Christmas eve we went in to my sister Mary’s as we always do. It was raining hard, but we were very gay with our carload of presents (mostly bought at the Vashon drugstore)—anyway in the city rain is merely shiny black pavement, blurry street lights and using the windshield swipes.
The entire family was at Mary’s—at that time only eighteen—now thirty-two and rapidly increasing. Mary’s house looked beautiful and very Christmasy and there was a delicious supper and magnificent Christmas spirit. We had a wonderful time. Then as we sang “Silent Night” for the last time Don announced suddenly that we had only twenty-seven minutes to get the last ferry.
By taking back streets and going through Chinatown, we made it and the next thing we knew we were on the Sanders’ sea wall looking down at the tide which was slapping playfully at the top step. The trail was dark with an impenetrable darkness like oily smoke, wet and very slippery. By the time we got home it was two-thirty and our Christmas presents and our spirits (even mine so homemade and old-fashioned) were like yesterday’s dumplings.
Don cheerfully built the fires while I put Christmas carols on the record player and made oyster stew. The girls’ reaction was tepid.
Christmas morning, rain was still lashing the windows and gurgling in the downspouts, but we managed a semblance of gaiety as we opened our partially dried-out presents in front of a roaring fire. The sagging atmosphere was leavened still further by the girls’ getting just what they wanted (I believe it was men’s sweaters, deep purple lipstick and a reasonable facsimile of a peignoir that year) and Mother and Alison and her husband, who had been invited to dinner, loyally appearing.
Then came January and the big snow. We are not used to snow in this country, are never prepared for it and, even when it is actually flittering down and lying on the ground and the sky is leaden and the weatherman predicts twelve inches, we keep talking gamely about those winters when the nasturtiums bloomed straight through.
I remember how surprised I was at ten o’clock that morning when I left my office building to go across the street for coffee and found that it was snowing hard—small dry flakes that powdered my hair and were still unmelted when I looked in the mirror behind the coffee urns.
By noon the snow was three or four inches deep on the downtown sidewalks and the radio reported six inches and more in the residential districts. Everyone in the office began calling home and excitedly relaying reports of six, eight, even twelve inches of snow, stuck cars, and no bus service. I tried to call the Russells, the only other year-rounders on the beach, to ask them to look out for Anne and Joan and keep them at their house until Don got home at four or thereabouts. The operator said the lines to Vashon were temporarily out of order. Every once in a while I went to the window and looked out. In spite of the wind, a thick white curtain of Lux flakes had turned the early afternoon into dusk and made the street lights wan and ineffectual. The roofs of the parked cars on the street below were heaped with snow which was pulled by the wind into peaks like seven-minute icing.
About three o’clock the “big boss” announced reluctantly that he was closing the office. He said that most of the city busses had stopped running and many of us would have to walk. There was a portentous germ-warfare atmosphere about the place. Even those most ardent “get-in-good-with-the-companys” (the ones who had asked to work on Thanksgiving) were hustling into their coats and hurrying out. I tried to call Vashon again but the lines were still out. I put on my raincoat (white poplin and stylish but no warmer than cellophane) and galoshes and started for the Vashon bus stop five blocks away. The wind, apparently fresh off a glacier, had gathered great momentum on the north-and-south streets and came whining down between the buildings with an armload of snow that made each crossing a little nightmare of streaming eyes and frozen legs. Everybody was walking huddled with their heads down, their coats pulled around them like bathrobes.
When I got to the Vashon bus stop, an unprotected corner by a furniture store, I found most of the commuters already there. Apparently every office in Seattle had closed early. While we crowded in the small doorway waiting for the bus, I heard that the lights always went off on Vashon during a snow—the telephone was already out and probably would be for weeks—the ferries probably wouldn’t be running—this looked like a big snow—big snows always caused terrible slides—a wind like this would certainly take out a lot of sea walls—they hoped the local grocers (five all told—two very small) had plenty of food on hand because it certainly looked as if we were going to be marooned for a long time.
