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At six-thirty in the morning, it was still snowing through gusts of wind, and the radio told her that the schools were closed on account of the blizzard. 6 The electricity went out Monday afternoon when the wind picked up. The telephone held for another day. Chris Olivet and Mr. Wilgosch called to check on her, urged her to sit tight, and Chris promised that he would be over to the house with his blade to clear her long driveway as soon as the snow stopped falling. Mary felt a wonderful calm over a mild steady buzz of sheer joy in being alive and having such a clear, elemental task in front of her: stay warm, feed the kids, enjoy each other, and watch the transformation of the woods and the lake, between the gusts of wind. When the wind blew she couldn’t see a thing. You could get lost out there, even in a place you knew well. Then the phone went out, and the wind blew the snow in tight drifts against the front door. How would they get out, if they needed to, where could they go . . . but we have everything we need, she reminded them. Food, candles, plenty of water, each other. The kids grew bored in the late afternoons with peanut butter sandwiches and the no-longer-fresh apples stored in the crawl space, but they were otherwise thrilled with the novelty of the storm, and endlessly inventive. They did not tire of puzzles, checkers, books, or shoebox villages. Every so often one or two of them ventured outside to ‹ll buckets with snow to melt. Sean worked on his Cub Scout carving , the wolf head from a kit. Chris Olivet, who rarely spared more than a soft hello for the kids, had shown him how to use a knife, back in the fall. “Don’t wanna pull a sharp blade right toward your own leg,” he said gently. Mary would have told Sean, but Chris saw it ‹rst. He put down his paintbrush and went over to Sean, who sat at the picnic table. “If it slips—or when it slips, ’cause they almost always do—it could ›y right inta the inside of your leg, cut a big artery. Show you how I do it.” “Sure,” said Sean, and gave him the wolf head. It was all blocked 47 out for him, in the kit. The Scouts were just supposed to carve away certain chunks of wood, gouge nostrils, hollow the ears, score the surface to indicate hair, and then paint it. Sean hadn’t forgotten Chris’s instruction. Mary watched him carve carefully away from his femoral artery. Alex snapped at him about getting shavings on the ›oor, and they quarreled brie›y, but Mary brought over some newspapers. That was the only ruckus of the afternoon , except for the terrier Klondy nipping at Becky when she tried to dress him in doll clothes. He ran upstairs, his toenails clicking, and Becky hurled the doll jacket across the room, embarrassed. But Klondy was back when evening fell and it got to be the time to light candles, cuddle under blankets, build a ‹re, boil cocoa on the gas stove, melt cheese sandwiches, and reminisce. Reminiscing consisted of the kids begging her to tell stories about what they called the Old Days when she was growing up in North Carolina. They seemed to think it was easy, telling stories. They gathered around her like pups. The wind, driving snow against the house, sounded like an owl hunting, a lonely sound and yet comforting—the cold outside, the warmth within. She remembered doing the same thing as a child, begging her mother and father for stories, as if they merely needed to open a trunk and select one of the many long strands heaped inside. Now, she was amazed at the difference between the stories in her head, the memories she wanted to share—and the words that came out of her mouth. The stories that came out of her mouth were different. She’d simplify things. She had to leave unspoken much of the color, the pleasure, the circumstance. But the kids didn’t care. They supplied their own color. Mary wanted to tell stories about how hard her mother worked to keep the family together after Hi Ashton went bankrupt and started drinking so much—if that’s exactly what happened—she never knew if the Depression caused his drinking...
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