They finally broke through, and as he cleared around the door, he saw Jake grab his knees, close his eyes.
“Go back to the barn, son,” he said, and to his surprise, Jake obeyed. Gordy had wrestled the door open by the time he returned.
“It’s the cold. And the work. I’ll be fine,” Jake said as he waved to Dottie through the mudroom window. They hiked down to the snow-covered tree.
Gordy could use a rest, his back turning to fire after all that shoveling. When had he gotten so old? He watched Jake shake the snow off the tree.
What a stubborn old man he’d been. Stubborn, stupid, and, apparently, old. He should ask Dottie to marry him before he croaked. He gripped his knees.
“You okay?” Jake said, now peering under the tree, as if hunting for something.
“Go up to the barn. You’ll find an ax in the utility closet. Let’s get this tree inside, let the ladies pretty it up.”
Jake hiked back up to the barn. The cold had begun to freeze the sweat inside Gordy’s jacket, and he started to shiver.
By the time Jake returned, Gordy’s teeth chattered.
“Go inside, Gordy. I can do this.”
“Naw—I’ll help you.” He got up, groaning. Maybe he should go inside. But he wasn’t quite ready to be mothballed yet. Grabbing the top of the tree, he steadied it for Jake’s blows. “Just chop off the top. Leave the rest.”
His entire body shuddered as Jake chopped at the cold tree, the blows radiating down his arms, into his brittle bones.
The final whack dislodged the tree from the base and the force of it pushed Gordy back into the snow. He lay there, staring at the pewter sky, closing his eyes. Yes, Dottie, I should have asked again.
“You’re not going to die on me, are you, old guy?”
Gordy opened his eyes. Then, because he could, he whipped out his leg and tripped Jake. Jake fell in the snow beside him.
Jake lay beside him, gasping. “Okay. Fine. Sorry I called you old. Maybe decrepit would have been better.”
Gordy tossed snow at him as he climbed to his feet. He grabbed the end of the tree. “You can just lay there and get some shuteye while I drag this up to the house.” He left Jake in the snow as he carried the tree to the house.
Maybe they’d have a merry Christmas after all. Especially since he planned to ask Dottie to marry him the first magical moment he could find.
And this time, he’d do it right.
* * * * *
He was going to die, right here in the snow, with the wind gluing his eyes shut.
And just when he thought he’d laid hold of a piece of the man he’d lost, back in the battlefields of Belgium. A man who helped others.
A man who ladled out real hope again.
Perhaps he was supposed to be here, to help put a smile back on Arnie’s face, if just for a day.
If he didn’t die first. Jake lay there, watching Gordy drag the tree up to the house, his chest webbing. He needed to get inside. But maybe if he just kept calm, kept breathing, he’d be fine.
He felt as if he might be breathing through a straw, sinking deeper underwater. He blamed the chopping. And the cold. And jumping from the roof. And chopping their way into the house.
And his insistence that he hide his condition from Violet. At home, in this weather, he would do everything, from rubbing his chest with camphorated oil, to preparing a toddy with honey and whiskey.
If he got desperate, he had a machine and a mask that opened his airways.
But of course, he’d left that back in Minneapolis.
He closed his eyes, tried small, more shallow breaths, calm breaths, listening to his rasping. Maybe he should get into the barn, but the hay there might only make it worse.
And he’d smoked the last of his asthma cigarettes.
He always feared that someday he’d start to wheeze in public, that a crowd would form, and then, while everyone watched, he’d suffocate to death on the sidewalk.
But worse, just might be sprawled in the snow, alone.
He’d simply gotten too excited about giving Arnie a Christmas.
No. He’d gotten too excited about the way Violet looked at him, a sparkle in her eyes. Really looked at him. Not as a substitute for Alex, but Jake, the guy who could bring magic to Christmas Eve.
Some magic.
Because being Jake wasn’t going to make her forget Alex. Being Jake was lying in the snow, gasping for air.
He didn’t want to be Jake.