I became almost frantic with worry. What if I couldn’t get to the island? Poor little Anne and Joan would be there all alone. I tried to inventory the supplies we had on hand. All I could accurately remember was a new case of Frisky dog food, part of a case of Puss’n Boots cat food, and three cartons of Camels. I remembered stories Gammy, my grandmother, had told us when we were children and wouldn’t eat something she had cooked (wise precaution), of the starving Armenian children who were grateful for willow twigs and cow dung. I thought of pictures I had seen of Swiss people digging the bodies of their loved ones out of avalanches. I wondered if smoking was really harmful for children. All those cigarettes and nothing to do day after long dark day. I wondered where Don was. I thought of our huge virgin firs, so black and majestic against a summer sky, now loaded with snow, leaning, leaning and finally crashing down on the house where two tiny matchstick figures shivered by a fire made out of the last chair.
Then the bus came. We all squeezed on board and drove to the dock, where we were informed the ferry, in the clutches of the wild north wind, had crashed into the dolphins and knocked them down. The ferry was now leaving from another dock in downtown Seattle. We drove back to Seattle and down onto the dock. There was a long line of waiting cars, but the bus had priority and went right to the front. There was no Vashon ferry in the slip nor in sight on the troubled waters. I got out of the bus and walked up and down the line of cars, talking to people I knew and even ones I didn’t know because disaster does much to break down the barriers of reticence.
Going from car to car I learned that the lights always went off on Vashon during a snow—the telephone was already out and probably would be for weeks—the ferries probably wouldn’t be running after this trip if they made it—this looked like a big snow—big snows always caused terrible slides—a wind like this would certainly take out a lot of sea walls—they hoped the local grocers had plenty of food on hand because it certainly looked as if we were going to be marooned for a long long time—had I seen the size of the waves—they were enormous and would be much much more enormous out in the middle of the passage—certainly made a person wonder if these boats were really seaworthy—after all they were old to begin with—had been discarded by San Francisco. . . .
The ferry finally left at eight o’clock. The waves were enormous, the ferry creaked and groaned and writhed in pain. In the restaurant where I sat out the trip, the coffee cups slid off the counter and one quite sensible-looking woman pushed away her apple pie and sobbed, “We’ll never make it. We’ll all be drowned!”
We landed at the Vashon dock about nine-thirty. At the store, Bob Russell and I were told the trail was impassable and we would have to go by the beach. The tide, for some strange co-operative reason, was out. We started out. The wind was at our backs, but the rocky beach was like walking on frosty billiard balls and our flashlights were futile against the driving snow. It took us almost an hour to reach the point where Bob lived. He wanted me to come in and warm up a little before going on, but I was too worried about the children. I stumped on. My nylon-clad legs were numb. My face felt as if it had been sandpapered. I recognized our sea wall, but the path from the beach to the house was completely obliterated.
On my hands and knees I crawled where I thought the path should be. I reached the kitchen door just as Don and the children came down the steps. They helped me to my feet, dragged me into the kitchen and gave me a big drink of whisky by candleli
ght.
“The lights are off, the telephone won’t work, and the pipes are all frozen,” Don told me cheerfully.
“The school’s closed,” Anne caroled. “It’ll probably be closed all winter.”
“Isn’t this snow keen?” Joan said.
We were snowed in for two weeks. At first I was happy because I couldn’t go to work and could be with my family. Anne was hysterical because of no school, Joan loved the snow and Don was very cheerful about hauling water from the spring and wood from the beach.
Then came the second day and cooking on the trash burner without an oven, by candlelight, lost a little of its hilarity; Don didn’t leap to his feet eagerly when I called WOOD, and the girls began quarreling the minute they opened their eyes. At night I dozed off to something murmured by Joan and answered by Anne’s shriek, “Mommy, Joan’s caught a mouse” (or a fly or a spider) “and she’s going to put it in my room! Stop her!”—to Don’s, “Peace! All I want is a little peace! Do something, Betty!”
