We returned to find Aunt Gert chasing Alfred around, trying to get him to find his socks. “You’ll catch your death, you little scamp,” she hollered. “Now you go find them.”
Since we had moved, Alfred had found more people to annoy. “No!” He roared through the kitchen and out into the hallway.
“He gets cold enough, he’ll find his socks,” Ma said. She sounded fed up.
“Mercy,” Aunt Gert hollered, chasing him up the stairs. She should have let the little brat freeze.
In the afternoon, Larry, Helen, and I huddled around the coffee table in the parlour playing forty-fives. Uncle Jim fiddled with the single dial of the Atwater Kent radio and tuned in to Ma Parker. Granny put a frame around a patchwork quilt she had been working on and began stitching. Ma laid a piece of burlap on the floor and sketched out a rug design in dark graphite. Aunt Gert’s own rug project was already set in a sturdy frame. She sat in the wingback chair and matched strips of fabric to the sections she had already hooked.
After supper, we listened to weather reports that urged everyone on the Island to stay indoors. Every so often, Uncle Jim adjusted the radio’s dial to try to ease the static, as the wind whistled and pounded around us. We couldn’t hide from this weather like we did back home in Everett. The large animals needed near constant care. Even the chickens would eventually need tending to. At six o’clock, we took shovels and fought our way back to the barn to feed, bed, and water the horses and the herd. Larry insisted on spelling Uncle Jim off at the well, but our uncle refused. “It’s dangerous. You fellas stay in the barn.” I don’t know if he was talking about the weather or the well.
Later that evening, the telephone rang. Aunt Gert went into the kitchen to answer it.
“It’s Ed, Mother.” She sounded concerned. “He wants to know if you’ve heard from Mr. White.”
Mr. White was the old farmer we had met at Granny’s on our first evening there. He lived next door to Uncle Ed and Aunt Kate. They treated him like family, keeping a close eye. They often brought him to Granny’s for dinner and to church. Larry and I followed Granny and Ma into the kitchen to see what all the fuss was about.
Granny took the telephone. “Mercy, no, Ed dear, I haven’t.” She stood with her lips close to the mouthpiece, holding the receiver to an ear. “Didn’t say he was going anywhere, no.”
According to Uncle Ed, there was no sign of Mr. White being home—no light, no chimney smoke. As he didn’t own a telephone, somebody would have to check on him. When Uncle Ed announced he was going, Granny offered to send Uncle Jim.
“You might need him,” she said.
“I’ll take the boys,” Uncle Jim said, never thinking to ask Ma. “We’ll need the sleigh and Big Ned.”
Ma moved toward me and took my shoulders. “Pius James is staying right here—it’s freezing out there.” Back home it wouldn’t have mattered. But ever since Dad died, she seemed to fear the worst.
“If Larry’s going, so am I.” I was sick of being treated like a little kid. Granny came to the rescue.
“He’ll be fine, Martha; stop your worrying,” she said. “It’s just a late-winter storm, It’ll be over before you know it.”
Ma’s eyes lit up in anger as Granny went straight to the mudroom, grabbed our jackets, and threw them over a kitchen chair. When she piled our hats, scarves, and mitts on top of the table, Ma clamped her mouth shut and gritted her teeth.
We pulled on several layers of clothing and wrapped scarves around every inch of our faces except for our eyes. We each grabbed a shovel from the mudroom and headed out the back door and into the blizzard.
The path we had dug the previous day was knee-deep. Snow whipped my face and stung my eyes. I turned to catch the wind side-on and shovelled hard behind Larry and Uncle Jim.
Uncle Jim hollered something, but I couldn’t hear through the storm. Larry turned to urge me on, but the wind drowned him out too. I kept digging, attacking the snow, pushing against the wind, as the cold numbed my hands. Despite it all, the feeling of being useful and necessary kept me going. I wanted to prove that I could work just as hard as Larry.
Uncle Jim reached the barn first and made a clearing around the door. Then he moved on to the shed to get the sleigh. Larry and I rushed inside to the thick stench of fresh manure. The door slammed behind us, and the Holsteins shifted nervously. Their breath turned to steam in the cool air. Larry entered Big Ned’s stall and ran a mittened hand down his neck. Lu put her head over her own stall to check on all the fuss. She watched Larry strip Big Ned’s blanket off him and pull a dry one from a box, then throw a bridle and reins over his huge head and buckle it closed. “We’ve got a job to do, big fella.” He led Big Ned across the mud- and dung-encrusted floor toward the door. Lu looked straight at me and whinnied.