Jake wasn’t enough. Hadn’t been enough when he was hauling the wounded back to the field hospitals, hadn’t been enough when he was dispensing chocolate in the foxholes, hadn’t been enough when he was offering up passages of hope in makeshift chapels, or eulogies at too many battlefield funerals.
He should have picked up a gun instead of a Bible to serve his country.
He pressed his hands on his chest, breathed in through his nose, but the biting wind only made his eyes water, hiccoughed his breath.
He sat up, wheezing.
Gordy had disappeared into the house.
He needed to get inside, to relax.
He needed an inhalant of medicine.
He needed to be whole again.
Please, God, can’t You be on my side here?
The wind brushed the tree back where he’d chopped it. Where the tree covered the ground remained a deep well, and he could nearly see the ground. Beyond that, the taillights of the Plymouth emerged. And near the back—
His suitcase. Oh, he nearly cried out with joy. He had another pack of cigarettes inside his suitcase, just in case. Crawling toward it, he picked it up, found his feet.
The wind fought him, but he reached the barn then wrangled his way inside. The silence accentuated his wheezing as he stumbled to the end of the truck, nearly fell into an empty stall. The smell of hay on a summer day could probably kill him, but today, in the crisp air, no allergens moved to irritate him. He fumbled with the frozen suitcase, finally coaxing the snaps open.
Inside were the letters, a change of clothes, and—hallelujah!—a pack of cigarettes. He pulled them out, his breathing more labored. He couldn’t control it now, started to feel the black panic rising deep inside him. Breathe. In through his nose, out…slow down, not so fast.
He pulled out a cigarette, his hands shaking as he tried to light it. But the wind, even in the protected barn, fought the flame.
His eyesight had begun to narrow, a black tunnel.
Breathe. Slow. Easy.
His head spun.
He fell back on the frozen, hard earth while his lungs began to close like a fist. He closed his eyes.
He would have liked to kiss Violet. That thought pulsed inside him as he shuddered, wheezing, forcing himself to keep his breathing slow and shallow. He should have. He should have leaned down and pulled her to himself and made her forget about Alex.
Jake could nearly smell her, the scent of roses and cinnamon. Could nearly feel her hair tickling his face.
Yes, he would have liked to kiss her, to tell her the truth—that he’d been in love with her for years. Would have liked to have been the man she had written to, hoping he’d remember her after the war.
He would have told her that he was proud of her and that she didn’t have to hide her past, because he knew it already. And that he loved her.
Yes, he would tell her all that, if he could just breathe one day longer.
He pressed his hands to his chest.
In. Out. Breathe.
Live.
* * * * *
The generator resembled the inner workings of her father’s diesel tractor. Violet checked the hoses, the fuel line. In case the injector might be clogged, she disconnected the fuel line then unscrewed the injector. Taking it apart, she took out the BB and the spring, cleaning them with a rag Dottie dug up, then cleared out the hole on one end with a toothpick.
She put the entire assembly back together while listening to the thumping outside, then the clanking as the men
chipped away at the door.
Oh, she didn’t want Jake to see her with grease saturating her fingers. If Alex hadn’t told him she’d changed tires and overhauled engines for four years, she didn’t want to cement that image in Jake’s head. She rather liked the way he looked at her, without some sort of wariness or even defense.
She’d finally understood the stigma while stationed in Berlin, during the aftermath of the war, when all she did was patch up engines and overhaul carburetors. She’d been walking back to her barracks, and the chatter from a cadre of privates lifted to her ears. “Maybe she can work on my engine.”
She felt dirty, had even stood in line for a shower, retreating to her bunk despite a USO event. The shows weren’t for the women, anyway, the acts intended to please the men. She’d stared at the dusky ceiling, recalling the expressions on her brothers’ faces as she’d sat at the dinner table with stained hands, so much like her father’s.
When she’d enlisted, she felt proud, but that day in Berlin, she’d wanted to hide. To start over. To be someone else.
