"He's fine, I'm sure of it. Chances are he's stranded on the side of the mountain. Perhaps there's been an accident. It can back cars up for miles."
"I've protected him so, that I sometimes think of him as a child. I confess this to you, Timothy. I'm not proud of it, but I sometimes treat him like a mindless boy, God forgive me."
"Whatever you're doing, it must be right. You should be a fly on the wall and hear him sing your praises. Don't worry. Please! Call me when you hear."
He got a call from the adultchoir director, who was stranded at the foot of the mountain. Would he contact everyone and cancel the rehearsal?
The head of the Altar Guild phoned to say that fortyfour memorial poinsettias had been left by the florist on the church stoop and had frozen solid.
The winds increased. Walter rang.
"We hear you're under three feet of snow, for Pete's sake."
"Nearly. It's losing power that concerns me—there're so many old people in this community..."
"Including yourself, of course."
"Ha. There goes your cashmere jacket for Christmas."
"Have you gone through any of the family papers yet?"
"What do you think?"
"You've been too busy, you haven't gotten to it, you apologize for the long delay, but you'll get right on it after the first of the year."
"I couldn't have put it better myself."
"We're off to a party. Keep in touch. Stay warm. Best to Dooley."
"Did the package arrive?"
"Under the tree."
"Great. I love you, you big lout."
"Same here, Cousin. Katherine sends her love. Let's have another trip together in the new year. By the way..."
He could hear it coming. To avoid an interrogation about his love life, he put his hand over the phone and yelled, "Be right there!
"Have to go, Walter. So long. Merry Christmas! God bless you!"
The wind roared around the house, moving the curtains and rattling pictures on the wall.
The evening news reported that major airports across the state were closed, that interstate highways were closing, and the word for the storm was officially "blizzard."
"One of natures most life-threatening storms is the winter blizzard," said a newscaster, standing hatless in the TV station parking lot, looking bewildered.
The houses of Mitford were frozen like so many ice cubes in a tray. Lights shone from windows onto the drifting snow, as leaden skies made even the daylight seem one long dusk. Everywhere, spirals of chimney smoke were violently snatched by the wind and blown through the streets, so that the stinging drafts of arctic air contained a reassuring myrrh of wood smoke.
The high winds did not cease. In some places, snowdrifts covered doors and windows so completely that people had to be dug out by more fortunate neighbors. Cars that had been abandoned on the street appeared to be the humps of a vast white caterpillar, inching up the hill toward Fernbank.
Percy Mosely lived too far from town to make it to the Grill and open up, but Mule Skinner, who lived only a block away, managed to open the doors at seven on Tuesday morning, brew the coffee extrastrong, and fry every piece of bacon on hand. J.C. Hogan, who was waiting out the storm in his upstairs newspaper office, came down at once. The weary town crew, unable to start the frozen diesel engines of their snowplows, were the only other customers.
Unlike most snows, this one did not bring the children to Baxter Park. The sleds stayed in garages, the biscuit pans shut away in cupboards. This was a different snow, an ominous snow.
Martha called. Stuart was safely ensconced in a motel outside Holding, after being stuck on the mountain behind a brutal wreck for five hours and stranded in a drift on the side of the road for three.
He learned that longdistance calls could not be received because of overloaded circuits, and there was still no answer at Cynthia's apartment.
The winds howled and moaned without letup. He could see the drapes move in the living room but couldn't see across the street for the brilliance of the whirling snow.
He checked the kitchen drawer for candles and matches, the flashlight for batteries, and the lantern for kerosene. He refused to look at the woodpile.
In just two days, she would be home. Surely, the weather would change, she would get through, and she would rush toward him from the little commuter plane, laughing, her eyes blue as cornflowers.
The very last thing to think about was who had answered when he called.
At four o'clock, he discovered the telephone lines were again dead.
Two hours later, he put the kettle on to boil. At the moment he turned the stove dial, the lights went out. It was as if he, himself, had pulled a switch that brought the whole thing down into darkness.
•CHAPTER SIX•
ON SUNDAY, THE ALARM RANG AT FIVE O'CLOCK.
He lay there, frozen as a mullet, listening to the ceaseless roar of the wind. There would be no heat in the church, nor any sensible way for the congregation to get there. He had never before missed a Sunday service because of weather.
In his mind, he counted the logs in the garage. He thought he could count six or seven and not a stick more.
"I'm freezin' m' tail," said Dooley who appeared in sweatpants and a ski jacket and crawled under the covers. Barnabas yawned and pushed in between them.
"I ain't goin' t' no church," said Dooley. His teeth were chattering.
"Me either."
"What're we goin't' do?"
If there was anything he didn't like about having a boy in the house, it was feeling he should have all the answers. "Blast if I know," he said, huddling against Barnabas. "What do you think we should do?"
"You could get up an' fry some bacon and baloney."
"How? By rubbing two sticks together?"
"Poop, I done forgot." He soon heard Dooley's whiffling snore.
Hello, Cynthia? Timothy. How's the weather up there? His mind turned once again to what he might say, if only he could reach her.