I stroked her neck and said, “Not this time, old girl,” catching myself sounding like Uncle Jim.
When Larry opened the door, the wind and snow howled straight through it. Big Ned reared his head and whinnied. My brother clicked his tongue and tugged on the reins. “C’mon, old boy.”
The horse considered him for a moment, then perked his ears forward and obediently stepped out into the darkness. Uncle Jim waited with the sleigh.
“I’ll take ’im from here.” He grabbed the reins, put a hand on each of Big Ned’s solid shoulders, and gave him a firm push. Big Ned stepped backward, barely squeezing between the sleigh’s two narrow shafts. Then Uncle Jim slipped the harness over him.
We hopped on, Uncle Jim in front, Larry and I huddled in behind, wrapped in the blanket. My uncle slapped the reins, and Big Ned leaned into his harness and stepped forward. The sleigh resisted, then lurched, then glided over the newly fallen snow.
From behind Uncle Jim, all I could see was Big Ned’s huge hind end lumbering forward and snow blowing all around him. Beyond us lay a stark, freezing whiteout. I knew our route headed due east. But I wondered how we could navigate blindly and find the open gateway at the end of the drive without the horse getting a hoof snagged in the barbed-wire fence.
Uncle Jim guided Big Ned along what remained of the path we had dug across the yard the day before. When the path ended, he slapped the reins and urged the horse into deeper snow. His pace slowed, but he kept pulling us. Snow kept falling over him, sticking to his thick winter coat. His legs seemed to sink into it as he pressed onward. I huddled under the blanket, my arms hugging my chest, my head bent behind Uncle Jim, shielded from the wind. It was like sleepwalking, it felt so directionless.
My uncle said Big Ned’s blind obedience was the Percheron’s nature. But there was something in the way he pushed steadily onward, in the way his ears perked forward, his neck straining and pumping, that said there was much more to him than that. There was a sense of urgency about him. It was as if he knew we were on a rescue mission and he was an important part of it. I’d never before thought of animals as being smart, but this one surely was.
Uncle Jim and that big old horse must have made that trip a thousand times. We reached the end of the drive, turned right onto Northbridge Road, travelled about a hundred yards, and then took a sharp left turn. Soon we found the path that connected the old man’s house to the road. Uncle Ed had managed to shovel it clear. Snow-laden branches of evergreens brushed us on each side. We entered a clearing. A lone, leafless apple tree stood to the right, covered in ice. To the left, across the yard, posts of an open gateway to Mr. White’s field poked from a drift. Beside it, the outline of the barn was barely visible. I knew Mr. White’s tiny, slope-roofed house was somewhere nearby, but I couldn’t see it. The snow swirled so hard, it was difficult to tell field from sky.
Uncle Jim whoa’d Big Ned by the barn. Larry led him inside while I followed my uncle to the house. A thin stream of smoke smouldered from the chimney and disappeared into the grey. Thick icicles hung from the eaves. Snow beat against the back door and stuck to it. A single ligh
t shone through a downstairs window, but there was nobody around. I got an eerie feeling about the place as we approached. I pictured Mr. White lying splayed out over the kitchen floor, eyes wide open, stone cold. I kept close to Uncle Jim as he stomped up the back steps and entered the house. It felt colder inside than it did outdoors.
To my relief, we found Uncle Ed leaning over the cookstove, holding a lit match to dry kindling. He looked back, as we entered. “Old John don’t look so good.” Then he stuck his head back in the stove. When the match caught, he moved back and blew on the kindling. He threw in a log, closed the cookstove door and glanced toward the upstairs. “He’s burnin’ up like blazes. Thinks it’s the flu. And he’s worried about Isabelle. Near killed himself chasin’ after ’er before the storm. She took off into them woods.”
“Stubborn, ain’t she,” Uncle Jim said.
“Perhaps it’s really old Isabelle White herself, come back to haunt him,” Uncle Ed chuckled.