Why couldn’t she enjoy knitting and cooking and crocheting and gardening, like other women? Why hadn’t God made her pretty, and womanly?
Violet screwed the fuel injector back together, hearing steps in the kitchen. Heavy steps. She opened the dining room door. “Mr. Lindholm!”
He was hauling in a beautiful green fir, still dripping with snow. Arnie looked up, and the expression on his face made it all worth it.
“C’mere,” she whispered to Gordy, “I need your help.”
He propped the tree in the hallway, near the front door, and clomped into the room. Sweat glistened on his face, and he was pale.
“Are you okay?”
“Just one of Santa’s elves,” he said, and grinned. “And call me Gordy, please.”
Oh, she liked him. For years, he’d been the hermit farmer out of town. How wrong the schoolchildren had been to call him Mr. McGregor.
“I need help bleeding the fuel line. Can you rip the pull cord while I bleed it out?”
He nodded and she picked up a rag, holding it at the end of the fuel line. Good thing Gordy had spread out old sheets in the room, although bringing the engine inside had certainly warmed the fuel, turned it less viscous.
Gordy stood over the engine, grabbed the handle, and pulled. Bubbles emerged from the end of the hose as air forced through it. “Again.”
“How did you know to bleed the lines?” Gordy asked as he pulled.
“We had to do it every time the tractor ran out of gas.” More bubbles emerged.
“Your father taught you?”
She nodded, as fuel finally spurted out of the hose. “That’s enough.” She reconnected it to the engine. “And, I got pretty good at it in the military.”
He stood up, wiping his hands, frowning. “You were in the military?”
“Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. I worked in the motor pool.”
She waited for his frown, even the look of disgust.
“Well, I’ll be,” he said. “Maybe after we get dug out, you can come over and take a look at the Ford. It’s got a sticky starter.”
She stared at him, nonplussed.
He smiled.
She found one inside to match it. “Can you carry this outside for me? I need to start it.”
He hefted it up, marched through the kitchen. Dottie was cutting up ham.
“What are you making?”
Dottie looked up at her. “I haven’t a clue.” But she winked as Violet trekked through the kitchen on Gordy’s tail.
They threw on their coats, their boots and hats, and he carried the generator out to the barn. “Dottie’s father wired the barn for electricity after the 1933 World’s Fair. He bought this generator there and thought he would be the first to have electricity in Frost. He was.”
He bent down, ripped the cord. The engine sputtered, but Violet thought she heard life. “Try it again!”
“There’s a plug out here that extends to the house, but it’s not going to run the entire house. You’ll have to turn off the switch, isolate just the lights in the house.”
“Can you do that for me?”
He nodded then pulled the cord again. The generator rumbled and sputtered to life, coughing twice before it died.
Gordy grinned at her as he pulled it yet again. This time the engine caught. “I’ll go throw the switch in the house.” He disappeared first into the utility room of the barn, emerging with what looked like a tree stand. Then he barreled back out into the cold.
While she waited, she wandered the barn, running her hands down the mane of the horse. In a back stall, an old sleigh, the runners rusty and dug into the dirt, suggested a more romantic era. She unearthed the roadster in yet another stall, covered by a blanket. A faded, red 1929 Ford roadster that, with the right touch and someone to believe in it, might be beautiful.
She was fiddling with the hood cover when movement caught her eye. There, in another stall, a foot—
Jake’s foot.
Had he fallen? “Jake?” She found him sprawled on the ground, his eyes closed, holding his chest, his breaths quick, wheezing.
“Are you having a heart attack?” She dropped to her knees beside him. “What’s wrong?”
“He’s having an asthma attack.” Gordy appeared behind her. “Let’s get him in the house.”
An asthma attack?
Gilmore Jenkins had died of asthma when he was ten years old. She could still remember the funeral, the story of how he’d stopped breathing while working in his daddy’s field, turned blue, then white, suffocating while they tried to help him breathe.
