A Season of Fire and Ice

by Lloyd Zimpel

  The twins affirm that we will, and Beidermann has no more to say. The Widow moves the lamp, to leave him in darkness, and he seems to sleep; as she cooks us an agreeable supper of ham and turnips, with a batch of molasses candy to divert the children. All this disposed of in good order, we ready our beds: the twins and I under cowhides on the floor, and the two girls head-to-toe with the Widow in her bed, before which she hangs a flannel blanket for privacy. In the night I twice hear her coming out in the cold to look to Beidermann’s comfort.

  LONG BEFORE FIRST LIGHT, the Widow is up, and while I fix the fire, she washes Beidermann’s wound, as the girls cook bacon and beans. When we have eaten, while the twins harness the teams, I go to Beidermann’s side. I cannot say that he is sensible of me: his eyes roll upward and away, and with dried lips he murmurs so that I can scarcely hear—the beast thou saw. Or so I take it: it is something biblical, and nothing I have heard before from Beidermann: in his calamity he transcends himself; or it is the hog that goes unbutchered invading his feverish dream.

  You hang on, I tell him, and we will do all the rest.

  Well, go and do it, then, says the Widow, retrieving the waspish aspect of her disposition displayed so often as poor Swede’s wife, but kept concealed as the tender nurse to Beidermann, which she has been the night past.

  WITH STRENUOUS NORTH WINDS behind and a heavy sky above, we retrace our blown-over trail of yesterday, and are soon at the river, and in two hours more at our place, where we relate at length the tale of Beidermann’s misfortune; this told less by me than by the twins, in bursts of breathless wonder, that this could happen to their Beidermann.

  It is a terrible thing, says Ma, but you were right to take him to Anna’s. She has a good sense in those things. I remember. . . .

  But here she falls silent, and if what she remembers is the Widow’s nursing of Swede as he went under, or her midwifely ministrations at the birth of our doomed little daughter, that is left unsaid.

  Otto takes my sheepskin coat for the ride to town, and although it is my contention he will do as well on snowshoes, given the fall of new snow and promise of more, yet he takes the black mare, vowing to keep to the bluffs on Krupp’s boundary, which the wind sweeps clear.

  The twins ask to accompany him, Otto being not unwilling for the companionship; but the two of them and Harris as well must aid me in returning Beidermann’s team to his place and in feeding his stock, which has gone untended too long now. Harris follows with a fresh team for our return, as I set Beidermann’s mighty Percherons to pull the sledge bearing the logs which, under a mantle of snow, carry the stain of their master’s frozen blood.

  The twins are called to service soon enough: for Beidermann’s treacherous wolf-dogs, savage even with full bellies but now long unfed, come bounding through the wind-swirled snow like the very hounds of Hell, confounded only momentarily by the sight of their master’s team under a strange hand. They head for Harris with blood in their eyes, until the twins jump amongst them happily, I would say; for they admire these beasts no less than does Beidermann—hollering words of some peculiar low Dutch which they have heard Beidermann use to curtail them. The dogs reluctantly haul up in slobbering puzzlement, yet lurk menacingly near, as if to ambuscade whoever moves incautiously; the boldest of the pair a three-footed brindle bitch, one paw lost to a trap, which injury has taught her not a jot of respect for the human race, as she is the most slaveringly vicious of this foul pair.

  Boys, Harris calls to the twins. You keep them egg-suckers well clear of these horses, or I will put a load of buckshot in their hinders without a second thought!

  Knowing Beidermann’s ways with the snarling brutes, the twins go after the frozen offal and bones hanging high in a log lean-to by the house, the brutes yelping and slithering in the snow, as the twins engage them in murderous teasing play, the animals baring teeth and promising to spring for a throat, but never doing so. It is a wonder these killers have not assaulted the hogs or calves and already made their own meal.

  Harris and I give them a wide berth as we unhitch Beidermann’s horses, which plow a path through the snow to their barn, where I follow down the long alley, past the pens of bawling calves and cow stalls. It is a structure of enviable size, Beidermann’s barn, in the construction of which the twins have, of course, lent their hand, as they have in the digging of his well, and the raising of his windmill.