Uncle Jim had told me the cow had qualities much like those of Mr. White’s dead wife. According him, she was contrary, tough, and obstinate, so Mr. White named his cow after her. We weren’t supposed to believe in reincarnation. But I laughed at the thought of the old man’s cranky wife coming back as an ornery, elderly cow. Then Uncle Ed told us she was with calf and ready to go.
“If she’s old,” Uncle Jim said, “what’s she doin’ with a calf in her belly? And if she’s ornery, that makes it even more confusin’.”
I didn’t quite get what he was saying. I’d have to ask Larry about it later. Somehow I figured Uncle Jim wouldn’t discuss this stuff with us kids.
“Stupid cow’s probably down to the river already,” Uncle Ed said. “He oughtta let ’er drown.”
My instincts said to go after Isabelle, to find her and put her safely in Mr. White’s barn. That’s what we did in Everett when someone lost a cat or a dog. We’d dress for the weather, then we’d go off on a rescue mission. If Dad were finished work, he’d come too. Chances were we’d find it down the block—cowering under a porch, stupid with cold—and carry it home. Unless it was too big, in which case we’d drag it by a rope, dry it off, and feed it. But it seems like farm animals don’t matter as much as pets do.
“No cow’s worth goin’ out into this for,” Uncle Jim said, shaking his head. “We’ll tend to old John and go after ’er in the mornin’.”
Uncle Ed found a tin of stew in a cupboard and emptied its contents into a pot on the cookstove. Uncle Jim carried a chunk of wood into the parlour and threw it into the pot-bellied stove. He found some kindling and shoved in a log. He lit a match and watched it take. Then he sent Larry and me outside to fetch more wood, so we wouldn’t run out.
As Larry and I were bringing in the second load, Uncle Ed came down the stairway, bending below the low ceiling. “He’s feverish as h—,” he said, stopping mid-sentence. “I mean, he’s burnin’ up. Talking funny-like. We should send for Dr. Brahaught.” Dr. Brahaught lived in Murray River, a village some twelve miles further east, at the end of a road that usually got snowed in with each storm.
“That won’t likely happen ’til mornin’,” Uncle Jim said. “We’ll just have to trust in the good Lord. Try to cool him down a bit too. But you needn’t stay, Ed. The boys and I’ll bunk out here and keep an eye on ’im. When you get home, perhaps you could call Mother and let ’er know.”
We ate supper seated around Mr. White’s rickety old table. Later, we bunked down in our long johns—Larry and I sharing a three-quarter spool bed in the room upstairs next to the old man’s. Uncle Jim dragged the chaise longue close to the cookstove and draped his jacket over himself. Our clothes hung over chairs in the parlour, drying by the fire. I crawled between the clammy sheets beside Larry. We lay back to back, sharing the same damp feather pillow, a pile of tattered quilts heaped over us. As tired as I was, it was hard falling asleep in that strange house, breathing in the smell of must and old wallpaper. I lay there, damp, shivering, thinking about Isabelle down by the river. Wondering if we’d find her. Across the hallway, the old man moaned himself into a quiet sleep.
By morning, clouds were sitting on the edge of an ice-blue sky. The sun cast rays across a vast expanse of white. They glistened off the snowy rooftop of Mr. White’s house and reflected off the weather vane on his barn. I hoped there were men shovelling out Northbridge Road, opening a passageway for Dr. Brahaught. But I imagined it would take days. Larry, Uncle Jim, and I were standing in the kitchen in our long johns over steaming mugs of tea when Uncle Ed returned.
“How is he?” he asked, referring to the old man.
“I checked on ’im through the night,” Uncle Jim said, his voice low and tired. “Slept well, fever’s down. We won’t be needin’ Dr. Brahaught, anyhow.”
“Thank the Lord,” Uncle Ed said, glancing up at the ceiling. Then he turned to Uncle Jim. “You don’t look so good.”
My uncle’s face was pale, his blue eyes looked dull and dry. The creases around them seemed to have deepened through the night. He had slept on a hard, hand-hewn chaise longue next to the stove in the parlour, covered only by his damp jacket. Larry and I had slept in a comfortable bed upstairs in the room next to Mr. White’s. Uncle Jim had hung our damp trousers over a chair by the cookstove, but had neglected his own.