"Don't start that nonsense," he said aloud. Think, instead, of how Miss Sadie and Louella and Uncle Billy and Miss Rose will be faring on this miserable and wretched morning, and pray, for God's sake, for their welfare.
He crossed himself and prayed silently. Assist us mercifully, O Lord, that among the changes and chances of this violent storm, your people may ever be defended by your gracious and ready help...Hello, Cynthia? Timothy. We were cut off the other day, and when I tried to reach you again, there was no answer. Then the lines went down for three days, and so, how are you?...O Lord, create in me a clean heart, and renew a right spirit...Hello, Cynthia, Timothy. How are you?
There was only one way to knock such idiocy in the head. He got out of bed and fell to his knees on a floor that felt like an ice rink.
The fire was fairly crackling, and he closed his mind to the fact that its cheer would be shortlived.
"This is neat."
"Bologna to die for," he said, picking two thick, browned slices out of the skillet with a fork and putting them on Dooley's toast. "Eat up, my friend, and don't hold back on the mustard." As for himself, he hadn't tasted such bacon since he was a Scout. He looked at their camp mess spread around the hearth. Not a bad way to live, after all.
The wind had cast torrents of snow against the study windows, where it froze solid, shutting out the light. They might have been swaddled in a cocoon, filled with an eerie glow.
He took a swallow of the coffee that he'd brewed over the fire in a saucepan. "Whose name did you draw at school? I've been meaning to ask."
"I drawed ol' Buster's name, but I didn't git 'im nothin'."
"Why not?"
"I traded for somebody else's name."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Jenny's."
"Aha.
"Had t' give ol' Peehead Wilson a dollar and a half to swap."
"Not a bad deal, considering."
"I got 'er a book."
"A book! Terrific. Best gift out ther
e, if you ask me."
"About horses."
"She likes horses?"
"She hates horses."
"I see."
"So I got 'er this book so she can git t' know 'em and like 'em."
"Good thinking, pal."
They drew closer to the brightness of the fire.
"You like oV Cynthia?"
"Yes. Very much."
"You love 'er?"
"I...don't know. I think so."
"How come you don't know?"
He really did dislike feeling that he had to have all the answers. "I don't know why I don't know! Do you love Jenny?"
Dooley looked forlorn. "I don't know."
"One thing's for sure," said the rector, "this is the dumbest conversation I've heard since the vestry made its new ruling on toilet paper."
In some places, the drifts were twenty feet high, and everywhere ice gleamed upon the snow like glaze on a sheet cake.
It was impossible to walk in this glittering ice kingdom, nor was there any standing up on the slick crust that lay over the ground.
Twice, he put on multiple layers of clothing and his warmest boots, determined to check on Miss Rose and Uncle Billy and fight his way up the hill to Fernbank, but the ice turned him back before he was scarcely clear of the garage. Attempting to leave by the front door, he made it down the porch steps but slipped and careened down the bank, slamming into the telephone pole at the sidewalk.
They stuffed towels along the sills of the aged windows and at the base of every door. They kept the faucets open, to delay, at least, the freezing of the pipes. In the garage, they found a ladderback chair intended for the rummage sale and a set of decrepit pine folding tables.
"We'll use the chair tonight and save the tables for tomorrow," he said, unconsciously looking around his own study for firewood.
He was finding that Dooley Barlowe could go the mile. He might be a complainer when life was soft, but he knew how to be tough when the chips were down.
"You're OK, buddy."
"When's ol' Cynthia comin' home?"
"Day after tomorrow."
"I bet she ain't."
And what gift would he give her if she did come home? As was often the case, he'd left a crucial decision until the last minute, hoping the solution would fall out of the sky.
He thought of his mother as they dozed on the sofa under piles of blankets and the radiant heat of one large dog. She had loved Christmas like a child.
When he went home from seminary, most of the room he slept in would be filled with boxes, wrapping paper, and endless yards of her signature white satin ribbon.
The armoire would be stuffed with gifts she'd been making and buying all year, and the house would smell the way she loved it best—of cinnamon and cloves, oranges and onions, coffee with chickory, and baking bread.
She would expect him to bring his friends and make the house merry, and when they begged her to sit down at the table and stop serving, she would always say, "But it's my joy!"—and really mean it.
Peggy Cramer had been with them for his mother's last Christmas, and Tommy Noles and his fiancee, and Stuart Cullen had called longdistance. He remembered the call because Stuart had spent nearly an hour talking to his mother and making her laugh as she sat by the wall phone in the kitchen.
He automatically loved anyone who made his mother laugh.
He had given her the brooch that year, a lovely thing, costing far more than he could afford, but when he saw it in the jeweler's window, he knew this was the gift that must try to convey his gratitude for the years of encouragement, for the fact that she had believed in him from the beginning, no matter what his father said to the contrary.
One small amethyst brooch with pearls had been required to speak volumes. Above all, he wanted it to say, Thanks for your support when you, more than anyone, wanted me to become a Baptist minister and I did the unthinkable and became an Episcopal priest.
That had been the coldest of affronts to her family and even to her own heart. But she loved him and stood with him, as stalwart as an armed regiment.
"Mother," he had said, "there's no way I can tell you..."
