by Jim Shepard
“Six inches.” His father’s attention remained largely on the eggs. “How’s that? You kids wanted more snow, you got more snow.”
He ate two of the eggs his father had made, drank some Sanka, and went upstairs and scooped everything out of his winter drawer. He pulled off his pajamas and pulled on a pair of thin cotton socks, and long underwear over them. Over that he slipped heavy woolen socks, choosing carefully from the pile and checking for holes, and then some dungarees. He found his lumberjack shirt and one of his heavy sweaters. He buckled his boots over his pants as a final touch and stood feeling secure and able to roll in the snow without any icy leaks. He grabbed his down mittens and hat and trooped downstairs.
“You need a scarf?” his mother asked as he went by.
“Nope.” He let Stupid out, adjusted his hat, and followed. It felt wonderful in the winter air and he realized he’d been hot and uncomfortable inside with everything on.
“Get your fort ready,” Kristi called. “Mine’s almost done.”
Stupid loped around, tracking rolling areas of white that Kristi had left untouched. Biddy chose a spot away from the house, at the back of the yard, and started to sweep the snow into a kind of wall with his down mittens.
“That’s too far,” Kristi said.
“Not for me.”
She made a face and he finished a short wall he could crouch behind, and then helped with hers. Their breath puffed around them and his feet were cold, though his hands sweated in the mittens. He curled his toes around in his boots. The air seemed to slip down his throat like water and leave him breathless.
“That’s good,” she said.
“You don’t want any more?”
“No. That’s good. Let’s go.” She knelt and started scooping snow together and as he ran back to his fort a snowball thumped against his jacket.
He called her a cheater, packed a ball together, and whizzed it at her. It sailed. It was hard to throw with down mittens. He kept trying but he had no control; nothing came close. One hit the house. He stayed low pulling another one together, and when he rose to throw, a snowball hit him dead center on the forehead, like a wet, easy slap. He teetered for a moment, the snow rolling off his face, and then flopped backward, arms outstretched, with Kristi laughing. He lay in the snow dead, a tribute to her aim, and then made angel wings.
Abruptly he got up, piling snow into a long line of snowballs behind the wall while Kristi’s throws landed around him. When he was ready he set himself, pulled off his gloves, and stood up, grasping a cold snowball in his bare hand, pivoting at a snowy second base and firing at his sister. He kept her pinned like that, flinging them in rapid succession, and then waited, wanting her to think he’d run out of ammunition. She raised her head and he caught the top of her hat and knocked it off.
“I give!” she called. “I give!” But he had a double line of balls left, and he pelted her fort, laughing; the balls, hardened in his hand before he threw, were starting to break down her protecting wall. He used an exaggerated overhand motion, discovering he could throw down into the fort that way, the snowballs disappearing behind it and his sister shouting with every hit. “I give!” she repeated, and finally, in blind frustration, she scrambled over the wall, rushing at him, head down, scarf twirling behind her in the wind like a tail. Laughing his aim was no better than it had been with the mittens, she stormed his wall shouting “I said I give” and drove her wet blonde head into his jacket front, toppling them both into a drift, laughing and wrestling, with snow leaking in everywhere and neither of them caring.
“Don’t think you’re going to get everything you see, because we’re only going to look,” his mother said. “Sit on the seat, Kristi. I slam on the brakes and you’ll go through the windshield.”
They were going Christmas shopping. Biddy and Kristi had changed out of their snowy clothes, Biddy finding a triangular lump of snow in his boot. They were coming along so they could point out a few things at the toy store. Their mother had little patience trying to decipher Christmas lists. Kristi had lost one of her mittens in the vicinity of the snow fort, and was kneeling on the seat, her hands on the dashboard.
“Where we going?” she asked after a turn. “This isn’t the way to Korvette’s.” They referred to the huge shopping mall in Trumbull simply as “Korvette’s,” the name of one of the larger stores, which had moved away.