“I just need to get home, get into some dry duds, and get some grub into me,” he replied, slipping into his trousers. “You three hold the fort. I’ll send Gert over to stay with old John, then we’ll get lookin’ for that cow.”
Two hours later, he returned with a shovel and a length of rope looped over a shoulder. Aunt Gert followed him through the back door, carrying in a hamper of food. She wiped her boots off on a mat in the mudroom, entered the kitchen, and placed the hamper on a counter. “This old kitchen’s a real shrine.” She surveyed the china that sat, neatly, along the upper shelf. Teacups were turned over on their saucers—the teapot perched dead centre. A wooden crucifix hung from the window casing above the stove, a bronze Jesus in the last throes of agony nailed to it. “Old John kept it just the way Isabelle would have wanted.”
“Maybe he’s still scared of her,” I said, remembering what Uncle Jim had said about Mrs. White.
“Hush up, Pius James,” Uncle Jim said. “That’s no way to talk about the dead.” He stood inside the kitchen doorway, fully dressed, showing no sign of entering.
“All that man can think about is that darn ol’ cow,” Uncle Ed said. “He’s frantic over ’er—can’t talk o’ nothin’ else.”
“We’d best get lookin’ for ’er, then,” Uncle Jim said.
Larry and I threw on our jackets and boots, each grabbed a shovel from the mudroom, and followed the two uncles out the back door. Everything around us lay in a heavy, frozen silence. The storm had moved on, but a cold Arctic front had settled in. It stung my nostrils and hurt my throat. I tightened my scarf over my face and took in the scene around me: the path to the barn, now waist deep; the snowdrifts covering the box sleigh and blocking the barn doors. My arms ached at the thought of more shovelling.
Larry and I glanced over at each other, our eyes mere slits between our woollen hats and scarves. The way my brother shrugged and pulled his collar up said he was resigned to it. I moved stiffly in the cold, wishing I had listened to Ma.
“Which way’d she go, you figure?” Uncle Jim asked, his voice muffled behind his scarf.
“Old John woulda gone down the pasture.” Uncle Ed pointed stiffly past the barn. “Isabelle musta heard him comin’—headed straight through the woods to the river.”
Larry led Big Ned out of the barn. We hitched him up to the sleigh and hopped on—Uncle Jim in front, Uncle Ed beside him, Larry and me huddled in back. Uncle Jim slapped the reins and Big Ned ploughed ahead. He hauled the sleigh with ease, trampling the snowdrifts along the downward-sloping pasture. We reached the end of the field and stopped at a forest cloaked in white. We lo
oked for an opening among the trees, entered, and found a path. As we followed it, the trees soon grew dense, and Uncle Jim slowed up the horse. Uncle Ed climbed off the sleigh and bent back branches. Snow fell over us in heavy clumps.
The path opened onto a snow-covered downhill clearing. At its edge, a river bubbled under a thin sheet of ice. Uncle Jim reined up Big Ned several feet from the clearing. He feared ice had formed under the snow, making the slope treacherous, so he tethered the horse to a nearby tree. Then we followed him as he moved along the edge of the river, digging his shovel into the slope, testing for ice.
Dirty River was a murky stream that marked the end of Mr. White’s property. Its real name was Mink River. But the way its slow, shallow current stirred mud up to the surface had earned it another name from the locals. It flowed over a cluster of smooth rocks and around a single boulder, behind which sat what looked to be a deep pool, now iced over. We carefully moved along the riverbank, keeping clear of the frigid water. We separated—Larry and I moving north, our uncles hurrying in the opposite direction. Soon, Larry and I noticed a break in the ice that stretched across the river. Mud lay splashed over the ice on both sides of the break. I scanned the opposite bank and noticed a gouge in the snow and slick, brown mud directly across from us. Beside this, a black-and-white mass lay sprawled up the slope. From where I stood, I saw a tail, a huge udder, a massive belly, and two legs. Then I heard a low, mournful bellow.
“Found her!” I pointed my mittened hand across the river. “Over there.” My voice echoed through the trees.
My uncles turned and ran toward us, using their shovels to steady their footing along the treacherous riverbank. “How the devil’d she get over there?” Uncle Jim asked no one in particular.
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