"You needn't try," she told him. "I can see it all in your eyes."
He looked at Dooley, asleep under the mountain of covers. It was almost this time last year that he had run away, racing down the mountain in a freezing wind on his Christmas bicycle, desperate to see the face of his own mother.
He prayed for Pauline Barlowe and the children scattered like so many kittens from a box.
"In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan..."
He heard the faintest singing somewhere and sat up and listened. Barnabas growled.
"Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone...
"Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow...
"In the bleak midwinter, long ago..."
Someone was singing his nearly favorite Christmas hymn, but who? And where was it coming from?
Barnabas bounded off the sofa, barking. "Angels in the garage!" he shouted, slipping his feet into frozen shoes.
A soprano and a baritone from the choir had pulled a sled to his house, wearing hobnail boots that bit into the ice. Lashed to the sled was a load of seasoned oak, and while it was no halfcord, it would give them respite.
They might as well have parked a Mercedes in the garage and presented him with the key. Gleeful, he and Dooley picked a log and split it into kindling.
Next, they chose a second log, as fuel for their supper.
Then they broke the chair into pieces, agreeing to save the folding tables for a Christmas Day blaze.
Things were definitely looking up, though there was no news from the outside world to prove it. The last report, the baritone said, was of helicopters dropping food into the coves and a forecast of freezing rain for tomorrow and the next day.
There was enough oak left to heat the study tomorrow, giving them a chance to write and read, instead of sitting in a frozen stupor, watching their breath vaporize on the air. He could not remember when his heart had felt so full of ease. A load of wood had been delivered and, with it, the spirit of Christmas.
"You know this one," he said to Dooley, who was laying kindling over the crumpled newspaper. "Sing with me! 'What can I give him, poor as I am? If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb...if I were a wise man, I would do my part...' " Hesitantly, Dooley joined in. " 'Yet what can I give him...give my heart.'"
He held out hope until the morning she was to arrive. It had rained the day before, and now, at dawn, he heard the relentless freezing rain still rapping sharply against the windows. Flights would be canceled, airports shut down.
He prayed they would be able to go forward with the hanging of the greens and with the afternoon and midnight services on Christmas Eve. After the death of winter had lain upon them like a pall, they needed the breathing life of the Child; they were starving for it.
He continued to pray for Miss Rose and Uncle Billy, Miss Sadie and Louella, and for all who were elderly, sick, or without food or heat. He was bold to ask that angels be sent, and step on it.
He was going to the kitchen door to let Barnabas out when he did an odd thing. Without thinking, and out of sheer habit, he turned on the dial of the burner under the kettle.
The television blared in the study. The light came on in the hall. The kitchen radio announced a Toyota sale.
He shouted, "Hallelujah!" Dooley hollered, "Hot dog!" Barnabas barked wildly. And the washing machine went into a spin cycle in the garage.
He would never bet on it happening again, but he felt he had somehow managed to shut down, and then restore, power to an entire county.
When the phone rang, he jumped as if shot at.
"Father! I just had to talk to somebody..."
"Margaret Ann...what is it?"
"The most awful thing has happened. I hid all of Amy's Santa Claus at Lisbeth's house, and I was going to pick it up on Christmas Eve. Well, Father, you k
now that awful hole my sister lives in down by the town cemetery, and now she's frozen in like...like..."
"A stick in a popsicle."
"Yes! And there's no way I can get my car out of the yard, Father, much less make it to Lisbeth's. What can I do? It's the prettiest little doll you ever saw, it wets like crazy, it cost somethin' awful, and no check from her daddy since Easter. Oh, and there's a little pink wagon with lights on it, and a nurse set, and a blue dress, and socks with lace. Oh, Father!" She was crying. "Amy is counting on Santa Claus!"
"I'll see what I can do. Give me a half hour."
Ron Malcolm's son was out, helping the town crew spread salt and slag. Lew Boyd's Esso was closed tight as a clam. The young man who once raked his leaves could not be found.
He called the baritone. "Is there any way I could borrow your hobnail boots for a couple of hours? Terrific. Just leave them inside your porch door." He called the soprano. "What size are your hobnails? Perfect. We won't come in, just set them on the stoop."
"Dooley," he shouted over a TV ball game, "can you come here a minute?"
"I ain't doin' this n' more," said Dooley, whose face was red as a lobster. He stomped along, carrying a doll and a wagon in a sack on his back. The rector's sack contained a dress, socks, and nurse's set, plus the doll carriage Margaret Ann had forgotten to mention.
"You fall and bust your butt," said Dooley, "and you cain't preach. I bust mine, I cain't play football."
"Good thinking." He had to stomp hard on the crust of ice with each step in order to keep from falling. He would pay for this by morning in every aching muscle. "We've only got three more blocks to go. Just keep in mind those steaks sizzling in the skillet...those ovenroasted potatoes with all the sour cream you can eat...and that triple-chocolate cake, sent by some well-meaning parishioner before the storm, which is currently hidden in the freezer. You can devour the whole thing!"
Dooley grunted.
The Main Street Grill was dead as a doornail, which was a sorry sight to behold.