The horses had died hours before, their bodies mounded beneath the relentless onslaught of snow. The man’s grim face turned back to the small clearing where his family waited. He saw their forms huddled near a meager fire, the glow barely piercing the veil of the blizzard. His young wife’s eyes, wide and frantic, met his as he approached. The baby’s cries carrying high above the howling wind.
“We have to keep moving,” he told her, his voice steady, concealing the gnawing fear in his gut. He looked at his son shivering and stamping his feet by the fire, a boy just now stepping into his eleventh winter.
“You know what to do. Stay here. Keep the fire going. Look after your Mamma and sister. I’ll be back.”
The boy nodded, his face pale already hollow with hunger. The man’s hand lingered on his son’s small shoulder for a moment. The weight of it a final bit of warmth and courage. Then he was gone, swallowed by the blowing white wilderness.
His mother’s breath came in ragged gasps, her fear palpable. He knew he had to take charge. He fed the fire, the crackling flames offering a semblance of hope and gathered what branches he could and began constructing a crude lean-to, his fingers numb and clumsy in the cold.
“Stay close to the fire, Ma.” She clutched the baby tighter, her eyes darting around suspicious of the growing shadows and small sounds of the forest around them.
Night came fast. The temperature falling with the sun. The wind shrieked through the pines sending icy daggers of cold breath racing through the brittle trees. The drifts around them froze. The boy worked tirelessly, stacking pine boughs for insulation. He knew the lean-to wouldn’t be enough.
He glanced at his mother, rocking the baby who would not be quieted. She herself was crying. Tears streaked her pale cheeks. The boy stopped and watched her. Her color was fading. She rocked the baby girl in her arms, holding her tight to her naked chest beneath chamise, flannel, coat, and blanket. She crooned and whispered to the babe, and the child cried and cried.
“It’ll be alright, Ma.”
The wind howled. Snow fell in flurries. His mother did not respond.
The fire, now a flickering heartbeat in the darkness, was a greedy friend. The boy broke off dead branches, his hands aching with the effort. His fingers numb, he struggled to open his old folding knife. He fumbled with the cold steel and dropped the tool in the snow. He stared at the small tunnel the knife had punched in the hardening snow. He grimaced and cupped his hands to his mouth, trying to breath what little warmth he had left into them. Then he plunged his right arm into the snow to his shoulder, searching for the gnarled stag scales and cold carbon steel. When he pulled his hand back his fingers had lost all feeling and he had to look to see if he’d recovered the blade.
He moved to the fire and held his small hands over the timid flames. The meager kindling he’d gathered was nearly gone, and as he squatted in the shifting smoke and swirling snow, he surveyed their surroundings, searching for easy wood, low-hanging branches, and shedding bark. Darkness crept upon their camp like an all-consuming tide. Visibility fell, and the boy knew he’d have to venture far from the fire’s light to secure more fuel.
“Stay close, Ma,” he repeated, though his mother seemed lost in her fear, her eyes glassy and unfocused. He knew he couldn’t rely on her. It was up to him alone.
Hours passed, the storm unrelenting. The boy’s mind wandered. The terrible cold was beautiful. Ice and frost and flakes shimmered in the fire’s light and he felt guilty marveling at it all. The wind whistled its buffeting song biting his exposed cheeks and nose and fingers. He made himself move, only pausing by the fire long enough to feel his hands again and then back out into the dark beyond where no comfort was to be found. Endless night shrouded in endless snow, the cold binding them all to inescapable hardness.
And then the predators came, hungry at the cry of the babe, her wails a beacon in the night. He heard them calling to one another in the darkness, distant at first, like a memory of a dream. The wind carried their eager conversations distorting them across space and time confusing the boy’s efforts to track their threats.
The fire consumed the wood as the night consumed the boy. He felt for the old revolver his father had tied hastily to his narrow waist. The weight of it and the power that dwelled there scared him. It was big and heavy, and his hands were not large enough or strong enough to cock the hammer, aim, and fire.
The night dragged on, an endless battle against the cold and the predators. The boy’s body ached with exhaustion, but he couldn’t afford to rest. He checked the lean-to, ensured his mother and sister were as sheltered as possible, and fed the fire with everything he could find.