Jake had asthma? He’d turned a sort of ashen color in the wan light. He seemed to be gasping now, and as Gordy went around one side of him, to lift him, he opened his eyes.
What looked like horror filled his eyes. His breath—shallow as it was—hiccoughed, then sped up.
“It’s going to be okay, Jake. We’ll get you in the house.”
“Suit…case.” He barely whispered the word, but she heard it. His suitcase lay open at his feet, and in his hand he clutched what looked like a cigarette. She took it from him, pocketed it, then closed the suitcase and picked it up.
Gordy wrapped his arm around him and headed toward the house.
The wind seemed even more violent, scraping ice into her eyes as they wrestled their way to the house. They got him inside, peeled off his coat, and Gordy half dragged him into the kitchen.
“Dot—he’s having an asthma attack. Get a towel.”
She nodded and darted out of the room.
“Violet, in his suitcase—he’s got a tin of Elliot’s Asthma Powder. Find it. We need to burn it and get him to breath in the smoke.”
She opened the suitcase on the table. Clothes, a manila package, shoes, a wrapped package—there, in a tin on the bottom.
“Open it, shake some of the powder into the lid.”
Jake sat in the chair, his eyes closed, as if trying to concentrate on breathing. His breaths came shallow and quick.
Dottie returned with the towel. She draped it over his head as Gordy swiped the matches from the stove, grabbed a candle off the table, and lit it. Then he moved it in front of Jake and held the lid over it.
“Breathe, son.”
Jake draped the towel over his head, began to breathe in the smoke of the powder.
Violet sank into a chair, her heart clogging her own breath as he inhaled.
“How did you know what to do?” she asked Gordy.
“He told me. That first night. He was trying to find his suitcase.”
She wanted to cry for him, watching him struggle to breathe. “How long has he had it?”
“He had it as a child, and it came back when he got sick in the war—pneumonia.”
Arnie had come into the kitchen, and Violet put her arm around him, holding him.
“Is he going to be okay?”
“We think so, honey,” Dottie said.
She watched Jake as he began to slow his breathing, as it seemed the smoke, which teared her eyes, began to seep into his lungs. Finally, as the powder burned out, he leaned back. Removed the towel and opened his eyes.
Met Gordy’s. “Thank you.”
“Don’t scare us again like that,” Gordy said, his voice ragged.
Dottie got up. “I have some tea left.”
Gordy reached for Arnie’s hand. “Help me put the tree up, little man.”
Violet stayed at the table, staring at Jake. She wanted to reach out, hold his hand, but it felt so feeble in the shadow of what had just happened. “I’m sorry about your illness. Alex told me that he’d had asthma too, and how terrible it was not to be able to breathe—”
“Alex didn’t have asthma,” Jake said quietly.
She stilled.
Jake met her eyes, something dark in them. “Alex never had asthma. Never gave anyone oranges for Christmas, never watched his brother die. Alex stole my life, okay?” His jaw tightened. “He concocted an identity out of my life. One that turned him into a hero in your eyes. Apparently, however, he left out the part where at any moment, he could keel over and die on you on the dance floor.” He shook his head. “I don’t really blame him for that part, I guess.”
Oh, Jake. It was as if she were watching him suffocate all over again, but this time on some wretched lie that he’d worked up inside his head.
Because, as he spoke, his words clicked inside her. No wonder he felt so familiar to her. No wonder she’d had an immediate affinity to him. No wonder she’d wanted to walk into his arms this morning.
He stood up. “The worst part is, you would have really liked Alex. And the Jake he created for you was only the good half of the story. I’m really sorry that neither of them exists.”
Then, as he left to join Gordy in the parlor, he dropped the towel into her lap. “And by the way, you have grease on your face.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“When Alex stole your life, he also left out the fact that you’re an idiot.”
Jake winced at Violet’s words but didn’t turn. Not when he knew he had pain etched in his eyes, his face. The last thing he wanted her to see was the shame of her finding him in the barn, gasping his last breath.
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