Comes in snow flurries and biting blows. The new mound in the graveyard is covered over deep, as Grandpa's turkey bones said it would be. The white border of the bay grows each day wider, and the ocean narrows and turns a black-blue. The farmer roasts skates' fins and tells the boys about his war while the wind howls outside. All winds are north or northwest. All winds have snow in them. But the year's yield is housed home safe. The girls sew dolls' dresses. The days draw in, and the hens scratch for the hot corns in the straw in the henhouse in a four-o'clock dusk. A thieving mouse, put to sleep by sluggish bee stings, is being walled up neat in wax in the silent hive.
The boy finds the evenings a burden after school, and he makes a gilt dust as he bends to the bucksaw by lantern light. Grandma grieves in her Boston rocker. The cows chew their cuds side by side through the short day and the long night and have no complaint. The big boy milks ten cows and squirts a long squirt of white on the small boy's ears where he sits with them wide,milking his one Jersey. The small boy squirts back, but misses.
It snows all day and all night. In the morning the pine trees droop to the stone wall under the weight of white furs. The woodchuck puts out the light and goes to bed for this year. Goodbye, John Henry! And sweet dreams of young peas! The winds skip over the bays, butting the islands with their furry heads. The house is alive with secrets. The girls hide packages done up in red strings in the bureau. The boy is making a toy sled for his Candy- Curls and dulls his father's best gouge. The nets hang like cobwebs in the silent fishhouse. A thousand herring with open mouths and wide eyes hang parallel on the sticks in the smokehouse. The hams in the chimney are mahogany brown. The small boy goes belly-bunt down the hill and half a mile out on the bay ice.
It is now Capricorn, the Goat, and the boy butts his way through the powdery trees to school and butts the boys in the snow fort with lowered hea for all the flying snowballs. The big reach boat is only a mound of snow at the cove. The upper bays are highways now, and huge horses smoke at their nostrils as they draw the piled beechwood over the water. The children go one after one over the ocean to school, keeping far apart in case one goes through. There are black rifts of water by the shore where the tide rises an falls, and the children must jump them.
School lets out with a burst of carols, and the small girls go home clutching the red net bags of striped candy. The rabbits leave three-cusped tracks by the alders, and there is a large dent where one has sat down to philosophize on the quiet white world. There are speckled feathers where the owl has made his dinner. The boy comes shouting home on his father's broad shoulders for the last time in his life and sees his home light from a higher place than he will see it even as a man.
Pinterest
