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.
Now it is hard on Christmas. Uncles come over the bays without boats, with icicles on their grizzled moustaches an a pocketful of seasoned pine to whittle into fine boats for a young boy. Aunts gather and talk of steamed puddings an hooked-rug patterns; one works a hen that is so wooden she must lay Connecti- cut nutmegs. The biggest gander is shut up in a pen, and he wonders at the mess of sweet turnips he is fed five times a day. The girls go for ground pine an running evergreen. But the small boy is trusted with the best axe and goes to bring in the fir tree. His breath is big and blue around him. It is his first Christmas tree. Last year the big brother got it. Now he has inherited the honor. He finds the right tree by a ledge in the pasture. He walks around it three times to make sure it is full on all sides, the north as well as the south. He fells it, he shoulders it and covers his coat with pitch; he comes home stumbling in the drifts, under the single first star, deep in the tree and Christmas to his eyes an heart. The tree is set in a box. Popcorn strings festoon it. The girls do the indoor trimming. The presents go on slyly. The uncles drink the hard cider deep into the night and talk of the hardness of aunts.
The small boy has hard work to sleep, he counts the rooster's crows, the stars slide over slow. But the window grows a little gray at the third cockcrow. He gets one stocking on inside out, forgets the latches to his breeches, tumbles downstairs, and opens the long package with his name. It is what he has ache for: a twenty-two rifle, longer and better than the one descended to him from his big brother! He sits on the peak of his life, from now on it will be all downhill. He wraps the gun up and steals back up to dreams of bringing down a buck in the balsams. The girls shout through the house from the morning star till breakfast. It is flapjacks and maple syrup, hulled corn and molasses. The girls all have sleds, and the boy breaks them in for them on the orchard hill. The gander comes smoking in his fat, Father saves the boy the outside piece with the crackling skin. It is steamed apple pudding cut with a string, and more cider for all the uncles. Grandma in her Boston rocker reads the chapter in Matthew in the old family Bible. The melodeon is warmed up. The boy, on all fours, helps pump the pedals with both hands. Aunts who sing only once a year let themselves out. The shrill children's voices quaver.
Shepherds sat upon the ground, Fleecy flocks were scattered round, And the brightness filled the sky, And the angels sang for joy On that Christmas morning!
A sleepy small boy, stuffed with popcorn, leans on his father's knee in the firelight. He thinks of molasses-candy hair, the stars twinkle at the frosty windows, the night wind blows, the firelight makes shadows dance huge over the ceiling. The boy hugs his gun and dog to him; he goes down the steep hill of sleep.
Now the days come shining, the days come snowing. The old calendar goes into the stove, and the new is hung up back of the wood box. The new almanac is hung by the mantel. The baby stands alone, teetering, for the first time. He has joined the upright animals for good. He crows and falls on his face. But he knows now where he belongs, and he will be up there again.
The Arctic owl comes back from the north, scaling home into the spruces on the white wings of a snow squall. He finds his old seat on the people stump, which fits his contours so well, and he looks over the young rabbits to pick out his supper. Winter is here for keeps. The field mice extend their tunnels under the snow, the barn mice gnaw new doorways in the grain bin, and the house mice creep to the cheese by a new street. The bees creep to a new comb in the hive. The crows hug their spiny roosts and have nothing to creep to at all.
The hired man grows restless nights. His love-sorrow has healed now, and he burns to try out his Christmas socks in the drifts. His big tracks make wider and wider circles each night around the farm. He is looking for a farmhouse where there are no tracks of a man on the snow.
The small boy goes into the firs to try out his new rifle. The yellow dog finds so many fresh tracks he cannot decide which rabbit to run and fills the woods with yelps. A squirrel laughs at the dog from a high limb, but his laughter is cut short, and there will be squirrel soup for supper. The new rifle has its first notch! The boy dangles with five squirrel tails when he stops in at the Molasses-Candy Girl's house on his way home to look over her presents and her. He promises her the best of the skins for a doll's coat. He walks home feeling big and toeing out like a man.
And the hired man finds his widow. She is nine farms away, she is not so plump as the other one, she has a mole on her left cheek, her house is not so large, and she has three boys full of the Old Harry. But a widow is a widow. And the boys can be broken into use at the bucksaw. They need a father's hand on their pert, untamed breeches. So the washbasin comes into use again, and the comb goes through a moustache that crackles with electricity and love. The year is not a total loss after all.
Out in the maple grove the snow buntings have arrived from the Arctic. They glitter like sparks. Their heads tip sidewise, their tails stand up saucy. The rabbits romp and roll and kiss noses in the snow.
So the year draws to its end. The man casts up his accounts. Life reckons up the old and turns to the new. A life is gone out, but a life has come in. A new boat and a new boy. The dories safe in the cove. The smokehouse full. The cows under cover. The mows nearly up to the eaves still. A boy old enough to run with a girl. A smart wife. A son safely married, a grandchild in the offing. And the farmer still trotting a baby on his knee! A good year, and so it goes out. And God be on this salt-water farm! Amen!