The storm showed no sign of abating, the wind a constant, icy whip. The boy’s fingers were numb, his face stung from the cold. His thoughts a blur, focused solely on survival.
He remembered the stories his father told him about their ancestors, homesteaders who had braved the elements, fought off wild animals, and built a life from nothing. They had been women and men and children of iron and oak, their hearts forged by necessity and hope. Was it like this, he wondered, when his grandfather had ventured out upon the vast prairie, a train of vulnerable wagons sheltering families that would not all survive? He watched his mother and baby sister shivering by the fire and thought of his grandmother, wondering what she had endured so her children and grandchildren would be strong.
He tended the fire, thinking of the warmth of the cabin they’d left behind. The way the hearth blazed with life and cast shadows on the walls, unknowable stories dancing across rough-hewn timber and sod. Somewhere in his mind, his mother’s laughter rang out, happy sounds proud at his tiny sister’s first steps. Exhausted, he caught himself before sleep fully took him, squatting by the fire, his chin lolling on his chest. He stood and shook the snow from his hat, placed it back on his steaming head, and pulled it as low as he could. The wind howled. Snow continued to fall in cascading flurries, and once again, he stomped out into the darkness to scavenge the trees for what low-hanging branches he could reach.
He returned with another armful of brittle branches, pine boughs, and bits of bark. His mother had fallen asleep. He could see her breath painting a vapor on the cold air, her chest rising and falling, the babe hidden, swaddled close to her heart. He stoked the fire with half of the fuel he’d gathered and let out a weary sigh, a tiny soul standing ragged guard against impossible night. Beyond the fire’s shifting warmth, the wilds called again, close and then far and then closer still. He went to his mother and gently shook her awake.
“Ma. Ma. Stay awake, Ma. I need to fetch more wood.”
Her eyes opened, and she looked past him, calling him by his father’s name, and told him she loved him and promised to stay awake. Somewhere a wolf howled and there woke in him the desire to call back. He could see the animal in his mind, feel its bushy fur and the warmth of its breath. He looked down at his mother and his sister and guilt and worry once again pushed him into the vast night. The snowfall seemed less now, and the oppressive sky occasionally let slip moonlight through roiling gradients of heavy clouds. He circled their exposed camp in widening arcs, stamping his mark in the snowpack, urinating and scenting trees and snow as he was able.
As he worked, he thought of his uncle’s voice, the man’s smile, and the lessons he’d shared. “Hard as it is, we don’t give up. Understand? Sometimes stubborn’s all you got.”
“Yessir,” he’d said, staring at the hard sun as it dripped into fading purple.
His sister’s infant cries pierced the night. The boy woke pitched against a tree, sticks and bits of wood scattered at his feet lost in the snow. He salvaged what he could and staggered shaking and trembling back to their fire. He found his mother sobbing quietly beneath the lean-to shivering. She hadn’t moved. The child was quiet. He piled everything he’d gathered onto the fire and squatted again in the soft wet snow that encircled the embers warming himself and trying to feel his hands and feet.
The night seemed endless, a black void that stretched uncaring and unyielding to a place from which there was no return. Sometime in the early hours he fell asleep. In that coldest time, the storm began to abate, the wind lessening, the snow falling more gently. Broad wet crystals turned to small hard flakes. The fire’s flames died to glowing embers.
It was still dark when he woke. Something close and threatening startling him to consciousness, a sound too muted to identify. The hasty lean-to had finally given before the wind. He looked at the sky and the stars stared back, cold and indifferent. He struggled to his feet, stamped the ground, and shoved his hands deep into the warm spaces beneath his arms. Then he looked to his mother and baby sister.
He found them still and silent, their forms unnaturally stiff beneath the blanket. Bits of branches and pine needles scattered across their lifeless bodies. He stared for a long time at their small singular frozen shape. Two souls now one, forever inseparable, nothing left to give and nothing left to take.
“Ma…”
He reached out, touching his mother’s face. Her skin was ice, her tears frozen crystalline paths staining her cheeks. His sister still buried in his mother’s embrace, forever silent.
Dawn broke, pale and fragile, creeping over the snow-covered landscape. The boy sat beside his family, slowly placing branches from the lean-to on the fire, the cold world around him silent and still.