  Harris, having fed the horses, aids me with Beidermann’s three milkers; and, setting aside part of the milk for the hogs, we carry the remainder to the calves skirmishing in their pen, bawling with hunger: butting and slobbering they skid to their knees on the manure-slippery floor, and plunge their heads into the pails, slopping milk to the floor, where it steams in the cold.

  As the frantic bleating of the calves diminishes, I hear the growing howl of the wind; and when Harris comes back from the hog pen, the twins following from the chicken house, he says, It is kicking up out there, in case nobody has noticed.

  Beyond the barn door the wind sucks up old snow off the drifts and sends it to mix with the needle-points of new snow descending aslant from a sky now dark. Beidermann’s house is only a shadow, seen when a seam occurs in the driven sheets of snow.

  Well, boys, we will not chance this, I say. Put our team in the barn with enough hay for the night, and make certain those dogs cannot get at them. We are not going anywhere soon, if I read this right. Let us hope Otto gets through.

  For all their distaste of biting wind, the horses balk at entering a strange barn—a little of which bashfulness I find in myself when we hasten through the storm to Beidermann’s door, through which I have never passed; for the only times I have visited Beidermann’s place, our business has been outside, and Beidermann found no occasion to invite me within.

  My own reluctance, however, does not restrain the twins, who have acquired ease around Beidermann’s place and are first inside, eager to build a fire, for it is solid dead cold within: they know where under the snow the wood is piled—they have helped to pile it there—and dash to fetch it.

  Ahead of me, Harris, stamping the snow from his boots, looks once around and says, He has fixed himself a nice place, then.

  He has indeed! I am caught by surprise and, soon, a little envy; for while I expected a rough bachelor’s accommodations, in the style favored by other crude and unsubtle loners, wretched hutches, barely enough to prove up their land; not so with Beidermann. Not so, by any means; for he has furnished his two rooms in an exceptional manner, from hooked rugs made of old overcoat strips to chintz curtains hanging at the two windows—a woman’s touch, perhaps; but what woman? I look around, compelled by what I know of Beidermann to make an inventory; for everything within these whitewashed walls is a surprise, like finding a spring of sweet water in the desert, which might be commonplace elsewhere, but here astonishing.

  A nutmeg grater hangs from one of a row of nails above the square iron stove in which the twins have their fire sprouting, and next to it a blue enameled spoon, a potato masher, an iron ladle; and beneath these a pine-board shelf supports stone jars of varied size, labeled in fancy script: Sugar, Salt, Soda. In the coldest corner by the door, above a speckled pail with its dipper held in half a foot of solid ice, hangs a saddle of venison, doubtless from the same animal of which the twins brought home a portion a month earlier. On the wall above the table, at which Harris takes a seat, is a cross-stitched hanging which bears the legend Endureth All. Who has sewn it? In the far room, Beidermann’s bedroom, his suspenders hang from a wooden peg above his bed. His bedstead is brass! And it is a featherbed, covered by a flannel blanket and cowhide. From two more pegs are neatly hung a spare shirt and trousers; and to their side a shelf holds a dozen books, one of them a Bible, one of Leatherstocking’s tales, another of myths, and two volumes in German. On a little table rests an uncased fiddle—it is finer than the warped one I own—and on the wall above it, next the grandfather clock that is stopped from lack of winding, hangs a picture of bird
s perched in a flowering tree. I am put in mind of a certain foreign bird species, the male of which constructs an intricate and ornate bower, and struts preening before it until a female, attracted by his artistry, succumbs.

  Harris offers advice to the fire-builders, but they already have a blaze under way. Outside, the wind roars, falls to a murmur, roars again, to push a sifting of snow beneath the window frames and stuff the smoke down the chimney to puff from the seams of the stove. Beidermann’s little castle trembles before the blast: his suspenders sway on the peg. I am not easy here, trespassing on Beidermann’s secret empire; but we are trapped in it by the storm: not even the rugged Beidermann would ask a man to face the prairie in a Norther.

  If Beidermann goes under, who will get this place? asks Harris.

  Who indeed? I have no answer.