“We’re picking up Cindy,” his mother said.
Cindy climbed into the back, smiling at Biddy and flipping her hair out from beneath her collar.
“You can get in front,” his mother said. “Kristi can get in back.”
“No, it’s all right.” Her coat was long and white and her hair shone against it. “I’ll sit back here with Biddy. Biddy’s my date.” He smiled, embarrassed, and Cindy scratched the top of his sister’s head in greeting.
“Where’s Ronnie?” his mother said.
“I told him not to come. I’m going to try and get his present today.”
“Does he still want that jacket?”
“What he wants and I can afford are two different things.” She edged a middle finger along the outline of her lower lip, checking her lip gloss. “He also wants Atari. Imagine that? This is a grown man we’re talking about. Biddy’s already outgrown it.”
He wouldn’t have minded one, but he remained silent.
“So what are you going to get him?”
“I don’t know.” She looked out the window. “He’d really like the membership in the health club renewed, but how can you give somebody that? Your fiancé?”
Biddy was hot in the car in his coat. They climbed the entrance ramp to the thruway.
“I don’t know,” Cindy said. “I’ll look around. A watch, or something.” She looked over at him. “So how about you? What’s new with you? Your mother tells me you’re in a choir.”
“Sister says he’s got one of the best sopranos she’s ever heard.”
“Really?” She smiled, raising her eyebrows exaggeratedly. “Another Caruso, huh?”
“Caruso wasn’t a soprano, was he?” His mother kept her eyes on the road.
“No, I don’t think so. I just meant a singer.”
They drove on, cars around them switching lanes in an effortless choreography. Cindy straightened a gold chain on her neck, moving the clasp around to the back. “So this is going to be a year-round thing, or just for Christmas?”
“Just for Christmas,” his mother said. “Sister thought it would be nice. I think it’s a good idea.”
Cindy said she thought so, too. She turned her attention to the road outside, and he watched the sun and shadow cross her face as they came off the turnpike. In the bright sun he could make out white hairs here and there, but in shadow her face was perfectly smooth. While they were parking, she peered into the mirror on the windshield absently, checking herself.
“All right, let’s get you kids out of the way first,” his mother said, shouldering her handbag. “Kristi, where do you want to go? That toy place?” Kristi nodded. “And, Biddy, you’re going to go to Herman’s first, right?”
He could wander endlessly through the sporting-goods store.
“Let’s do this,” Cindy said. “Save time: I’ll take Biddy to Herman’s and you and Kristi come get us when you’re ready.”
“That’d be great. You don’t mind?”
“I’ll look around for something for Ronnie.”
They split up and made their way through the crowd, Biddy fidgeting despite himself on the escalator down to the lower level. Ahead of him a woman had a large bag with a pink rabbit ear the size of an oar sticking out of it.
He threaded his way along the bottom floor, staying close to the larger plant stands in the middle and glancing back every now and then for Cindy. He led her past Koenig Art Supplies and Waldenbooks and stopped a few yards ahead while she poked her head into Hit or Miss.
She caught up to him and put her arm around his shoulder. “What’re you going to get me for
Christmas, anyway?”
“Nothing,” he said.
“Nothing? What kind of sugar daddy are you?”
“Ronnie’s supposed to get you things,” he said, faltering.
“Well, you’ll never make any time with offers like that. Sheesh.”
They turned in to Herman’s, at its mall entrance a cacophony of racquets, strung and unstrung. Her hand left his shoulder and she strayed into the tennis section. He followed and waited before finally turning away and finding the camping department.
He circled tents of all sizes, assembled like crabs or moon landers on wooden frames, and plucked guy ropes, and got down on his hands and knees and looked inside. He examined two or three different models. When he’d decided on one, he pulled out a small pad he had brought along and wrote, “Tent: EMS Explorer.” There was a good chance they wouldn’t get him one, he knew. He lingered by the sleeping bags as well, but in the end decided against listing one, figuring the more he put down the less chance he had of getting what he most wanted.