By the sixth day I began to wonder what all those delightful things were that I had been planning to do when I stopped working. By delightful I didn’t mean cooking, washing dishes, scrubbing, washing clothes, mending, making beds, refereeing quarrels, carrying wood or sweeping. I had faint recollections of dreams of long country evenings spent in front of a roaring fire reading Shakespeare, each of us taking a part, the way we used to do when Daddy was alive, listening to symphonies on the record player, braiding rugs.
Of course, the first drawback was the fire and Don’s attitude toward the woodpile which had become that of a mother puma guarding her young. If I had more than two matches and a sliver going at once, I had to listen to moans about waste and lectures on not looking ahead. Naturally, during this period the beach was as clean as a plate—the tide didn’t even bring in seaweed.
Another thing was the matter of light. We had one kerosene lamp and one kerosene lantern but we had no kerosene. We had quite a few candles but we learned that a wick is a wick even if a candle is three feet tall and bayberry. We couldn’t play the record player because it was electric—I hadn’t learned how to braid rugs—the Shakespeare was in one of the hundreds of boxes in the back hall (the house had only three small bookcases) and the last thing I wanted to do was to look for it.
We played bridge—this was not too much fun for me as I was the only one who knew how and my pupils refused to take my word for anything, one of them kept falling asleep and the other two slapped across the table. Finally our life boiled down to reading, eating, sleeping, getting wood and getting on each other’s nerves. Even eating lacked its customary fillip, and when I was asked what I was fixing for lunch or dinner and I told them, I was almost certain to hear at least one “Ugh!” This was partly induced by ennui and partly by the fact that our only really ample supplies were the dog food, the cat food and noodles, of which we seemed to have about a thousand pounds.
One bleak morning toward the end of the siege, I was shuffling around the kitchen contemplating a casserole of noodles, Puss’n Boots and candle stubs, when Don announced, “My God, we have run out of whisky!” and offered to mush up to Vashon and get some supplies.
I said I would make a list, but he told me not to bother as he knew what we needed and he was the judge of what his knapsack would hold and what his tired bony shoulders could carry. Of course at this point the girls rushed in with demands for absolutely vital things such as hormone cream, movie magazines, Firecracker Red nail polish and bobby pins. After a great deal of discussion and a few tears, Don said firmly he would not forget the kerosene. He would get some candy and gum. He would get bobby pins. He would not get movie magazines, hormone cream or nail polish. He would get the mail. He would not forget the matches.
We bundled him up and waved him off and, as he crunched down the beach past the spring which was a frozen waterfall and the big logs in their white fur scarves, I could almost hear the enclosing howl of the wolves and smell the cow dung burning in our sod hut.
While Don was gone there was a fine bark tide and for hours and hours Anne and Joan and I filled gunny sacks with bark, dragged them along the beach and heaved them up onto the sea wall. Then we each hauled one sackful up the path to the house. When the fire in the fireplace was burning hot and bright, the way only bark soaked in salt water can burn, I made a pot of coffee and we each had a cup.
While we drank our coffee, Joan told (with noticeable envy) of her friend Evelyn who got her clothes off the city dump and had dirt floors in her house which never had to be swept, and Anne described in exact detail her next formal which she thought should be of black velvet, strapless and very tight.
Joan said that Evelyn’s father used to have a very good job but he didn’t agree with the policy of any company so he couldn’t work any more. Anne said that two of the girls in her class at school smoked. Joan said that Evelyn’s Indian girlfriend, who came down from Canada every summer to pick fruit, had a baby in the Swansons’ chicken house, a darling little boy. Wasn’t she lucky? Anne said that she thought that thirteen was really old enough to smoke if you used a holder. I asked her if she would like a cigarette and she accepted eagerly, as did Joan. They coughed and choked their way through two apiece. I noted with interest that Joan was by far the more experienced smoker of the two.
When the last tear had been wiped away and the last stub crushed out, Mamsie Pepper MacDonald said to her little daughters, “Now, girls, if you feel that you must smoke, please smoke in front of me.”