  While the twins make biscuits and Harris cooks up beans and bacon, I light Beidermann’s etched-glass lamp against the cold shadows. In the wall cupboard Harris finds a jug of whiskey tucked behind a dozen pieces of glazed china—plates and cups, all bearing a pattern of perching birds and appearing long unused, perhaps never used: but we take our supper off tin plates at my order, for all that Harris fancies the china; as, indeed, he fancies the whiskey; of which, despite his importuning, I deny him more than a single drink, which he makes such a greedy one that I grab the jug away, much to his irritation. He is growing into a crude man, Harris: as the youngest son but for the twins, he believes little deference or privilege comes his way; and when he does not carp, he glowers: not a day—indeed, hardly an hour—goes by that does not hold disappointment for him, which he quickly voices.

  Beidermann’s elegant bedstead being inadequate for the four of us, I give it up to Harris and the twins; and in Beidermann’s handsome buffalo robe roll up beside the stove, to listen for a long time to the wind slapping the house and howling in the distance: its ferocity I think excessive, for if man needs reminding of his insignificance on Earth, a storm one-tenth of this would suffice. . . .

  At first light, for all that a brisk wind sweeps steadily from the north the strength has gone out of it, and no snow falls, so that the morning lies brilliant, in perfect cold: the drift against Beidermann’s door reaching to our heads, it seems easier to tunnel than shovel clear, but at last we thresh our way to the barn to feed Beidermann’s livestock and retrieve our team. We would hie ourselves home, but it is slow going for the horses, who plow a deep valley through the snow, until we strike the bluff by the river and the icy ground offers faster travel. Here we come across a frozen heifer of Beidermann’s which has been chewed upon, and even more such may be buried half-chewed in the snow-filled gully. Harris says it is coyotes, although I think it is not beyond Beidermann’s fiendish dogs themselves to do the trick. Tomorrow, on his way to tend Beidermann’s stock, which will be his daily duty for a time, Harris vows to lace the carcass with strychnine, so that we might discourage such scavenging.

  The day is mostly gone when, to Ma’s great relief, we arrive; although we are still worried if Otto has outwitted the storm. When the boys are all in bed, I tell Ma of Beidermann’s singular bachelor residence, describing it from curtains to china, for I know she will take a womanly interest in the refinement and elegance of it. But if I expected her to be surprised, she is not; and says only, The poor man.

  DEC. 7. Cold and clear, windy. Early we are shoveling paths to all the pens, the wind driving snow back in all the while; and after chores, having given in no less to my own concern for Beidermann’s welfare than their entreaties, the twins and I set out for the Widow’s place, bearing a pot of Ma’s special stew for the invalid. An hour along, we come upon a welcome sight in this vast expanse of snow: it is Otto on the black mare, coming briskly toward us.

  He is crabby with the cold, his cheeks a little frozen; but he has done his errand, and reports delivering the doctor in good order, with not much complication; having waited in Skiles at Rasmussen’s stables for the storm to abate, that occurring in fine coincidence at the very time Doctor Entwhistle sobered sufficiently to ride.

  We are eager for his report on Beidermann, and it is more sanguine than I expected; for all that Otto reports that Entwhistle, before hastening back to his jug the moment the weather cleared and he had extracted twelve dollars for his service, offered neither a strong yea or nay as to Beidermann’s immediate prospects; although Otto has no doubts.

  That Beidermann is an ugly ox, he says. He looks to me unkillable. He wanted me to drive him home. You will see for yourself.

  He is off for the warmth of our house, pleased for the decent trail our team and sleigh have broken; in turn, we follow his path to the Widow’s, where, approaching her door through banks of snow shoveled out as high as the horses’ heads, I wonder, from Otto’s description of the invalid’s hardiness, whether Beidermann himself has not risen to do the shoveling.

  He is in bed where we have left him; but presents a changed and surprising appearance: his hair is cut, neatly shorn all around at the ear to show the white and pink of his head, like a sheared sheep.

  Hullo there, boys, he says, sounding nowhere near death, nor looking it. His face is somewhat drawn, and his position stiff on the mattress: he is a little bashful, but whether from his helplessness or his haircut, I cannot tell. The house is exceedingly warm, as if the Widow would burn her whole winter’s wood for Beidermann. She clucks and fusses to straighten the covers he pulls aside in turning to see us.