Beyond camping there was more to see. He moved along a wall of sneakers, mostly white with stripes of different shapes and colors. A wall full of left shoes, each on its own shelf, arranged by sport. He paused at the football section and picked the black Puma off the wall, fingering the white plastic spikes. He tried it on in one of the nearby seats—at times the size would vary with spikes—and then carefully wrote, “Puma football size 7½” on his pad. Cindy caught up to him at the basketball row. He was looking at the Converse All Stars.
“You like the stars?” she said. “I like those, with the horns. What are they? Pumas?”
“Uh-huh.” He wrote, “Converse All Stars size 8” on the pad.
“I thought I’d find you with the baseball stuff.” He put the shoe back on its shelf and shook his head. She took his shoulder again, lightly. “C’mon. Help me pick out a ski sweater. They got a sale going here.”
He found himself in front of a table piled high with sweaters, tightly knit and filled with color. He saw a kelly green he liked, but it disappeared as Cindy sifted around.
“How about this?” she said. She held up a dark blue one with light blue and red stripes across the shoulders.
“It’s really nice,” he said.
“Hello,” someone said behind him.
He turned. A stranger was smiling at Cindy, holding a sweater himself. Biddy turned back; Cindy’s sweater was suspended where she held it.
“What’re you doing here,” she said.
Biddy didn’t turn around again. The voice came over the top of his head. “Guy can’t buy a sweater?”
She looked down at the pile. She’s embarrassed, he realized; why is she so embarrassed?
“I called before and you were out,” the man said.
“Sean, this is Biddy. Walt and Judy Siebert’s oldest. Biddy, Sean.”
Biddy turned and the stranger nodded to him.
“Here you are,” his mother said. Kristi shuffled up behind her. “What’re you, interested in sweaters this year, Biddy?”
“I’m looking,” Cindy said. “Biddy’s helping.”
He glanced around. The stranger was gone.
His mother pulled a bright red sweater out by the arm. “Who was that guy you were talking with?”
Cindy colored. “A guy from my old class. Guy I went to school with. Hadn’t seen him in a long time.”
His mother kept digging around and he kept his eyes on Cindy. She was absorbed in the sweaters. He watched her spread them out and check prices. What are you lying about? he was thinking. What am I missing?
Outside the wind shook the windows and the television antenna rattled as it buckled and swayed back and forth. It was a noise friends of his always noticed immediately on windy days in his room but one he had long since grown used to. He set the Cessna manual aside and pulled out The Lore of Flight, opening to the page with the bookmark. It was black outside, and the wind seemed fierce. He considered closing the curtains to conserve heat. The pencil made a soft scratching noise while he underlined.
Light aircraft, however, share one important feature with their larger counterparts: their flying control systems are fundamentally similar. All types of aeroplane, except for a few unorthodox research aircraft, are controlled in the air by movable surfaces on the wings and tail. These surfaces are operated by a control column (or handwheel) and rudder bar, and govern the attitude and actions of the aircraft when airborne.
His father poked his head into the room. “Hey, champ,” he said. “Heard we had a little trouble today.”
Biddy shut the book and nodded.
“Your mother says you were giving her a hard time at the shopping center?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What happened?”
Beyond the window the wind was making hollow, muffled sounds, like a ghost. “We came out of Herman’s and there was this dog that must’ve gotten run over or something. Its paw was mashed. It wouldn’t let anyone near it.”
“And you wanted to help.”
“Its paw was mashed.”
His father shook his head. “Albert Schweitzer, Jr. Look, Biddy … you said the dog wouldn’t let anyone go near him.”
“I wanted to get help.”
“Your mother said she got the security guard.”
“They wouldn’t do anything. They said they didn’t know whose dog it was.”
“Well, they didn’t. What are they supposed to do? Rehabilitate him?”
He looked away.