“Why?” Joan asked. “Do you like to watch us?”
“It’s not that,” I said hurriedly. “It’s just that I want you to discuss things like smoking with Don and me. I really don’t think you are old enough to smoke, but if you must try it, and I guess all girls do” (I did my early smoking behind the greenhouse in Volunteer Park when I was eleven—Benedarettes silk-tipped which tasted like burning gunny sacks—but were the only thing available at Jane’s house) “I’d prefer to have you do it in front of us. I don’t want you to feel you have to sneak.”
Whereupon both girls looked so sneaky I was embarrassed for them and left the room.
Don came back at dusk with the kerosene, several cans of beef stew, very heavy and tasting like dog food, candy, gum, movie magazines, nail polish, mail, whisky, steaks, bacon, eggs, canned milk, matches, lettuce, coffee and noodles.
He brought the noodles, he said, because, although I hadn’t said anything, he noticed the supply was getting low. He had been driven both to and from Vashon by an Army jeep—the Army had also brought oil to Beall’s Greenhouses and saved several million dollars’ worth of orchids. The reason he had taken so long was because the liquor store, filled with customers, was locked. The real proprietor was home sick and a very well-oiled friend had taken over and decided for some well-oiled reason that the customers were unruly and should be locked in the store. He wouldn’t let anybody in or out for several hours.
“A liquor store wouldn’t be a bad place to be locked in during a big snow,” Don said dreamily.
Anne said, “It says right here in Photoplay that Lana Turner didn’t go to college and she’s certainly successful.”
CHAPTER VI
WE MADE IT OURSELVES
THERE were times during that first long, dreary, wet, dark winter when I wondered what I had ever seen in this nasty little island. When I longed to pitch a tent in, say, the lobby of a downtown movie theatre—a stifling hot downtown movie theatre.
The fireplace in our living room is very large. Its maw will hold, without crowding, eight large logs or three sacks of bark or ten big cartons squashed or three orange crates whole or sixty-two big magazines rolled up. Before we moved in, when we were just visiting, I noticed that the Hendersons had tiny fires in only one corner of this great friendly fireplace. I thought this niggardly and uncozy of the Hendersons and I called any little fire an “Emmy fire” after Mrs. Henderson. That was when we first moved in, before we realized that wood, the getting and bu
rning of, was going to dominate our entire existence.
At first, getting wood seemed fun. An excursion. A gay family enterprise. And it was free. No fourteen dollars a cord any more. All we had to do was to go down to the beach in front of the house and pick it up, or go to the woods in back of the house and roll it down. We had alder and fir and cedar just for the cutting or picking up and we were lavish with it. We kept great big eight-log MacDonald fires burning in both fireplaces and the stove (no “Emmy fires” for us) from early morning until late at night and the house became warmed all the way through. If we had been less enthusiastic and more observant we might have noticed the cracking and snapping of the pine walls and beams warning us that such heat was unaccustomed.
But we were so happy in our new life and it was still October and there were many bright days and many bark tides and we considered a six-by-twelve-foot woodpile on the sea wall a big supply and kept the fires roaring until the chimneys were hot and we could eat in comfort at the dining room table with only one sweater and without heating the plates until they had to be passed with tongs. Then the days began getting shorter. At the same time the bark tides were fewer and the weather wetter and colder. Don and Joan, our wood-getters, began to speak of Emmy Henderson as a pretty smart little lady. Three toothpicks, a broomstraw and a rolled-up copy of Quick centered on one firebrick became their idea of a dinner fire. Anne and I took to heating the dinner plates until they turned brown and the food sizzled on them. We all wore two or three or four sweaters all the time. We filled hot water bottles with boiling water right out of the teakettle and put them in our beds before dinner. We never had colds, but we didn’t have much fun either. It was like living in a mine. Dark and damp and cold when we got up. Dark and damp and cold when we went to bed. We let the animals sleep on all the couches and chairs because they warmed them.