  You come to fetch me home then, eh? he says with hope; although clearly his readiness to leave signals neither a miracle from Entwhistle nor an exceptional spontaneous reclaiming of health, but more a desire to flee the Widow’s fussy caretaking; which she continues hard at, bustling about, ordering her girls to boil some coffee for me as she lurks over Beidermann like one of those brooding hens with which she hatches out her goose eggs. For all his protests that he wants none, she fills his cup with Ma’s stew, and smooths back what wild black hair she has left him; his demurrer to this being feeble, with little of the full Beidermann orneriness, as if he knows she must show her handiwork, like a woman who will display her new quilt to a friend.

  It was money wasted to have Entwhistle, Beidermann claims; for in his opinion, as he says, Anna can do anything he can.

  Does the Widow blush? I think so, as she busies herself to bare Beidermann’s middle and bathe it with the black tar-smelling liquid Entwhistle left as proof against blood poisoning: she dabs it tenderly over a swollen tumor of shining scabs, which the twins push forward to wonder at.

  He will have a lump there, says the Widow in a teacherly way. Like a rupture. But see, it is healing over already. The doctor says none of his innards is cut. It is God’s miracle.

  That may be. Her own husband went under from cuts and bruises of less severe appearance than this injury of Beidermann’s; but it was loss of blood that did Swede in. We could not stop it—that being not merely our selfish apology but Doctor Entwhistle’s opinion as well: we could not have stopped it; and so suddenly did Swede go, being on his last legs when we got him home, that the Widow had no opportunity to practice her nursing skills upon him. For all that Beidermann appeared no better than Swede when we hauled him in three days earlier, now, as if he is chosen in a way denied Swede, he bids fair to recover.

  The Widow plumps up her goose-down pillows under Beidermann’s shoulders, as he again declares his readiness to travel—he would go right now, in my sleigh. He makes a demand of it: no polite request from Beidermann.

  Shoot, I say, and lean over to give him a wink, if I was in your shoes, I would not be so eager to leave the bed and tender care of a good-looking woman.

  The Widow raises her whinnying laugh. Beidermann’s face darkens: his helplessness baffles him. He says, No, I mean to go.

  Well, then, I say, if that is what you mean to do, let me give you my straight opinion, which is that at this stage of the game your best bet is not to get out of that bed. There is no call to court disaster. And if you are wor
ried about your stock, well, there is no cause for it. My boys are doing your chores, and you will have to admit that they are considerable fellows, and do a bang-up job at what they tackle, which is the way I have raised them. By God, they even have those vicious hounds of yours eating out of their hands.

  The patient gives me a sullen look. I do not like to put a strain on you, he says. You have chores of your own.

  I have a whole houseful of boys to do them, I say; but I feel I am boasting again, for he has nothing like them in his house. With this weather they have time on their hands.

  Beidermann stares in silence at the ceiling beams, his whiskery jaw clamped, and at last says, If I can get over to my place, I can do all right by myself.

  Well, that is surely true, I say, and I note that the arrogance is gone from his voice: he speaks wonderingly, like a man asking a question about matters he has not thought of before, and of which he knows nothing.

  I always have, before, he says.

  I wonder if he has at last come upon a different notion of himself. Not only is it the Widow’s hair-shears and beguiling pats he wishes to escape: God has visited the proud Beidermann, and he is beholden—and not to me, as he thinks. His leathern face draws down mournfully as if he relinquishes the vision of himself in his particular life, seeing now that it is furnished no more by china and lacy curtains than by reckless vanity. With his new-cut hair bristling against the Widow’s pillow, he looks upon the fact that he is not the only man on Earth who can throw corn to hogs.

  Beidermann looks on bleakly as the twins and I depart. From the door I call to him, A few more days and we will fetch you back to your place in fine style.

  I suspect that when we do, I tell the twins, the Widow will have dug out Swede’s old razor, and have Beidermann shaved just as pretty as you please.

  INTER-LEAF

  HE WAS HEADED WEST at an angle to the constant wind, and not until a whirling dust-devil slapped back his hat brim did he catch the first scary sniff. The black mare—straightaway alert—caught it when he did: her nostrils flared, and she pulled her trick of taking the bit, lying back on her haunches and wheeling left. Beidermann wiped the grit from his eyes with one hand, and with the other kept hold just enough to let her swerve to catch the foreboding scent full on. She hesitated, trembling, judging it.