“Biddy, they’re running a business. This was just some dog from the neighborhood. I’m sure he’s all right now. His owner probably found him right after you left.”
He didn’t answer.
“What did you want to do?”
“I wanted to call someone. Firemen. I don’t know.”
“That’s right. You don’t know. Biddy, they wouldn’t’ve been able to do anything either.”
“They would have tried to find out whose dog it was.”
“That’s right. And then what? What happens when they don’t find out?”
He picked at the desk top.
“He goes to the pound, that’s what happens. Is that what you want? You know what happens at the pound if nobody claims him?”
They sat opposite each other, not moving. The panes shook.
His father shifted on the bed. “I thought I asked you to go easy on your mother. She’s unhappy right now and she doesn’t need this kind of aggravation. I thought I asked you about that.”
He nodded.
“Now am I going to hear a song and dance when I come home every time you notice an animal not in perfect health?”
Biddy hesitated a moment, then shook his head.
“All right. Now I understand you care for the dog—I’d feel bad too. But there’s so much in the world we can’t do anything about. I don’t want you making yourself miserable all the time.”
He nodded. His father sat watching him, silent.
“Your mother showed me the list you came up with today. Some haul you’re expecting. What’s with the camping stuff? You planning a trip?”
He shrugged.
“Tent, mess kit … maybe you could use that stuff in the summer. Maybe we could go camping somewhere up north.” He stood. “We’ll work on it. Maybe we’ll go to Lake Champlain. Guy I work with has a cabin up there.”
He stopped by the door and looked back. “Just excited to death by the possibility, I can see. Use the desk lamp if you’re going to read. You’re going to have glasses if you keep this up.”
He went downstairs. Biddy reopened the Flight book and his top drawer and pulled out a black notebook. In it he wrote, under the general heading “Questions,” “Are the brakes on the rudder pedals?”
He returned to the book. After a few moments he snapped on the desk lamp. He underlined:
Ailerons, on the wings and moving in opposite directions, push one wing up and the other down, causing the aircraft to roll. The elev
ator, hinged to the rear of the tailplane, pushes the tail up or down causing the aircraft to dive or climb. The rudder, mounted vertically and hinged to the fin, controls the aircraft in yaw, or its rotation about its vertical axis.
He reread the final sentence two or three times, concentrating, before finally writing, “What is yaw?”
Laura passed a candle to him after lighting it with hers. He stood there, in the gloom, waiting for the hot wax to drip onto his fingers.
They were in one of the smaller side naves of the chapel with the overhead light off. The darkness seemed a warm brown from the candlelight on the wood, but it was drafty as well, and they stayed close to each other, three rows deep around the baptismal font. Sister had a hymnbook she was reading from in the yellow light of her candle. The class had half-page dittoed sheets.
“O come, o come, Emma-a-anuel,” she sang softly. Her voice rose toward the beams of the high-pitched ceiling. They joined her. The song was dirge-like, slow, and reminded him of a moment from a film he’d seen: Napoleon’s army returning from Moscow. He wasn’t sure why.
“And ransom captive I-i-is-rael, That mourns in lonely e-ex-ile here, Until the Son of Go-o-od appear.” They grew louder together suddenly, those in class who hadn’t been singing joining in: “Rejoice! Rejoice! Emma-a-anuel shall come to thee, O I-i-is-rael!” Their voices dropped again. The volume of the darkened space seemed to enforce quiet.
On the font they encircled, Sister Theresa had one of a set of four red candles burning for the first week of Advent. In the catechism it was the first of four weeks preceding the coming of Christ, each with its own special significance. To the class, it was the first step in a countdown to Christmas, the beginning of a series of incessant reminders that the day was moving ever closer. On that Monday and the next three, they would assemble in the chapel with the lights out and sing “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” For those few moments the ceremony lasted even the rowdiest of the class stood quietly and gave Sister no trouble.
They completed the song and she looked at them uncertainly. A few people shifted and coughed, in the darkness every sound magnified.