The Children's Blizzard(20)

Somewhere they wouldn’t all freeze to death by morning.





CHAPTER 9


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THE SLEIGH WAS NOT SKIMMING merrily over the snow as it should have. The wind was too capricious, pummeling first this way, then the other, like a prizefighter taking out his revenge on an unworthy opponent. The little bay, Tiny’s pride and joy, was frothing at the mouth, trying to keep up; his eyes kept getting crusted over with ice, causing him to stumble, so that every few yards, Tiny had to rein him in and climb down to cover the horse’s eyes with his hands, thawing the ice.

“How close are we to home?” Gerda shouted over the wind as Tiny pulled on the reins, preparing to climb down and repeat this task. The little bay was whinnying pitilessly.

“A mile, maybe two,” Tiny called back, and Gerda’s heart sank. They must have been in the storm for nearly an hour. The two little girls sat on either side of her, their shawls—inadequate—pulled up over their heads. As Gerda gathered them closer to her, she could feel them shivering uncontrollably—or was that her own body trembling?

Then they were falling. Falling, the sleigh teetering on one runner, for a brief, hopeful moment balancing there while Gerda held her breath lest she blow the whole thing over. But the sleigh tilted farther, heartlessly tossing its occupants out onto the prairie before it was yanked back upright by the horse. They hit the ground hard—the snow was packed and icy—and the girls started to cry. Gerda pushed herself up, stunned, and suddenly Tiny was leaping to his feet and dashing after the little bay who was still trying to outrun the storm; the horse and the sleigh disappeared into a swirling mass of ice and snow.

    “Tiny! Tiny!” Gerda didn’t seem hurt from the fall, but maybe she was too numb to feel pain? She wasn’t too numb to feel panic, however; panic rising up from her feet, rushing over her heart, squeezing her throat as Tiny disappeared into the raging nightmare, shouting, “Poco! Poco!”

Poco. That horse of his, he’d named it after himself, saying that poco was the vaquero word for “small,” and maybe it was but it didn’t matter now. What mattered was that Tiny had vanished—she couldn’t even hear him calling after the horse—leaving her and the girls. Minna was crying while she held on to Ingrid’s hand, and the tears, Gerda saw to her horror, froze on her cheeks. Gerda took her thumb, clad in her wool gloves that were also frozen, and tried to rub the ice away from the little girl’s cheek.

She stopped, her stomach churning, when the flesh peeled away, exposing a raw, red wound on Minna’s face, although the girl didn’t appear to feel anything; she kept sobbing, but it was from fear, not pain, as far as Gerda could tell.

“Tiny!” Gerda—holding tight to the girls, one in each hand—took a few steps toward where Tiny had vanished, but she wasn’t sure of the direction. Maybe it was this way? She turned, took more steps, stopped, dizzy; she didn’t know which way was north or south, east or west. Desperately she looked at the ground, searching for tracks of the cutter sleigh, of their footsteps in the blowing, drifting, oddly sand-like snow, but there were none. It was as if a giant broom had swept away any trace of their journey so far.

    “Tiny!” Where was he? Why didn’t he come back? He would, he must—they would wait for him. He’d be back in a moment, back with the horse and sleigh, of course he would. He wouldn’t leave her, not Tiny—reliable, exasperating Tiny. Men like him didn’t leave women and children to fend for themselves in a storm like this. He would be back. He had to come back.

Squatting down, she huddled with the two girls, drawing them close to her body; it was a little warmer this close to the ground, a little more visible as well, but still she couldn’t see more than a couple of feet in any direction.

“Let’s sing a song,” she began, to keep the girls’ minds off the deadening misery that must have grasped their very bones as it was now seizing hers. “Little drops of water, little grains of sand…” But she gave up; she couldn’t keep shouting over the wailing squall. So they crouched as long as they could, Gerda’s knees locking into place so thoroughly she wondered if she could ever stand straight again; finally, she collapsed onto the numbingly glacial earth, drawing the girls into her lap, the three of them one shuddering, miserable being, snow blowing so fiercely she worried they’d be covered completely, then she thought that might be preferable to being so exposed….

She opened her eyes, her heart thumping but curiously weak; she must have drowsed off, and she knew that was deadly. She shook the girls, pinched them until they cried; little Minna’s long eyelashes were frozen to her cheek and Gerda blew on them, rubbed them and more of the girl’s tender flesh was exposed. Ingrid remained stoic, too stoic; Gerda worried that the older girl might just topple over without giving her a chance to save her.

    Because they were lost and alone. Tiny hadn’t come back. She had no idea how long they’d been there on the ground but she had to dig them out of a small drift that came up to Minna’s shoulders, in order for her to painfully rise and pull the girls to their feet.

Her entire body began to shudder, so that she could barely get the words out. “Girls, le-le-let’s go,” she forced herself to say. She couldn’t wait for Tiny anymore. For one last moment she let him fill her thoughts—Tiny with shoulders so broad she teased that he could pull a plow himself; Tiny with a cocky smile at the ready, even in church; Tiny with strong hands that could span her waist; Tiny, his sparse mustache with a little white streak in it, like a bolt of lightning, that she imagined would tickle her lips when she allowed him to kiss her.