read.”

  Essie started on the second list. “Rosemary and Charlie Bibb.”

  “Found!” someone called. “They’ve already been found.”

  Essie’s spirits rose at that, for if two had been found alive, maybe Sophie was all right. She read the next name on the list, Jane Cobb, hoping someone would cry out that Jane had been saved.

  But there was silence, until a woman muttered, “That’s the Negro girl. I reckon she’s still buried.”

  “Schuyler Foote,” Essie read.

  “He’s safe, too.”

  “Jack, Carrie, and Lucia Turpin.” Essie paused, because no one spoke up. Then she saw a woman with long yellow curls, tears running down her face, and knew she was the mother of the three.

  “Emmett Carter.”

  Again there was silence, until someone muttered, “He’s Minder Evans’s grandson. Minder’s digging out there. I’ll go tell him.”

  “Sophie Schnable.” Essie’s voice wavered a little. It was like a stroke of death to her to pronounce her daughter’s name.

  “Martha’s girl,” a woman said.

  “My girl,” Essie told her, and then she added, “That’s all of them.”

  She stood by herself a moment, and then Lucy Bibb, standing with the woman with the yellow curls, reached out to her. “Come and keep warm with me and my sister,” she said.

  A long time had passed now, ten minutes, maybe fifteen, and the men dug frantically, knowing the chances were not good that a child could live even a minute or two longer buried in the snow.

  “Here’s a coat, a boy’s coat,” one of them called, and the crowd of women leaned forward as one. Knowing their children were safe on the other side of the avalanche, some of the mothers had gone home to gather food. It would be a long night, and the men would need to eat, and the women, too, because they would stand vigil as long as the men were there. They stayed because it was a town tragedy that had happened.

  “Who is it?” the women asked one another.

  “Jack, it must be Jack,” Dolly whispered, and Lucy’s heart leapt.

  But it was not. The women heard one of the rescuers cry out, the long wail of an old man, and Minder Evans dropped his shovel and took the boy in his arms.

  “It’s Emmett Carter,” Lucy said, and felt Dolly sag against her. “He’s limp.”

  The women watched, silent now, as Minder struggled to carry the boy. Emmett’s arms were limp, broken, and his skull was crushed. A man offered his aid, but Minder told him no.

  “Is he alive?” Dolly whispered, and Lucy heard the hope in her sister’s voice, because if Emmett were alive after all this time, Dolly’s three children might be, as well.

  Lucy shook her head. “I don’t know. He’s not moving.”

  “Carry him to the Foote house. The doctor from the mine is there,” someone told Minder.

  The old man struggled up the path to the big house, others trying to help, but Minder wouldn’t let them. He carried the boy into the kitchen, where women were already spreading food on the table—pot roast and chops, cakes and pies and plates of fudge and gingerbread, food that they had prepared for their own families’ suppers. It would feed the rescuers now—and the rescued.

  “The fireplace room. Take him there.” Grace set down the coffeepot she was filling and followed Minder into the parlor, the very room from which she had watched the avalanche. Minder laid the boy on the davenport, and Grace covered him with a white throw as soft as duck down, which she kept on the back of the sofa. The boy was pale and white and did not stir, and he looked like death. The old man, too, looked devoid of life, his eyes black and hollow, the skin on his face and neck as gray as mine muck. He looked as old as the mountains.

  “Doc?” Grace said to a man who was sitting on the floor talking to the Bibb girl, but the doctor was already getting to his feet. He went to Emmett, took a mirror from his bag, and, kneeling down, held it to the boy’s mouth. He examined Emmett’s head, then listened for his breath, his heartbeat, and after a few minutes, he rose and took the old man’s hands in his and shook his head.

  “He must have been hit by a log or a rock. I’m sorry. He died of a concussion.”

  Minder slid to the floor and put his arms around the boy. “He died of cowardice, Emmett did. Cowardice. That’s what.”

  “You mustn’t say that. There was nothing cowardly about the way he died. He was caught in the slide. You can’t blame him.”

  “I don’t,” Minder replied, not looking up. “I’m the coward. It’s my abomination. That’s why he died. Retribution for what I did.” The old man began to sob, long, tearless cries that racked his body and seemed to draw the blood from his face drop by drop. “I was going to raise him till he’s grown, raise him up to be righteous.” His eyes grew even darker, until they were like dead coals, and he collapsed onto the body of his grandson. Grace and the doctor laid the old man on the floor. The doctor examined him and said he was all right, and Grace covered him with a blanket. “When he comes to, we’
ll give him something strong to drink. It will stimulate him.”

  “Does he want to be stimulated?” Grace asked.

  The doctor smiled sadly. “We can heal the body but not the heart. That’s up to him, and it’s not likely he’ll do it. I know Minder Evans. He’s been through the war. Some of them never got over it. There’s times I think I ought to let people die.” He took a deep breath and stood up. “But it’s against my calling. Let’s move the boy’s body. Is there a place we can put the dead? That’s what the next ones will be.”

  Ted Turpin came up to his wife, who was standing among the women with her sister and the girl from the Pines. “We just got the word down at the dredge. The kids?” he asked, breathless, because he had been running.

  Dolly turned her face to her husband and opened her mouth, but she was so full of misery that the words wouldn’t come out.

  “They haven’t found them,” Lucy told him.

  “Luce?” Ted asked.

  He had not spoken directly to his sister-in-law since that night so many years before outside of his house, and Lucy thought how much he had aged. Where once he had been slim and hard as a bone, he was fleshy. The whites of his eyes were streaked with red, and his skin was flushed, perhaps from the cold, but it might have come from being filled with drink, for he had become an imbiber. It was known that he had once passed out in a snowbank and would have frozen if someone had not found him. Ted still worked on the dredge, but he had never been promoted, and people thought of him as a man whose education got in the way of his common sense. Ted’s life had not been a good one, but that was his fault, and Lucy did not waste pity on him, not for his life. But she did feel sorry for him that his children were buried in the snow. “We’re waiting. Some of the children have been rescued already. There’s hope.”